Gwilym Ivor Thomas

Early life and military career

Born on 23 July 1893, Thomas was the son of John Thomas, the Harpist to Queen Victoria and King Edward VII and Joan Francis, the youngest daughter of William Denny. He attended Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire and later the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Royal Artillery on 20 December 1912.

Thomas fought in World War I, arriving on the Western Front with II Battery, XIII Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, part of the 7th (Meerut) Division, in October 1914. He remained on the Western Front throughout the conflict, and was wounded twice, in 1917 was twice awarded the Military Cross and mentioned in despatches, and, in January 1918, the Distinguished Service Order, ending the war as an acting major.

Between the wars

Remaining in the army, the first few years of the interwar period for Thomas were spent as an adjutant to various Territorial Army (TA) units, until attending the Staff College, Camberley from 1924–1925. Among his fellow students there were numerous future general officers, including Daril Watson, Douglas Graham, Cyril Durnford, Michael O'Moore Creagh, Alfred Godwin-Austen, Guy Robinson, Archibald Nye, Noel Beresford-Peirse, Rufus Laurie, John Reeve, Noel Napier-Clavering, Humfrey Gale, Clifford Malden, Noel Irwin, Geoffrey Raikes, Frederick Hyland, Thomas Riddell-Webster, Sydney Wason, James Harter, Gerald Brunskill, Otto Lund, Gerald Fitzgerald, George Lammie, Langley Browning, Gerald Gartlan, Vyvyan Pope, Robert Studdert and Lionel Finch. After this he became a brigade major with Aldershot Command from 1926–1930.

In 1931 he served at the Royal Artillery depot at Woolwich, Kent, before becoming a General Staff Officer Grade 2 (GSO2) to General Sir David Campbell, the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Malta. He then attended the Royal Naval College, Greenwich in 1934 and then, from 1935 to 1936, became a brigade major with the artillery of the 1st Infantry Division. This was followed by serving as a GSO2 at the War Office and later GSO1. He was appointed Deputy Director for Recruiting and Organisation at the War Office in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, and then he was Director of Organisation at the War Office in 1940.

World War II

In September 1940 Thomas, by now a temporary brigadier, became Commander Royal Artillery (CRA) of the 2nd Infantry Division, which had recently fought in France with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Following this he was CRA of I Corps. In March 1942 Thomas was promoted to the rank of acting major general and became General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, his first time in charge of a large formation of infantry, succeeding Major General Charles Allfrey. The 43rd Division – composed of the 128th, 129th and 130th Infantry Brigades, along with supporting divisional troops – was a first-line TA formation, serving in Kent on anti-invasion duties as part of XII Corps, under Lieutenant General James Gammell, who was replaced in November by Lieutenant General Montagu Stopford who, the following November, was himself by Lieutenant General Neil Ritchie.

In June 1942, three months after Thomas became GOC, the 43rd Division was one of many selected to be converted into a "mixed" division, of one tank brigade and two infantry brigades. As a result, Brigadier Manley James's 128th Brigade left the division and was replaced by the 25th Tank Brigade which, in September, was replaced by the 34th Tank Brigade. In September 1943, however, the experiment with "mixed" divisions was abandoned and, with the arrival of Brigadier Hubert Essame's 214th Infantry Brigade, formerly an independent unit, the division reverted into being a standard infantry division. By this time Thomas's division had been selected to participate in the Allied invasion of Normandy, then scheduled to take place in May 1944 as part of the newly formed British Second Army (initially under Lieutenant General Sir Kenneth Anderson but later replaced in January 1944 by Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey, and training in all-arms cooperation, already at a very high standard due to the GOC's energetic and ruthless methods, intensified.

After years of training the 43rd Division, under Thomas's command, landed in Normandy in mid-June 1944, shortly after the D-Day landings on 6 June, but was not immediately involved in any major engagements. On 24 June the 43rd Division was assigned to Lieutenant General Richard O'Connor's VIII Corps and, days later, took part in Operation Epsom, in an attempt to capture Caen, which, although a D-Day objective for the 3rd Division, still remained in enemy hands. He was closely involved in Operation Berlin to rescue the British 1st Airborne Division once Allied forces had been overwhelmed at the Battle of Arnhem, part of Operation Market Garden, in September 1944.

Thomas was temporarily given command of XXX Corps by Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, the 21st Army Group commander, during the Battle of the Bulge.

Postwar

After the war he was appointed GOC I Corps District within the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in 1945 and then Administrator for the Polish Armed Forces in the West under British Command in 1947. He became General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) Anti-Aircraft Command in 1948 and Quartermaster-General to the Forces in 1950; he retired in 1952.

Honours and awards

These are as follows:

Extract from citation for Distinguished Service Order

For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. When his battery was being relieved the position was shelled by an intense bombardment, which lasted for over two hours and caused many casualties in Loth batteries. The pits and ammunition of one section caught fire, and he succeeded in extinguishing this. Later, the telephone pit and mess shelter were wrecked, and he immediately led the way to the rescue of wounded men inside. The camouflage nets of three more guns were then set alight, and the ammunition began to catch fire. This he also saved by tearing down the burning camouflage and smothering the smouldering ammunition, some of which had already begun to explode. Not until all the fires had been extinguished, and he had seen every man, both wounded and unwounded, clear of the position, did he seek cover for himself. His great gallantry and exceptional coolness throughout the whole of this time were worthy of the highest praise.