Major-General Douglas Neil Wimberley, CB, DSO, MC (15 August 1896 – 26 August 1983) was a British Army officer who, during the Second World War, commanded the 51st (Highland) Division for two years, from 1941 to 1943, notably at the Second Battle of El Alamein, before leading it across North Africa and in the Allied campaign in Sicily.

In December 1914, four months after the outbreak of the First World War, he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and, on 11 May 1915, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, into his grandfather's regiment, the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders.

He was promoted to lieutenant on 17 March 1916,[4] and, in October, was sent to England, where he attended the Machine Gun Training Centre at Grantham, Lincolnshire and, returning to the Western Front, was promoted to the acting rank of captain on 12 February 1917,[5] and assumed command of the 232nd Machine Gun Company, which in July became part of the 51st (Highland) Division, a Territorial Force (TF) formation.

[6] The German Army launched its Spring Offensive in late March and Wimberley was again wounded and, evacuated to England, was passed fit for service in June and attended a machine gun refresher course at Grantham the following month, but was not to see any further action during the war.

Wimberley chose to stay in the army during the interwar period and, in 1921, served as the assistant adjutant of the 2nd Battalion, Cameron Highlanders, then stationed at Queenstown during the Irish War of Independence.

[1] Following his studies, Wimberley attended the Staff College, Camberley from 1926 to 1927, where he was a student in a class of instructors who would lead the army to victory in the next war, such as Bernard Montgomery, Alan Brooke and Bernard Paget, with fellow students such as Harold Alexander, Charles Hudson, Roy Bucher, Alan Duff, George Wood, John Clark, Noel Holmes, Sidney Archibald, Euan Miller, John Albert Charles Whitaker, Leonard Arthur Hawes, William Holden, Noel Holmes, Richard Bond and Richard Lewis, along with Warren Melville Anderson of the Australian Army.

[7] Shortly after the Second World War began, in September 1939, Wimberley took his battalion to France, where it formed part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

[14] There was no immediate action, however, and in late December Wimberley was sent to England and made GSO1 and Chief Instructor at the Senior Officers' School, Sheerness, so missing the hostilities in France which commenced in May 1940.

[7] The division was then stationed in Scotland under Scottish Command, reforming after having played a distinguished part in the Battle of France, but suffering alarmingly heavy casualties in the process.

Wimberley's rank of major-general was made temporary on 21 May 1942,[18] and, towards the end of June, the 51st Division left the United Kingdom, destined for North Africa.

[17] In October and November, the division figured prominently in the "break-in" and "crumbling phase" of the Battle of El Alamein and actions round Kidney Ridge.

Before and during the battle, Wimberley had become a familiar sight touring the divisional areas, an incongruous spectacle in his jeep with his knees nearly reaching head height.

[19] He often paused to assist troops carrying out work or briefed individual private soldiers, so as to make them better understand the part which they were to play.

Having observed in the closing stages of the battle an assault by his Highlanders which had gone in without an artillery barrage, he wrote:The position was, as we had reported, strongly held, not a sign of our tanks was to be seen, but plenty of enemy ones...

[20]Known, trusted and respected by Montgomery, Wimberley led the 51st Division across North Africa and almost continuously throughout the Tunisian Campaign, fighting at Mareth, Medinine, Akarit and Enfidaville, and Adrano.

In his unpublished memoirs, Wimberley wrote of the Battle of El Agheila:The 14th December is a day I will never forget....As I motored forward I saw every 100 yards or so wounded men, mostly sappers who had become casualties on the mines.

About every quarter of a mile along the road derelict vehicles had been pulled across it, to block it, and each vehicle was a mass of trip wires and booby traps....I was told the very corpses of our poor dead, which we lost out on patrol, were all booby trapped, when later the burial parties went out to clear the battlefield and bury them.... Never again, while I commanded the Highland Division, did we ever meet such a heavily mined area.

[22]To Wimberley was entrusted the task of taking Buerat and opening the way to Tripoli, before supplies ran out over a tenuous chain of communication, so fast had the Eighth Army advanced.

Having opened the way to the city – the first major Axis prize to fall in the whole of the war so far – Wimberley's achievement went virtually unrecognised by Montgomery, who accused him of "dilatoriness".

On 4 February 1943, when Churchill and Brooke arrived, Wimberley ordered a composite brigade of the 51st Division, all of whom were wearing kilts and were led by the massed pipers, to march past the Prime Minister and CIGS.

[27] In July 1943 Wimberley led the 51st Division, again serving under Leese's XXX Corps, during the Allied invasion of Sicily (codenamed Operation Husky).

At this time, all three of Wimberley's brigades were commanded by future general officers, the 152nd by Gordon MacMillan, the 153rd by Horatius Murray and the 154th by Tom Rennie.

[30] He assumed command in September, after a long leave, returning to the college nearly twenty years after he had attended it as a student, in turn succeeding Major-General Alan Cunningham.

[30] Richard Mead wrote that "Wimberley will always be associated with the Highland Division, which became under his command one of the best-known of all British formations, with a reputation which spread a long way beyond Scotland.

[35] In his role as Principal of University College, Dundee Wimberley helped to found the Abertay Historical Society in 1947, along with the History lecturer Dr. Wainwright.

The society, which is still active, was formed to encourage the study of the history of the Abertay area (Dundee, Angus, Perthshire and northern Fife).