General Sir Lashmer Gordon Whistler, GCB, KBE, DSO**, DL (3 September 1898 – 4 July 1963), known as "Bolo", was a British Army officer who served in both the world wars.

Serving with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), he found his company quartered in the same Ulrich Gasse barracks where he had been a POW in the previous year.

He was appointed adjutant of the 5th (Cinque Ports) Battalion, Royal Sussex, a Territorial Army (TA) unit, as a temporary captain on 1 May 1929,[13] this becoming a permanent rank on 30 September 1932.

[14] In 1933 he was posted to Karachi and then to Egypt at the time of Benito Mussolini's Italian invasion of Ethiopial[15] It took Whistler twenty-one years after being commissioned to achieve the rank of major[2][16] which he attained in August 1938, shortly before his 40th birthday.

Unlike a large number of British commanders who were to attain high rank in the upcoming war, Whistler had not qualified for the staff colleges at either Camberley or Quetta, having twice failed the entrance examination for the former, and confided in his old Harrow and Sandhurst friend, Reginald Dorman-Smith, the younger brother of Eric Dorman-Smith, that he would end his military career in command of a battalion at most.

[17] With little prospect of advancement to higher command, "Bolo" Whistler had seriously been considering leaving the army for civilian life when war broke out.

However, on 5 February 1940 he became an acting lieutenant colonel and was appointed Commanding Officer (CO) of the 4th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, a TA unit.

Whistler worked hard to transform the TA battalion into fighting shape and on 8 April they embarked at Southampton for Cherbourg, France, to serve as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

An officer, Peter Hadley, reported finding Whistler "standing in the middle of the street with a positive hail of explosives coming down all around".

For the next two years, the 44th Division, after moving briefly to Gloucestershire and then Yorkshire, served as part of XII Corps, defending Kent against a potential German invasion of the United Kingdom.

[24] Whistler led the 131st Brigade, which, because of its role with armour, was often in the forefront of events, through the rest of the fighting in North Africa until the surrender of the Axis forces in Tunisia in May 1943.

[30] In the latter stages of the Tunisian campaign, the 7th Armoured Division was, in late April, transferred to Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson's British First Army, joining IX Corps, which by that time was commanded by Horrocks (transferred over from the Eighth Army), after the original GOC, Lieutenant-General John Crocker (another of Whistler's future superiors), was injured and temporarily replaced by Horrocks.

[24] Whistler was awarded the first bar to his DSO in April 1943 for "gallant and distinguished services in the Middle East",[31][27] and by 12 May 1943 all Axis resistance in Tunis had ended and the fighting in North Africa, after almost three years, was finished.

[33] X Corps, commanded from late August by Lieutenant-General Sir Richard McCreery after Horrocks was severely injured by a German aircraft, formed part of Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark's American Fifth Army.

There Whistler, by this time "very scruffy" and looking like a skeleton, met General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO), but shortly after had to spend a few days in hospital with a fever.

[34] In November, the 7th Armoured Division, now withdrawn from combat, received the news that it was to be transferred to the "Imperial Strategic Reserve" and would return to the United Kingdom, to spearhead the Allied invasion of Normandy.

[33] The division was chosen by Montgomery, who was returning to England to take command of the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group, which controlled all Allied ground forces for the invasion and subsequent campaign in Normandy.

Corporal Sidney Bates of the 1st Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) around this time.

On 24 January Whistler left for a months' worth of leave, the division temporarily being commanded by Major General Alexander Galloway.

[4] With the German surrender and the end of World War II in Europe, Whistler was sent to Osnabrück to take over administration of a large area of Germany of Minden and Munster.

There was considerable communal violence prior to independence that required careful policing, but Whistler's main concern was the extraction of British units stationed in India.

After final meetings with Lord Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru, and a parade at the Gateway of India, Whistler left Bombay with the last British unit, the 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, on 28 February 1948.

[27] Sir John Macpherson, the Governor-General of Nigeria, warned Whistler of the resistance to his speed of change, receiving the reply, "Well I'm old enough and ugly enough to look after them.

[63] His main interests were to build rapport with the civil authorities, bolster the TA and encourage recruitment and training of officers in Wales and its bordering west Midland and the north-west counties of England.

In 1954 he was ear-marked as Army Commander designate in the event of an east–west war in continental Europe and in this role he played a leading part in the training exercise "Battle-Royal".

[66][27] He held the post of GOC Western Command until his retirement from the army in February 1957,[67] following his promotion to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath the previous month.

"[69] In April 1957, just before Whistler's retirement, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer asked him to become Chairman of the Committee on the Reorganisation of British Infantry.

[72] In 1958 Whistler was appointed Colonel Commandant of the Royal West African Frontier Force,[73] being the last British officer to hold the post as it ceased to exist on 1 August 1960.

[78] Brigadier Sir John Smyth, a distinguished soldier, wrote Whistler's biography "as a study in leadership" and noted four traits in his character: his humility, his humanity, his sense of humour and his devotion to his family.

The wedding took place at Eastbourne in 1926, and the reception was held at his old school St Cyprians, one of the ushers being then naval cadet Rupert Lonsdale.