Edward Orlando Kellett

Who was Edward Orlando Kellett?

Colonel Edward Orlando Kellett DSO was an English Member of Parliament and British Army officer who was killed in action during fighting in Tunisia during the Second World War.

The son of Major-General Richard Orlando Kellett, C.B., C.M.G., Kellett graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Irish Guards on 1 February 1923. In 1928 he was confirmed as a lieutenant in the reserves. On 1 March 1930 he transferred to the Territorial Army as a lieutenant in the Nottinghamshire Yeomanry. By 1939 he was a major and in May 1939 was elected as Member of Parliament for Birmingham Aston He was also a big game hunter.

The Second World War saw Kellett fighting in Tunisia as a colonel of the Royal Armoured Corps. He was killed in March 1943, aged 40, during the fighting in North Africa and was buried in the War Cemetery at Sfax.