Quick Facts
Biography
Major General Charles Brian Wainwright (17 August 1893 − 1968) CB was a British Army officer.
Biography
Quoted from Nick Smart, Biographical Dictionary of British Generals during the Second World War, p. 319
"Educated at Wellington and Oxford University, Wainwright volunteered in 1914, was commissioned in the Royal Artillery, but spent his First War service attached to the Royal Flying Corps.
Married in 1917 and an instructor at the School of Artillery, Larkhill, for many years, Wainwright, a major in 1932 and a colonel in 1939, commanded 183rd Brigade on Salisbury Plain from 1939 to 1940 and commanded a corps' medium artillery 1940−1941. CRA 51st Division in North Africa in 1942, he was CRA 79th Division (Hobart's 'Funnies') in 1943. Appointed GOC 54th Division in April 1943, he was transferred in scarcely a month to command 61st Division, a training formation under Home Forces.
Retired from the army in 1948, Wainwright became Director of the Duck Ringing Research Station at Abberton Reservoir in Essex. A prime mover in the scientific study of migrating wildfowl, he lobbied tirelessly for the Abberton site to be declared a nature reserve and it was said that he individually ringed over 100,000 birds. A member of the council of the Wildfowl Trust, he lived near Colchester."