David Peel Yates

Sir David Peel Yates KCB CVO DSO OBE ( 1911 - 1978 ) was a British officer and lieutenant general in the Army . From 1962 to 1966 he was the 11th Commander of the British Sector of Berlin and thus one of the Allied City Commanders .

Beginning of the military career

Peel Yates entered the military in 1931. As a young second lieutenant he served from 1937 as an infantryman with the British Army's South Wales Borderers in Wazuiristan, on the north-western border of India .

Two years later he took over the post of adjutant of the 1st Battalion of the Mommoutshire Regiment .

During the Second World War he was first chief of staff of the 113th Infantry Brigade from 1940 , then moved to the Staff College Camberley before he became chief of staff of the 204th Independent Infantry Brigade (Home) in 1941 .

Subsequently, Peel Yates served as a general staff officer in the 4th Division .

In 1943 Yates was a participant in the Tunisian campaign and then switched to the position of commanding officer of the 6th Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment , with which he was deployed on the Italian front . Then he returned to the 4th Division.

As a brigadier he served in 1945 on the General Staff of General Sir Harold Alexander at the headquarters of the Allied Forces in Italy.

After World War II, Peel Yates took on a position as an instructor at the Joint Services Staff College in 1946 , before becoming Vice Adjutant and Quartermaster General in the War Office in 1949 .

Between 1951 and 1953, Peel Yates instructor at the Defense College of NATO in Paris and took over following the post of commanding officer in the 1st Battalion of the South Wales Borderers .

In 1955 he was appointed commander of the 27th Infantry Brigade and led missions in Hong Kong and China . Two years later he was appointed deputy head of Staff College Camberley.

Finally in 1960 he took over the position of Chief of Staff at Army Command East.

City Commander in Berlin

As the successor to Claude Dunbar , Peel Yates became the new commandant of the British sector of Berlin in December 1962 and thus one of the Allied city commanders. He formed with the Americans Albert Watson II, James H. Polk (from January 1963) and John F. Franklin (from September 1964) as well as the French Edouard Toulouse and François Binoche (from 1965) the highest authority of the Western Allies of Berlin . He was thus a member of the Allied Command , which was subordinate to the Allied Control Council .

As city commander, he assumed one of the most important and outstanding posts that the British military had to fill outside of Great Britain. As such, he was on the one hand the military, but above all the "political leader" of his country and exercised a kind of representative status for Queen Elizabeth II , since Berlin was formally not part of the scope of the Federal Republic of Germany and Great Britain's ambassador residing in Bonn was not responsible.

Like his predecessors, Peel Yates, as city commander, concentrated primarily on the political and diplomatic representation of his country and his duties as a member of the Allied Command, while the respective brigade commander took over the purely military command of the British armed forces in the four-sector city .

With the move to Berlin Peel Yates moved with his family in the Berlin district Gatow located Villa Lemm . The members of the British royal family also resided on the property during their stays in Berlin. The function of the host towards the royal family was fulfilled by a British city commander at least once a year when the Royal Birthday Parade ("Queens Birthday Parade") was to be accepted on the Berlin Maifeld at the Olympic Stadium .

Peel Yates was the first of a total of three British city commanders ( Robert Richardson 1978 and Patrick Brooking 1987) whom Elisabeth II was allowed to receive in Berlin during a state visit to Germany. The monarch traveled to the divided city in May 1965 and personally attended her birthday parade on the Maifeld. This Berlin visit was also a declared main target for intelligence measures by the East German State Security Service .

In January 1966, Peel Yates was recalled and replaced by John Nelson as city commander. His tenure was one of the longest of any British city command.

Last commands

Immediately after his time in Berlin Peel Yates was Queen 1966 Elizabeth II. To Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath beaten and thus into the knighthood raised why he henceforth the suffix " Sir " led. In addition, he was promoted to lieutenant general.

Until 1968 he was in his last posts as a commanding general in the Army Command East, then deployed in the Army Command South.

In 1969, Peel Yates finally retired .

Between June 1969 and September 1977 he took the position of Colonel of Honor with the South Wales Borderers .

Private

Peel Yates came from a family of officers. When Lieutenant Colonel H. Peel Yates it was his father. Since 1947 he was married to his wife Christine. The marriage produced a son and a daughter.

David Peel Yates died in 1978, his wife Christine in May 2005 at the age of 86.

Orders and decorations

• Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath
• Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
• Distinguished Service Order
• Officer of the Order of the British Empire

literature

• Robert Corbett: Berlin and the British Ally 1945-1990 . 1991.

Web links

• The British city commanders on the GSU History website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Author: MfS / HA VII: Honorary formation of the British Brigade on the Berlin Maifeld. The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, May 27, 1965, accessed on March 6, 2018 (German).