Hugh Bruce Williams

Sir Hugh Bruce Williams, was a British Army officer.

Military career

Hugh Bruce Williams was born in 1865, the son of a general in the British Army. He was educated at Winchester College, followed by the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, from where he graduated and was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in April 1885.
Williams, promoted in March 1894 to captain, attended the Staff College, Camberley in 1899 and later served in the Second Boer War, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and promoted to brevet major in April 1901.
He became a deputy assistant quartermaster general at the War Office in April 1904 and later succeeded Major Walter Braithwaite as a deputy assistant adjutant general in January 1906. In October 1907 he became brigade major and secretary at the School of Military Engineering. Having succeeded Colonel Aylmer Hunter-Weston as GSO2 of Eastern Command in June 1908, he was made a lieutenant colonel in July. After serving as a general staff officer, grade 2, he was placed on the half-pay list from October 1911 until January 1912, when he was again appointed as a GSO2.
He was promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general in December 1914, some four months after the First World War broke out. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in February 1915. After being promoted once again, now to temporary major general and succeeding Major General G. F. Milne as major general, general staff, or chief of staff, of General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army on the Western Front, Williams went on to succeed Brigadier General Edward Feetham in command of the 137th (Staffordshire) Infantry Brigade, part of the 46th (North Midland) Division. In 1916 he took command of the 37th Division.
Williams, made a KCB in June 1919, retired from the army as a substantive major general in January 1923.