Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton

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Sir Ian Hamilton, ca.1915

Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton GCB GCMG DSO (* 16th January 1853 on Corfu ; † 12. October 1947 in London ) was a British general and led in the First World War , the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in the failed Dardanelles expedition to Gallipoli .

Life

Ian Hamilton was born in Corfu in 1853 as the eldest son of the captain, later lieutenant colonel, Christian Monteith Hamilton, officer of the Gordon Highlanders . His mother, Maria Corinna Prendergast Vereker, was a daughter of the 3rd Viscount Gort , an Irish representative pear. She died when Ian was three years old shortly after the birth of his brother Vereker .

Hamilton graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1871 and then joined the Suffolk Regiment , only to be transferred to his father's regiment, the Gordon Highlanders , a little later . With this he took part in the Second Anglo-Afghan War and the First Boer War, where he was wounded in the battle of Majuba Hill and was taken prisoner. He later served in Sudan, Burma and Bengal. From 1893 to 1898 he served on the staff of the commander in India George Stuart White and commanded a brigade in the Tirah campaign of 1897/98.

In the Second Boer War he was assigned to the Natal Field Force and commanded the British infantry in the Battle of ElandslaAGEN . He later came under siege from Ladysmith with his superior White . After the liberation of Ladysmiths, he received the command of a newly established division as Lieutenant General, with which he took part in the advance on Johannesburg and Pretoria . Originally proposed as his successor by Lord Roberts , he served as Lord Kitchener's chief of staff towards the end of the war .

From 1901 to 1903 Hamilton served as the military secretary to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Lord Roberts, and then until 1904 as Quartermaster General . From 1904 to 1905 he was a military attaché of the British Indian Army observer in the Japanese Army in the Russo-Japanese War . From 1905 to 1909 he commanded the Southern Command before being appointed Adjutant General of the Army. In 1910 he was transferred to the Mediterranean region as Commander-in-Chief, while at the same time holding the post of Inspector General of the Overseas Forces.

Sir Ian Hamilton (2nd from right) with Sir Roger Keyes , Vice-Admiral John de Robeck and General Walter Braithwaite (from left) during the Dardanelles expedition in 1915

During the First World War he was appointed Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) in the Dardanelles Expedition in early 1915 . After the company's failure, he was recalled to England in October of the same year and replaced by General Charles Monro .

After the war, he became president of the British Legion veterans organization for Scotland in 1920 . He was also a co-founder of the Anglo-German Association in 1928 and worked to exclude Jews from membership. After the rise of the National Socialists in Germany, he initially expressed his admiration of Adolf Hitler , but the association was later dissolved again.

Works

  • A Staff Officer's Scrap-book: During the Russo-Japanese War , 2 volumes, Edward Arnold, London 1905/06
  • Compulsory Service: A Study of the Question in the Light of Experience . John Murray, London 1910
  • Gallipoli Diary , 2 volumes. Edward Arnold & Co, London 1920
  • The soul and body of an army . Edward Arnold & Co, London 1921 <reprint Ashgate Publishing 1991, ISBN 0-7512-0032-8 >
  • When I was a boy . Faber & Faber, London 1934
  • Jean: A memoir . Faber & Faber, London 1942
  • Listening for the drums . Faber & Faber, London 1944

literature

  • Biographies
  • Ian Bogle Monteith Hamilton: The Happy Warrior: A Life of General Sir Ian Hamilton . Cassell, London 1966
  • John Lee: A Soldier's Life: General Sir Ian Hamilton 1853-1947 . Macmillian, London 2000, ISBN 0-333-73444-0 (Paperback: Pan Books, London 2001; ISBN 0-330-48400-1 )
  • CF Aspinall-Oglander: Hamilton, Ian Standish Monteith . In: Hew Strachan (Ed.): Military Lives. Intimate Biographies of the Famous by the Famous . 1st edition. Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York 2002. pp. 195–201, ISBN 0-19-860532-3 (collection of articles from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography )
  • George H. Cassar: Hamilton, Sir Ian Standish Monteith (1853-1947). 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 January 2011 (not viewed).
  • The Dardanelles operation
  • Cecil Faber Aspinall-Oglander : History of the Great War : Military Operations - Gallipoli , Volume I: Inception of the Campaign to May 1915 . William Heinemann, London 1929
  • Cecil Faber Aspinall-Oglander: History of the Great War: Military Operations - Gallipoli , Volume II: May 1915 to the Evacuation . William Heinemann, London 1932
  • Others

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Hamilton, Ian Standish Monteith
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British general
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Corfu
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1947
Place of death London