Adrian Carton de Wiart

The One-Eyed, One-Handed General Who Survived Three Wars Few soldiers in British military history lived a career as extraordinary as Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO. He lost his left eye and left hand, suffered repeated battle wounds, survived aircraft crashes, endured years as a prisoner of war, escaped through a tunnel from an Italian prison camp, and served through the Second Boer War, the First World War and the Second World War. Yet the remarkable part of Carton de Wiart's story was not simply that he survived. Again and again, after wounds that might have ended another officer's career, he returned to active service and command. GOV.UK Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart was born in Brussels, Belgium, on 5 May 1880. Of Belgian and Irish descent, he spent part of his childhood in Cairo before being educated in England and attending Balliol College, Oxford. University life did not hold him for long. When the Second Boer War broke out in 1899, he left Oxford and enlisted under the shortened name "Trooper Carton" in Paget's Horse. In South Africa he was wounded in the stomach and groin and invalided home, but after recovering he returned to the war and served with the Imperial Light Horse. On 14 September 1901 he received a regular commission as a second lieutenant in the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, beginning the professional Army career that would dominate the next four decades of his life. The Genealogist Although Belgian-born, Carton de Wiart formally became a British subject. The London Gazette records his certificate of naturalisation and oath of allegiance in 1907, listing him as Adrien Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart, known as Adrian Carton de Wiart. By then he had served in India and South Africa and had become firmly established in the British Army. The Gazette The First World War would transform him from a cavalry officer into one of the most recognisable soldiers of his generation. His war began in Somaliland, where British forces were fighting the Dervish movement. During operations at Shimber Berris, Carton de Wiart was badly wounded in the face, losing his left eye and part of an ear. His conduct during the Somaliland operations brought his first major British decoration. On 15 May 1915, The London Gazette announced his appointment as a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order for distinguished service during the successful operations against Dervish forces at Shimber Berris in November 1914 and February 1915. The Gazette But Somaliland was only the beginning. Carton de Wiart transferred to the Western Front in 1915, where another severe wound ultimately cost him his left hand. He was also wounded in the hip and ankle, but continued to seek active employment. By July 1916 he was commanding the 8th (Service) Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, while still belonging to the 4th Dragoon Guards. Then came the action that secured his place in the history of the Victoria Cross. National Army Museum Collection On 2 and 3 July 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, Carton de Wiart fought at La Boisselle amid intense artillery and machine-gun fire. After three other battalion commanders became casualties, he assumed control of their commands, helped maintain the captured ground and repeatedly exposed himself while organising positions and supplies. His Victoria Cross citation described his "most conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination" and concluded that "His gallantry was inspiring to all." The award was published in The London Gazette, Issue 29740, page 8869, in September 1916. The Gazette The Victoria Cross did not remove him from danger. Carton de Wiart continued serving on the Western Front, held further battalion and brigade commands, and accumulated still more wounds. His First World War record eventually included six Mentions in Despatches, while his foreign and British honours continued to grow. Belgium appointed him an Officer of the Order of the Crown in 1917 and awarded him the Belgian Croix de Guerre in 1918. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1918 Birthday Honours, and a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1919 Birthday Honours. His surviving Victory Medal bears the bronze oak leaf representing a Mention in Despatches. The Gazette Peace did not end his military adventures. In 1919 Carton de Wiart went to Poland as part of the British military mission during the turbulent struggles that followed the collapse of the old European empires. He became closely involved with Poland during the Polish-Soviet War and remained in Warsaw during the crisis of 1920. The Polish government's historical account records that he was awarded the Order of War of Virtuti Militari and the Cross of Valour for his service. More than twenty years later, during the Second World War, Poland honoured him again with the Cross of Valour, and The London Gazette of 11 April 1941 records the King's unrestricted permission for Carton de Wiart to wear that Polish decoration. These two awards explain the separate 1920 and 1941 Cross of Valour ribbons represented in his reconstructed ribbon rack. Gov.pl Carton de Wiart spent much of the interwar period in Poland, living at Prostyń and pursuing his enthusiasm for hunting. War found him again in 1939. The War Office recalled him from retired pay, and The London Gazette records his appointment as a commander with the acting rank of major-general from 28 November 1939. He again headed a British military mission connected with Poland before taking command of Mauriceforce during the Norwegian Campaign in 1940. At Namsos his force attempted to operate against the German advance under severe logistical and air-power disadvantages before the Allied withdrawal. He subsequently commanded the 61st Infantry Division in Northern Ireland. The Gazette Then, at the age of sixty, Carton de Wiart became a prisoner of war. In April 1941, while travelling to take up a British military mission to Yugoslavia, his aircraft came down in the Mediterranean near the Italian-held North African coast. He reached shore but was captured and eventually confined with other senior British officers at Castello di Vincigliata near Florence. Captivity did little to quiet him. After repeated escape efforts, he took part in a tunnel escape in 1943 and remained free for about eight days before being recaptured. The episode might have been the closing chapter of his war. Instead, it became the prelude to another diplomatic assignment. GOV.UK In August 1943, the Italian authorities unexpectedly released Carton de Wiart from the prison camp and sent him with General Giacomo Zanussi to Lisbon during secret contacts concerning an Italian armistice. A contemporary diplomatic telegram records that he arrived in Lisbon after being taken from captivity, provided with civilian clothes and an Italian diplomatic identity, and instructed to accompany the Italian general. Winston Churchill later told the House of Commons that Carton de Wiart had been used as evidence of the mission's good faith and was subsequently free to return to Britain. Office of the Historian Retirement again failed to follow. Late in 1943 Carton de Wiart was sent to Asia as Britain's Special British Military Representative to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. He attended the Cairo Conference in November 1943, where official Allied minutes place Lieutenant-General Carton de Wiart among the British representatives meeting Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang. He then spent the final phase of the war working at the highest levels of British liaison with Nationalist China and the Allied command in Asia. Office of the Historian His service was recognised once more in the 1945 New Year Honours, when King George VI appointed Major-General, temporary Lieutenant-General, Adrian Carton de Wiart an Additional Knight Commander of the Military Division of the Order of the British Empire. The official notice already carried the post-nominals VC, CB, CMG and DSO, marking the extraordinary accumulation of British honours earned over decades of service. The Gazette Carton de Wiart was also present in Singapore during the formal Japanese surrender in September 1945. The official British history records him among the senior officers attending the ceremony on 12 September, while Imperial War Museums film shot at Kallang two days earlier shows the unmistakable one-eyed, one-armed lieutenant-general arriving in Singapore and inspecting a guard of honour. He remained involved with China after the war, and contemporary diplomatic records continued to identify him as Britain's representative with Chiang Kai-shek. General Staff His foreign reputation had grown alongside his British honours. A contemporary obituary published by Le Monde in June 1963 recorded Carton de Wiart as a Commander of the French Legion of Honour and an Officer of the Belgian Order of the Crown. His complete reconstructed entitlement also records the French Croix de Guerre 1939-1945 with bronze palm, alongside his Belgian and Polish decorations. Le Monde.fr His wartime temporary rank of lieutenant-general formally ended on 18 February 1947, when The London Gazette recorded that he relinquished that temporary rank. He ultimately left active military life with the honorary rank by which he is remembered, Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO. The Gazette Carton de Wiart spent his remaining years in County Cork, Ireland, and died there on 5 June 1963, one month after his eighty-third birthday. By then his career stretched from mounted warfare in South Africa to the trenches of the Western Front, revolutionary warfare in Poland, the Norwegian Campaign, captivity in Fascist Italy and high-level Allied diplomacy in wartime China. His physical appearance, an eye patch, an empty sleeve and the bearing of a cavalry officer, became almost inseparable from his legend. Yet behind that legend stands an unusually well-documented military record, including the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Order, appointments to the Orders of the British Empire, the Bath and St Michael and St George, and honours from Belgium, Poland and France. GOV.UK Perhaps the most revealing line was his own. Looking back on the First World War in his memoir Happy Odyssey, Carton de Wiart wrote simply, "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war." It is an unsettling sentence, but one that captures something essential about a soldier who repeatedly returned to danger when age, injury and circumstance had given him every opportunity to leave it behind.