Thomas Cubitt

Who was Thomas Cubitt?

General Sir Thomas Astley Cubitt KCB CMG DSO was a British Army officer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who commanded a division in the First World War and in retirement served as Governor of Bermuda.

Cubitt was the youngest son of a family of rural gentry in Norfolk, who joined the Royal Artillery in 1891. He requested colonial service, and spent five years in Africa, where he was involved in the creation of the West African Frontier Force and served in a number of campaigns in northern Nigeria. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, he was appointed as Deputy Commissioner in Somaliland, where he mounted a series of campaigns against the Dervish State.

He requested a transfer to the Western Front in 1916, and commanded an infantry battalion and a brigade before being promoted to take command of 38th Division in early 1918. He led the division until the Armistice, with marked success. Following the war, he held a series of peacetime commands in Germany, Egypt, and England, before being made Governor of Bermuda in 1931. He held this position until 1936, when he retired.