Robert Cotton Money

Major-General Robert Cotton Money, MC, CB (21 July 1888 – 16 April 1985) was a British Army officer, who commanded 15th (Scottish) Division during the early part of the Second World War.

Money was born in 1888, the only child of Robert Cotton Money, an officer in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He was educated at Wellington College before entering the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He passed out of Sandhurst and joined the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) in 1909.[1]

At the outbreak of the First World War he was posted to the 1st Battalion, which was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force as rear-area security troops. Money, an amateur photographer, took a number of photographs of the battalion as it deployed and saw combat in 1914 and early 1915, including images of the Retreat from Mons, the Battle of Le Cateau, the Action at Néry, and the Battle of the Marne.[2] He later served in India, and remained in the Army after the Armistice, rising to command the 1st Battalion from 1931 to 1934.[3]

He married Daphne Gartside Spaight in 1917; the couple had one son and one daughter. His son was killed in action in 1940, serving with the 2nd Cameronians in the Battle of France.[4] Following his retirement they eventually settled in the village of Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire where they continued to live for the rest of their lives. Daphne died in 1968, and Money remarried in 1978—at the age of ninety—to Evelyn Grosstephan.[5] [6]

He commanded a brigade in the Army of India at Lucknow from 1936 to 1939, from where he was appointed to command the Senior Officers' School in 1939. In 1940–41, he commanded the 15th (Scottish) Division, then a home defence unit drawn from the Territorial Army. He was later appointed to command a district in India, and retired from the Army in 1944, to take up a post at the Ministry of Transport. He finally retired from government service in 1952.[7]

Notes

  1. ↑ Who Was Who
  2. ↑ These pictures are items numbers Q.51468 to Q.51712 in the Imperial War Museum collection. They include a small set from May 1915 during which he seems to have accompanied the 2nd Battalion at the Battle of Aubers Ridge.
  3. ↑ Who Was Who
  4. ↑ Casualty Details—Money, Robert Cotton, Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved on 21 September 2010.
  5. ↑ Who Was Who
  6. ↑ Cholesbury-cum-St Leonards LHG Newsletter, Retrieved 12_10_2010
  7. ↑ Who Was Who

References