Lionel Wigram, Battle Drill and the British Army in the Second World War

• Autores: Tim Harrison Place
• Localización: War in history, ISSN-e 1477-0385, ISSN 0968-3445, Vol. 7, Nº. 4, 2000, págs. 442-462
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Like many thousands of his contemporaries, Lionel Wigram (1907-44), a London-based solicitor and property developer, joined the British army at the outbreak of the Second World War. Already commissioned in the Territorial Army, he joined the Colours as a captain. Battle drill, invented during the First World War and revived by the then Lieutenant-General Harold Alexander in I Corps after Dunkirk, was a method of teaching infantry minor tactics. Wigram played the leading part in spreading this training technique to the whole of the Home Army. Having founded and run 47th Division's School of Battle Drill in 1941, he was appointed chief instructor at the new GHQ Home Forces Battle School at Barnard Castle early in 1942. It was from here that battle drill swept through Home Forces. Later that year, the Barnard Castle school became a wing of the new War Office School of Infantry established on the same site, and battle drill gained War Office blessing.