Lieutenant-General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg, (21 March 1889 – 4 July 1963) was a British-born New Zealand soldier and Victoria Cross recipient, who served as the 7th governor-general of New Zealand from 1946 to 1952 - the first to have been raised and educated in New Zealand.

Freyberg served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War. He took part in the beach landings during the Gallipoli campaign and was the youngest general in the British Army during the First World War, later serving on the Western Front, where he was decorated with the Victoria Cross and appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order with three bars, making him one of the most highly decorated British Empire soldiers of the First World War. He liked to be in the thick of the action: Winston Churchill called him "the Salamander" due to his ability to pass through fire unharmed.

During the Second World War, he commanded the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Battle of Crete, the North African campaign and the Italian campaign. Freyberg was involved in the Allied defeat in the Battle of Greece, defeated again as the Allied commander in the Battle of Crete and performed successfully in the fighting in North Africa, commanding the 2nd New Zealand Division, including during the Second Battle of El Alamein and in the subsequent Tunisian campaign.

In Italy, he was defeated again at the Second Battle of Cassino as a corps commander but later relieved Padua and Venice and was one of the first to enter Trieste, where he confronted Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav Partisans. By the end of the Second World War, Freyberg had spent ten and a half years fighting the Germans.Kay, p. 549

Early life

The youngest of five children, all boys, Freyberg was born at 8 Dynevor Road, Richmond, Surrey, to James Freyberg and his second wife, Julia (née Hamilton) was of partial Austrian-German descent.Stephen Levine: New Zealand As It Might Have Been 2, Victoria University Press, 2011 He moved to New Zealand with his parents at the age of two.

He attended Wellington College from 1897 to 1904. A strong swimmer, he won the New Zealand 100-yards championship in 1906 and 1910.

Freyberg joined the New Zealand Territorial Army, and in 1911 was a Second Lieutenant serving in C Company of the Hauraki Regiment. This company was based at Annandale, near Morrinsville, and during this time Freyberg served as locum for a local dentist. On 18 January 1912, Freyberg was gazetted into the 6th Hauraki Regiment. Freyberg later resigned and moved to Levin.

In March 1914 Freyberg left New Zealand for California. A 1942 Life magazine article claimed that Freyberg went to San Francisco and Mexico around this time, and was a captain under Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution. Upon hearing of the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, he travelled to Britain via Los Angeles (where he won a swimming competition) and New York (where he won a prizefight), to earn money to cross the United States and the Atlantic. Recent research indicates, however, that Freyberg never went to Mexico, that he spent most of his time in California as an oil field official living in Coalinga, that he left for the war by train from San Francisco and that he created the Mexico myth about himself shortly after arriving in Britain by spinning a yarn to a New Zealand journalist, perhaps hoping that some active service might help to secure a commission in the British forces.

First World War

Immediately on the outbreak of the First World War Freyberg went to England and volunteered for service. G. S. Richardson arranged for him to join the 7th "Hood" Battalion of the Royal Naval Brigade, and he was on the Belgian front in September 1914. In late 1914 Freyberg met Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and persuaded him to grant him a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve commission in the 'Hood' Battalion, part of the 2nd (Royal Naval) Brigade of the newly constituted Royal Naval Division.

In April 1915 Freyberg became involved in the Dardanelles campaign. On the night of 24 April, during the initial landings by Allied troops following the failed naval attempt to force the straits by sea, Freyberg volunteered to swim ashore in the Gulf of Saros. Once ashore, he began lighting flares so as to distract the defending Turkish forces from the real landings taking place at Gallipoli. Despite coming under heavy Turkish fire, he returned safely from this outing and was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He received serious wounds on several occasions and left the peninsula when his division evacuated in January 1916.

Victoria Cross In May 1916 Freyberg was transferred to the British Army as a captain in the Queen's (Royal West Surrey) Regiment. However, he remained with the 'Hood' Battalion as a seconded temporary major and went with them to France.

During the final stages of the Battle of the Somme, when commanding a battalion as a temporary lieutenant-colonel, he so distinguished himself in the capture of Beaucourt village that he was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC). On 13 November 1916 at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre, France, after Freyberg's battalion had carried the initial attack through the enemy's front system of trenches, he rallied and re-formed his own much disorganised men and some others, and led them on a successful assault of the second objective, during which he suffered two wounds, but remained in command and held his ground throughout the day and the following night. When reinforced the next morning, he attacked and captured a strongly fortified village, taking 500 prisoners. Although wounded twice more, the second time severely, Freyberg refused to leave the line until he had issued final instructions. The full citation for the award, published in The London Gazette in December 1916, describes the events as follows:

During his time on the Western Front Freyberg continued to lead by example. His bold leadership had a cost: Freyberg received nine wounds during his service in France, and men who served with him later in his career said hardly a part of his body did not have scars.

Freyberg gained promotion to the rank of temporary brigadier general (although he still had the permanent rank of only captain) and took command of the 173rd (3/1st London) Brigade, part of the 58th (2/1st London) Division, in April 1917, which reportedly made him the youngest general officer in the British Army. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George the same year. In September a shell exploding at his feet inflicted the worst of his many wounds, having "been hit in five places by the heavy shell that had burst at his feet, right through a lung in one place, and in his thigh was a hole the size of a fist". He was evacuated to Bryanston Square Hospital, London, where he remained for the next three months. Initially, it was feared that he would "lose a leg – or even his life".

When he resumed duty in January 1918, the same month in which he was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel, he took command of the 88th Infantry Brigade, part of the 29th Division, performing with distinction during the German spring offensives of March–April 1918. He won a bar to his DSO in September that year. Freyberg ended the war by leading a cavalry squadron detached from the 7th Dragoon Guards to seize a bridge at Lessines, which was achieved one minute before the armistice with Germany came into effect, thus earning him a second bar to the DSO. By the end of the war, Freyberg had added the French Croix de Guerre to his name, as well receiving five mentions in despatches after his escapade at Saros. With his VC and three DSOs, he ranked among the most highly decorated British Empire soldiers of the First World War.

Interbellum Early in 1919 Freyberg was granted a Regular Army commission in the Grenadier Guards and settled into peacetime soldiering, as well as attempts to swim the English Channel. He attended the Staff College, Camberley from 1920 to 1921. From 1921 to 1925 he was a staff officer in the headquarters of the 44th (Home Counties) Division. He suffered health problems arising from his many wounds, and as part of his convalescence he visited New Zealand in 1921.

On 14 June 1922 he married Barbara McLaren (a daughter of Sir Herbert and Dame Agnes Jekyll, and the widow of the Honourable Francis McLaren) at St Martha on the Hill in Surrey. Barbara had two children from her previous marriage; she and Freyberg later had a son, Paul (1923–1993).

In the general election of 1922 he stood unsuccessfully (coming second) as a Liberal candidate for Cardiff South.

He represented New Zealand on the International Olympic Committee in 1928–30. Promoted to the permanent rank of major in 1927 (having been a substantive captain since 1916), he held a GSO2 staff appointment at Headquarters, Eastern Command until February 1929 when he was transferred to the Manchester Regiment and promoted to lieutenant-colonel upon being appointed to command the 1st Battalion, Manchester Regiment.

In March 1931 he was promoted colonel (with seniority backdated to 1922) and was appointed Assistant Quartermaster General of Southern Command. In 1933 he wrote A Study of Unit Administration, which became a staff college textbook on quarter-masters' logistics; it went into a second edition in 1940.

In September 1933 he moved to a GSO1 posting at the War Office before being promoted major-general in July 1934. With this promotion, at age 45, he seemed headed for the highest echelons of the army. However, medical examinations prior to a posting in India revealed a heart problem. Despite strenuous efforts to surmount this, Freyberg, who was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1936, was obliged to retire on 16 October 1937.

Second World War

The British Army classified Freyberg as unfit for active service in 1937. After the outbreak of war in September 1939, he returned to its active list in December as a specially employed major-general. On being approached by the New Zealand Government, Freyberg, by then commanding the Salisbury Plain Training Area in the United Kingdom, offered his services and was appointed commander of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force and of the 2nd New Zealand Division.

Under Freyberg's charter he was ultimately responsible only to the Government of New Zealand and as such was allowed to make decisions to protect the New Zealanders under his command. This enabled him at times to bypass his superior officers and confer directly with Peter Fraser, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, on certain issues. He was also insistent that his division would fight as a complete formation and not be split up into brigade groups or smaller. This brought him into conflict with his senior commanders in the war's early years, most notably with General Sir Archibald Wavell, then the Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East, where the division, which began to leave home in early 1940, began to concentrate.

In the chaos of the retreat from the Battle of Greece in 1941, Churchill gave Freyberg command of the Allied forces during the Battle of Crete. Although instructed to prevent an assault from the air, he remained obsessed with the possibility of a naval landing and based his tactics on it, neglecting adequately to defend the airfield at Maleme, ignoring ULTRA intelligence messages, which showed that the assault was coming by air.James Holland, 2015. The War in the West vol.1, Bantam Press – Transworld Publishers, LondonAntony Beevor, The Second World War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014 (paperback edition).. See pp. 201–217 However, many sources consider that the intelligence given to Freyberg was vague and inadequate, and did indicate the possibility of a naval landing; this compromised his ability to respond correctly to the invasion.John Keegan, Intelligence in War, pp. 193–195