Lieutenant-General Vyvyan Vavasour Pope CBE DSO MC & Bar (30 September 1891 – 5 October 1941) was a senior British Army officer who was prominent in developing ideas about the use of armour in battle in the interwar years, and who briefly commanded XXX Corps during the Second World War before dying in an air crash.

He was at Lancing from September 1906 to December 1910 and was a member of the school's football team and its Officer Training Corps (where he reached the rank of sergeant).

[3][4] On 8 March 1911, Pope was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in the 4th Battalion, Prince of Wales's (North Staffordshire Regiment), as part of the Special Reserve of the British Army.

[11][12][4] His MC citation states the following: For the gallantry, skill, and dash with which he led his Company in the attack on the German position at Lepinnette, on the night of the 11th–12th instant.

When a party of the enemy broke into our trench, he at once organised a counter-attack, drove them out, and, although himself wounded in two places, remained at the point of danger till all was quiet.

[29][4] On his return to Britain, and following a brief period of service with the 2nd Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment in Ireland, he transferred in April 1920 to the Royal Tank Corps (RTC).

[4][35] In 1935, at the time of the Italo-Abyssinian War, he was posted by Brigadier Percy Hobart to Egypt, as Commander of the Royal Tank Corps there, with a brief to promote the advantages of mechanised forces: the episode taught him valuable lessons about the challenges of operating vehicles in a desert.

[37] On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Pope was appointed Chief of Staff to II Corps, which had been mobilised at Salisbury under Brooke's command.

[42] He was then posted as Adviser on Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFV) on General Lord Gort's staff at BEF headquarters in France.

He soon contrived to become more closely involved in the fighting and was a prominent commander in the Allied counter-attack at Arras on 21 May, which, although it did not halt the advancing Germans, shook their confidence.

[35][46] Pope was succeeded as GOC XXX Corps by Lieutenant-General Willoughby Norrie, who had been one of his fellow students at the Staff College, Camberley in the mid-1920s.