St. John Desmond Arcedeckne-Butler

Major-General St John Desmond Arcedeckne-Butler, (30 November 1896 – 4 February 1959) was a senior British Army officer and head of MI8.

Military career Educated in the United States and Switzerland, Arcedeckne-Butler entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, being commissioned into the Royal Munster Fusiliers in 1915. Serving with distinction in France and Belgium during the First World War, he was decorated with the Légion d'honneur and was one of the two young British Army officers sent to study at the prestigious École Supérieure d'Électricité (Supélec) in Paris at the end of the war.

Arcedeckne-Butler transferred to the Royal Sussex Regiment in 1922 and then to the Royal Corps of Signals in 1923. Promoted to colonel in 1938, Arcedeckne-Butler joined the General Staff at the War Office in 1940 and, promoted major-general (temporary), served as Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Supply between 1941 and 1946. retiring from the British Army the same year. He later became a Director of Romary & Co. Ltd, Thermionic Products Ltd and other companies as well as a member of the Broadcasting Advisory Committee, Eire.

In 1929 he married Ethel Helen Nesbitt Walker (1905–1953), daughter of Colonel Reginald Selby Walker (killed in action 1918), Christal Synolda Arcedeckne-Butler, born 1938, married 1961 Geoffrey William Medcalf (died 2009), having issue.

The Arcedeckne-Butlers are in remainder to the Dunboyne peerage title.

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