Adrian Carton de Wiart
Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC , KBE , CB , CMG , DSO (born May 5, 1880 in Brussels , † June 5, 1963 in Aghinagh House County Cork ) was a British Lieutenant General .
Life
Carton de Wiart was born the son of a lawyer in Brussels. From 1891 he attended the Oratory School in Edgbaston. He then attended Balliol College in Oxford . But he soon ran away and enrolled under a false name and age in a regiment (Paget's Horse) that fought in the Second Boer War. Seriously wounded, he was sent back to Oxford in 1900 after his true identity was discovered. Carton de Wiart broke off his studies and returned to South Africa with the Imperial Light Horse . In 1901 he received a regular officer position with the 4th Dragoon Guards. After serving in British India from 1902 to 1904, he was adjutant to Sir Henry Hildyard , the Commander in Chief in South Africa, from 1904 to 1908 .
In 1908 in Vienna he married Countess Friederike Fugger von Babenhausen, the daughter of Eleonora Fugger von Babenhausen . The marriage resulted in two daughters. From 1910 to 1914 he was an adjutant to the Gloucestershire Hussars, but was transferred to the Somaliland Camel Corps in British Somaliland in the summer of 1914 , where he took part in the fighting against the uprising of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan . Here he also suffered an injury in November 1914, which resulted in his left eye having to be removed in July 1915. Carton de Wiart received the Distinguished Service Order for his work and was transferred to the 4th Dragoon Guards on the Western Front near Ypres . Here he was seriously wounded eight times and lost his left hand. Since he kept returning (wounded) to a certain hospital, the nurses kept his personal pajamas ready.
When three units had lost their commander, Carton de Wiart took command, led them from the front line and was able to take and defend La Boisselle on July 3 and 4, 1916 on the second day of the Battle of the Somme . For this act he was awarded the Victoria Cross , which he downplayed all his life and did not even mention in his autobiography, as he received the award for the achievements of the entire unit. In the further course of the war he took over command of infantry brigades and achieved the rank of brigadier general, but was never commissioned to lead a division, which was certainly not entirely due to his daring leadership style. He was shot in the back of the head at the Battle of Arras . The bullet missed the spine, so he recovered and promptly returned to the front.
After Louis Botha's death , Carton de Wiart became chief of the British military mission in Poland and took part in the Battle of Warsaw . In 1924 he left the army and settled in the Polish Pripet swamps . In July 1939 he was reactivated to head the British military mission again.
After the defeat of the Polish army in the German invasion of Poland , he returned to Great Britain via Romania and took over command of the 61st Division. As a lieutenant general sent to Norway in April 1940 during the Weser exercise , he did not succeed in taking Trondheim , but he was able to successfully pull the British forces out of the fighting. In April 1941 he was supposed to take over the British military mission in Yugoslavia . His plane crashed over the Mediterranean Sea and Carton de Wiart was captured by the Italians . Despite his old age, injuries and the fact that he did not speak Italian, he tried to escape several times and was able to avoid recapture for eight days.
To serve as a mediator in the negotiations on a ceasefire with the Allies, he was released by the Italians and sent to Lisbon . In October 1943 he was Winston Churchill's representative to the national Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek until the end of the war . In November 1943 he took part in the Cairo Conference . For his services he was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1945.
After his wife Friederike died in 1949, he married Joan McKechnie in 1951. With her he settled at Aghinagh House in County Cork, Ireland, where he died on June 5, 1963. His grave is in the Killinardish cemetery .
Trivia
- Winston Churchill was a great admirer of Carton de Wiart and wrote the preface to his autobiography.
literature
- GD Sheffield: Carton de Wiart and Spears , In: John Keegan (Ed.): Churchill's Generals . London 1991. ISBN 0-297-82066-4
- ET Williams: Carton de Wiart, Sir Adrian (1880-1963). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of September 2010 (rev. Gary Sheffield).
Web links
- Brief CV and Awards at victoriacross.org.uk (English)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Carton de Wiart, Adrian |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | DeWiart, Adrian Carton |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British Lieutenant General |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 5, 1880 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brussels |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th June 1963 |
| Place of death | Aghinagh House County Cork |