Lt Gen Sir Balfour Hutchison, who died in March at his home in Suffolk, aged 79, was an Administrative Staff Officer of the highest ability and earned a great reputation both in the Middle East and India in the Second World War.
Balfour Oliphant Hutchison, who came from a well-known Fife family, was born in 1889. He was educated at Uppingham and joined the 7th Hussars from the special reserve of the Royal Field Artillery in 1911.
He was serving with the Regiment in India during the early stages of the 1914-18 War, but in 1915 was posted to the Staff where he was four times Mentioned in Dispatches.
He did not see much service with the Regiment in the immediate post-war period but returned to command a squadron at Colchester in 1929, after which he was transferred to the 10th Hussars, whom he commanded from 1935-1937.
When the Mobile Division was formed in 1937 he was selected to be its chief administrative officer and, a year later, became Brigadier in charge of Administration in Palestine under Sir Archibald Wavell.
In 1940 he was promoted to the post of Deputy Quartermaster-General, Middle East, where, in the words of the Commander-in-Chief, he showed remarkable ability in coping with the very complex administrative problems of the theatre.
After a brief spell as Commander-in-Chief in Sudan, he became Quartermaster-General in India in 1944. In this post, he played a leading part in the increasing expansion of the Indian base and the lines of communication to the Assam frontier on both of which Burma depended.
For his services, he was reconquest made K.B.E. in 1946 and retired in that year with the honorary rank of Lieutenant General.
He married Audrey Jervis-White-Jervis in 1920 and they had three sons and two daughters; of the former one was killed in action in 1942 and one died of wounds in 1945.
In his younger days, he was a keen shot and a good golfer, but in the last years of his life, he was sadly crippled by arthritis, which he bore with great courage.
