There's been some talk about mechanised warfare via drones and satellites making one operator a one man army, and when I was a kid, the owner of a 'Johnny Seven' gun was a 'one man army' of the ilk that aged around 10 I lusted to be.
.... but my parents refused to buy me one .... scarred for life!
But it seems that Britain had its own real one man army .... Lieutenant General, Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO .... who really was scarred for life.
who amazingly ONLY died in 1963.
I say amazingly, because he should have died many times over in his military career. This man is someone could really say that he laughed in the face of death .... he served in the Boer War, World War One and World War Two and was wounded in all of them.
Born, on the 5th of May 1880, into an aristocratic Belgian / Irish family in Brussels, many believed he was the love child of King Leopold II of the Belgians. His father, a lawyer moved the family to Cairo after de Wiart's mother died. His father practised law for the Khedive, and was well connected in Egyptian governmental circles, and it was here that de Wiart learnt Arabic, as well as the French spoken at home. In 1891, his English stepmother sent him to a boarding school in England where he progressed to Balliol College, Oxford.
However, the call of the war trumpet proved too much, and around 1899, at the age of 20 he left University to join the British Army during the Second Boer War. He signed up under the false name of "Trooper Carton", and claimed to be 25 years old. He was was invalided home, with bullet wounds to both the stomach and groin .... the first of very many wounds in his career. His father was furious but eventually let him remain in the army by purchasing him a commission in the Second Imperial Light Horse. Wounds healed, he returned to action in South Africa again, and in 1901 was given a regular commission as a second lieutenant in the 4th Dragoon Guards, but was transferred to India with his regiment in 1902.
Of his time there the Countess of Ranfurly (a lady he was rather fond of), said later that he must have held "the world record for bad language." ... transferred back to South Africa he served as an aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief. However he had remained a Belgian subject, but he took the oath of allegiance to Edward VII and was formally naturalised as a British subject in 1907. In 1908 he married an Austrian Countess, and was promoted to the rank of Captain on 26 February 1910.
1914 saw the resumption of his active fighting career .... he first fought in Somali-land against the Dervish forces of Mohammed bin Abdullah "The Mad Mullah", and was again wounded in an assault on an enemy fort at Shimber Berris, being shot twice in the face, losing his eye and also a portion of his ear .... his first DSO was awarded in 1915 for that action. He wasn't fazed by these wounds, and in the same year, went to the Western Front, commanding successively three infantry battalions and a brigade.
Almost beyond belief he was wounded seven more times in the first World War, losing his left hand in 1915, after pulling off his own fingers when a doctor declined to remove them (the rest of the shattered hand was removed by a surgeon later that year). These wounds included being shot through the skull and ankle at the Battle of the Somme, through the hip at the Battle of Passchendaele, through the leg at Cambrai, and through the ear at Arras. Indeed his regular need for hospital treatment meant that the nursing home in Park Lane kept a set of his own pyjamas, ready for his next visit. During this period he threw his painful glass eye away, apparently after it caused him such discomfort that he allegedly threw it from a taxi, and instead acquired his famous black eye patch.
By 1917 he had been through numerous promotions to the substantive rank of major in the Dragoon Guards, and by the end of the war in 1918, Carton de Wiart was in command of a brigade with the rank of temporary brigadier general.
His medal list had come on leaps and bounds, along with the scars ... his honours included the Croix de Guerre (Belgium), Legion of Honour (France), Croix de Guerre (France), and was appointment as a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the King's Birthday Honours List. However he also won the Victoria Cross (VC), in 1916 'For most conspicuous bravery' aged 36 and a temporary lieutenant-colonel in the 4th Dragoon Guards (Royal Irish), British Army, attached to the Gloucestershire Regiment, commanding the 8th Battalion. During an attack in which he exposed himself to enemy fire without flinching, and was seen by his men pulling the pins of grenades out with his teeth, and hurling them with his one good arm, then holding off enemy counter-attacks on the village of La Boiselle, during the Battle of the Somme.
He chose not to mention the winning of the VC medal in his autobiography, later telling a friend that "it had been won by the 8th Gloucesters, for every man has done as much as I have".
The end of the war saw him live in Poland for most of the inter-war period, in command of the British-Poland Military Mission, before retiring on half pay in 1923, and living in a converted hunting lodge on a Polish island in the Pripet Marshes, only a few miles from the Soviet border. But when World War Two broke out, he was reactivated in to the army in 1939, and led the fleeing Polish Governments car convoy which was attacked by the Luftwaffe on the road as they entered Romania.
Back in the UK he led a campaign in Norway in 1940 which failed, and was briefly stationed in Northern Ireland as he turned 60. Sent to Yugoslavia both engines failed on his plane off the coast of Italian-controlled Libya, and the plane crash landed in the sea about a mile from land. Knocked unconscious, but revived by the cold sea water when the plane broke up and sank, he and the rest of the party aboard swam to shore to be captured by the Italian authorities.
When in 1943 the Italians were considering changing sides in the war, he was freed in Lisbon. Back in England, Churchill immediately sent him to China via a conference in Cairo, and a stay in India. Eventually, in Peking at the end the the war, now 66 he was offered a job by Chiang Kai-Chek but declined as even his strength was waning. However he had one more medical emergency to face, after he slipped on coconut matting, fell down, broke several vertebrae, and knocked himself unconscious. Shipped back to England he slowly recovered, and the doctors also succeeded in extracting a large amount of shrapnel from his old wounds.
Carton de Wiart died at the age of 83 on 5 June 1963. He left no papers other than his published autobiography 'Happy Odyssey'. They simply don't make them from that mould anymore .... A final quote from a real warrior, and a soldier who would have revelled in battle in any time and place in the world ....
"I knew once and for all that war was in my blood. If the British didn't fancy me, I would offer myself to the Boers" .... writing of just his First World War exploits he said ... "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."
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| The Only Toy For A Boy And One Man Army! |
.... but my parents refused to buy me one .... scarred for life!
But it seems that Britain had its own real one man army .... Lieutenant General, Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO .... who really was scarred for life.
 |
| Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO |
who amazingly ONLY died in 1963.
I say amazingly, because he should have died many times over in his military career. This man is someone could really say that he laughed in the face of death .... he served in the Boer War, World War One and World War Two and was wounded in all of them.
Born, on the 5th of May 1880, into an aristocratic Belgian / Irish family in Brussels, many believed he was the love child of King Leopold II of the Belgians. His father, a lawyer moved the family to Cairo after de Wiart's mother died. His father practised law for the Khedive, and was well connected in Egyptian governmental circles, and it was here that de Wiart learnt Arabic, as well as the French spoken at home. In 1891, his English stepmother sent him to a boarding school in England where he progressed to Balliol College, Oxford.
However, the call of the war trumpet proved too much, and around 1899, at the age of 20 he left University to join the British Army during the Second Boer War. He signed up under the false name of "Trooper Carton", and claimed to be 25 years old. He was was invalided home, with bullet wounds to both the stomach and groin .... the first of very many wounds in his career. His father was furious but eventually let him remain in the army by purchasing him a commission in the Second Imperial Light Horse. Wounds healed, he returned to action in South Africa again, and in 1901 was given a regular commission as a second lieutenant in the 4th Dragoon Guards, but was transferred to India with his regiment in 1902.
Of his time there the Countess of Ranfurly (a lady he was rather fond of), said later that he must have held "the world record for bad language." ... transferred back to South Africa he served as an aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief. However he had remained a Belgian subject, but he took the oath of allegiance to Edward VII and was formally naturalised as a British subject in 1907. In 1908 he married an Austrian Countess, and was promoted to the rank of Captain on 26 February 1910.
1914 saw the resumption of his active fighting career .... he first fought in Somali-land against the Dervish forces of Mohammed bin Abdullah "The Mad Mullah", and was again wounded in an assault on an enemy fort at Shimber Berris, being shot twice in the face, losing his eye and also a portion of his ear .... his first DSO was awarded in 1915 for that action. He wasn't fazed by these wounds, and in the same year, went to the Western Front, commanding successively three infantry battalions and a brigade.
Almost beyond belief he was wounded seven more times in the first World War, losing his left hand in 1915, after pulling off his own fingers when a doctor declined to remove them (the rest of the shattered hand was removed by a surgeon later that year). These wounds included being shot through the skull and ankle at the Battle of the Somme, through the hip at the Battle of Passchendaele, through the leg at Cambrai, and through the ear at Arras. Indeed his regular need for hospital treatment meant that the nursing home in Park Lane kept a set of his own pyjamas, ready for his next visit. During this period he threw his painful glass eye away, apparently after it caused him such discomfort that he allegedly threw it from a taxi, and instead acquired his famous black eye patch.
By 1917 he had been through numerous promotions to the substantive rank of major in the Dragoon Guards, and by the end of the war in 1918, Carton de Wiart was in command of a brigade with the rank of temporary brigadier general.
His medal list had come on leaps and bounds, along with the scars ... his honours included the Croix de Guerre (Belgium), Legion of Honour (France), Croix de Guerre (France), and was appointment as a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the King's Birthday Honours List. However he also won the Victoria Cross (VC), in 1916 'For most conspicuous bravery' aged 36 and a temporary lieutenant-colonel in the 4th Dragoon Guards (Royal Irish), British Army, attached to the Gloucestershire Regiment, commanding the 8th Battalion. During an attack in which he exposed himself to enemy fire without flinching, and was seen by his men pulling the pins of grenades out with his teeth, and hurling them with his one good arm, then holding off enemy counter-attacks on the village of La Boiselle, during the Battle of the Somme.
He chose not to mention the winning of the VC medal in his autobiography, later telling a friend that "it had been won by the 8th Gloucesters, for every man has done as much as I have".
The end of the war saw him live in Poland for most of the inter-war period, in command of the British-Poland Military Mission, before retiring on half pay in 1923, and living in a converted hunting lodge on a Polish island in the Pripet Marshes, only a few miles from the Soviet border. But when World War Two broke out, he was reactivated in to the army in 1939, and led the fleeing Polish Governments car convoy which was attacked by the Luftwaffe on the road as they entered Romania.
Back in the UK he led a campaign in Norway in 1940 which failed, and was briefly stationed in Northern Ireland as he turned 60. Sent to Yugoslavia both engines failed on his plane off the coast of Italian-controlled Libya, and the plane crash landed in the sea about a mile from land. Knocked unconscious, but revived by the cold sea water when the plane broke up and sank, he and the rest of the party aboard swam to shore to be captured by the Italian authorities.
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| Cairo Conference 1943 - de Wiart Far Right. |
When in 1943 the Italians were considering changing sides in the war, he was freed in Lisbon. Back in England, Churchill immediately sent him to China via a conference in Cairo, and a stay in India. Eventually, in Peking at the end the the war, now 66 he was offered a job by Chiang Kai-Chek but declined as even his strength was waning. However he had one more medical emergency to face, after he slipped on coconut matting, fell down, broke several vertebrae, and knocked himself unconscious. Shipped back to England he slowly recovered, and the doctors also succeeded in extracting a large amount of shrapnel from his old wounds.
Carton de Wiart died at the age of 83 on 5 June 1963. He left no papers other than his published autobiography 'Happy Odyssey'. They simply don't make them from that mould anymore .... A final quote from a real warrior, and a soldier who would have revelled in battle in any time and place in the world ....
"I knew once and for all that war was in my blood. If the British didn't fancy me, I would offer myself to the Boers" .... writing of just his First World War exploits he said ... "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."
Fascinating! What a soldier, I'm Glad he was on our side!
ReplyDeleteThe Boers probably wished he had joined their side instead. As you say 'What a soldier'.
DeleteThis chaps story was featured on a TV show repeat - Antique Road trip - this week. There is a museum for the Gloucestershire Regiment with a display of his life. Sorry I can't recall which episode it was, but it featured Christina Trevanion.
ReplyDeleteThanks for comment. I'll have to keep an eye out as that show repeats on one of the many digital channels.
Delete