Adrian Carton de Wiart
Literally shot to pieces during his years of service in the British Army, the Belgian native Adrian Carton de Wiart earned Britain’s highest honour for gallantry during the Somme Offensive
The incredible story of a man who put his body on the line for his troops
“HE DISPLAYED THE UTMOST ENERGY AND COURAGE IN FORCING OUR ATTACK HOME. AFTER THREE OTHER BATTALION COMMANDERS HAD BECOME CASUALTIES, HE CONTROLLED THEIR COMMANDS AND ENSURED THAT THE GROUND WON WAS MAINTAINED AT ALL COSTS. HE FREQUENTLY EXPOSED HIMSELF IN THE ORGANISATION OF POSITIONS AND OF SUPPLIES, PASSING UNFLINCHINGLY THROUGH FIRE BARRAGE OF THE MOST INTENSE NATURE. HIS GALLANTRY WAS INSPIRING TO ALL”
VC citation
When speaking of Sir Garnet Wolseley, Dr. Joseph H. Lehmann observed that the British general “believed the best possible way to get ahead in the army was to try to get killed every time he had a chance.” Wolseley had plenty of scars, medals and honours to show for it. Another soldier in the British Army,
Adrian Carton de Wiart, lived by Wolseley’s maxim. The transplanted Belgian-british army officer possessed a strange combination of a fiery temper, sense of humour in the darkest times, humility and an obsession to “justify his existence” through reckless heroism. His hairs-breadth escapes on the battlefield were legendary, and he would earn the Victoria Cross during the defence of La Boisselle in July 1916.
Born in Brussels, Belgium in May 1880, Adrian Carton de Wiart was never meant to be a soldier. His father, Carton de Wiart, a successful lawyer, moved his family to Cairo after the death of his wife. There he became a legal advisor to Khedive Tewfik. In 1888 he married an English woman, who ensured her new husband’s children grew up to revere everything British.
In 1897 the 17-year-old de Wiart was sent to the University of Oxford to study law. Although well-versed in the French, English and Arabic languages, he failed as a student. He would rather be out playing cricket than hitting the books and hated the boundaries a university presented to his adventurous spirit.
When war broke out in Africa between the British Empire and the Boers in 1899, de Wiart abandoned his studies, feigned British citizenship, lied about his age and enlisted as a volunteer with Paget’s Horse under the last name of Carton. “At that moment I knew, once and for all, that war was in my blood,” he professed later.
It was not long before the reckless Oxford dropout was wounded. He was shot in the stomach and groin by a Boer sharpshooter during a skirmish. Fearing he would be sent back to Oxford after his recovery, he pleaded with his father to allow him to remain in the British Army. With his son failing at his studies and with his mind locked on other ambitions, Carton de Wiart had no choice but to yield.
Rising to the rank of captain, de Wiart served in Somaliland in the run-up to Britain’s entry into World War I. He was serving with ‘C’ Company of the Somaliland Camel Corps, who had been tasked with crushing a Dervish force under the command of the Islamic leader Mohammed Abdullah Hassan – recognised among the British ranks as ‘Mad Mullah’.
During the assault on the six redoubts at Shimber Berris, de Wiart was wounded in his left eye and elbow, and he had a chunk of his ear torn off when a Dervish shot was fired at him from less than a yard away. Patched up by the surgeon, he returned to the fight. He received another wound to the same eye from a ricocheting bullet but remained in the field.
Captain de Wiart’s badly damaged eye was subsequently removed after the action, though he resisted, fearful of what it could do to his military career. He received the Distinguished Service Order for his service at Shimber Berris. His only afterthought on facing death and losing his eye in Somaliland was, “It had all been exhilarating fun.”
He saw the loss of his eye as an opportunity rather than an end to his career. He was sent back to England to recuperate, frothing at the idea of being closer to the fighting on the Western Front. He appeared before the Medical Board to receive permission to return to active service. The examiners relented and allowed him to return to the field under the condition that he wore a glass eye. Following the board’s approval, de Wiart tossed the annoying glass ball out of the window of a taxi, donning a black patch instead for the remainder of his life.
Back in action, this time on the Western Front, he was wounded in the left hand in an
“FRANKLY, I HAD ENJOYED THE WAR; IT HAD GIVEN ME MANY BAD MOMENTS, LOTS OF GOOD ONES, PLENTY OF EXCITEMENT…”
Adrian Carton de Wiart
artillery strike during the Second Battle of Ypres. This German shell fragment left his hand, in De Wiart’s own words, a “gory mess”. His left palm was gone and most of his wrist was shot away. Two of his fingers hung only by a thread of skin. The surgeon refused to remove his two remaining fingers, so de Wiart handled it himself, tearing them off. Sent back to England to recover, what remained of the heap of flesh that used to be his hand was amputated.
Yet again convincing the Medical Board examiners to allow him to return to the front (he argued he was still able to shoot and fish), de Wiart transferred from the cavalry to an infantry battalion. Now a lieutenant colonel, he took command of the 8th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment. The unit was badly in need of field officers, prompting de Wiart to seek service in the infantry, where he would have a greater chance for distinction. He returned to the front just in time to play a vital role in the Somme Offensive in July 1916.
The French village of La Boisselle was an imposing obstacle for General William
“HE IS A MODEL OF CHIVALRY AND HONOUR”
Winston Churchill
Pulteney’s III Corps. The Germans turned each wrecked home and building in the village into a mini citadel, with all approaches covered by machine gun crews – some of the best-trained soldiers in the German army. Two mines were detonated under the German lines by engineers in the hope they would throw the German defenders into a state of confusion.
During the first two days of fighting between Fricourt and La Boisselle the 21st Division made progress and forced the Germans back. But on the division’s left, the 34th and 8th Divisions of the III Corps made little headway at La Boisselle against the German 28th Reserve and 26th Reserve Divisions.
On 2 July fresh reinforcements from the 19th Division, originally held in reserve, led to the British securing a foothold within La Boisselle. Lieutenant Colonel de Wiart’s battalion, alongside the 10th Warwicks, were called up to support the battered Eighth North Staffords and 10th Worcesters. De Wiart described the disarray in the village: “La Boisselle was a truly bloody scene. The casualties had been appalling: there were dead everywhere, not a house standing and the ground as flattened as if the very soul had been blasted out of the earth and turned into a void.” Together, these combined British units wrestled, metre-bymetre, trenches from the Germans. By 6pm de Wiart was placed in command of all the units in La Boisselle – the other three senior battalion commanders were either dead or wounded.
A good portion of the village was in the hands of the British by next morning. De Wiart received orders from his division commander, General Tom Bridges – a daring character himself – to hold on to La Boisselle at all costs. The Germans counterattacked the same
day at 8.30am. The author Everard Wyrall, in his history The 19th Division, declared that this German counterattack “led to what was probably the most intense fighting the Division had up to that period experienced.” The battalions were forced halfway back through the village by 12.30pm. It looked as if the British would be driven from the ground they had fought so hard to capture.
Lieutenant Colonel de Wiart’s men dug in around some hedges and fought to defend every inch of ground. Armed with only his walking stick, de Wiart inspired his men with his trademark calm under fire. Disregarding German artillery shells and bullets (miraculously dodging sniper bullets), he filled his men with admiration. With his only good arm, de Wiart yanked the pins from his Mills grenades out with his teeth, lobbing them at groups of onrushing German soldiers. It is hard to imagine what these German soldiers expressed to one another when they witnessed this crippled warrior with a pinned-up sleeve and a black eyepatch hurling grenades in their direction. His heroism and inspirational leadership motivated his men to hold their lines and allowed the British to secure La Boisselle by 5 July.
Around 3,500 men from the 19th Division fell in the fighting at La Boisselle. Adrian Carton de Wiart was one of three members of the division to be awarded the Victoria Cross. His citation, printed in the London Gazette on 9 September 1916, gave an admirable evaluation of his deeds.
Adrian Carton de Wiart was wounded a total of eight times before the close of the war and rose to the rank of brigadier general. He was invested by King George V with the Victoria Cross on 29 November 1916. He had met the king once before: while visiting British soldiers on the front line, King George ran into the eccentric officer. Striking up a conversation with the king, the Belgian thought it was an appropriate time to crack a joke. He commented on the irony that he had served in the British Army for ten years without being a British subject. King George, not pleased at all with de Wiart’s remark, asked that he see to it that he rectify the issue of his citizenship.
Adrian Carton de Wiart continued in the service of the British Army for another 29 years. During the interwar years he served as a military attaché in Poland, narrowly escaping a Cossack ambush during the Soviet invasion of 1920. During World War II he commanded the Central Norwegian Expeditionary Force in 1940 and headed the British Military Mission in Yugoslavia in 1941. He was captured by the Italians after being shot down over the Mediterranean, escaped through a tunnel during his imprisonment but was recaptured. After his release, he served as Winston Churchill’s representative to Nationalist China in October 1943.
The ‘unkillable soldier’ died in Ireland in June 1963. General de Wiart never viewed his life as adventurous but rather full of “misadventures”. He declared in his autobiography years later, “That I should have survived them is to me by far the most interesting thing about it.” He seemed to be one of those rare individuals who had a knack for eluding death but who also enjoyed facing it.
“IT MAY BE FOUND THAT MAJOR GENERAL DE WIART ONCE MORE OUT-HOLLYWOODED HOLLYWOOD”
Army News, 16 September 1943