Adrian Carton de Wiart

Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart VC KBE CB CMG DSO (5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963) was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. His military career spanned more than four decades and included service in five major conflicts. Registered under Army Officer Reference Number 836, he left Balliol College, Oxford, in 1899 to enlist in Paget's Horse for the Second Boer War under the assumed name "Trooper Carton". Wounded in the abdomen and groin during operations in South Africa, he returned to England before obtaining a regular commission as a second lieutenant in the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards in September 1901.

In November 1914, while seconded to the Somaliland Camel Constabulary, Carton de Wiart participated in an attack on a Dervish fort at Shimber Berris. Enemy fire tore through his face, costing him his left eye and part of his ear. He received the Distinguished Service Order in May 1915 for his leadership in Somaliland. Transferring to the Western Front later that year, he sustained severe injuries to his left hand during the Second Battle of Ypres. When an attending surgeon refused to amputate his damaged fingers, Carton de Wiart tore them off himself, leading to the complete surgical removal of his hand.

While commanding the 8th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, at La Boisselle on 2–3 July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, Carton de Wiart earned the Victoria Cross. His award was published in the London Gazette on 9 September 1916 with the official citation: "For most conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination during severe operations of a prolonged nature. It was owing in a great measure to his dauntless courage and inspiring leadership that a serious reverse was averted. The commanding officers of three other battalions having become casualties, he controlled their commands, took charge of their holding, and ensured that the ground won was maintained at all costs. He frequently exposed himself in the organization of positions and of supplies, passing unflinchingly through fire of the most intense description. He was wounded in the head and hand."

He was wounded several more times during the war. Bullets struck his skull and ankle at the Somme, his hip at Passchendaele, his leg at Cambrai, and his ear at Arras. Between 1919 and 1923, he led the British Military Mission to Poland, where he observed active fighting during the Polish-Soviet, Polish-Ukrainian, and Polish-Lithuanian conflicts. He lived on an estate in the Pinsk Marshes until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, when the British Army recalled him to head the military mission in Poland once more.

He later commanded the Allied Central Namsos Force during the 1940 Norwegian Campaign. In April 1941, his aircraft crashed into the sea off Axis-controlled Libya. Italian forces captured him and held him at the high-security prisoner-of-war camp at Castello di Vincigliata. Carton de Wiart made five escape attempts, at one point spending seven months digging a sixty-foot tunnel through solid rock and remaining on the run for eight days dressed as an Italian peasant. Italian authorities released him in August 1943 to help negotiate their armistice with the Allies.

Winston Churchill appointed him Special Military Representative to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in late 1943, a position he held until the end of the war in Asia. He retired from active military service as lieutenant-general in 1947. After publishing his memoir, Happy Odyssey, in 1950, he married Ruth Myrtle Muriel Joan McKechnie in 1951. The couple settled at Aghinagh House in County Cork, Ireland, where Carton de Wiart died on 5 June 1963 at the age of 83.