Brave dead man
Timid, lazy, lacking assurance and incapable of a healthily active interest in life, I have always tended to admire those who possess what I so conspicuously lack. I first heard of Lt-Gen. Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (1880-1963), as the model for the fire-eating Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn Waugh's Men At Arms, the greatest novel to come out of the Second World War.
"He was the great Halberdier enfant terrible of the First World War; the youngest company commander in the history of the Corps; the slowest to be promoted; often wounded, often decorated, recommended for the Victoria Cross, twice court martialled for disobedience to orders in the field, twice acquitted in recognition of the brilliant success of his independent actions; a legendary wielder of the entrenching tool; where lesser men collected helmets Ritchie-Hook once came back from a raid across no-man's-land with the dripping head of a German sentry in either hand".
Late in life De Wiart was prevailed upon to write an autobiography, published by Cape in 1950 as Happy Odyssey. The style is brisk and straightforward. He joined the army from Oxford as a humble trooper and first saw action during the Boer War. Promoted to Corporal, he found himself demoted the next day after threatening to hit his Sergeant. Commissioned into the Imperial Light Horse, he was posted to India, which he loathed, but where he developed an intense enthusiasm for the sport of pig-sticking. Convalescing from a pig-sticking injury, he almost lost his commission:
"One of the coolies annoyed me and I threw some stones at him. He got himself out of range of the stones, turned around and laughed at me. This was too much for my temper and I promptly put up my gun and peppered him in his tail".
A complaint was lodged with the cantonment magistrate. De Wiart had to cough up a heavy fine, but preserved his commission. As the Great War broke out he was en route to Somaliland, where Britain was engaged in one of its periodic campaigns against the Mad Mullah's "fuzzy wuzzies". In a close quarters action to storm a blockhouse, De Wiart was twice shot in the face, resulting in the loss of his left eye. He was provided with a glass eye but, finding it uncomfortable, tossed it out of the window of a taxi and for ever afterwards wore an eye-patch.
His involvement in the First World War resulted in a further seven wounds. His leadership in an action at La Boiselle in July 1916 resulted in the award of the Victoria Cross. He does not mention this in the autobiography. "Frankly", he wrote, "I enjoyed the war". One of his wounds resulted in the loss of his left hand. He amputated the fingers, when a surgeon declined to remove them, by biting them off. In all he was wounded eleven times and spent much of the rest of his life having pieces of metal removed from various parts of his body.
By the outbreak of the Hitler war, De Wiart was 60. His only active command was in the ill-conceived shambles of the Norwegian campaign in 1940. The next year he became a prisoner of the Italians when a Wellington bomber, in which he was flying to take up an appointment to the British Military Mission to Yugoslavia, suffered double engine failure and crash-landed off the Libyan coast. In 1943 he was escorted to Lisbon to take part in behind-the-scenes negotiations by which Italy hoped to extricate herself from the war. He completed his career as Churchill's representative to the Nationalist Chinese, under Chiang Kai Shek.
The portrait is by Cecil Beaton. One can't help wondering what the two found to say to one another during the sitting. To the current bloodless age I suppose such a man as Carton De Wiart would be an embarrassment.
Brave dead man
Timid, lazy, lacking assurance and incapable of a healthily active interest in life, I have always tended to admire those who possess what I so conspicuously lack. I first heard of Lt-Gen. Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (1880-1963), as the model for the fire-eating Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn Waugh's Men At Arms, the greatest novel to come out of the Second World War.
"He was the great Halberdier enfant terrible of the First World War; the youngest company commander in the history of the Corps; the slowest to be promoted; often wounded, often decorated, recommended for the Victoria Cross, twice court martialled for disobedience to orders in the field, twice acquitted in recognition of the brilliant success of his independent actions; a legendary wielder of the entrenching tool; where lesser men collected helmets Ritchie-Hook once came back from a raid across no-man's-land with the dripping head of a German sentry in either hand".
Late in life De Wiart was prevailed upon to write an autobiography, published by Cape in 1950 as Happy Odyssey. The style is brisk and straightforward. He joined the army from Oxford as a humble trooper and first saw action during the Boer War. Promoted to Corporal, he found himself demoted the next day after threatening to hit his Sergeant. Commissioned into the Imperial Light Horse, he was posted to India, which he loathed, but where he developed an intense enthusiasm for the sport of pig-sticking. Convalescing from a pig-sticking injury, he almost lost his commission:
"One of the coolies annoyed me and I threw some stones at him. He got himself out of range of the stones, turned around and laughed at me. This was too much for my temper and I promptly put up my gun and peppered him in his tail".
A complaint was lodged with the cantonment magistrate. De Wiart had to cough up a heavy fine, but preserved his commission. As the Great War broke out he was en route to Somaliland, where Britain was engaged in one of its periodic campaigns against the Mad Mullah's "fuzzy wuzzies". In a close quarters action to storm a blockhouse, De Wiart was twice shot in the face, resulting in the loss of his left eye. He was provided with a glass eye but, finding it uncomfortable, tossed it out of the window of a taxi and for ever afterwards wore an eye-patch.
His involvement in the First World War resulted in a further seven wounds. His leadership in an action at La Boiselle in July 1916 resulted in the award of the Victoria Cross. He does not mention this in the autobiography. "Frankly", he wrote, "I enjoyed the war". One of his wounds resulted in the loss of his left hand. He amputated the fingers, when a surgeon declined to remove them, by biting them off. In all he was wounded eleven times and spent much of the rest of his life having pieces of metal removed from various parts of his body.
By the outbreak of the Hitler war, De Wiart was 60. His only active command was in the ill-conceived shambles of the Norwegian campaign in 1940. The next year he became a prisoner of the Italians when a Wellington bomber, in which he was flying to take up an appointment to the British Military Mission to Yugoslavia, suffered double engine failure and crash-landed off the Libyan coast. In 1943 he was escorted to Lisbon to take part in behind-the-scenes negotiations by which Italy hoped to extricate herself from the war. He completed his career as Churchill's representative to the Nationalist Chinese, under Chiang Kai Shek.
The portrait is by Cecil Beaton. One can't help wondering what the two found to say to one another during the sitting. To the current bloodless age I suppose such a man as Carton De Wiart would be an embarrassment.