Dan Snow's History Hit - Dan's History Heroes: Britain's Greatest Soldier, Part 1

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

This is the story of Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, Britain's most extraordinary soldier. The one-handed, one-eyed, walking stick-wielding war hero fought in the Second Boer War, The First World War and the Second World War. He was wounded countless times, awarded prestigious medals for gallantry, and made into a figure of legend. Away from the battlefield the eccentric veteran rubbed shoulders with kings and emperors, and worked with some of the most important world leaders of the 20th century.To tell this astonishing tale, Dan weaves his storytelling with the words of Carton De Wiart himself, read by Dan's father, Peter Snow. In this first episode, we follow the aspiring young officer from his baptism by fire in South Africa to the trenches of the Western Front.Written and produced by Dan Snow, and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Sir Adrian Carton de Wyatt was a superstitious man. For example, he avoided taking on any new projects on a Sunday. And that's because, over the course of an extraordinary career, he'd been wounded six times on a Sunday. But then he'd been wounded so often, I'm not sure any other days of the week would have been much better. This is a podcast about Adrian Carton de Wyatt. He's Britain's greatest soldier, and not in terms of battles won, but in a slightly more nebulous sense, in terms of the breadth, the length, the type, the location of his service, the effect he had on those around him

and under his command. There has never been anyone like him and I'm certain we can predict there'll never be anyone like him again. He fought in Africa, North and South. He took part in a sea battle in Asia. He experienced aerial combat. He performed such acts of valor in the trenches, armed only with a walking stick, that he was awarded the Victoria Cross. He rubbed shoulders with emperors. He was imprisoned. He escaped from Italian Castle. He survived multiple plane crashes, exercised by running up the pyramids, narrowly escaped both the Nazi blitzkrieg and the Soviet Cossacks. Evelyn Waugh based a character on him. He became the youngest brigadier general in the British Army and he was awarded Britain's two highest gallantry medals.

He disagreed with Lloyd George. He discussed the course of the war with Churchill. He told Mao Tse-Tung over dinner that he hated communism and thought he was making no effort against the Japanese. He was impressed by Roosevelt and Marshall. He told Chamberlain some home truths. He was unimpressed when he met Haig. He told George V how it was on the Western Front. He advised Marshal Pilsudski as the Red Army approached Warsaw. He banqueted with Chiang Kai-shek. He met Slim in the jungles of Burma. He worked alongside MacArthur, Wingate, Wavell,

Mountbatten, and nearly every single senior wartime commander. He was the ultimate British Imperial soldier. Yet he wasn't even British. He was a fire-eating warrior. But he achieved some of his greatest triumphs in the subtle arts of diplomacy. He was both Achilles and Odysseus. He was an enigma. He left no papers, no letters, no diary. He did once in his life write the most extraordinary memoir. It's called Happy Odyssey and in it our Odysseus tells of his long and deadly

foreign journey of storms, of comrades lost, exotic lands visited, tragedy, shipwreck, beautiful women, and a few monsters. He writes of his adventures, and he corrects himself immediately, saying actually they were more often misadventures. It is simply one of the greatest and best memoirs I have ever read. It was a bestseller in the 1950s. Go and buy it immediately. It's a hysterical, self-deprecating, honest, weird, inspiring, thought-provoking, bonkers book. It's also partial. He doesn't mention his Victoria Cross, his knighthood, his distinguished service order, his wife or daughters. distinguished service order, his wife or daughters. I was so entranced with the book as I was praying for this podcast that I ended up quoting for it at such great length I felt I needed another voice to do justice to it in this podcast. So I invited another storied, legendary individual, one who's seen the world, one who's rubbed shoulders with emperors and frontline soldiers, and that's my dad, Peter Snow. He's back on the podcast. He's going to be reading Carton de Wyatt's words. So let's get into it. This is the story of Sir Adrian Carton de Wyatt.

Churchill said there are only one or two men alive like him and wrote that his whole life has been vigorous, varied and useful. He is a model of chivalry and honour and I'm sure his story will command the interest of men and women whose hearts are uplifted by the deeds and thoughts of a high-minded and patriotic British officer. Well, I suspect you are men and women of exactly that type that Church led in mind. So, enjoy. T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. There were persistent rumours that the baby was not that of its apparent father.

rumors that the baby was not that of its apparent father. On the 5th of May 1880, child had been born, apparently to Ernestine Carton de Wight and her husband Leon in Brussels, Belgium. He was baptized Adrian Paul Gillane Carton de Wight, but right from the off his life was a magnet for drama. Within weeks, his 20-year-old mother had bolted. He was looked after by a wet nurse, a farm girl from, pleasingly, the village of Waterloo, one of Britain's greatest heroes suckled by a woman raised on the hallowed turf of Britain's greatest victory. His mother was apparently the daughter of a rich German merchant. But she might have been, wait for it, a Circassian slave rescued from the human flesh markets of the Ottoman Empire. The Circassians were a group from the North Caucasus, next door to modern Georgia on the Black Sea. Now, this German merchant may

have rescued her, taken her into domestic service, or even adopted her. But there were other rumours at the time as well. One was that the real father was Leopold II, King of the Belgians, ruler of the vast Persian Empire of the Congo Basin, responsible for its genocidal cruelties. He was known to have many affairs, and it's possible the baby was given to the Carton de Waerts, along with lots of cash and an exhortation to do their patriotic duty. So I warned you folks, this story starts strong and there's absolutely no slackening off

the page, I can guarantee. For obvious reasons, with tongues wagging in Brussels, his father moved to Cairo. There was a dynamic Belgian community there, lots of investment going on. He became director of several companies, an important member of the commercial community. So he never knew his mother, and he describes his childhood as one of shifting scenes and personalities. Right, let's hear from the man himself, still working at 85, another irrepressible soul giggling beside me, Peter Snow. Dad, how are you doing? Very well, Dan. Did you ever meet Carton de Watt? No, I never met him. I wish I had. When you started out, were there all sorts of First World War legends?

Presumably, it was nothing surprising to meet one. Yes, when I was a young lad, there were some First World War heroes around. No question there were. I mean, good old Monty, of course, was one. There were. I didn't really ever speak to any of them, I don't think. You met Monty? Did you meet Monty? I met Monty. Oh, yes, indeed.

I did. Wonderful interview. I can imitate him quite well. Okay, give us your Monty. Well, I wore this shirt all the way from Alamein to Lunabag Heath. Boy, what does that like to say? That there are differences between people in the army. There are the officers and there are the men. The officers are there to give their orders

and the men are there to work them out. I think that's as close as we're going to get to Carton Dwight, actually, Dad. Your job today is to read parts of this astonishing memoir. Let's start. How does Carton Dwight describe his childhood? My first real recollection, he says, is of Alexandria, where my parents took me when I was three, and I can still see the fierce fires shooting up into the sky to signal the warning of the dread menace cholera. So then his father marries a, what he describes, a glamorous attendant to a Turkish princess. She comes across through his memoir as harsh. She was full of vigorous ideas, accentuated by a strong will and a violent temper. She taught him how to swim by throwing him in water,

and he grew up to love riding and shooting. He had an irrepressible mania for catching frogs, loved pageantry and all things military. He describes his childhood as very lonely and formal and later in life his friends speculated that his loneliness growing up in Cary without siblings and a mother made him very self-sufficient. He was always very happy to retire away from friends and companions and live in a state of almost total isolation. I knew nothing of nurseries, plump, kind nannies, and buttered toast for tea. He had it hard. He had it hard.

His stepmother packed him off to boarding school in England. He was 11 years old and conditions were... Pretty grim. The food was bad. The discipline was strict. There was bullying, particularly as he said little Belgian boys raised in Egypt got bullies. Still, he dealt with it and he threw himself into sport. It was an easy road to popularity and soon my foreign extraction was

forgiven and in fact forgotten. He became captain of all the sports teams, cricket, football, tennis, and he generally excelled. He finished up as head boy. And then he went to Balliol College, Oxford. We lived in great comfort, had indulgent fathers, ran up exorbitant bills, and developed a critical appreciation for good wine. We were unable to develop a taste for the ladies, as in those ascetic days they were banned from the university. We were the usual miscellaneous collection of brains and brawn, and though many of my contemporaries have become famous,

illustrious in the church, politics and all the arts, I then measured them by their prowess of sport, our taste in burgundy, and remained unimpressed by their mental gymnastics. Dad, you went to Balle College, in fact, in the 1950s. Were women allowed in anywhere near the university then, Dad? They were allowed in, but they had to get out at 11 o'clock. If they stayed the night, you were in real trouble. I'm sure you never got in trouble, Dad. He played a lot of cricket, but he realised he was never going to make the grade academically, and thankfully for him, a war broke out.

In South Africa, the British and the Boers, who are descendants of Dutch settlers, had been in dispute since, well, at least 1880, essentially about who ought to rule over the region and particularly enjoy the profits of its diamond and gold mines. In 1899, the so-called Second Boer War broke out. Now, this really was a media war, a war of breaking news, telegraph cables, carrying updates, breathless reports on the front line. Fleet Street went to town. There was war mania in the streets of Britain, and the young Adrian Carton de Wyatt

was hooked. At that moment, I knew once and for all that war was in my blood. I was determined to fight, and I didn't mind who or what. I didn't know why the war had started. I didn't care on which side I was to fight. If the British didn't fancy me, I would offer myself to the Boers, and at least I didn't endow myself with Napoleonic powers, or imagine that I would make the slightest difference to whichever side I fought for. I know now that the ideal soldier is the man who fights for his country, because it's fighting, and for no other reason. Causes, politics, and ideologies are better left to the historians. His dad did not want him to go. If anything, his Belgian family, like many in Europe, were quite pro-boer, and his father also wanted him to pursue a lucrative,

respectable career as a lawyer, as he was doing. But it wasn't just his dad who put obstacles in his path. The British army did not want an underage foreign boy to join up, so he lied about his age, he lied about his nationality. And as a result, the teenager Trooper Carton joined a curious unit. It was called the 9th Battalion of the Imperial Yeomanry, a unit of volunteers raised in a rather 18th century fashion you could say by one particular individual george paget he was a rotund red-faced old soldier a grandson of the earl of anglesey wellington's cavalry commander at waterloo his uncle had been the light brigade and he now spent much of his time in the gentlemen's clubs of pal mal The unit that he raised for the British Empire in the Boer War had a badge with a PH on it, which Wags said stood for Piccadilly Heroes, or Perfectly Harmless.

Carton de Wight's first experiences of soldiering were very boring. He hated the training, thought it was dull. He didn't like the cleaning. Looking after the horses was drudgery, he said. He was very pleased when he got aboard ship and storms turned the adventure a little more spicy. Everyone was sick and things were flying around all over the ship. Then they arrived in South Africa, where he said he learned a new kind of English from the sergeants and corporals.

He had one desultory trip into the interior of Africa, got fever, ended up in hospital, checked himself out, joined a random passing unit, and almost immediately got shot in the stomach and groin by a Boer sniper. He went back to that same hospital, a doctor saw him in the hospital, and sent him home, invalided him out of the army. That was it. His military career was over, apparently. It was impossible, he wrote, for anyone to have a duller dose of war. He felt useless. He thought he'd failed, although he did get back to Oxford and realise he was treated as a bit of a hero thanks to his wound. Having been

invalided out, he had had an honourable discharge. Had he scratched the itch of military service? No, he hadn't. He realised again that Oxford was not for him, and this time his father realised it was all hopeless and allowed him to try and enlist. Cardinal Dwight was desperate to go back to the Boer War, but he didn't want to join a British unit because he'd have to train for a year, deadly. So he made his own way to South Africa. He paid his own way. He arrived in January 1901. He says he had one pound left in his pocket. And the day he arrived, he enlisted in the Imperial Light Horse. This was seen as something of an elite unit. Rough riders from all over the empire came and showed off their prowess on

horseback. There was a test, and apparently only about 5% made it through. They had to vault into the saddle of a horse without using stirrups. The unit had a high reputation. There were two Irish international rugby players in there, both of whom ended up with Victoria crosses. He joined as the lowest rank. He joined as a trooper. He was made a corporal, but he was demoted after 24 hours

because he threatened to punch a sergeant. He describes an experience that he valued hugely as it taught him how to get along with men from all backgrounds. And he was given a commission. He was made an officer after a few months. They rode from one of the country to another and he proudly says he had no real idea what they were doing or who was in charge. It didn't bother him. He didn't see that much of the Boers, which did bother him. It was now an insurgency. The Boer so-called commando groups rode hard and attacked where and when it suited them. It was a hard life. It definitely toughened him up. It was once said of Sir Garnet Wolseley that he believed the best way to get ahead in the British army is try and get yourself killed at every opportunity. Now by this measure, by the Wolseley measure, Carton de Wight tried hard to get ahead. He describes volunteering to carry out one particularly

dangerous mission, but his commanding officer told me I was a damn fool and to get back and remain with my men. What he doesn't mention in his memoir is that he was badly wounded in the knee at the Battle of Bethlehem in the Orange Free State in August 1901, and slightly wounded in the face and hands a month later, the wound count already creeping up. He was sent to another unit, this time in India. He arrived there in 1802, and he spent most of his time hunting wild boar on horseback. This is really exceptionally dangerous. At one stage, his horse rolled on him, breaking his ribs and injuring his ankle. He lost his temper and shot an Indian worker in the backside. He was arrested. He was very, very lucky to keep his commission in

the British Army. They were sent back to Africa in 1904. On his way, he visited his family in Cairo and they tried to lose weight for a horse race by running up and down the pyramids in multiple jumpers in the desert heat. When the fateful day arrived for the horse race, he fell off and got concussion. My soldiering was without ambition, and I was solely concerned with the present. I wanted to be fit, to be efficient, to have good ponies, good shooting, a good time, and good friends. Some would find fault with my philosophy, but I was in no way unique. Dad, when you were in the army, did you have a similar outlook? Very much so, except I had a lot of ambition. I wanted to get out of the army, go and study something exciting, and become

a journalist. But you did have good friends and a good time. I had a wonderful time. I mean, best time of my life, I suppose, really, strictly speaking. The naughtiest time was certainly in the army. Okay, well, I'm not going to ask any more about that. Worryingly, in his memoir, he doesn't mention that it was on that particular Egyptian trip that he met Princess Frederica Maria Carolina Henrietta Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen. In a whirlwind of socialising, they obviously took a fancy to each other. He dragged her up the pyramid, literally. Two Arab guides holding an arm each, another one pushing from behind. They would marry a couple of years later, seemingly against the

wishes of her family. What gets more attention in this memoir is South Africa, where he became an aide-de-camp, so a vital assistant to the general officer commanding. He won the regimental polo twice, he proudly writes. He was actually part of a band of wunderkinder at the time that included Lord Lothian, who was a future Second World War ambassador to the USA. Another man would become a Nobel Prize winner, John Buchan, the great novelist, and a future editor of the Times. I'm sure they had a ball. He returned to Britain. He won the regimental polo tournament there as well, of course, having unwittingly broken his leg in the quarterfinal. Naturally, he continued to play all the way

through. He had lots of hilarious scrapes, but then received some genuinely sobering news. His father had lost his fortune. The allowance was drying up. Carton de Wye grieved briefly. Money I'd come to look on as a most useful commodity, appearing with a regularity of breakfast and as important as my morning shave, but it wasn't gone. He could no longer afford to be a soldier in the English provinces where you're expected to maintain a fine lifestyle and a full stable on very little pay, so he had to go on active service abroad. In fact, it was a prospect he came to relish the more he thought about it. However,

I think there's more here than he reports in his memoir. His wife was fabulously wealthy, and it seems clear that he actually wanted to get out of the country. He wanted to get rid of her, and he wanted to get the whiff of gunpowder back in his nostrils. Divorce was out of the question, so leaving and going to a distant imperial frontier was a chivalrous and honourable way of leaving a relationship that was boring him. And there was no shortage of opportunity. There was usually a war going on somewhere on Britain's vast imperial frontier, and Carleton de White signed up to fight in one of them, in northeast Africa, in Somaliland. Before leaving for Somaliland,

I had to go up for my examination for promotion to major. I failed gloriously, achieving a record in obtaining eight marks out of a possible 200 in military law. How lucky that wars wash out examinations, and I've never been asked to do another one since. Still a captain, therefore, not a major, he left England at the end of July 1914. An archduke had been shot in Sarajevo. The world was lurching towards war, but this hedonistic,

thrill-seeker didn't realise. He was obviously not a newspaper reader. In fact, only 12 days after he set sail for Somaliland, the unit that he'd been serving in in Britain was mobilised and would spend the First World War fighting in Egypt, Gallipoli and Palestine. It seems extraordinary to think of my utter ignorance of world affairs. But at that even then pregnant moment, I fondly imagined I should be one of the few people to see a shot fired in anger, and I could hardly believe my ears when at Brindisi or Malta we heard that Germany and Russia were at war. And my cup of misery overflowed when, on arrival at Aden, I learned that England also had declared war on

Germany. He was now desperate to get home, not to look after his poor wife, who was now an enemy alien trapped in Britain with two brothers fighting for the Kaiser, but because he wanted to get into the main theatre action. But instead he was now committed to fighting in some dusty, But instead he was now committed to fighting in some dusty, overlooked corner of the world. It felt like playing in a village cricket match instead of in the test. He was in North East Africa to fight the so-called Mad Mullah. This was a charismatic, physically impressive young Somali man whose name was actually Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassan. He had declared holy war against the British in 1900

and he'd proved a tireless opponent ever since. He was eventually defeated in 1921, and Carton de Wuyert said that when that happened, he felt a sense of personal loss. He was a godsend to officers with an urge to fight and a shaky or non-existent bank balance. All the officers in the Camel Corps were British, seconded from British or Indian regiments. We were a mixed crowd, and I suppose our only common denominator was that we were all short of cash, a fact quite unnoticeable in Somaliland,

which was about the one and only place on earth where one couldn't use it. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. There's more to come. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history.

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by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. The first time he goes into action in Somaliland, he led his men against a blockhouse, a kind of fortified position. And he was seething with excitement. When he was shot in the eye. It had all been the most exhilarating fun and he continued to try and lead his men into this blockhouse despite going pretty much blind. There was a witness there who rose to become Churchill's chief military advisor in the Second World War. He's called Pug Ismay and he wrote an account describing Carton de Wyatt leading

from the front with a bandage over an eye. Carton de Wight came up with a plan to rush the fort. One companion was killed instantly. Carton de Wight was shot again in the arm and the ear, but as Pug Ismay relates, it did not even check his stride. After this short but intense bout of fighting, Carton de Wight found himself invalided out of a theatre of war for the second time. It came as some consolation that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for this brave fight in Somaliland. On the way home, he stopped in Egypt and begged the doctor not to take out his eye. He knew that without an eye, he'd have no chance of rejoining the war.

He made his way to London, almost completely blind, and got a second opinion. A doctor in a nice park lane hospital told him that it had to come out. The eyeball was removed on the 3rd of January 1915, the anniversary of his father's financial collapse. He was worried about the date for the rest of his life. He doesn't mention whether it was a Sunday or not. A piece of metal was found behind the eyeball, which had passed through it. Over the next few years, that Park Lane Hospital would become a home from home for him. In fact, they kept a set of special pyjamas for him with his name embossed on them. And he had a regular room with a view of the park.

He would be there a lot. But in early 1915, he discharged himself and appeared before an army board. They seemed rather shocked at my desire to go to France. One-eyed people were excused active service. But here was this one-eyed young man who couldn't wait to get to the bloodbath of the Western Front. They said, well, if you can find a convincing glass eye, they'd let him go. He turned up to the next interview with an uncomfortable glass eye. They said, fine, head off to France. I was past fit for general service.

On emerging, I called a taxi, threw my glass eye out of the window, put on my black patch, and have never worn a glass eye since. He sailed from Southampton to France, and when he arrived on the Western Front, he was shocked. To me, then, far and away the worst part was the scene of utter desolation, mile upon mile of nothing, except an occasional weird cluster of amputated tree trunks, blown bare, and standing like eyeless effigies surveying destruction. I supposedly got used to it, day in, day out, but if ever I went away from it, on my return it hit me anew with its despairing emptiness. They were up against it, he recalls, in those early months of the war. They were outgunned

and outplanned. But the war may not have been going very well for us, but we had two great assets which the Germans could not emulate. The unconquerable spirit of the British, who is his best when he's losing, and that unfailing sense of humour which can rise above everything. He took part in the Second Battle of Ypres, in which the Germans used gas for the first time, and which Dad's grandfather and my great-grandfather also fought. He called it the most abominable form of warfare. On one occasion, his second-in-command asked him

why he wasn't ducking when shells whizzed by. I was on the point of telling him that I was a fatalist and believed in the appointed hour when we heard another shell coming and he ducked. Carton de Wyatt was blown one way, his friend blown the other, except his friend was also blown into pieces and spread across a wide area. After a short break, they were sent back to the front line. He was led by a staff officer, but they walked too far and hit a German patrol. The Germans opened fire. A bullet smashed into Carlton Dwight's hand, tore his palm off, shattered his wristwatch, and blasted the remnants of his wristwatch into the wound. Fingers were hanging off. He tourniqueted himself with a woolly scarf

taken from a German corpse. He staggered back along the road, got shot at by his own side, but was called out and given safe passage. The doctor examining him refused to take his fingers off, and so he pulled them off himself and felt absolutely no pain in doing it. He was then sent back to England, ended up at Park Lane, naturally hovering between life and death. He languished there throughout 1915. He had innumerable operations as doctors tried to save at least a piece of his hand. By the end of the year, he said he'd had enough. The hand had to come off, he told the doctors, and with a touch of laughing gas, the whole entertainment was no worse than having a tooth out, and an hour later I was eating up a meal.

An old mate then offered him a job, and three weeks later he was out of hospital, and he went to beg his case in front of the medical board. He pointed out that he could still shoot and fish, and therefore was surely fit for action in France. The medical board, who by now must have been in consternation, agreed and he was cleared to serve once again. By the 20th of February 1916, he was back in France and he was made second in command of an infantry battalion. He saw some action in the spring of 1916. He was serving in the so-called Preston Pals. It was a regiment raised in North Lanx, whose nearly 1,000 men had all volunteered together on the same day from the same neighbourhood in September 1914. On the 15th of June 1916, he was given command

of his own battalion, the 8th Gloucesters, just before the Battle of the Somme. He wrote that he could never have wished to serve alongside a nicer bunch of chaps. He insists on physical training sessions every morning at 0630. Then there was bayonet drill and company tactical exercises. He said he tried to learn the name of every officer and non-commissioned officer, that's sergeants and corporals as well. He seems to have turned a mediocre unit around and restored their pride. When I took over, I received another goodly inheritance in the shape of my predecessor's

servant, Holmes. He was a delightful scoundrel and provided me with endless amusement, besides giving me some very devoted service. One day, Holmes annoyed me considerably by letting off his rifle in my ear at some passing plane. And I thereupon seized his rifle, and from that day forward, he was armed only with my blanket and my primer stove. I never carried a revolver, being afraid that if I lost my temper, I might use it against my own people. So my only weapon was a walking stick. use it against my own people. So my only weapon was a walking stick. Carton de Werdes and his legendary walking stick were now about to go into the biggest and bloodiest battle the British Army had ever fought. At 1.30am on the 3rd of July, his Glosters moved up to the front line on the Somme. The battlefield was strewn with British corpses, the fighting had been raging for

nearly 48 hours at that point, and had included the bloodiest day in the history of the British army. His men were still moving up to the front when the Staffordshire battalion in front of them broke and fled, retreated. It was chaos, and knowing that chaos was infectious, Cardinal Dwight jumped out of the trenches and roared at his men to maintain their cohesion. In full view of the enemy, he gave calm, clear instructions and filled his men with confidence. In trench warfare, there is no way of finding out what's happening except by going to look. And in my opinion, a battalion commander has no time during a battle to sit about in the dugout provided for him. He should cover as much ground as possible as fast as he can.

For the telephones are usually the first things to be blown up, and messages take a long time to arrive. When the shelling is heavy, the men need to spur on from time to time, and an invisible commander in a dugout cannot be a great source of inspiration. The Glosters attacked at 3.15am. As the first blush of dawn lit up the eastern skies, they advanced into a hellscape of deep German dugouts, joined together by trenches and tunnels. It was a battle of grenades and bayonets. It was a close quarters, confused scrap. It was a battle of grenades and bayonets. It was a close quarters, confused scrap.

His men took appalling casualties. It was as if the very soul had been blasted out of the earth and turned into a void. By the morning of the 4th of July, Carlton de White's unit had secured their objectives. But just after that, the Germans launched a ferocious counterattack, as was their want. During that attack, Carlton de White said he used grenades for the first and last time. He found a new use for my teeth, pulling the pins out. I was thankful that my teeth were my own.

Exhausted, the unit were withdrawn. By the early hours of the 6th of July, they were able to get some sleep in Albert after five days, near or on the front line. They'd lost 20 officers, killed and wounded, that's nearly all of the officers, and about 300 other ranks, so you're approaching 50% of those who went into battle. It had been a savage fight, all for an area the size of a football field. An officer who met Carton de Wight at the time recounts that he always had a word for everyone and never forgot a man who'd been under his command. And during that Somme battle, Carton de Wight had seen a man cowering in the trenches

and he asked him what he thought he was doing. The man replied that he'd been wounded three or four times and just couldn't face it again. Carton de Wight told him that he'd been wounded several times and he had to get on with it. Then, to give a little point to my argument, I gave him a push in the right direction. And on he went. I'll bet he did. Next, they were sent to a sector of the Somme battlefield known as High Wood.

This, he says, was a magnet for shells. He went up to recce with one of his few uninjured officers who was killed during that recce. I felt the losses more and more as time went on. It was late July 1916 and they were now to attack the hell that was High Wood. Our orders was to try and get High Wood in a night attack. On my way up to the line I stepped on a man in the dark. I thought he was wounded and asked him where he'd been hit. His answer was that he'd not been hit. Turning to my adjutant, who was following, I asked him for his revolver. Before I had time to use it, the man had dived straight over the parapet. On this eventful journey up to the front line, just shortly after

this incident, Carton de Wye was blasted to the ground. He simply remembers being flat on his face. With the sensation that the whole of the back of my head had been blown off. Thankfully, his trusty servant was there to save his life. I was feeling around gingerly in an endeavour to find out which bits of my anatomy remained and which of my limbs were still functioning, when my faithful Holmes, as usual, on my heels with the primers and blanket, pulled me into a shell hole. They stayed there for a few hours with shells dropping all around them and then Holmes dragged him to a dressing station.

In that medical station, he learned that his battalion had been smashed. There had been no gains. There had been terrible casualties. He'd received eight new officers on the day of the attack, and he'd lost them all in one night. He was sent back to Park Lane. The doctor had a good look at his skull, ordered a bottle of champagne, and told him by some miracle,

the bullet traveled through the back of his neck without hitting anything important. The only lasting effect of this wound was whenever he had a haircut afterwards. My neck tickled. Although he doesn't mention it in his memoir, this bit's extraordinary, as a result of his efforts in early July and the fighting which followed, he was given a rather important award. He obviously performed acts of such exceptional gallantry

that he was decorated with the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry that he was decorated with the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry. The citation reads, Captain, rackets, temporary Lieutenant Colonel, Adrian Carton de Wyatt, DSO. For most conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination during severe operations of a prolonged nature, it was owing in great measure to his dauntless courage and inspiring example that a serious reverse was averted. 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 one was maintained at all costs. He frequently exposed himself in the organisation of positions and of supplies, passing unflinchingly through fire barrages of the most intense nature.

His gallantry was inspiring to all. Despite having been shot through the neck, he spent just three weeks in recovery and was soon back with his battalion and back on the Somme. He decided to have a look where he'd been hit. There he found his walking stick. On October the 20th, he was hit by a German shell again, a fragment, this time in the ankle, and he was set back to Park Lane naturally. He was beginning to feel like the Germans were aiming for him personally. I felt I was becoming an individual target for the Hun. Whilst receiving treatment back in Britain,

he met the King on the 29th of November, who presented him with his Victoria Cross. There, he was alongside families of seven other men who were presented with the Victoria Cross as their sons, husbands and fathers had won but who had not survived to collect them. He was becoming a celebrity in London. The Society of Beauty lady Cynthia Asquith wrote, quote, great excitement, the hero of the war, Carton de Wyatt. He is wonderful, undisfigured by his Nelson wounds, loss of an eye and an arm, and I rather fell in love with him. Very good looking, with great distinction, hands and gentle languid manner, certainly most attractive. Sounds like you, Dad. Indeed. He was rather less gentle and languid with another Londoner.

He was rather less gentle and languid with another Londoner. While in the city, he got involved as a second in a duel. A vague friend of his was furious at another man who was paying a lot of attention to a certain lady. Unsurprisingly, the other man backed out when it became clear that Carton de Wyatt and his mate were very happy to kill him. Carton de Wyatt sighed. It was a tame end.

It seemed to me that he didn't like the lady enough to fight for her. He needed a threshing. He returned to France, probably a good thing, and was asked to command a brigade. He'd risen from captain to brigadier in under a year, and had spent a good deal of that time in a bed. It was astonishing. And that gives you a sense of how his superiors valued his extraordinary leadership on the battlefield in the hellscape of the first world war he seemed to get results his presence emboldened his men he now claimed this made him the youngest brigadier in the allied armies now i can't work out whether that's true there were two younger men freiburg and roland

bradford who would be made brigadiers in pretty's true. There were two younger men, Freyberg and Roland Bradford, who would be made brigadiers in pretty short order, and they were both younger than him. But in January 1917, he may well have been right. And perhaps that's why he called this remarkable year, the one he'd just lived through, one of the luckiest years of my life. If that's lucky, I'd hate to see an unlucky one. His job was now to rebuild a brigade, part of a division that had been shattered by casualties and in desperate need of new leadership. Its paper strength was just over 4,000 officers and men, and it was about to be thrown into battle at Arras. The day before the attack, he was visiting the front when a piece of shrapnel ripped his ears

to shreds. His response? I was very alarmed in case I should be done out of the battle. Thank goodness they patched him up and sent him straight back to the front line. Arras was a wonderful success. Giant mines destroyed German front line positions. His men advanced and captured their objectives with no great difficulties. He felt buoyed up. The Allied guns had totally silenced the German batteries and it was a great relief as they pushed forward.

His brigade only suffered less than 200 casualties. But, as was the way on the Western Front, the German defences then hardened up and it became a slogging match. Captain Colin Gubbins, who was later head of the Special Operations Executive, the SOE in the Second World War, visited Carton de Wuyert's headquarters and described his method of planning an attack. I was sent to his HQ as a liaison officer and joined him in the dugout. When the divisional orders for next day's attack reached him, long and voluminous,

he read these through twice, questioned me on one or two gunner matters, then deliberately tore up the orders and sent for his battalion commanders. A ten-minute conference, a few clear, verbal orders from him, and it was all over. He could not abide what he called the Bumpf War. His approach certainly was different, and it was distilled for me when he talks about one visit by senior officers to his HQ, which was in a cellar. We had a remarkable feast which I had never forgotten. A large game pate had just arrived from Fortnum's. We finished off

with a bottle of port and sent our visitors off with a warm sensation of well-nourished confidence. The King came to visit the front lines and Carlton de Wyatt was asked to go and meet him. He had a good chat but ruined it all at the end by saying how funny it was that he'd served so long in the British Army without being British. The King did not think so, and Carton de Wight quickly assured him that he'd now naturalised. He was now a Brit. Meanwhile, attrition had set in on the Arras front, and his brigade suffered through a terrible stretch on the front line in May 1917, when it lost a thousand casualties in six days. By late May, he had barely over 2,000 of the 4,000 men who he'd commanded at the start of the battle. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the

greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit,

wherever you get your podcasts. They were then sent to take part in the awful third battle of ypres passiondale has become remembered it was hell wide open plains with a water table never more than a spade's breadth below the surface regularly less than that a sea of mud his brigade was beaten up badly it attacked in torrential rain on the 9th of October. It was the lead brigade of the assault. Much of the artillery bombardment that was supporting it was ineffective. Shells thudded into deep mud, which smothered their effect. A few weeks later, he was sent to carry out diversionary attacks for the big surprise attack that was coming up on

Cambrai. His unit was blasted by a barrage one morning, and yards away from his headquarters, eye. His unit was blasted by a barrage one morning and yards away from his headquarters, he was felled again. A shell splinter penetrated his hip, taking a load of dirty clothing with it. It was back to Park Lane for three months. He later learned that his headquarters had been badly hit a little later and lots of people killed, so his injury may have saved him. His servant Holmes was furious when the embarkation officer at the Channel port refused to allow him to accompany Carton de Wight back to England. Halfway across the Channel, Holmes turned up in Carton de Wight's cabin. Carton de Wight tombed a lay low and meet him at Park Lane, which duly did, and Carton de Wight never inquired how

on earth he'd made it onto the ship. He begged to be allowed back to France, and eventually he was. He commanded the 105th Brigade just as the mighty German spring offensive smashed into British lines in 1918. He experienced very heavy shelling, and after one week of being back on the Western Front, he was injured once again. He almost had his leg blown off. Back to Park Lane. He made it back to the Western Front in October to command a brigade just in time to see the end of the war. The armistice brought a momentary thrill of victory, which soon faded. I think it's only the civilians who get any real joy out of the end of a war

and the release from the strain of eternal waiting. A week after the end of hostilities, he was promoted to command a division, doing the job of a major general. There, he found the officers and men suffering from a bad dose of anticlimax. For months, for years, we'd fought and longed for the end of the war, and now that it had come, we felt out of a job. Training seemed useless. The man discontented and only longing to get home. Then comes the most famous line in his memoir. It's become almost an epitaph for this most extraordinary of soldiers.

Frankly, I'd enjoyed the war. It had given me many bad moments, lots of good ones, plenty of excitement, and with everything found for us. Musing on what he'd learnt during the conflict, he admitted that the best troops had been the Canadians and the Aussies. The Aussies perhaps having a slight edge, for they loved to fight. They'd come to fight, and the enemy were made to know it. He talks beautifully in many ways about war.

He says it was... A great leveller. You see man in his most stripped-down state. Not as he would like to be, but exactly how he is. You see fear and weakness, but you also get surprised at small men doing extraordinary things. He also learnt one rather hard lesson, and that was never give anyone

second chances. If they screw up once, they will do so again. His worst memory? The stench of putrefying corpses. I can smell them still. And though death may be sublime on a battlefield, it certainly is not beautiful. He'd risen from a captain, that is someone who is second in command of a company, a unit of say 120 men or so, to an acting major general, commanding a division of up to 20,000 men. He'd been given Britain's highest gallantry award, the Victoria Cross. He'd been wounded around five times, a few more probably, bringing his running total to something like 11 wounds in the service of his adopted country. He never mentions it, but he must have lived with intense

pain for the rest of his long life. He sat for a portrait at the time, and the artist recorded that he was a joyous man, so quiet, so calm, so utterly unaffected. And Adrian Carton de Wyatt certainly had a lot of life left to live. There's an old saying that we humans don't get a second act. Well, in the case of Carton de Wyatt, that's nonsense. There are plenty more adventures to come. Within weeks of the war ending, Carton de Wyatt got a very unexpected posting. He was being sent to the ancient, yet recently reborn, Poland. My geography being a little shaky, I had only a hazy idea as to the whereabouts of Poland, but I knew that it was somewhere near Russia and that

the Bolsheviks were fighting there. I could not think of any adequate reason why I'd been chosen for this inviting job, and I accepted it with alacrity before anyone had time to change his mind. Well, whoever had made up their mind sitting there had made a very good decision indeed. Find out how he fared in the anarchic maelstrom of post-First World War Eastern Europe by joining me and my dad next time here on Dan Snow's History Hit. you