Edward Williams (cricketer, born 1892)

Brigadier Edward Stephen Bruce Williams CBE (2 November 1892 – 20 January 1977) was a distinguished British Army officer whose career spanned 35 years. He also an English cricketer. Williams was a right-handed batsman who bowled right-arm slow and who occasionally kept wicket.

Williams was born in Pinhoe, Devon, the son of Major-General Sir Hugh Bruce Williams and Mabel Heward. He was later educated at Winchester College. There he played for the college cricket team. Following this he undertook his military training at Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, becoming a commissioned officer with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant on 20 September 1911, and being assigned to The Rifle Brigade.

Williams received his first promotion on 17 April 1913, to that of a Lieutenant. With the start of the First World War in 1914, Williams initially served with the rifles in France and Belgium from August to October 1914. He spent a brief period time with the Royal Corps of Signals in April 1915. It was also in May 1915 that he was promoted to Captain, while seeing action in the Gallipoli Campaign. From October 1915 to March 1916, he served in Egypt. From the 14 March 1916 to June 1916, Williams was a General Staff Officer, 3rd grade with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. He returned to the Western Front in June 1916, where in the course of duty he was wounded twice. In 1917, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur and mentioned in dispatches to this degree. He returned to England in February 1918, where he was a Brigade Major in the Home Forces, where he ended the war.