Brigadier Ernest Walter Davie Western (1901–1952) was the first son of Walter Western (1871–1936) and Elizabeth Ann Heard (1875–1952). E.W.D. Western was born on 2 Feb, 1901,[1] in Gibraltar. He was educated at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, Canterbury, in 1918. He passed the entrance exam to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, 1919 and was commissioned into the 2nd Battalion Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment.
In late 1937 he married Pamela Rachel Petrides (the daughter of Sir Philip Bertie Petrides, the Chief Justice of the Gold Coast (1936–1943), and they had three children: Caroline C. Western (1943), Pamela J. Gay Western (1947), and Christopher J. Western (1949).[2]