Lieutenant General Sir David Peel Yates, KCB, CVO, DSO, OBE (10 July 1911 – 8 October 1978) was a senior British Army officer who served in the Second World War and reached high office during the 1960s.
[1] Yates was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the South Wales Borderers, a line infantry regiment of the British Army, in which his father had served, in 1931.
[2] He was deployed on Waziristan operations on the North West Frontier of India in 1937 before becoming adjutant of the 1st Battalion, Monmouthshire Regiment, a Territorial Army unit, in 1939.
[2] He was appointed commanding officer of the 6th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment, which was deployed to the Italian Front in 1943 before he returned to the 4th Division later that year.
[2] He was an instructor at the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) Defence College in Paris between 1951 and 1953 when he became commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, South Wales Borderers.