Brigadier Donald Harley NOTT, D.S.O., O.B.E., M.C., D.L. (39447)
 
Commanded the 9th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment from July 1945 to December 1945.
 
Brigadier Nott was educated at Marlborough College and Sandhurst, where he was a member of the R.M.C. Hockey XI, Captain of the Rugby XV, and Novices' Heavyweight boxing champion.

On first commissioning to The Regiment, in February 1928, Donald Nott was posted to the 2nd Battalion, then serving on the Rhine, and he represented that Battalion at shooting, athletics, cricket, Rugby football and hockey including playing hockey and Rugby football for the Army versus the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and the French Army in 1929 and 1930. Subsequently, he also played Rugby football for Devon and Kent, and hockey for Berkshire and Herefordshire.

As a Platoon Commander, his platoon won the Hopton Cup in 1932 and he was Officers' Individual Rifle and Pistol Champion. He was Weapon Training Officer in the 2nd Battalion in Malta when that Battalion won the Queen Victoria Trophy and the King George Vth Cup, and was sub-editor of "FIRM" in the Battalion for 7 years—a record?—and a constant contributor of verse and cartoons for "FIRM," which he has kept up to this day in the form of the well-known "Little General."

After spending his early service with the 2nd Battalion in Germany, Malta, China and India, he was posted to the 1st Battalion in 1938 and took part in the Arab Rebellion, where he won the Military Cross for gallantry in action at Beni Naim.

As Weapon Training Officer of the 1st Battalion he was a member of the Army Hundred at Bisley in 1938, and was—and still is—a keen sporting gun shot, it being recalled that he once personally accounted for 83 snipe in one day in Egypt!
 


Brigadier D. H. Nott
    

Shortly after the outbreak of the 1939/45 war, he took part in the campaign of the late General Wingate's force in Abyssinia, in which he was awarded the D.S.O. for gallantry in the battles of Agibar and Debra Sena, the Haile Selassie Military Medal, and he was mentioned in despatches.

He took part with the 1st Battalion in the Western Desert Campaign in 1941-42 and gained a bar to his Military Cross at the famous 1st Battalion engagement at Point 187
, whilst commanding ' D' Company In the this engagement on the 14th June 1942 his company "bore the brunt of three successive tank and infantry assaults" during one of which he "regardless of heavy machine-gun fire from the German tanks rushed forward personally to organise the defensive fire of his forward sections". 

He was captured by the Germans with the 1st Battalion at the fall of Tobruk, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, apart from five adventurous months on the run in Italy in company with Major Robin Tuckey and Captain Ian Bains of the Regiment.

In 1945 he commanded the 9th Battalion The Worcestershire Regiment and later attended a course at the Canadian Staff College. He was Commandant of Eaton Hall Officer Cadet School, Chester, from 1950 to 1952, following which he was appointed Commanding Officer of the 4th (Uganda) Battalion, The King's African Rifles, which took part in operations against the Mau Mau in Kenya from 1952 to 1954, for which services he was awarded the O.B.E.
 


Officers of the 9th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment (1945)
Back row: Lieutenants J. Chapman, K. S. Jackson, P. V. Hoar, M. C. Hassett, L. Ray, T. J. Gurney,
D. C. Thomas, M. E. Courtney, J. J. Horton, M.C.
Centre Row: Lieut. (Q.M.) R. E. Heap, Captains D. B. Haslehust, H. W. Sargeant, C. F. Graham, J. B. Hall,
W. Foster, B. E. St. L. Stuart, R. M. Edelston.
Sitting: Captain K. G. Lewis, Majors H. Kent, H. Macpherson, Brigadier B. C. S. Clarke, D.S.O., Colonel, The Worcestershire Regiment, Lieut.-Col. D. H. Nott, D.S.O., M.C. (Commanding), Lieut.-Colonel P. H. Graves Morris, D.S.O., M.C. (A.D.C.), Captain W. L. Leadbeater, Majors R. F. Barnes, J. W. Pitt, Captain W. Jamieson.
  

 
On his return to England he commanded 158 Infantry Brigade (T.A.) at Lichfield, of which Brigade 7th Battalion The Worcestershire Regiment (T.A.) formed a part.

He attended a course at the N.A.T.O. Defence College, Paris, in 1958, during the course of which he visited Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Italy and Turkey. With the possible exception of General Sir Richard Gale, it is probably fair to say that Brigadier Nott is the most widely-travelled officer in the Regiment.

He did a short tour of duty at the War Office in 1959. He was promoted on completion of this tour and commanded a TA Brigade before retiring from the Regular Army in February 1960, after 32 years' service with the Regiment, the greater part of which, as outlined above, was spent as a Regimental soldier.

On his retirement he became Assistant Civil Defence Officer for Worcestershire
and County Commissioner of the St. John Ambulance Brigade.

He was appointed Colonel of The Regiment, the highest honour which a Regiment can bestow upon one of its officers by Her Majesty The Queen on 20th April 1961, in succession to General Sir Richard Gale.


In 1963
he was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Worcestershire in 1963.

His 6¼ year tenure as Colonel of The Regiment was, almost continuously, a period of re-organization and change in the Army as a whole, during which many difficult decisions affecting The Regiment had to be made—decisions which ultimately were invariably the responsibility of the Colonel of The Regiment.

He relinquished this appointment on 21st July, 1967, when Colonel T. J. Bowen, M.C., was appointed Colonel of The Regiment.

Brigadier Donald Harley Nott of Four Seasons, Battenhall Avenue, Worcester died on 5th February 1996 aged 87 years.

 
 
 

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