Major General Sir John Ponsonby, KCB, CMG, DSO (25 March 1866 – 26 March 1952) was a British Army officer who commanded the 5th Division during the last year of the First World War.
Born the son of Sir Henry Ponsonby and educated at Eton College, Ponsonby was commissioned as a lieutenant into the 3rd (Militia) Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters in March 1886.[3] After transferring to the Royal Irish Rifles (later the Royal Ulster Rifles) in November 1887,[4] he was transferred into the Coldstream Guards, and the Regular Army, in August 1888.[5][6]
After being seconded for service by the Foreign Office in January 1898,[7] he served in Uganda later that year and was seconded for service in the Second Boer War in South Africa in March 1900, and attached to the Rhodesian Field Force.[8] By now a captain, having been promoted to that rank in July 1901,[9] he was again sent to South Africa in February 1902.[10][6]
In October 1913 he was made a lieutenant colonel and succeeded Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Sutton as commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards, part of the 1st (Guards) Brigade.[11]
Ponsonby fought in the First World War, initially, after receiving a promotion to the temporary rank of brigadier general in August 1915,[12] as commander of the 2nd Guards Brigade, part of the Guards Division. He was promoted to brevet colonel in January 1916[13] and then, after being promoted to temporary major general in September 1917,[14][15] as general officer commanding (GOC) 40th Division, leading his division at the Battle of Cambrai later that year.[16] His permanent rank was advanced to colonel in November 1917.[17] In July 1918 he went on to become GOC 5th Division, remaining in that role until the end of the war.[16] He had been appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George earlier in the war, in February 1915.[18]
After the war Ponsonby, whose rank of major general was made permanent in January 1919,[19] became GOC Madras District of India.[16] In May 1925, after the death of General Sir Thomas Morland, he was appointed as colonel of the Suffolk Regiment.[20] He retired from the army in June 1927.[21][22]
In 1935 Ponsonby married Mary (Mollie) Robley; they had no children.[16] He lived at Haile Hall near Beckermet in Cumbria.[16]
