Lieutenant-Colonel D.R. Wilson
2nd Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment
7th Battalion, Green Howards
2nd Battalion, South Wales Borderers

He has throughout combined a high sense of duty with a humane understanding of the many factors affecting the morale of the soldier, and his work has been of a constantly high standard.

(O.B.E. citation, 1 Jan 1957)

Born on 15 January 1912 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, Douglas Richard Wilson attended Radley College and Royal Military College, Sandhurst before being commissioned into the Lincolnshire Regiment in 1932. His father Colonel Richard Henry George Wilson (1874–1944) had commanded the 8th, 1st, and 1/5th Battalions during the First World War. Following overseas service with the 1st Battalion in Hong Kong and India in the 1930s, the younger Wilson was attached the headquarters staff of the 9th Infantry Brigade during the battle of France.

Wilson completed staff college before being posted second-in-command of the 2nd Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment at the end of February 1944. On D-Day just over three months later, the battalion landed in Normandy with 9th Brigade, 3rd Division. When commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel C.E. Welby-Everard was wounded in action on 19 July, Wilson assumed command of the 2nd Lincolns. He was wounded by shell fire just weeks later on 6 August and put out of action.

On recovery, in October 1944, Wilson was appointed commanding officer of 7th Battalion, Green Howards in the 50th Division. His tenure would be brief as that division returned to the United Kingdom in December. Wilson later wrote, “the atmosphere was oppressive, and it was a bitter blow to those who had come all the way from Alamein with the Division … I was sad to leave such a loyal and courageous body of men.”

Wilson received a new command appointment in the 49th Division. He led the 2nd Battalion, South Wales Borderers from December until the defeat of Germany in May 1945. He then returned to the Lincolnshire Regiment and commanded the 2nd Battalion in Palestine. Following general staff officer postings with the British Army of Occupation in Germany, Wilson commanded the 1st Royal Lincolnshire Regiment from 1951 to 1954. While stationed in Egypt during civil unrest in 1951, a bomb was thrown at his car.

Wilson was made Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1957 and retired from the army three years later. Having belonged to the regiment for nearly thirty years, he deeply lamented the amalgamation of the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment with The Northamptonshire Regiment in 1960.

Wilson died on 14 December 1980 in Warminster, Salisbury, Wiltshire.