After graduating from the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1894, Thomson was commissioned into the Royal Engineers. He served first in Mauritius and then saw action during the Second Boer War during which he was in command of a field company section and was mentioned in dispatches. He also had his first encounter with aviation when he was detailed to help with the RE Balloon Section outside Kimberley. After the war he became an instructor at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham and then at Sierra Leone. He was promoted to captain and brevet major in 1904 and in 1909 joined the Army Staff College in Camberley. In 1911 he went to the War Office, and in 1912 Thomson was appointed military attaché with the Serbian army during the first and Second Balkan Wars, after which he returned to the War Office in 1913. During the First World War Thomson first served at the British Expeditionary Force Headquarters and was Chief Military Interpreter between Sir John French and General Joffre. In 1915 he was sent to Bucharest as military attaché on Kitchener initiative to bring Romania into the war. But when there he quickly formed the view that an unprepared and ill-armed Romania facing a war on three fronts against Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria would be a liability rather than an asset to the allies. This view was brushed aside by Whitehall, and he signed a Military Convention with Romania on 13 August 1916. By the end of 1916 he had to alleviate the consequences of Romania's capitulation, and he supervised the destruction of the Romanian oil wells to deny them to Germany. From 27 August 1917 to 27 May 1918 Thomson served as Commander Royal Engineers of 60th Division in Palestine, commanding the divisional engineers in the Battle of Beersheba, the attack on the Sheria position, and the Capture of Jerusalem. He distinguished himself at the Capture of Jericho. After a distinguished wartime career both behind the lines and at the front, Thomson formed part of the British delegation at the Versailles conference, but condemned the Versailles terms as "containing the seeds of another war." As in Romania where he followed a policy that he did not agree with, he found both experiences profoundly negative.
Politics
After Versailles Thomson made the decision to enter politics, and joined the Labour Party and Fabian Society. He stood as Labour candidate in two Tory strongholds, Bristol Central in 1922 and St Albans in 1923, but failed to win either seat. In 1924, however, newly elected Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald elevated him to the peerage as Baron Thomson, of Cardington in the County of Bedford. He was sworn of the Privy Council at the same time. He served as Secretary of State for Air in Macdonald's first short lived Labour administration of 1924 - interrupting briefly Sir Samuel Hoare's seven year grip on the post. The fall of the government meant that it was not until 1929 that he regained the position, once again serving under Macdonald. In the interim he had maintained his air interests acting as chairman of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Royal Aero Club, and patron of the Air League.
Private life
Thomson was known as Kit to his family and C. B. to his friends. In March 1915 while British military attache in Bucharest, he met the French-Romanian author Princess Marthe Bibesco, and remained devoted to her for the rest of his life. They corresponded regularly. She dedicated four books to "C.B.T." and visited the site of the R101 accident with their mutual friend the Abbé Mugnier in December 1930.
Death
His second term in office was cut short by tragedy as Thomson died in the crash of the R101 airship, a government designed dirigible, on its maiden flight to Karachi in October 1930. The accident claimed the lives of 48 people and led to the cancellation of the British airship programme by Thomson's successor as air minister, Lord Amulree.
Selected works
Smaranda. A Compilation in Three Parts, Lord Thomson of Cardington, Jonathan Cape, 1926.
Lord Thomson of Cardington: A memoir and some letters, Martha Bibescu, Jonathan Cape, 1932.
