Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Welby-Everard
2nd Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment

But you have to get into that frame of mind where however tired you are, however exhausted you feel, you have just got to go on. Now that is a state of exhaustion that a great many of you, I am sure, have never experienced at all. I have only experienced it once, and that wasn’t really bad, but we shall really be up against the problem and we have just got to pull ourselves together. If you realise it beforehand it will be very much easier to compete with when the moment actually comes.

(Welby-Everand speech, war diary, June 1944)

Born on 9 August 1909 in Spalding, Lincolnshire, Christopher Earle Welby-Everard was a graduate of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and a Territorial Army officer. He was commissioned Lincolnshire Regiment in 1930 and served during Arab revolt in Palestine in 1936. He became battalion adjutant prior to war in September 1939, and afterwards completed staff college at Camberley. Following staff officer duties, in March 1944 he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and took command of the 2nd Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment.

Before the battalion embarked for Normandy on 6 June 1944, Welby-Everard announced to his troops:

The next point I want to talk on is the mental attitude to get into before you start … You must be ready and prepared for the first four or five days to be really tough — really tough. You will be lucky if you get any sleep at all. You may be able to snatch a few hours possibly — if you are lucky — but there will be very little time for rest, and it is up to everyone of you to get yourselves prepared in your own minds, because the first engagement — which always makes one more tired than anything else — will make us all really exhausted.

Welby-Everard led the 2nd Lincolnshire from the landing on Sword Beach until 19 July, when he was wounded by German mortar fire. After evacuation and recovery, in late 1944, he was posted to 49th Infantry Division as GSO 1 for which he earned the D.S.O.: “He was invariably balanced in his judgement, always cheerful and by his tireless efforts he set an excellent example to all other members of the Div HQ staff.”

After the war, Welby-Everard served in the Middle East and commanded the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment in Egypt in 1949. He rose to major-general in 1959 but resigned from the British Army three years later to become general officer commanding the Nigeria Army. He was the last British officer to do so after Nigeran independence. He retired from the military in 1965. 

Welby-Everard died Sleaford, Lincolnshire on 10 May 1996.