Alexander Cobbe
recipient of the Victoria Cross (1870–1931)
General Sir Alexander Stanhope Cobbe (6 June 1870 – 29 June 1931) was a senior British Indian Army officer and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
Early life
Alexander Stanhope Cobbe was born on 5 June 1870 in Nainital, Bengal Presidency, British India, the third child and second son of Lieutenant General Sir Alexander Hugh Cobbe and Emily Barbara Cobbe, née Jones. Alexander had two sisters and four brothers; of the latter two became lieutenant colonels in the British Army and one a captain in the Royal Navy. In 1881, he was a pupil at Eagle House School, Wimbledon. He went on to Wellington College and then followed his elder brother Henry Hercules Cobbe to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from where he passed out in September 1889. At the age of 19 he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the South Wales Borderers.
Early military career
The highlights of Cobbe's military career can be tracked by the regular records of his promotions and deeds published in the London Gazette. In March 1892, he was promoted to lieutenant, and later in the same year, he was seconded to the Indian Army Staff Corps. This secondment led to his permanent transfer from the South Wales Borderers in 1894. The purpose of the Indian Staff Corps was not only to provide officers for headquarters' staff but, far more broadly, for the native Indian regiments, the army departments and also for civil and political appointments for which Indian Army officers might be eligible.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander Cobbe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.