John Capper

John Capper was born in Lucknow, India to civil servant William Copeland Capper and his wife Sarah in December 1861. Returning to England at an early age for education, Capper attended Wellington College and upon leaving in 1880 enrolled in the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich from where he went on to study at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham, before subsequently being commissioned into the Royal Engineers as a lieutenant in July 1880. A capable engineering officer, Capper served in India and Burma for most of the first 17 years of his career, principally employed on military and public construction projects. He performed well in this position, being promoted to captain in 1889. In 1897, Capper was attached to the force dispatched to the Tirah campaign on the North-West Frontier of British India. One of his tasks there was to supervise the construction of the first road for wheeled vehicles across the Khyber Pass. and transferred to South Africa while his wife Edith Mary (née Beausire) and their son John Beausire Copeland Capper returned to England. Arriving in South Africa at the outbreak of the Second Boer War later in the year, Capper became deputy assistant director of railways, a vital job given the lengthy and dangerous supply routes along which the war was fought. In 1900, he received the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel and commanded several locally raised units, eventually becoming the commandant at Johannesburg. He returned to England in June 1902, following the end of hostilities the previous month, and on 22 August 1902 was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the October 1902 South Africa Honours list. ==Aeronautics==

In 1903 he settled with his family at Bramdean House in Alresford, and was appointed Commander of the Balloon Sections, based at Aldershot under the command of Col James Templer. In October 1905 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and to brevet colonel in January 1906. Later that year, having briefly become the Balloon Companies, the organisation became the School of Ballooning with Capper, who in January that year had been promoted to brevet colonel, as its commandant. At about the same time the Balloon Factory was split off and moved to a new site nearby at Farnborough and, on Templer's retirement, Capper also became its Superintendent and was given the brevet rank of full colonel. Templer was retained at the factory under Capper to complete the development of Britain's first military airship, the Nulli Secundus ("second to none") in a purpose-built airship shed. Capper not only supervised the British Army's ballooning and airship activities, but took a wider interest in aeronautics. In anticipation of the new airship, he took up the civilian sport of ballooning, flying in competitions initially as assistant to the Hon. C.S. Rolls and later with his own balloon "Pegasus" and his wife as assistant. Capper and Cody undertook the first successful flight of a British airship, the Nulli Secundus, over London in 1907. Capper went on to modify the airship as Nulli Secundus II, parodied by Punch as "second to none the second", and a smaller experimental airship called Baby. Neither was an immediate success, although Baby would later be modified and have a long and successful career. Capper oversaw the first Army aeroplanes. He briefly flew Dunne's first glider, the D.1, during secret trials at Blair Atholl in Scotland in 1907. The flight had lasted only a few seconds when the glider crashed into a wall, with Capper sustaining a cut to the head. The next year, Cody flew the first British-built aeroplane at Farnborough, which earned it the title British Army Aeroplane No.1. This was an ironic achievement for Capper's command, as he had pinned his personal hopes on Dunne, whose D.4 achieved no more than a few hops. That autumn the government conducted a formal inquiry into military aviation. Capper had to return early from Blair Atholl in order to present his evidence. He argued strongly for a promising future of all forms of aeronautics and especially the aeroplane. However his Army superiors on the committee were against aeronautics in any form. It was decided that only small-scale airship experiments should continue and that aeroplane work should be stopped. It formally ceased when Dunne and Cody's contracts ran out at the end of March 1909. Soon afterwards the Balloon Factory was removed from the command of the army and a new civilian superintendent, Mervyn O'Gorman, appointed. Capper remained in command of the Army Balloon School. When Dunne left Farnborough, Capper was one of several friends who offered support for his efforts. In 1911, one of Dunne's new aeroplanes was exhibited at the Olympia Aero Show, with a placard stating it was "Built to the order of Col. J. E. Capper, R.E." He relinquished this position in October 1910 and was placed on half-pay, and promoted to colonel. In April 1911 he was transferred to the School of Military Engineering at Chatham as its new commandant, marking the end of his aeronautical career. ==First World War==

Capper remained at Chatham until September 1914 when the lack of experienced officers forced his transfer to France to join the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the early months of the First World War. Promoted to the temporary rank of brigadier general later that month, Capper was first made deputy inspector of the lines of communications before being given the post of chief engineer to the III Corps. In June 1915 he was promoted to major general "for distinguished service in the Field" and made chief engineer of the Third Army. In October, following the deaths of several senior officers at the Battle of Loos, including Capper's younger brother Major-General Sir Thompson Capper, killed while general officer commanding (GOC) of the 7th Division, he was promoted to overall command of the 24th Division of Kitchener's Army. Capper remained in command of the division for the next 18 months, including periods of heavy fighting in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, in which his son John was killed in action serving with the Royal Artillery. The division also spent extensive periods of time in other sections of the line and gained extensive battle experience at the cost of high casualties. As a reward for his service in command of the division, he was presented with the Commander of the Legion of Honour by the French government. In May 1917, he was recalled to England, initially to run the Machine Gun Corps training centre and from 28 July hold the position of director general of the newly formed Tank Corps at the War Office. ==Retirement and final years==

In July 1918, Capper left the War Office and commanded the 64th Division in England until May 1919, when the war was over, when he took over command of Number 1 Area in France and Flanders. In July 1920, Capper became lieutenant Governor of Guernsey and took over command of the island's military installations, succeeding Lieutenant General Sir Launcelot Kiggell. He held the post for five years and during that time was made, in July 1921, a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and colonel commandant of the Royal Tank Corps in September 1923. Retiring from the army in July 1925, Capper remained associated with the Royal Tank Corps and also became a governor of Wellington College, associations he retained until 1946. ==Notes==