AFTER A CAREER as a courageous and skilful professional soldier, Brian Wyldbore-Smith went on to serve the Conservative Party with distinction for decades at Central Office and was a close friend of Baroness Thatcher.

He was director of the board of finance of the Conservative Party from 1970 to 1992. In 1997 Lord McAlpine of West Green, who became party treasurer in 1975, described Wyldbore-Smith as a man of great ability “and when it comes to getting money out of people, there are few to match him.

“He led a troop of exemplary men who worked, at that time, for salaries that were derisory. Central Office’s view, when I arrived, was that these people were useless and should be removed.”

At first McAlpine fell for the idea but, after a couple of weeks he began to see the sense in employing “these fine people. Wyldbore-Smith and I became close friends and I have only the highest respect for the work that he did. His honesty and integrity were of the highest order.”

In 1998 Wyldbore-Smith was critical of what he saw as the collapse during John Major’s leadership of the “Chinese walls” that separated Tory treasurers and party donors from politicians. The party chairman was now in charge of fundraising, whereas in the past “senior treasurers would report to the party chairman once a month. But politicians largely kept out of it; it was embarrassing for them.” In his time he had turned down about six offers in the region of £1 million. He could think of “one or two” examples of people who wanted to give money only in return for influence. “But of course they weren’t accepted.”

He was a man of independent mind who had appeared, during his Army days, to care little, if at all, what anyone thought of him. Colleagues could find his offhand, sometimes wounding, comments disconcerting. His undoubted courage both in action and on the hunting field gave him a distinct cachet, of which he seemed totally unaware.

Francis Brian Wyldbore-Smith was the son of the Rev W. R. Wyldbore-Smith. He was educated at Wellington and the Royal Military Academy Woolwich, from where he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1933.

Service with armoured formations in the Western Desert, from before El Alamein in October 1942 to the capture of Tunis the following May, had given him a comprehensive grounding in the principles of tank deployment. In Italy he commanded a battery of 5th Regiment Royal Horse Artillery in support of the then Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Carver’s 1st Royal Tank Regiment Group. During the advance from Mount Vesuvius to the River Volturno in September-October 1943, he had scaled an electric pylon in order to range his guns accurately. When shot out of this perch by a German 88mm shell, he went forward under small arms fire to complete the task. For this exploit he was awarded an immediate DSO. Carver, never one to waste a word, completed the citation with the phrase: “His bold and resolute personality was reflected in the speed and accuracy with which his artillery support was provided.”

When the 7th Armoured Division left Italy to prepare for the invasion of Normandy, Wyldbore-Smith was appointed GSO 1 (Chief of Staff) of the 11th Armoured Division, already in England training for the same enterprise. Commanded by the experienced Major-General “Pip” Roberts, 11th Armoured was ashore by mid-June 1944 and quickly involved in operations. Their great test was to be a month later — in “Operation Goodwood” mounted from east of the River Orne on the left flank of the Allied bridgehead.

Montgomery planned to surprise his old opponent Rommel by secretly concentrating three armoured divisions east of the Orne, but the bridging was detected and the German defences deepened to meet the British attack. After a devastating aerial bombardment, 11th Armoured led the way south towards the German-held Bourguébus ridge. Momentum was soon lost, however. The open ground was dotted with small fortified villages which, instead of bypassing, the advancing armoured regiments paused to attack piecemeal. Roberts and his GSO 1 urged them forward, but by dusk the division had lost 40 tanks and was obliged to consolidate north of the Caen-Vimont railway, short of the day’s objective.

Historians still argue over Montgomery’s intentions for “Goodwood” and the reasons for it not producing an immediate breakout on the left flank of the bridgehead. Wyldbore-Smith explained the lack of achievement on the first day as a degeneration into “pedestrian” armoured tactics, which Roberts and he had tried so hard to eliminate in training based on their experience against Rommel in the desert. Throughout the rest of his career, anything remotely pedestrian in military thinking was anathema to him and, in his characteristic forthright manner, he never hesitated to chastise anyone guilty of it.

He was a member of the directing staff at the Staff College, Camberley, from 1948 to 1950. This further deepened his interest in tank warfare and, on leaving, he transferred to 1st The Royal Dragoons, an armoured reconnaissance regiment, as second-in-command. When promoted substantive lieutenant-colonel in 1954, it was to command the 15th/19th King’s Royal Hussars about to go to Malaya, then in the grip of a communist insurrection.

This was not the sort of armoured corps task in which he had so deep an interest, yet he put his back into the escorting of troop and supply convoys along narrow, ambush-prone roads of the peninsula with characteristic fervour.

His resolute enthusiasm for development of armoured tactics to face the threat of the Warsaw Pact forces was recognised by his appointment as GSO 1 of 7th Armoured Division in the Army of the Rhine. He then returned to Camberley as the colonel in charge of B Division. The study of nuclear tactics had just begun there in earnest, based on a dubious strategy termed “nuclear defence of a river line”. When one student suggested that rather than attempting to defend a river line the enemy should be lured to cross, so that his concentration could be attacked with nuclear weapons, Wyldbore-Smith famously pronounced him a “military harlot” for “inviting penetration”. The student suffered no harm from this, but enjoyed some useful notoriety.

He returned to the Far East as a major-general to become Chief of Staff Far East Command, in Singapore, in 1962. There was no apparent prospect of large-scale operations in the theatre, the Malayan emergency having been brought to a successful conclusion. Nevertheless, the armed “confrontation” of President Sukarno of Indonesia with the newly formed Federation of Malaysia in 1963 gave him a lively and interesting couple of years. The jungles of North Borneo, where operations against Indonesian incursions took place, offered little scope for armoured warfare, but he was glad to be on active service again.

On return to England in 1965, he was appointed GOC of the 44th Division of the Territorial Army and of Home Counties District, from where he retired in 1967. He was Colonel of the 15th/19th King’s Royal Hussars 1970-80 and was knighted in 1980.

He married in 1944 the Hon Molly Angela Cayzer, daughter of the 1st Baron Rotherwick. She predeceased him, as did a son and a daughter. He is survived by three daughters.

Major-General Sir Brian Wyldbore-Smith, CB, DSO, OBE, GOC 44th Division TA and Home Counties District 1965-68, and director of the Conservative Party’s board of finance, 1970-92, was born on July 10, 1913. He died on December 6, 2005, aged 92.