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Major-General Sir Reginald John Pinney, KCB (2 August 1863 – 18 February 1943) was a British Army officer who served as a divisional commander during the First World War. While commanding a division at the Battle of Arras in 1917, he was immortalised as the "cheery old card" of Siegfried Sassoon's poem "The General". Pinney served in South Africa during the Boer War with the Royal Fusiliers, and at the outbreak of the First World War was given command of a brigade sent to reinforce the Western Front in November 1914. He led it in the early part of 1915, taking heavy losses at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. That September he was given command of the 35th Division, a New Army division of "bantam" soldiers, which first saw action at the Battle of the Somme; after three months in action, he was exchanged with the commander of the 33rd Division. He commanded the 33rd at Arras in 1917, with mixed results, and through the Spring Offensive in 1918, where the division helped stabilise the defensive line after the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps was routed. After the war, he retired to rural Dorset, where he served as a local justice of the peace, as High Sheriff for the county, and as a Deputy Lieutenant; he was also the ceremonial colonel of his old regiment, the Royal Fusiliers. ==Early career== Reginald Pinney was born in 1863 in Clifton, Bristol, the eldest son of the Reverend John Pinney, vicar of Coleshill, Warwickshire, and his wife, Harriet. His paternal grandfather was Charles Pinney, a prominent merchant and former mayor of Bristol,〔Foot (2006)〕 whilst his maternal grandfather, John Wingfield-Digby, was a previous vicar of Coleshill;〔''Who Was Who''〕 an uncle, John Wingfield-Digby, would later be the Conservative MP for North Dorset.〔"DIGBY, John Kenelm Digby Wingfield", in 〕 John and Harriet Pinney had five more children, four sons and a daughter, before Harriet's death in 1877.〔 At least one of Reginald's brothers, John, also passed into the Army, joining the Central India Horse.〔, p. 212. The regiment is given as "30th C. I. Horse", which may be referring to either the 38th Central India Horse or the 30th Lancers (Gordon's Horse). The Commonwealth War Graves Database has (an entry ) for John's ''son'', killed in action in 1917, who was serving attached to the 38th Central India Horse; this would seem to make it marginally more likely that his father was also in the 38th.〕 After four years at Winchester College, Pinney entered the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in 1882.〔 He passed out of the Academy and was appointed to the Royal Fusiliers (7th Foot) as a lieutenant on 6 February 1884.〔 Contemporaries at Sandhurst included Henry Rawlinson, later Pinney's commander in Fourth Army, and Frederick Stanley Maude, who would later, like Pinney, command 33rd Division.〕 He spent five years with his regiment before attending the Staff College, Camberley in 1889–90;〔 after leaving Camberley, he was promoted to captain in December 1891. From 1896 to 1901 he served on the staff as the deputy assistant adjutant-general at Quetta, in India,〔 with a promotion to major in December 1898. He married Hester Head in 1900; the couple had three sons and three daughters.〔 Pinney saw active service in the Boer War, arriving in South Africa in November 1901 as second-in-command of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers.〔''Hart's Army List'' (1903), p. 235〕 He served with the battalion until the end of the war, following which he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and given command of the 4th Battalion, with a brevet promotion to colonel in 1906. He relinquished command of the battalion in 1907, going on to half pay, and later took up the position of assistant adjutant-general in Egypt in 1909. He held this posting until 1913, aged fifty, when he was transferred to command a reserve unit, the Devon and Cornwall Brigade of the Wessex Division in the Territorial Force.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reginald Pinney」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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