Wars and Rumours of Wars - A Memoir

Leo Cooper, 1984

The life story of General Sir James Handyside Marshall-Cornwall, born in 1887, commissioned as a gunner into the Royal Artillery in 1907. In WW1 he served on Sir Douglas Haig's staff. He then saw service in Europe, the Near and Far East, learned Turkish and Mandarin, and was sent to Berlin as Military Attache in 1928. In 1936 he was sent to India, then to Egypt where he learned colloquial Arabic. In April 1941 he became General Officer Commanding the British Troops in Egypt. Later that year he was sent by Winston Churchill to Turkey in an attempt to persuade the Turks to enter the war on the Allied side, a mission which failed. He then took over Western Command in November 1941, but was dismissed in the Autumn 1942 for going outside the proper channels to secure the safety of the Liverpool docks. He spent the rest of the war with the Special Operations Executive and MI6, attempting to promote better relations between them. He retired from the army in 1943. After the war he wrote military histories and was president of the Royal Geographical Society. He died in 1985...