Henry Hugh Tudor

Sir (Henry) Hugh Tudor , KCB , CMG (* 1871 Newton Abbot in Devonshire , England; † September 25, 1965 in St. John's , Newfoundland), was a British soldier who served as an officer in the Boer War (1899-1902) and as Staff officer took part in World War I (1914-1918), but is best known today for his role in the Irish War of Independence (1920-1921).

Life

Tudor was born in Devonshire / England in 1871 . He entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1888 and was transferred to the Royal Horse Artillery in 1890 . He was stationed in India from 1890 to 1897 before returning to England. He was seriously wounded in the Battle of Magersfontein (December 11, 1899), but was able to resume service after his recovery. His excellent service in South Africa is reflected in his awards: the Queen's South Africa Medal with four buckles and the King's South Africa Medal with two.

After the end of the Boer War, Tudor went back to India for five more years (1905–1910). He was then transferred to Egypt , where he stayed in Europe until the outbreak of war. He served on the Western Front from December 1914 until the Armistice in 1918 , rising from the rank of captain of an artillery battery to the rank of major general in the 9th (Scottish) Division . Even after November 11th he remained in command of this unit, then as part of the Rhine Army until it was disbanded in March 1919.

Tudor was a professional and progressive gunner: the historian Paddy Griffith describes him as an "excellent tactician". He was the first British general to use smoke grenades for camouflage purposes and one of the earliest proponents of the artillery strikes that preceded the attacks. He suggested the use of tanks in the Cambrai section in July 1917 and his ideas formed the basis for the British breakthrough in the battle there in November. He was also a general who spent a lot of time on the front lines. In the Third Battle of Ypres in October 1917 he was nearly killed when a piece of shrapnel pierced his helmet and hit him on the head. In addition, during Operation Michael , the first German offensive in spring 1918, he was almost captured by the Germans.

After the dissolution of the 9th Division, Tudor was again stationed in Egypt and India. In May 1920 he was appointed Police Adviser to the Dublin Castle Administration in Ireland . His main qualification for this position was his friendship with the Minister of War, Winston Churchill . Tudor had met Churchill in Bangalore in 1895 , and they had become lifelong friends. During the short time Churchill spent on the Western Front as an infantry officer in 1915, he served in the same sector as Tudor near the Ploegsteert forest .

When Tudor took up his new post, the Anglo-Irish War was approaching a crisis: the British regime over the island had come to the brink of collapse within a few months. The moral and effective assertiveness of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) declined: fighters from the Irish Republican Army attacked police patrols, burned police shelters and organized the boycott of police officers and their families. Railroad workers went on strike and refused to drive trains carrying armed police or troops. Merchants refused to serve customers who were police officers. Police recruits and members were attacked and intimidated; Women who interacted with police officers had their hair shaved. Police possessions have been destroyed or stolen: in some cases, the bicycles were taken away by police officers while their owners were in church.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin was building an alternative state: the Irish Republic , which had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising of 1916. Local authorities recognized the authority of the First Dáil . IRA volunteers acted as Republican police. Republican courts of law have ruled both civil and criminal trials. The Republic became a reality in many parts of Ireland.

Tudor's job, as he realized, was to raise the morale of the police, punish crime, and restore law and order: I had nothing to do with politics, he wrote years later, and I didn't give a damn what level of Home Rule it was had. At a cabinet meeting on July 23 in 1920, while his colleagues in Dublin Castle an offer of self-government as a Dominion favor, Tudor was convinced that "with the right support, it would be possible to put down the current campaign of violence." The whole country was intimidated, he said, and would be grateful to God for tough measures. The government took the hard line: on August 9, 1920, Parliament passed the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act , which gave the Dublin Castle administration the power to rule by ordinance, replacing criminal courts with courts-martial and judicial murder investigations with military investigations punishing recalcitrant local authorities by withholding their budget.

As Police Adviser, Tudor took control of the entire Irish police force and eventually made himself the "Chief of Police". Under his leadership, the police were militarized: at the cabinet conference of July 23, 1920, Tudor had declared that the RIC as police would soon become worthless; but made great impact as a military unit. Like his patron, Churchill, Tudor gave police posts to his friends and colleagues in the military: Brigadier General Ormonde Winter, for example, became Deputy Police Adviser and Chief of Intelligence . He was once my captain in a battery in Rawalpindi , Tudor said, and we have done many horse races together in India. The beleaguered RIC was reinforced with British ex-soldiers and sailors - such as the infamous Black-and-Tans . Additionally provided Tudor, the Auxiliary Division on a temporary gendarmerie of ex-officers, led by two experienced colonial fighters: Brigadier Frank Percy Crozier and Brigadier EA Wood .

But while he worked hard to restore the strength and morale of the RIC, Tudor did relatively little for their discipline. When police and militia members were killed in attacks, their comrades often responded with reprisals against supporters of the republic and their communities: some of these reprisals were spontaneous "police riots", but others were organized and led by local police officers. Tudor's response to these arson and murder outbreaks was weak and ambiguous: in a memorandum on discipline dated November 12, 1920, Tudor exhorted his people to maintain "the highest discipline" while assuring them that they would fully support the most drastic actions against them Gang of murderers, the so-called IRA. After a Catholic priest was shot dead by a mentally ill gendarme in December 1920, a Castle official wrote in his diary that he felt some sympathy for the killer, “as these people are undoubtedly influenced by what they consider to be the passive applause of their officers understood from Tudor downwards so that they would never be punished for anything. "

The reprisals sparked a scandal in Britain, where the opposition Liberals and Labor parties forced the government to reinstate self-government in Ireland. In the first half of 1921 police discipline improved and police reprisals became less common, but this development came too late. The political damage was irreversible. In May 1921 it was clear that the government's strategy of combining limited coercion with limited concessions had failed. Faced with the choice of either risking war or negotiating peace with the insurgents, they opted for an agreement. An armistice agreement was signed in July 1921 and a treaty in December.

Tudor remained chief of police until its units were demobilized and the RIC dissolved. In May 1921, Churchill, who was also Minister of Aviation, found a new post for his friend in the troubled Mandate of Palestine , where Tudor became Director of Public Security with the temporary rank of Air Vice Marshal . Interestingly, Tudor set up a gendarmerie in Palestine whose European section consisted of many former black-and-tans and auxiliary militiamen.

In 1923 Tudor was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath . In 1924 he retired from both his post as director of public safety and the army and emigrated to Newfoundland , where he lived the rest of his life. He died in St. John's / Newfoundland on September 25, 1965.

literature

• Joy Cave MS "A Gallant Gunner General: The Life and Times of Sir HH Tudor, KCB, CMG, together with an edited version of his 1914-1918 War Diary", 'The Fog of War,' Imperial War Museum, Misc 175 Item 2658.
• A Woman of No Importance [pseud. Mrs. C. Stuart Menzies]: As Others See Us (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1924).
• Periscope [pseud. GC Duggan]: The Last Days of Dublin Castle . In: Blackwood's Magazine 212, no.1282 (August 1922).
• Bert Riggs: Longtime resident fled from IRA; distinguished British officer served in First World War and Ireland before coming to Newfoundland . In: St. John's Telegram, September 25, 2001, p. A11.
• David Leeson: The Black and Tans: British Police in the First Irish War, 1920-21, (PhD: McMaster University, 2003).