Major-General Sir Reginald John Pinney (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 German 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.
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, whilst his maternal grandfather, John Wingfield-Digby, was a previous vicar of Coleshill; an uncle, John Wingfield-Digby, would later be the Conservative MP for North Dorset. 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.
After four years at Winchester College, Pinney entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1882. He passed out of the College and was appointed to the Royal Fusiliers (7th Foot), one of the oldest regiments in the British Army, as a lieutenant on 6 February 1884. 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 Second Boer War, arriving in South Africa in November 1901 to become second-in-command of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (the battalion had been there since the outbreak of the war in late 1899). He served with the battalion until the end of the war, which ended with the Peace of Vereeniging in June 1902. Four months later he left Cape Town on the SS Salamis with other officers and men of the battalion, arriving at Southampton in late October, when the battalion was posted to Aldershot. After his return he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and given command of the 4th Battalion of his regiment, 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 (TF).
First World War
Brigade commander in France
Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, an Expeditionary Force of seven regular divisions was mobilised for service in France. At the same time, the Territorial Force was activated to replace them for home defence duties. The Expeditionary Force represented almost all the regular units stationed in the United Kingdom, but only about half the strength of the regular Army; the remainder was scattered in various stations around the Empire, mainly in India and the Mediterranean. These units were withdrawn as quickly as they could be replaced by Indian or Territorial units, and formed into new divisions to reinforce the Expeditionary Force.