Adrian Carton de Wiart
Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart,[1] VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (/də ˈwaɪ.ərt/;[2] 5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963) was a British Army officer. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" in various Commonwealth countries.[3] He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; was blinded in his left eye; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and tore off his own fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war."[4]
This article uses a Belgian surname: the surname is Carton de Wiart, not Wiart.
Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart
Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart
5 May 1880
Brussels, Belgium
5 June 1963 (aged 83)
Aghinagh House, Killinardrish, County Cork, Ireland
United Kingdom
1899–1923
1939–1947
836
61st Infantry Division
134th Brigade
12th Brigade
8th (Service) Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
After returning home from service (including a period as a prisoner-of-war) in the Second World War, he was sent to China as Winston Churchill's personal representative. While en route he attended the Cairo Conference.
In his memoirs, Carton de Wiart wrote, "Governments may think and say as they like, but force cannot be eliminated, and it is the only real and unanswerable power. We are told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these weapons I would choose."[5] Carton de Wiart was thought to be a model for the character of Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn Waugh's trilogy Sword of Honour.[6] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography described him thus: "With his black eyepatch and empty sleeve, Carton de Wiart looked like an elegant pirate, and became a figure of legend."[7]
Early life[edit]
Background[edit]
Carton de Wiart was born into an aristocratic family in Brussels, on 5 May 1880, as the eldest son of Léon Constant Ghislain Carton de Wiart (1854–1915), a lawyer and magistrate, and Ernestine Wenzig (1860–1886), although at the time he was widely believed to be an illegitimate son of King Leopold II of the Belgians.[8] He spent his early days in Belgium and in England;[9] the 'loss of his mother' when he was six prompted his father to move the family to Cairo so his father could practise at Egypt's mixed courts. This led early biographers to assume that his mother had died in 1886; however, in later research it was established that his parents had in fact divorced in that year and that his mother remarried Demosthenes Gregory Cuppa later in 1886.[10] In his position as a lawyer, magistrate, and a director of the Cairo Electric Railways and Heliopolis Oases Company, his father was well connected in Egyptian governmental circles. Adrian Carton de Wiart learned to speak Arabic.[11]
Carton de Wiart was a Roman Catholic. In 1891, his English stepmother sent him to a boarding school in England, the Roman Catholic Oratory School, founded by John Henry Newman. From there, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, but left around 1899, just before or during the Second Boer War, to join the British Army. He falsified his name and age, signing up as "Trooper Carton" and claiming to be 25 years old where his actual age was no more than 20.[12]
Second Boer War[edit]
Carton de Wiart was wounded in the stomach and groin in South Africa early in the Second Boer War and was invalided home. His father was furious when he learned his son had abandoned his studies, but allowed him to remain in the army. After another brief period at Oxford, where Aubrey Herbert was among his friends, he was given a commission in the Second Imperial Light Horse. He saw action in South Africa again, and on 14 September 1901 was given a regular commission as a second lieutenant in the 4th Dragoon Guards.[13] Carton de Wiart was transferred to India in 1902. He enjoyed sports, especially shooting and pig sticking.[14]
Character, interests and life in the Edwardian army[edit]
Carton de Wiart's serious wound in the Boer War instilled in him a strong desire for physical fitness and he ran, jogged, walked, and played sports on a regular basis. In male company he was "a delightful character and must hold the world record for bad language."[15]
After his regiment was transferred to South Africa he was promoted to supernumerary lieutenant on 16 July 1904 and appointed an aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Henry Hildyard, the following July.[16] He describes this period lasting up to 1914 as his "Heyday", the title of Chapter 3 of his autobiography. His light duties as aide-de-camp gave him time for polo, another of his interests.[14] By 1907, although by then having served in the British Army for eight years, he had remained a Belgian subject. On 13 September of that year, he took the oath of allegiance to Edward VII and was formally naturalised as a British subject.[1]
In 1908, he married Countess Friederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen (1887 Klagenfurt – 1949 Vienna), the eldest daughter of Karl, 5th Fürst (Prince) von Fugger-Babenhausen and Princess Eleonora zu Hohenlohe-Bartenstein und Jagstberg of Klagenfurt, Austria. They had two daughters; the eldest, Anita (born 1909, deceased), was to be the maternal grandmother of the war correspondent Anthony Loyd (born 1966).[17][18]
Carton de Wiart was already well-connected in European circles, his two closest cousins being Count Henri Carton de Wiart, Prime Minister of Belgium from 1920 to 1921, and Baron Edmond Carton de Wiart, political secretary to the King of Belgium and director of La Société Générale de Belgique. While on leave, he travelled extensively throughout central Europe, using his Catholic aristocratic connections to shoot at country estates in Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, and Bavaria.[19] Following his return to England, he rode with the famous Duke of Beaufort's Hunt where he met, among others, the future field marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson and the future air marshal Sir Edward Ellington. He was promoted to the rank of captain on 26 February 1910.[20] The Duke of Beaufort was the honorary colonel of the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars, and from 1 January 1912 until his departure for Somaliland in 1914 Carton de Wiart served as the regiment's adjutant.[21]
First World War[edit]
Somaliland Campaign[edit]
When the First World War broke out, Carton de Wiart was en route to British Somaliland where a low-level war was underway against the followers of Dervish leader Mohammed bin Abdullah, called the "Mad Mullah" by the British. Carton de Wiart had been seconded to the Somaliland Camel Corps. [22] In an attack upon an enemy fort at Shimber Berris, Carton de Wiart was shot twice in the face, losing his eye and a portion of his ear. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) on 15 May 1915.[23]
Western Front[edit]
In February 1915, he embarked on a steamer heading for France. Carton de Wiart took part in the fighting on the Western Front, commanding successively three infantry battalions and a brigade. He was wounded seven more times in the war, losing his left hand in 1915 and pulling off his fingers when a doctor declined to remove them.[24] He was 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. He went to the Sir Douglas Shield's Nursing Home to recover from his injuries.[25]
Victoria Cross[edit]
Carton de Wiart received the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for gallantry in combat that can be awarded to British Empire forces, in 1916. He was 36 years old, and a temporary lieutenant-colonel in the 4th Dragoon Guards (Royal Irish), British Army, attached to the Gloucestershire Regiment, commanding the 8th Battalion, when the following events took place on 2/3 July 1916 at La Boiselle, France, as recorded in the official citation:
Polish gentleman (1924–1939)[edit]
His last Polish aide de camp was Prince Karol Mikołaj Radziwiłł, member of the Radziwiłł family who inherited a large 500,000-acre (200,000 ha) estate in eastern Poland when the communists killed his uncle. They became friends and Carton de Wiart was given the use of a large estate called Prostyń, in the Pripet Marshes, a wetland area larger than Ireland and surrounded by water and forests.[47] In this location Carton de Wiart spent the rest of the interwar years. In his memoirs he said "In my fifteen years in the marshes I did not waste one day without hunting".[47]
After 15 years, Carton de Wiart's peaceful Polish life was interrupted by the looming war, when he was recalled in July 1939 and appointed to his old job, as head of the British Military Mission to Poland. Poland was attacked by Nazi Germany on 1 September and on 17 September the Soviets allied with Germany attacked Poland from the east. Soon Soviet forces overran Prostyń and Carton de Wiart lost all his guns, fishing rods, clothing, and furniture. They were packed up by the Soviets and stored in the Minsk Museum, but destroyed by the Germans in later fighting. He never saw the area again, but as he said "they did not manage to take my memories".[47]
Retirement and death[edit]
En route home via French Indochina, Carton de Wiart stopped in Rangoon as a guest of the army commander. Coming down stairs, he slipped on coconut matting, fell down, broke several vertebrae, and knocked himself unconscious. He was admitted to Rangoon Hospital where he was treated.[84] His wife died in 1949. In 1951, at the age of 71, he married Ruth Myrtle Muriel Joan McKechnie, a divorcee known as Joan Sutherland, 23 years his junior (born in late 1903, she died 13 January 2006 at the age of 102.)[85] They settled at Aghinagh House, Killinardrish, County Cork, Ireland.[86]
Carton de Wiart died at the age of 83 on 5 June 1963. He left no papers.[87] He and his wife Joan are buried in Caum Churchyard just off the main Macroom road. The grave site is just outside the actual graveyard wall on the grounds of his own home, Aghinagh House. Carton de Wiart's will was valued at probate in Ireland at £4,158 and in England at £3,496.[88]
