Frederick Wing

Major-General Frederick Drummond Vincent Wing CB (29 November 1860 - 2 October 1915) was a senior officer of the British Army during the First World War and was one of three British divisional commanders killed in action in the space of week in the aftermath of the Battle of Loos. Wing had served in the army for over thirty years at the time of his death, having been commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1880. He had served with distinction in the Second Boer War and been an aide de camp to Lord Roberts in 1903.

Military service

Frederick Wing was born in 1860, the son of Major Vincent Wing and Gertrude Elizabeth Wing (née Vane). In 1880 aged twenty, Wing joined the Royal Artillery after graduating from the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Wing rose in prominence in the regiment, and saw action in the Second Boer War between 1899 and 1902 for which he was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath and was seconded to the staff of Lord Roberts, whom he served as aide-de-camp in 1903.^[1] In 1905, Wing married Mary FitzClarence, a granddaughter of the Earl of Munster and Earl of Clonmell.^[2]

In 1913, Wing was given command of the artillery corps of the 3rd Infantry Division and accompanied them to France in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War. Wing served at all the major battles of 1914 and was wounded on 22 September 1915 by a shrapnel bullet in the calf, but returned to duty the next day. Wing also had a close escape early in 1915, when a German shell burst directly over his car during a tour of his artillery positions. Wing was unhurt in the blast, but his chauffer was wounded in the arm.^[1]

Later in 1915, Wing took overall command of the newly raised New Army 12th Infantry Division. In the September 1915 Battle of Loos, generals George Thesiger and Thompson Capper were killed, and less than a week later, on 2 October 1915, a shell exploded in the road outside the 12th Division's forward report centre at Mazingarbe and killed Wing and his aide-de-camp Lieutenant Tower outright at 3:45pm.^[1] Both were buried in the nearby Noeux-les-Mines Communal Cemetery which is now maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.^[3]

Notes

References

• Frank Davies & Graham Maddocks (1995). Bloody Red Tabs. Leo Cooper. ISBN 0-850524-63-6.