World War I Major General Sir William Bernard Hickie, KCB, FRGS (21 May 1865 – 3 November 1950) was an Irish-born senior British Army officer and an Irish nationalist politician.

[2] From a long soldierly line and famous Gaelic stock, Hickie's name is best remembered as one of the notable Irishmen who served during World War I.

Hickie was educated at St Mary's College, Oscott, Birmingham, a renowned seminary for training youths of prosperous Roman Catholic families.

[4] He was commissioned as a lieutenant into his father's regiment, the Royal Fusiliers, at Gibraltar, in February 1885, in the same class as Douglas Haig, a future field marshal.

[6] In 1899 he graduated at the Staff College, Camberley and was selected when the Second Boer War broke out later that year as a special service officer in which capacity he acted in various positions of authority and command.

He left Southampton for South Africa on board the SS Canada in early February 1900,[7] and was promoted from captain of mounted infantry to battalion command as major on 17 March 1900.

[16] When war was declared the Staff of the Irish Command became automatically the staff of the II Army Corps and accordingly with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he was promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general,[17] and as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France took charge of the adjutant and quartermaster-general's department during the retreat of the II Corps after the Battle of Mons, to Paris, and during the Battle of the Marne.

The growing shortage of Irish replacement recruits (due to nationalist disenchantment with the war and the absence of conscription in Ireland) was successfully met by Hickie by integrating non-Irish soldiers into the division.

Hickie had typified the army's better divisional commanders, was articulate, intelligent and had been competent and resourceful during the BEF's difficult period 1916–1917, laying the foundations for its full tactical success in 1918.