GeneralSir James Willcocks, GCB, GCMG, KCSI, DSO (1 April 1857 – 18 December 1926) was a British Army officer who spent most of his career in India and Africa and held high command during the First World War.
HMS Malabar, the troopship aboard which Willcocks returned to India as a subaltern
Military career as a company and field officer
In late 1879, shortly after being promoted lieutenant,[2] Willcocks persuaded his superiors to send him to the Second Afghan War (although his regiment was not engaged there), where he served as a transport officer. In 1881 he again served as a transport officer in the Mahsud Waziri expedition, rejoining his regiment the following year. In 1884 he was seconded to the newly formed Army Transport Department and posted to Assam. He was promoted captain in what was by now the Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment in August 1884.[3] He served in the Sudan in 1885–1886 and then returned to Assam before serving in Burma in 1886, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).[4] In December 1887 he was offered a permanent transfer to the Commissariat and Transport Department, but declined in favour of the adjutantcy of the 1st Battalion of his regiment.[5]
General Sir James Willcocks, K.C.M.G., D.S.O., and staff, at the entrance to the fort at Kumasi
In early January 1902, Willcocks received orders to go to South Africa, and issued a statement to say how welcome he found this order, as he had never before been unemployed.[13] He was graded as a colonel on the staff while employed on special service in South Africa.[14]
Serving under Willcocks in Bermuda as General Staff Officer, 2nd Grade, was his son, Major James Lugard Willcocks, DSO, MC (1893–1963) of the Black Watch.[29] His granddaughter (the daughter of James Lugard Willcocks and his wife, Muriel Kathleen Price, the daughter of the late Colonel Gordon Price, I.M.S.), Wendy Winifred Willcocks, was born at Bermuda on 15 November 1919.[30]
The depot ship at the Royal Naval Dockyard Bermuda at the time was the old troopship HMS Malabar, which had been assigned to that role in 1897 and was renamed HMS Terror (the name of her predecessor as depot ship) in 1901. She was placed on the sale list in 1914 and was sold in 1918. She was the first ship Willcocks saw at Bermuda when he arrived in 1917. Shortly after visiting her alongside the wharf at Front Street in the city of Hamilton, he wrote a letter for the Royal Gazette newspaper (dated 3 September 1918 and published on the front page on 7 September 1918) in which he fondly recalled his passage to India aboard her when he was a subaltern at the start of his career as a military officer.[31] Willcocks also memorably was carried aloft in the first flight over Bermuda (by a Burgess-built Curtiss N-9H Jenny floatplane (A2646) of the United States Navy from the former USS Elinor) on 22 May 1919 (strictly the second flight: US Navy Ensigns G. L. Richard and W. H. Cushing flew the seaplane from Murray's Anchorage to Hamilton Harbour, where they set down to collect Willcocks, who took Cushing's place in the two-seater). Willcocks dropped a message of goodwill to the people of Bermuda, which was Bermuda's first air mail.[32][33] Willcocks was also a passenger in the first descent by a submarine in local waters. He was the life patron of the Bermuda War Veterans Society.[34]
Willcocks married Winifred Way, the second daughter of Colonel George Augustus Way, CB, BSC, on 29 July 1889, at Calcutta. James Lugard Willcocks, born 5 January 1893, in Delhi, was their only child.
Death
Willcocks died at Moti Hahal Palace, Bharatpur, Rajputana, India, on 18 December 1926. News of his death was received at Bermuda on 21 December. A ball scheduled to take place that evening at Government House was postponed until 23 December.[37][38] The Legislative council was sitting, but limited business to one matter other than sending a letter to the Governor asking that the council's sympathies be expressed to Lady Willcocks.[39] The House of Assembly of Bermuda also sent a message to the Governor, on the motion of Major Thomas Melville Dill, MCP, asking that the profound regret of the Legislature and people of Bermuda and an expression of sympathy be sent to Lady Willcocks by the Secretary of State for the Colonies.[40] General Willcocks' final message to Bermuda was printed in the Royal Gazette on 29 December 1926.[41]
I wired to the War Veterans for their gathering on 11th November and I mean one day to again visit Bermuda and meet such old friends as may still remember me.
^"Memories of the old Malabar: H.E. the Governor Visits the Famous Indian Troopship as she Lies off Front Street and Tells of his experiences Aboard her in the ByGone Days". The Royal Gazette. Bermuda. 7 September 1919.
^Partridge, Ewan; Singfield, Tom (2014). WINGS OVER BERMUDA: 100 Years of Aviation in the West Atlantic. Royal Naval Dockyard, Ireland Island, Sandys, Bermuda: National Museum of Bermuda Press. ISBN978-1-927750-32-2.
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