John Charles Francis Holland

John Charles Francis "Jo" Holland was a British Army officer and one of the founders of the modern apparatus of irregular warfare. At the outbreak of hostilities in World War II, Holland went to work for the War Office and recruited the heads of a large swathe of the sections of the Directorate of Military Intelligence. His recruits at this time included; Colin Gubbins, Norman Crockatt, E.R. Coombe, and Gerald Templer. For the first half of the war, he was the director of the irregular warfare efforts for the War Office, managing at first an organization called GS (R), which was later the Military Intelligence (Research) Department, abbreviated as MI(R). In 1940, he was one of the creators of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), and MI(R) was then merged into the SOE. Holland went back into regimental staffs shortly after becoming the progenitor of the British Commandos.