Charles Cox

Major General Charles Frederick Cox, (2 May 1863 – 20 November 1944) was an Australian Army officer and politician. He retired in 1923 as an honorary major general. Early life Charles Frederick Cox was born on 2 May 1863 at Pennant Hills, New South Wales. He was a grandson of William Cox. He was educated in Parramatta and became a clerk with the New South Wales Railways traffic audit branch in 1881. Cox enlisted in the New South Wales Lancers in 1891 and was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1894. In 1897 he was chosen to head a detachment of the regiment in the ceremonies for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. He married Minnie Elizabeth Gibbons on 7 March 1894. Promoted to captain in 1897, he travelled to England again in 1899 in command of a squadron of the lancers for training with the British cavalry. Boer War The squadron was training alongside the 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers) at Aldershot, England, when the Boer War broke out. Cox volunteered himself and his squadron for service in South Africa. Some 70 of his men went to South Africa; another 31, for various reasons, did not, and returned to Australia. Cox and his volunteers arrived in Cape Town in December 1899 and were the first colonial volunteers to arrive in Cape Town.