High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Major-General Sir Reginald John Pinney, KCB, (2 August 1863 – 18 February 1943), was a British Army officer, who served as a divisional commander during the First World War. Whilst commanding the 33rd Division at the Battle of Arras, in 1917, he was immortalised as the "cheery old card" of Siegfried Sassoon`s poem The General.