George K. Cockerill

Who was George K. Cockerill?

Brigadier General Sir George Kynaston Cockerill CB was a British Army officer and a Conservative Party politician.

Cockrill was the son of the Surgeon-General Robert William Cockerill, and his wife Clara Sandys, daughter of Major-General Charles Pooley.

He joined the Queen's Royal Regiment in 1888, and served in the Hazara Expedition in 1891. From 1892 to 1895 he explored the eastern Hindu Kush, for which he won the Macgregror Memorial medal and was a gold medallist of the Royal United Services Institute in India. He served with the Chitral Relief Force in 1895, on the North-West Frontier of India from 1897 to 1898, and as a staff officer in the Second Boer War from 1900 to 1902. In 1907 he became a major in the Royal Fusiliers, and retired from that post in 1910.

At the December 1910 general election he stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate in the Thornbury division of Gloucestershire. He was British technical delegate at the Hague Conference in 1907. During World War I he served in the War Office, first as Sub-Director of Military Operations, then as Deputy Director of Military Intelligence and Director of Special Intelligence with the rank of Brigadier-General.