Vivian Majendie

Major-General Vivian Henry Bruce Majendie, (20 April 1886 – 13 January 1960) was a British Army officer and amateur cricketer for Somerset County Cricket Club.

Military career The son of The Reverend Henry Majendie, Vivian Majendie was educated at Winchester College and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Somerset Light Infantry in 1905. He developed a career as a cricketer and played for Somerset and Devon. He served with the West African Frontier Force in Southern Nigeria from 1908 to 1913 and then in India from 1913 to 1914.

After the war, Majendie became commander of the Amiens Sub Area of France and then, after attending the Staff College, Camberley from 1920 to 1921, became brigade major for the 14th Infantry Brigade in Curragh in 1922 before becoming a General Staff Officer at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. In 1939, with war in Europe deemed likely, the division split to form a second-line duplicate formation, the 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division.

Majendie served from the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 until June 1941 as GOC the 55th Division, which in late June 1940 was reorganised as an infantry division and served in the United Kingdom throughout the war. By now believed to be too old for field command, he relinquished command of the 55th Division to Major-General William Morgan, became GOC Northern Ireland District in 1941 and served in the War Office as President of the War Office Regular Commissions Board from 1943. He retired from the army, after a career spanning well over 40 years, in 1946 and ceased being Colonel of his regiment the following year. He became deputy lieutenant for the county of Hertfordshire in 1951.