Major General William Norman Herbert CB CMG DSO & Bar DL (26 August 1880 – 26 April 1949) was a senior British Army officer who served as colonel of the Northumberland Fusiliers and commanded the 23rd (Northumbrian) Division in the Battle of France during the Second World War.

Herbert entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the British Army's Northumberland Fusiliers on 11 August 1900.

[5] Following the end of the war in June 1902, he returned to the United Kingdom on the SS Europan which arrived at Southampton in early September.

[7] He was commanding officer (CO) of the 1st Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers in which capacity he captured an enemy position together with fifty-nine prisoners for which he was awarded a bar to his Distinguished Service Order in January 1919, the citation for which reads: He commanded his battalion with marked ability and skill, and when one of his advanced posts had been captured he organised and led a counter-attack, after a personal reconnaissance, whereby the position was recaptured, together with fifty-nine prisoners.

[13] Although he retired in February 1939, he was recalled during the Second World War as GOC 23rd (Northumbrian) Division to lead the deployment of that formation as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the Battle of France in April 1940.