Cheerful, Typical Air Force Man Helped MacArthur

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 100, 25 September 1950, Page 5

Cheerful, Typical Air Force Man Helped MacArthur

Air Vice Marshal C. A. Bouchier, the man who is senior British military liaison officer with General MacArthur, is a typical R.A.F. personality, cheerful and energetic, with compact, wiry build and engaging grin reminiscent of "Lord Tedder. In the R.A.F. he is called “Boy” Bouchier because of a youthful gusto and exuberance of manner; but he sheds his exuberance when getting down to work and becomes keen, alert and concentrated. He is a man who gives everything to the job in hand. In taking up his new post he has really gone back to Tokio, for since the end of the war he has spent more of his time in Japan. He was for two years Air Officer Commanding the Air Group in the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces, and was twice acting C-in-C of the 8.C.0.F. Since retiring a year ago —until the world situation recalled him to service—he has carried out an important trade mission in Japan. Besides knowing the East well, he has an expert knowledge of the integration of all branches of the fighting services in modern warfare. Fighter Specialist

Air Vice Marshal Bouchier is a fighter plane specialist with experience of two world wars. During the recent war he commanded a fighter station dui’ing the Battle of Britain, at Hornchurch in Essex, oh one of the Luftwaffe’s favourite approach routes. He has spent various terms of duty with the famous No. 11 Fighter Group at Uxbridge, was Deputy Director of Fighter Operations at the Air Ministry in 1942, and at H.Q. Fighter Command played an important part in working out the plan for the air “umbrella” which covered the Normandy invasion. He himself wrote out,, for security. reasons, the whole of the scheme, known to airmen as the DDay Bible. He went over with the assault forces to take operational control of air cover operations which included British and U.S.A. units, and he was made a Commander of the Legion of Merit for his services to the U.S.-Air, Force Rise To High Rank

Cecil Arthur Bouchier is young as high-up officers go; he was born in October, 1895, and educated at Chicester Grammar School. At 19 he enlisted in the first World War, in the Territorial Army's oldest formation, the famous Honourable Artillery Company. In 1918 he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, was commissioned, and received a permanent commission in +he R.A.F. when it was formed. He went to Murmansk in the North Russian campaign in 1919 and won the D.F.C. for initiative and courage. Then came service in India and Iraq; he returned to India in 1931 after graduating at the R.A.F. Staff College. He was lent for three years to the Royal Indian Air Force, then just being formed; he was in no small measure responsible for the building up, and is called one of the “fathers” of the force.

He came home in 1936, and the outbreak of war found him on air staff duties with No. 11 Fighter Group; he went to Hornchurch the following December. It was just before VE-Day that he first went East to command a goup in Burma, a few months later came his appointment to Japan, in February, 1946.