Charles Scott Napier

Major-General Charles Scott Napier (3 February 1899 – 16 June 1946), was a British Army officer who served in the First and Second World Wars. During the latter he was Chief of Movements and Transportation at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) during the campaign in north-west Europe. Early life Charles Scott Napier was born in India on 3 February 1899, the oldest of the two sons of Archibald Scott Napier, a civil engineer, and his wife Katherine Edith Liveing. He was sent to England and educated at Springfield Park School, Horsham, and Wellington College, Berkshire, where he earned a Prize Cadetship granting entry to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in 1915. Great War On graduation, Napier was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 26 May 1916, during the First World War. At the age of 17, he was too young to send overseas, so he attended a short course at the School of Mechanical Engineers, and was posted to Eastern Command. He was promoted to lieutenant on 26 November 1917, and when he reached the age of nineteen, was sent to India, from whence he joined the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in October 1918. Between the wars After the war Napier commanded the 18th Company of the Bombay Sappers and Miners in Palestine until he was recalled to the UK in 1920 to attend a supplementary course at the University of Cambridge. He earned a First Class pass in the second-year course of the Mechanical Sciences tripos. He then attended the School of Mechanical Engineers and the railway operating course at Longmoor. On completion of the course in June 1925 he became the adjutant of Supplementary Reserve (Railway) units. He was promoted to captain on 19 January 1926. In 1927 he married Ada Kathleen Day Douetil. They had one child, a son who was born in 1929.