Lord Wigram
Guards officer who braved heavy fire to take and hold two bridges during the advance on Germany
THE 2ND LORD WIGRAM, who has died aged 101, was for 20 years an officer in the Grenadier Guards and was awarded an MC in the last six weeks of the campaign in north-west Europe. On March 30 1945, during the advance from the Rhine, Wigram was in command of a squadron of the 2nd Bn Armoured Grenadier Guards (2GG), part of 5th Guards Armoured Brigade. On the approach to the small Dutch town of Aalten, close to the German border, they met with fanatical German resistance.
Large trees had been felled to create roadblocks; there were huge craters to be negotiated, and many anti-tank mines. All these obstacles were covered by enemy fire. The situation called for a combined attack of tanks and infantry.
Wigram was commanding the leading squadron in support of the King’s Company 1st Bn (1 GG). Despite fierce opposition and mounting losses, they succeeded in seizing two vital bridges and holding them. In the town, Wigram cleared the streets of enemy and took 60 prisoners. The brigade was able to continue its advance. He was awarded an immediate MC.
George Neville Clive Wigram was born at The Wilderness, Ascot, Berkshire, on August 2 1915. His father, the 1st Lord Wigram of Clewer, was Private Secretary to King George V in the latter part of his reign.
Neville was educated at Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1934, while still an undergraduate, he was staying in Scotland and played in a local cricket match at Forres against a touring Australian side which included Donald Bradman. Batting as a tail-ender, Neville scored 16 runs in his first over, six in his second and by the end of the match he was 28 not out.
In 1937 he was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards and in September 1939 he took the battalion transport to France. During the withdrawal from Belgium, he had some lucky escapes. On one occasion, 10 minutes after he had finished breakfast, a shell landed on the table. On another, his steel helmet was blown off by the blast from an exploding shell.
On June 1 he and his party reached Dunkirk after marching along the beach for 10 miles under persistent bombing and strafing from the air. After they were evacuated, bound for Folkestone, a stick of six bombs missed the ship by a few yards.
In early 1941 he was appointed adjutant of 2GG. After attending a short course at the staff college, he was posted to 33 Guards Brigade in London as brigade major and subsequently to the 6th Guards Tank Brigade, again as brigade major. In 1943 his brother, Francis, was killed at Salerno while serving with the 6th Battalion.
In August 1944 Wigram was flown to Normandy, but he had to spend several frustrating months with “B” Echelon before rejoining 2GG in command of a squadron. In April the following year, the 1st and 2nd Battalions ran into determined resistance from SS units, before liberating Stalag XB POW camp at Sandbostel. The conditions in the camp were as bad as those at Belsen. It was their last engagement of the campaign. Three months later, he was posted to Divisional HQ at Bad Godesberg as DAAG.
In 1946 he moved to New Zealand on his appointment as military secretary to the Dominion Governor General, Sir Bernard Freyberg VC. Guests who visited Government House at the time included Monty, Anthony Eden, Randolph Churchill, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.
Wigram became Regimental Adjutant of 3GG in 1950. When the King died in February 1952, he took part in the 12-hour vigil in Westminster Hall during the lying-instate.
After a spell in the Canal Zone with 2GG, in 1955 he assumed command of 1GG at Hubblerath, BAOR. While taking part in an exercise, the jeep that he was in overturned and he was thrown through the windscreen. He suffered from headaches and memory loss and, while on sick leave from the Army, he enrolled on a one-year course at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester.
On retiring from the Army in 1957, he bought a farm and became a highly respected breeder of Clun Forest sheep. He succeeded to the barony on the death of his father in 1960. He was a governor of Westminster Hospital from 1967 to 1974 and a Deputy Lieutenant of Gloucestershire in 1969.
He married, in 1941, Margaret Helen (Poppy) Thorne, daughter of General Sir Andrew Thorne, also a Grenadier. They played golf together for the House of Lords. She predeceased him and he is survived by their son and two daughters. The title passes to his son, Andrew, who had also served in the Grenadiers.
The 2nd Lord Wigram, born August 2 1915, died May 23 2017