Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart, (; 5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963) was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" in various Commonwealth countries. He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, groin, ankle, leg, hip, and ear. He was also blinded in his left eye, survived two plane crashes, tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp, and ripped off his own severely injured fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war."
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." 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.The English author Christopher Sykes (1907–1986), Waugh's biographer, said in 1975 that he thought that the fire-eating officer in the Sword of Honour trilogy, Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook, "bears a very strong resemblance to" Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, a friend of the author's father-in-law. Waugh was familiar with Carton de Wiart through a club to which he belonged. 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."Williams, ODNB
Early life Background 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 (1860–1943), although at the time he was widely believed to be an illegitimate son of King Leopold II of the Belgians.Michael Korda, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia , p. 236 He spent his early days in Belgium and in England; the 'loss of his mother' when he was six prompted his father to move the family to Cairo so his father could practice 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 divorced in that year and that his mother remarried Demosthenes Gregory Cuppa later in 1886. 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.
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" in Paget's Horse and claiming to be 25 years old where his actual age was no more than 20.
Second Boer War 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. Carton de Wiart was transferred to India in 1902. He enjoyed sports, especially shooting and pig sticking.
Character, interests and life in the Edwardian army 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".
After his regiment was transferred to South Africa he was promoted to lieutenant on 16 July 1904 and appointed an aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Hildyard, the following July. 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. 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.
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 Prince Fugger von Babenhausen and Princess Eleonora zu Hohenlohe-Bartenstein und Jagstberg of Klagenfurt, Austria. They had two daughters; the eldest, Anita (born 1909), was to be the maternal grandmother of the war correspondent Anthony Loyd (born 1966).
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 , 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. 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. 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.
First World War Dervish war 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 the Dervish haroun, including leader Mohammed bin Abdullah, called the "Mad Mullah" by the British. Carton de Wiart had been seconded to the Somaliland Camel Corps. 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. Upon hearing of the death of the "Mad Mullah", Carton de Wiart stated that he "felt a sense of real personal loss", for the "Mad Mullah" was "a godsend to officers with an urge to fight and a shaky or non-existent bank balance".
Western Front 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.Nemesis (2007) Hastings, M. HarperCollins Press, London. , p.446 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.
Victoria Cross Carton de Wiart received the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for gallantry in combat against the enemy 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, in the opening days of the Battle of the Somme, at La Boiselle, France, as recorded in the official citation:
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the National Army Museum in Chelsea.
1916–1918
Carton de Wiart was promoted to temporary major in March 1916, and to the rank of temporary lieutenant colonel on 18 July, was brevetted to major on 1 January 1917 and was promoted to temporary brigadier general on 12 January 1917. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the Crown of Belgium in April 1917. On 3 June 1917, Carton de Wiart was brevetted to lieutenant-colonel. On 18 July, he was promoted to the substantive rank of major in the Dragoon Guards. He was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre in March 1918, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the King's Birthday Honours List in June.
On 8 November, just three days before the end of the war, Carton de Wiart was given command of a brigade with the rank of temporary brigadier general. A.S. Bullock gives a vivid first-hand description of his arrival: 'Cold shivers went down the back of everyone in the brigade, for he had an unsurpassed record as a fire eater, missing no chance of throwing the men under his command into whatever fighting happened to be going.' Bullock recalls how the battalion looked 'very much the worse for wear' when they paraded for the brigadier general's inspection. He arrived 'on a lively cob with his cap tilted at a rakish angle, and a shade over the place where one of his eyes had been'. He was also missing two limbs and had eleven wound stripes. Bullock, the first man in line for the inspection, notes that Carton de Wiart, despite having only one eye, ordered him to get his bootlace changed.Bullock, A S, Gloucestershire Between the Wars: A Memoir, The History Press, 2009, pages 88–89
Post-First World War era and the Polish mission
At the end of the war Carton de Wiart was sent to Poland as second in command of the British-Poland Military Mission under General Louis Botha. Carton de Wiart was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1919 King's Birthday Honours List. After a brief period, he replaced General Botha in the mission to Poland.
Poland desperately needed support, as it was engaged with Bolshevik Russia in the Polish-Soviet War, the Ukrainians in the Polish-Ukrainian War, the Lithuanians in the Polish-Lithuanian War and the Czechs in the Czech-Polish border conflicts. There he met pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the Chief of State and military commander and General Maxime Weygand, head of the French military mission in mid-1920. The Ukrainian nationalists under Simon Petlyura were besieging the city of Lwów (; ). One of his tasks soon after Carton de Wiart's arrival was to attempt to make peace between the Poles and the Ukrainians; the peace talks were unsuccessful.
From there, he went on to Paris to report to the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George and to General Sir Henry Wilson, regarding the Polish situation. Lloyd George was not sympathetic to Poland and, much to Carton de Wiart's annoyance, Britain sent next to no military supplies. Then he went back to Poland and many more front line adventures, this time in the Bolshevik zone, where the situation was grave and Warsaw threatened. During this time he had significant interaction with the nuntius (dean of the Vatican diplomatic corps) Cardinal Achille Ratti, later Pius XI, who wanted Carton de Wiart's advice as to whether to evacuate the diplomatic corps from Warsaw. The diplomats moved to Poznań, but the Italians remained in Warsaw along with Ratti.