Henry Lawson (British Army officer)
Sir Henry Merrick Lawson, was a British Army general during the First World War.
Military career
Educated at Cheltenham College and the Royal Military Academy Woolwich, Lawson was commissioned into the Royal Engineers of the British Army in December 1877.He took part in the Suakin Expedition and Nile Expedition in 1884 and served in the Egyptian Army during the Mahdist War in 1898.
He served in the Second Boer War between 1899 and 1902, and following the end of the war in June 1902 stayed on as Deputy-Adjutant and Quartermaster-General to the Forces in South Africa. He became Director of Movements and Quarterings at the War Office in 1904, was appointed commander of the 13th Infantry Brigade in Dublin in 1906 and Major-General in charge of Administration for Aldershot Command in October 1907.
Lawson became General Officer Commanding 2nd Division in February 1910 and Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey and Alderney in 1914.
He went on to be Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff in November 1914, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief for Northern Command in succession to Lieutenant General Sir Herbert Plumer in January 1915 and then went into "Special Service" at the front in 1916. He was critical that too many men were doing "soft jobs" in the war and thereby encouraged the formation of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps. Finally he was Inspector General of Communications for the Italian Expeditionary Force from 1917 to 1918; he retired from the army in 1921. He had been awarded the CB in January 1918.