Robert Cotton Money

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

Military career

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 as a second lieutenant and joined the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), British Army, 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 (BEF) 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 First Battle of the Marne.^[2] He later served in India, and remained in the British Army after the armistice of 11 November 1918, 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 during the Second World War, serving with the 2nd Battalion, Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) 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. From June 1940 until August he commanded the 136th Infantry Brigade, a Territorial Army (TA) unit. In 1940–41, he commanded the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division, then a home defence unit drawn from the TA. He was later appointed to command a district in India, and retired from the British Army in 1944 to take up a post at the Ministry of Transport. He finally retired from government service in 1952.^[7]

Notes

References

• "MONEY, Maj.-Gen. Robert Cotton ", in Who Was Who (Online ed.). A & C Black. 2007. 
• Obituary in The Times, 29 April 1985, p. 14.