Major-General Sir Percival Spearman Wilkinson (5 July 1865 – 4 November 1953) was a British Army officer who served as colonel of the Northumberland Fusiliers from 1915 to 1935 and commanded the 50th (Northumbrian) Division for over two years during World War I.
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Early life
Percival Spearman Wilkinson was born in County Durham in July 1865. He received his formal education at Uppingham School, Rutland, a prestigious public school.
Early military career
Unlike many of his future contemporaries, Wilkinson did not attend the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Instead, his military career began when he commissioned as a lieutenant into the 3rd (Militia) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers (later the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers), on 10 November 1883. He transferred to the Regular Army on 28 April 1886.
He was promoted to captain in January 1895. He was seconded for service with the Colonial Office in October 1897 and "served in West Africa on operations on the Niger" and received promotion to brevet major in July 1899.
In 1900 he served "on operations in Ashanti, where he was wounded".
He was promoted to major, on augmentation, in July 1900, was made a brevet lieutenant colonel in January 1901, a brevet colonel in February 1904, and, upon being made a substantive colonel and temporary brigadier general in September 1909, became inspector general of the Royal West African Frontier Force at the same time.
Promoted to major general on 8 August 1912, he served as general officer commanding (GOC) of the 1st Secunderabad Infantry Brigade, part of the 9th (Secunderabad) Division, on internal security duties in India, taking over command from Major General Francis George Bond in November 1913. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) and Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in January 1914 in the 1914 New Year Honours.
First World War
The outbreak of the First World War, which began in the summer of 1914, saw him still in India and as GOC of the brigade, an appointment he relinquished in October when he returned to Britain. In January 1915 he was appointed colonel of his regiment, the Northumberland Fusiliers, a prestigious role he would hold for the next two decades.
In June 1915 and was appointed to command the Troops at Shorncliffe before sent to the Western Front in August to take command of the 50th (Northumbrian) Division, a Territorial Force (TF) formation, taking over from Major General The Earl of Cavan.
Wilkinson led the division throughout the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Under his command, the division was committed to the line in July and participated in the major set-piece attacks at the Battle of Flers–Courcelette, the Battle of Morval, and the Battle of Le Transloy. The next major engagement for Wilkinson and his division was the Battle of Arras in April 1917, by which time they were serving in General Sir Edmund Allenby's Third Army. It was on 13 April, a Friday, during the early stages of the battle, near Arras itself, where Wilkinson was wounded. According to the division's diary:
Major-General P. S. Wilkinson, C.B. C.M.G., while up in the line visiting Brigade H.Q. was hit with a piece of shell in the leg; causing considerable contusion.
Despite the injury, he refused evacuation and remained at duty with his division.
Soon afterwards, Wilkinson found himself involved in a unique incident in British military history. Alongside two other fellow divisional commanders—Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle of the 29th Division and Philip Robertson of the 17th (Northern) Division—Wilkinson protested directly to the commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the BEF, and Allenby's superior, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. The three men, at "considerable risk to their careers and in defiance of the traditions of their service", convinced Haig that Allenby had "utterly misunderstood what Haig wanted" and that the Third Army commander had "ploughed on with an intensified mass offensive" with "calamitous" results. As a result, Haig "suspended all operations in the Arras sector" on 15 April. Unusually, neither Wilkinson nor his fellow generals received any reprimand.
Post-war and final years
Upon relinquishing this assignment in June 1919, he returned to command 50th (Northumbrian) Division as a peacetime formation in the UK in July 1919 before he retired from the army on 4 July 1923. In retirement he was chief commissioner of the St. John Ambulance. He ceased to belong to the reserve of officers in July 1932.
Having been made colonel of the Northumberland Fusiliers (soon to be the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers) twenty years earlier, he relinquished this position in July 1935, when Major General William Norman Herbert succeeded him.
He died on 4 November 1953 at the age of 88.