Alfred Edward John Cavendish

Alfred Edward John Cavendish was the second son of Francis W H Cavendish, a Clerk in the Foreign Office. He was commissioned in the 91st Highlanders [later the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders] on 14 January 1880. He was Adjutant of 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders from 1885 to 1887, after which he entered the Staff College, graduating psc in 1889.

For the next fourteen years he remained on the staff path, serving as Military Attaché to the Chinese Army (1894) and to the British Legation in China (1895) during the China-Japan war. He was attached to the Korean special mission during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897), after which he was DAAG Dublin District (1897-1900), DAAG Aldershot (1900) and DAAG South African Field Force (1900-2). From 1907 until 1911 he was CO 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

When the European War broke out in August 1914 he was AAG Southern Command with the rank of colonel. He went to war as AAG of the BEF and reached general officer rank as DA&QMG V Corps on 8 January 1915. He returned home in April 1915 to become briefly AAG Aldershot Command.

He was AAG Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and Dardanelles Army (1915-16) and GOC South African Command (1916-18). Brigadier-General Cavendish published two books, Korea and the Sacred White Mountain (1891; 1894) and The 93rd Sutherland Highlanders (1929) and was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.