Discover the Best Books Written by Lord Wavell

Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, CMG, MC, KStJ, PC (5 May 1883 – 24 May 1950) was a senior officer of the British Army. He served in the Second Boer War, the Bazar Valley Campaign, and the First World War, during which he was wounded in the Second Battle of Ypres. In the Second World War, he served initially as Commander-in-Chief Middle East. 

In that role, he led British forces to victory over the Italians in western Egypt and eastern Libya during Operation Compass in December 1940, only to be defeated by the German Army in the Western Desert in April 1941. He served as Commander-in-Chief of India from July 1941 until June 1943 (apart from a brief tour as Commander of ABDACOM). Then he served as Viceroy of India until his retirement in February 1947.

Born the son of Archibald Graham Wavell (who later became a major-general in the British Army and military commander of Johannesburg after its capture during the Second Boer War) and Lillie Wavell (née Percival), Wavell attended Eaton House, followed by the leading preparatory boarding school Summer Fields near Oxford, Winchester College, where he was a scholar, and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. 

His headmaster, Dr. Fearon, had advised his father that there was no need to send him into the Army as he had "sufficient ability to make his way in other walks of life" After graduating from Sandhurst, Wavell was commissioned into the British Army on 8 May 1901 as a second lieutenant in the Black Watch, and joined the 2nd battalion of his regiment in South Africa to fight in the Second Boer War.

The battalion stayed in South Africa throughout the war, which formally ended in June 1902 after the Peace of Vereeniging. Wavell was ill and did not immediately join the battalion as it transferred to British India in October of that year; he instead left Cape Town for England on the SS Simla at the same time. 

In 1903 he was transferred to join the battalion in India, and having been promoted to lieutenant on 13 August 1904, he fought in the Bazar Valley Campaign of February 1908. In January 1909 was seconded from his regiment to be a student at the Staff College. He was one of only two in his class to graduate with an A grade.  

In 1911, he spent a year as a military observer with the Russian Army to learn Russian, returning to his regiment in December of that year. In April 1912, he became a General Staff Officer Grade 3 (GSO3) in the Russian Section of the War Office. In July, he was granted the temporary rank of captain and became GSO3 at the Directorate of Military Training. On 20 March 1913, Wavell was promoted to the substantive rank of captain. 

After visiting maneuvers at Kiev in the summer of 1913, he was arrested at the Russo-Polish border as a suspected spy, following a search of his Moscow hotel room by the secret police, but managed to remove from his papers an incriminating document listing the information wanted by the War Office.