Tom Bridges

Lieutenant General Sir George Tom Molesworth Bridges KCB KCMG DSO (20 August 1871 – 26 November 1939), known as Sir Tom Bridges, was a British military officer and Governor of South Australia.

He joined the Royal Artillery in 1892. He commanded Australian Mounted infantry in the Boer War in South Africa 1899–1901.

He was sent a military liaison to the United States after it entered the World War One in 1917 to coordinate the sending of American soldiers to Europe. He ran into some difficulty because like most British generals and politicians he pushed for the amalgamation or incorporation of Americans into understrength British units to be commanded by British officers. This caused much friction as the American general staff felt that US troops should be commanded by US officers.

He was Governor of South Australia from 4 December 1922 until 4 December 1927. The appointment was made at the instigation of his friend Winston Churchill. He was a nephew of the Poet Laureate of England, Robert Bridges, who honoured him with an ode To His Excellency.

He wrote several books:

• Alarms and excursions: reminiscences of a soldier (Longmans & Co, London, 1938)
• compiler, Word from England: an anthology of prose and poetry (English Universities Press, London, 1940)
• Friedrich Adam Julius von Bernhardi, Cavalry in war and peace translated from the German by Major George Tom Molesworth Bridges (Hugh Rees, London, 1910)

External links

• British Military archives
• Australian Dictionary of Biography