Dan Snow's History Hit - Dan's History Heroes: Britain's Greatest Soldier, Part 2

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

Please note that this episode contains some explicit language.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 second episode, Carton de Wiart survives the 1939 invasion of Poland, becomes a POW in Italy and eventually makes his way to China, where he becomes Churchill's personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek.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.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hint. Adrian Carton de Wye has a good claim to be Britain's greatest 20th century soldier. Not in obvious terms like number of battles that he won, but in a much more subtle sense. In terms of the breadth, the length, the type, the location of his service, there's never been anyone quite like him, and I'm pretty sure 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 valour in the trenches that he was awarded the Victoria Cross,

armed only with a walking stick at the time. He was imprisoned. He rubbed shoulders with emperors. He survived multiple plane crashes, exercised by running up the pyramids, narrowly escaped both the Nazi Blitzkrieg and the advance of the Soviet Cossacks. He became the youngest Brigadier General in the British Army and he was awarded Britain's two highest gallantry awards. 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 wasn't doing much to fight the Japanese. He was impressed with Roosevelt. He told Chamberlain some home truths, filled Marshal Haig, left him cold. He met George V on the Western Front. He was close to Marshal Pilsudski. He banqueted with Chiang Kai-shek. He met Slim in the jungles of Burma, and he worked alongside MacArthur, Wingate, Wavell, Mountbatten and nearly every senior Second World War commander. This is episode two of my history of a man who was once a national treasure but he was a man who left no papers, letters or diaries. Thank goodness he did leave an extraordinary memoir. It's called Happy Odyssey and and in it, our Odysseus tells of his long, deadly foreign journey of storms, comrades lost, exotic lands visited, tragedy, shipwreck, beautiful

women, and a few monsters. It was a bestseller when it was published in the 1950s, and he was a celebrity. It deserves to be read today. He writes of his adventures, although he says actually it should be called misadventures, and it's simply one of the greatest and best memoirs I've ever read. Going by it immediately, it is hysterical. It's self-deprecating, honest, weird, inspiring, thought-provoking, bonkers. It's also pretty partial. It doesn't mention his Victoria Cross, his knighthood, his distinguished service order, or his wife, or his daughters. Just as with episode one, so too in this episode, I've invited a very special guest to read extracts from it. Another man who asked hard questions of the powerful. That is my dad, Peter Snow, back on the podcast. He will be reading

Adrian Carton de Wyatt's words. Enjoy. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. We rejoin our hero just after the First World War. He's 40 or so. He has a Victoria Cross and only one eye. He's ended the war a general, having experienced a promotion so rapid it's only matched by the spoilt sons of kings and despots. But unlike them,

he earned it through merit on the battlefield. During the war, a bullet went through his neck, he lost a hand, and nearly lost a leg, but that didn't stop him announcing that he enjoyed the war and considered himself very lucky. I say the war is over, but of course, as you all know, the fighting didn't stop in 1918. The fighting in the Middle East has never really stopped in the centuries since, and while the First World War might have had a reasonably neat finish on the Western Front, elsewhere the years that followed 1918 were marked by no let-up in violence. Great empires had collapsed. In their anarchic aftermath, new states were fighting battles for survival. One of them was Poland. Once one of Europe's great powers, Poland had been repeatedly partitioned in the 18th century. Austria, Germany and Russia absorbed slices of that proud country until it had disappeared from the map.

The Poles, though, had never accepted this state of affairs, and they'd used the First World War, and particularly the collapse of its three occupying powers, the revolution sweeping away the Hohenzollerns in Berlin, the Habsburgs in Vienna, and the Romanovs in St. Petersburg. This was an opportunity for the Poles who pressed their claims to a revived, independent country. Now the British needed someone on the spot to monitor this violent birth, and the obvious man was the Skard Wunderkinder, a European Catholic aristocrat by birth, but every Brit the British officer by breeding, Adrian Carton de Wyatt. He was a little surprised. Let's hear his own words, spoken by my brilliant dad. Dad, Peter Snow, what did Carton deight make of his appointment? My geography being a little shaky, he writes, I had only a hazy idea as to the whereabouts of Poland. But I knew that it was somewhere near Russia and the Bolsheviks were fighting there.

I couldn't 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. Then I proceeded to find out all I could about the situation. It's great, Dad, isn't it, how self-deprecating he is in this book? Yes, he is. I mean, I met lots of chaps who'd fought in First and Second World Wars, but nobody liked this one. He was unique. What his research taught him was that Poland was fighting on no fewer than five fronts. The Poles were fighting the Germans, the Bolsheviks, the Ukrainians, the Lithuanians, and the Czechs.

So Adrian Carton de Wight was absolutely thrilled. He felt he was going to be busy. On arriving in Poland, he discovered that the country had been destroyed by the war. One observer calculated that it had been invaded no less than seven times during the First World War. He met the Polish leader, Marshal Pilsudski, quickly and recalls that he was one of, if not the greatest man he'd ever met. Pilsudski had been sent to Siberia by the Russians and then later arrested by the Germans, so he was the ideal candidate to be a head of state in the new Poland,

an enemy of all the right people. They became close friends. The British ambassador to Poland, William Max Muller, noted that the two foreigners whose advice carried the greatest weight were Sir Horace Rumbold and General Carton de Wyatt. Another British general who was in Eastern Europe at the time noted that Carton de Wyatt is the only man who P in Eastern Europe at the time noted that Carton de Wyatt is the only man who Pilsudski really pays attention to. They had a very good relationship

and Carton de Wyatt's book is full of disarmingly honest accounts of conversations between them. On one occasion he describes Pilsudski's superstitions in the context of Poland seizing much of what is now Ukraine. Pilsudski was a very superstitious man, and having taken Kiev, he admitted to feeling uneasy, for he told me that every commander who attempted to take the Ukraine had come to grief. Later, when he had been forced to retire from Kiev, I asked why he had attempted to take it against his superstitions. His answer was that he felt that his luck stood so high that he thought he could risk it. But he added, you see, I was wrong.

Let's hope that Pilsudski's rule for Ukraine is correct, Edad, and that every commander who tries to take it does in fact come to grief. Cardinal Dwight took stock of the situation. He was not impressed with the intensity of the fighting, despite its geographical spread. He described the various conflicts going on as little wars going on all round us. They all seem very light and inconsequential after France, resembling the campaign in South Africa. One well-placed contemporary commented that General Carton de Wight, VC, said to be the

bravest man in the British Army, who has 13 wound stripes, comes to Warsaw with us. He seems a first-rate fellow, a splendid man, and withal the most modest of men. Carton de Wyatt was, I think, mainly interested in the Polish problem from the military point of view because it offered him the chance of hearing bullets whizzing around his head once again, a chance of which he freely availed himself on the eastern frontiers of Poland. On one exhibition, Carton de Wight went to visit Lvov, which is now in the very western part of Ukraine. He traversed a battlefield that he thought was nothing of the sort. He said it was very low-intensity fighting. In Lvov, though, he did discover something that shocked him, a unit of women soldiers. And curiously, it seems that this man who'd sauntered across the kill zones of the Somme and Passchendaele

had finally met his match. They were an unnerving ordeal, like all women in uniform. You definitely get the sense that he wasn't cut out to show the greatest sympathy in this kaleidoscopic, complicated, violent, sectarian jigsaw that was Eastern Europe. On this occasion in Lwów, he lost his temper and hopped on a train back to Warsaw, and it was machine-gunned as it left Ukrainian territory. He certainly did not enjoy the political wrangling with the French either, Britain's quote-unquote ally, but who regarded Poland as being within their sphere of influence. They had a large number of officers in Poland training Polish troops. He was also furious that the British government seemed intent on ignoring his advice to arm the Poles. They would be a bulwark against Bolshevism in the region. Instead, they wasted money on hopeless causes within Russia

itself, where the civil war was tearing the country apart. The British government backed the ill-fated white Russians who fought Lenin, men like General Danikin, whereas Carton de Witt argued that the Poles were far more effective. Happily for him, though, he could get away from all this politicking and head to his happy place, led by the sound of the guns. In the spring of 1920, the Russian Bolsheviks launched a big offensive into Polish-held territory. The Poles were thrown out of Minsk, which they'd been occupying. There were reports of swarms of horsemen raising gigantic dust clouds as they spread across the landscape like a flood. Obviously, Carlton Dwight wanted to go and check it out for himself.

He ended up travelling along one particular road and suddenly spotted Cossacks ahead. He wasn't a fan of Cossacks. He thought them ill-trained and ill-disciplined. What they lack in skills, they try to make up in brutality and murder, and their treatment of prisoners was too horrible to describe. Keen to avoid experiencing said treatment, he beat a hasty retreat. He'd left a train carriage at the station, and he now hunted around for another train with a locomotive to hitch his carriage to. He reckoned he had about two hours max before the Cossacks took the town. I was anxious to leave as soon as possible. And coming from him, you know the situation's serious.

Eventually, a long train of strange, sort of odd, mismatched carriages left the station, travelling about less than 10 miles an hour. And suddenly, there were Cossacks everywhere. A Russian field gun, like a cannon, took out one of the two engines. The pace of the train slowed to walking pace. Now, he was in a rather posh carriage that they had purloined somewhere in Eastern Europe. And it became clear that the Cossacks were now drawn to it. The next bit is just priceless, Carton de Wyatt,

so I'm going to get you to quote at length that. I was giving Rawlings my opinion of our situation when a shell hit us, luckily rather low, and the carriage dropped on its wheels. The last few minutes had been pregnant with national behaviour. I'd been sitting thinking that our trip to Rono had been a mistake. Rawlings, that's Bernard Rawlings, who's the naval attaché with him, was obviously highly amused. The Hungarian coach attendant was trying to get under the carpet

and my Batman, James, was quietly and methodically packing my things. They ran along the train to a different coach, but he was impeded a bit by only having one arm and one eye, and as they were clambering about, he fell off the train. He lay there on the tracks, apparently looking up at the sky, thinking a lot, like the proverbial recollections of a droning man. He checked his revolver. It had two rounds in it, one for a Cossack, he thought, the other for himself. I was not going to risk being taken prisoner.

He staggered to his feet. He saw the Cossacks still milling around at a distance, so he decided to run behind the crawling train and managed to clamber back on. They then detached their knackered carriage and the train sped up a bit. They did make it safely back to Warsaw. The Times of London wrote up the adventure, burnishing his reputation yet further. The Soviets continued to advance, but the Poles made a stand at the gates of Warsaw. They counterattacked, and the exhausted Soviets fell back. For Carton de Wight, this was a time full of interest and exceedingly pleasant as well. Every morning, I went off to the front,

spent the day there and came back to bath and dine at the club. His second-in-command later claimed credit for the turnaround, saying that Carton de Wight had visited a Polish general, fed him a bottle of whiskey and told him to counter-attack. A few months later, heading back to the front, he took the British ambassador to have a bit of a look, accompanied by an armoured car. They ran into some Cossacks again, and this time Carton de Wight ordered his machine gunner to open fire. There was a stiff fight. The diplomat was apparently thrilled. It was his first time under fire. Carton de Wight then said he had to do a 20-point turn in a narrow lane to get out of there.

On another occasion, a Polish sentry fired at Carlton Dwight by mistake. Carlton Dwight got out of the car, removed the sentry's rifle, punched him and threw him in a ditch. He flew to Riga on another occasion. A rifleman on the ground shot at the plane and the bullet passed eight inches away from him through the fuselage. Another plane flight ended up with him doing a forced landing in a forest. He comments wryly that flying

did not seem to be my luckiest mode of transport. Another plane made a forced landing and turned turtle. The politics of Poland were very difficult. In British circles, he argued passionately the Polish case. He wanted Poland to be given, for example, Eastern Galicia. But the British government ignored his advice, and that therefore enraged the Poles. He then had to bury his own personal sympathies in his duty, and he did that on one particular occasion by roaring at various angry Poles who refused to dance at a British embassy party, which upset the hostess, Lady Rombold. He challenged one particular Pole who he'd been arguing with to a duel,

but his opposite thought apparently that he was a... Dangerous lunatic. And the whole affair was... Patched up. I think his opponent was absolutely right. Poland and Lithuania then got in a scrap. The Bolsheviks had withdrawn. The Poles wanted Vilnius, what's now the Lithuanian capital.

The Lithuanians said it would only be taken over their dead bodies. Carton de Wyatt, rather snidely, remarks that when the Poles advanced, Lithuanians forgot to shed their blood because there was only one casualty and he was run over by a lorry. Carton de Wyatt, never far from the action, went on a mission to investigate. His train came to a blown-up bridge and he continued by sledge. They sledged all the way into Lithuanian lines and he took a volley of rifle shots from 15 yards range.

He sat there calmly and told the sentries to take him to their commanding officer. After various adventures, he was returned by a slightly embarrassed Lithuanian government to Poland. Assumed dead, a touching and flattering obituary had been published. His servant had refused to believe he was dead and had stood guard beside the abandoned train carriage and hadn't allowed anybody near it. By 1924, Poland had fought and mostly won its wars. There was nothing more for him to do. He concludes this chapter of his life, When I went, I must admit I had the greatest doubts as to my fitness for the post, for I knew nothing of Poland, its geography, its history or its politics.

Afterwards, I found my ignorance to be my greatest asset, for I was free from prejudice, tackled situations as they turned up, and knowing no history, I couldn't assume it would repeat itself. It may do so, but not invariably, and it's safer not to count on such an assumption. He resigned his commission. He had a falling out with the war office in London. They'd refused to give him a brigade to command, and he'd also fallen out with his wife. And so he made the slightly eccentric decision to adopt the life of an aristocratic Eastern European countryman. He was offered a glorious hunting lodge by a friendly Polish prince in the Pripyat Marshes in what was then

eastern Poland is now Belarusia. It took an entire day to reach by river. It seems that he might have been having an affair with the prince's family member or possibly two of them. Anyway, the Polish aristocratic life agreed with him. All day out hunting and shooting, giant dinners, witty repartee in the evenings, roaring fires, big house parties, armies of servants. And I dropped into its life as easily as into a deep armchair and should never have come out of it if Hitler had not precipitated me forcibly. It was a lonely spot, but I never felt loneliness. For the countryside had so much to give, everything in fact that I ever wanted. Plenty of sport, lovely wild country, and the sense of remoteness.

The peace and quietude could be felt. The singing of a nightingale was a rude interruption. For the first time in my life, I'd found a place where I could get away from people. Well, he'd certainly got away from his wife. Later, he wrote to his daughter explaining things from his point of view. This isn't in his memoir. Neither wife or daughters are mentioned in that otherwise very fine book, as I said. But Dad, can you read it anyway? Because this is in his voice. I asked her to come out, but she preferred Vienna, which I quite understood. But as far as I was concerned, it finished my married life. I have no feeling against her whatsoever. I never should have married, as I always hated married

life, nor did I try to make the best of it. She's not to blame in any way. That is briefly the story. I wonder how his daughter took that. He took a quick break from Poland, sought out his ill stepmother's affairs in Cairo, and he got very excited while he was there about a mutiny in Khartoum down south in Sudan. He signed up to help, but sadly for him, it was quickly resolved. He used to say he went to Poland for three weeks, and he stayed for 20 years. He loved the winter when he travelled by sledge at night on the frozen rivers, as outriders in saddles on horses carried flaming torches alongside him. He did sleep the revolver under his pillow and a mosquito net over his window, just to stop any grenades that might get thrown in. He estimates that he shot over 20,000

duck during his years in Poland. He shot every single day. One guest recounts that when he or another one of the so-called guns of the people shooting had to cross a ditch, a Polish attendant would lie down to form a bridge for which he received a tip. Apparently the great thing was to be shot by one of the prince's guests accidentally, because then you'd get paid off in gold. But this happy idyll did not last forever, and in 1939, Poland's neighbours were circling. As the Storm Counts gathered in the summer of that year, Carton de Wight was reappointed to his old job as head of the British military mission in Poland.

On the 22nd of April 1939, he was at lunch. He was smoking a pipe on his Polish estate. was at lunch. He was smoking a pipe on his Polish estate. He'd shot 60 snipe that morning and he was hoping to make it a hundred by the time the day's shooting came to an end. But instead he was told he had an urgent call. It was the British ambassador and he was to come to Warsaw immediately. He left in the clothes he was standing up in and with his brand new British uniform packed. He would never see his beloved house ever again. It's a poignant moment in his memoir. Poland as he knew it would quickly be overwhelmed,

occupied, crushed, partitioned. Being in the east of the country, it was the Soviets who grabbed his property and all its contents. He writes they took his clothes, his furniture, his guns and his rods, but they couldn't take his memories. I still have them and live them over and over again. took his clothes, his furniture, his guns and his rods, but they couldn't take his memories.

I still have them and live them over and over again. The Second World War in Europe broke out a few days after he arrived in Poland. Germany invaded Poland and the Poles were badly outgunned. The Germans struck Warsaw with deadly air raids the day war broke out, and Carton de Wyatt comments that he saw the very face of war change, bereft of romance, its glory shorn, no longer the soldier setting forth to battle, but the women and children buried under it. The Polish Air Force was immediately knocked out. The British were no help at all. They made matters worse by inflicting useless and irritating leaflet raids, which had no physical effect at all. We were crying out for bombs, not bits of idealistic paper.

He's referring to the Royal Air Force dropping propaganda leaflets all over much of Western Germany at this time. As Poland collapsed, the Germans invading from the west, the Soviets from the east, he managed to escape through Romania, just. His entire team decided to change in civilian clothes on the border before crossing. He obviously didn't, that would be beneath his dignity. In a general's uniform, roundly abusing the Romanians, he entered the temporary haven of their borders. According to a colleague, he roared at the border guard, There are only three sorts of Romanians.

They're either pimps, pederasts, or violinists, and bloody few are violinists. He then repeated it in French, apparently, for good measure. He knew the pro-German group in government were hoping to catch him and deliver him to Hitler. The Romanian Prime Minister was pro-Western allies and so he gave him safe passage through the country but that same Prime Minister was murdered. He was assassinated by Romanian fascists with German encouragement just hours after Carton de Wight got away. On his journey back across Europe he stopped in Paris where he was a little worried by the negative vibes about the coming war from those he rubbed shoulders with. Then he reported

back to the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had him for dinner at Number 10 Downing Street, a dinner over which Carlton de Wight vented about those useless leaflet drops. He learned back in London that the Soviets had gone straight to his Polish house, arrested his servant James, and sent him back to England. All his possessions, though, had been taken to a museum in Minsk that was later torched by the Germans during their invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa. I vaguely hope that some omnipotent commissar is not strutting around in my fur coat.

He had a powerful lesson in the advent of air power and the speed and mobility of mechanised warfare. He was really the first Brit to see and hear Blitzkrieg warfare, and it filled him with unease. Back in Britain, he was extremely anxious about being employed again. He knew that there were various people in the War Office who considered me out of date. He does admit there were days when he felt that he was tied together with tacks and bits of string. Luckily, though, he was given command of a division, the 61st Division. It was based in southern England, and he calls those early months of the war

the Boer War. They were lulled into complacency by tales of the French defences along their German border, the so-called Maginot Line. Personally, I was in utter ignorance as to where it either began or ended. I visualised it stretching magnificently and impregnably from frontier to frontier and ending up somewhere in the sea. I was rather shocked when I learned, eventually, that the Maginot Line simply ceased and that a boy on a bicycle could scramble around

the end of it. Carlton Dwight does talk about where there was action, and that was at sea, where the war was being conducted by the navy in a traditionally valiant manner. But then the Germans made their move on Norway. They needed to secure their supply of iron ore from the mines in Sweden, which came through the Norwegian port of Narvik. In the early hours of the 8th of April 1940, the German navy put to sea. By the end of the 9th, Denmark had fallen, and German troops were ashore at various ports along the Norwegian coast. A few days later, Carlton de Wyatt's phone rang in the middle of the night. It dawned on me the reasons might be Norway, especially as I'd never been there and knew nothing about it. He was perfectly qualified. He was right though. He was to command

the Northwest Norwegian Expeditionary Force, a grand title that disguised what was in fact a bit of a hodgepodge of British and French troops. They flew from Scotland in a flying boat. His assistant, Captain Elliot, was airsick the whole way over. Then, as they were coming to land, they were attacked by a German fighter. His fuselage was peppered and the unlucky Captain Elliot was hit. They landed. Carton de Wight climbed out on the float. The German plane was still strafing them,

but then it ran out of ammunition and left them alone. Captain Elliot was sent back to Britain for treatment. So much for his campaign. Carton de Wight looked up at the snow-topped peaks towering above the coast and knew that to have any impact here he would need specialist troops, which he did not have. He was told that he was an acting lieutenant general, but he was filled with foreboding about the length of this campaign, so he never bothered attaching the badges of his new rank to his uniform. about the length of this campaign, so he never bothered attaching the badges of his new rank to his uniform. The Germans spotted the traces of his men landing and obliterated the Norwegian

town of Namsos from the air. The French troops under his command were specialists, they were mountain troops, but a vital leather strap for their skis had been left behind, so they were entirely useless. As far as planes, guns and cars went, I had no trouble at all, for we had none. His time ashore makes for grim reading. He didn't have enough troops, he had no heavy equipment, he had no vehicles, no chance of altering the course of the campaign. At one stage, the men were pushed into the snowy hills by German destroyers, which sailed up the fjord and blasted his men ashore,

and they had only small arms to shoot back. During one air raid, Carton de Wight's staff officer gave an account of his commander's attitude. Well equipped for winter warfare, the French rapidly dispersed outside the town and took to the rocks like rabbits. Downing in the open beneath a hailstorm of bombs, Carton de Wyatt fished in his pocket for his cigarette case, took a cigarette out of it and lit it

—no easy task for a man with one arm— and muttered, Damn frogs, they're all the same. One bang and they're off. The same staff officer gives a brilliant account of Carton de Wirt's conspicuous leadership. I watched him saunter down the steep hill towards the quay as the church bells rang and the first air raid of the day was unleashed. A conspicuous figure in his red hat, he maintained an even pace down the centre of the gutted streets. Machine guns clattered, smoke drifted from burning buildings, the Heinkels were flying so low the bombs had no time to whistle

before they burst. Cardinal de Warrick paid not the slightest attention. From safe bivouacs in the wooded heights around Namsos, hundreds of men were watching him. French infantry, British base personnel, all in some degree shaken by their recent ordeals. All at a guess, becoming a little more war-worthy as they followed his lackadaisical process. The Luftwaffe went home with empty bomb racks. The General returned with some delicious sardines. His single eye surveyed my preparations for breakfast. Devastation was all around us. Better get rid of those eggshells somewhere. devastation was all around us. Better get rid of those eggshells somewhere.

Don't want the place in a mess. In his memoir, Carton de Wyatt shows that, internally at least, he was a little less carefree than his outward manner suggested. My farmhouse headquarters provided us with some amusement and excitement from the air. My new staff had not seen these air antics, played by the Hun, and were startled one day when a German plane came down the road, flying very low and machine gunning us. It's the most unnerving and unpleasant sensation to be peppered at from a plane bearing straight down on one, and takes a lot of getting used to. Eventually, this British and French force was evacuated.

Carton de Wyatt thought it would be impossible, but he learned a few hours later that the Navy do not know the word. He was a bit sad during this evacuation to miss a very great experience. He was meant to embark on HMS Alfredi, but his gear was sent to HMS York by mistake, so he went aboard York reluctantly. Minutes later, Alfredi was sunk by a German air attack. He rued that he'd lost my chance. On May 5th, his 60th birthday, he arrived back in Scapa Flow.

18 days since leaving. He shared a bottle of champagne with the commander of HMS York. He was typically phlegmatic, really, about the disastrous expedition. Politically, Norway was worth a gamble, and I'm sure the gesture was important, but I never feel that the whys and wherefores are a soldier's business. To me, war and politics seem bad nixers like port and champagne, but if it wasn't for the politicians, we wouldn't have wars. And I, for one, should have been done out of what is for me a very agreeable life.

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wherever you get your podcasts. It was May 1940. He'd personally witnessed two disastrous retreats in the last nine months, but he was glad to have been at both of them. And notwithstanding the debauch, I never doubted the ultimate issue. He was sent to Northern Ireland when he got back. There was a bizarre panic in the summer of 1940 that, invited by the IRA, the Germans would invade Ireland. He never believed they would, but he said he had a very pleasant time

driving around having nice dinners with local bigwigs. One officer serving under him remembered that he was a magnificent man, courageous, the troops would follow him, brave as a lion, charming. But then came a crushing blow. It was now decided that he was too old and he'd be relieved of his command. I could not bear the idea of being out of the war and wondered what on earth I should do with myself. But not for the first time. My despair was interrupted. On April the 5th, 1941, he was called to the war office. And in that magnificent building, he was told he was going

to be given a fascinating job, the head of the British military mission to Yugoslavia. He flew to Malta, toured the battle-scarred island, and then went to the aerodrome, where an engineer told him that he'd checked the aeroplane's engines himself, and they were in perfect conditions. I have the useful and unfailing capacity for sleep in almost any circumstances. And as the plane climbed into the sky, he passed out and snored. But... To all three hours into the flight, my slumbers were disturbed by the repeated word SOS.

SOS. It had eventually penetrated my consciousness that the signal was ours. They landed successfully on the water. He did get smashed on the head and lose consciousness and someone pushed him out of a hatch where he got inundated by a wave and realised that immersion in a cold sea is the perfect cure for concussion. Their escape rubber dinghy was punctured so they had to swim for shore half a mile away when the plane eventually broke up and sank. Carlton Dwight dragged a crew member with a broken leg, something he also doesn't mention in his memoir. A North African soldier in Italian uniform pointed a rifle at them when they crawled up the

beach. Carlton Dwight barked in Arabic for him to put the rifle away. The man told him that the British had retreated through here only yesterday. It was gutting. If they'd flown for another five minutes, they'd have made it to British lines. As the battlefront seesawed back and forth across North Africa, they'd landed at a place where the British had just left and the Italians hadn't yet arrived. But the locals kept hold of Carton de Wight to impress them when they did arrive. He planned to escape that night,

but the Italians showed up and he was carted off. It was there and then, in that small bedroom, that I felt the walls close around me, shutting me in alone with the inescapable fact that I was a prisoner. Often in my life, I thought that I might be killed, and though death has no attraction for me, I regard it more or less phlegmatically. People who enjoy life seldom have much fear of death, and having taken the precaution to squeeze the lemon, do not grudge throwing the rind away. But never, even in the innermost recesses of my mind, had I were absolutely thrilled after a bumper week. They'd captured other generals too, O'Connor and Neame. O'Connor was one of the greatest British generals in recent

history. He's mentioned dispatches nine times in the First World War. In the Second World War, you'd ever seen the extraordinary destruction of a much larger Italian army in East Africa early in the war. And it's because of this success that Hitler had sent the Africa Corps to North Africa. O'Connor had blundered into a German patrol by accident, and even worse, alongside him in the car had been one of Britain's most famous soldiers, General Neame. Victoria Cross in World War I, Olympic gold in shooting after it. It was quite the week's work. They were taken to Italy, where this celebrity bunch of Victoria Cross owners thought of nothing but escape from morning till night. They were treated well. They took up hobbies. While others learned

Italian, Carlton de Wyatt had no interest and took up sunbathing. If the truth were known, I had absolutely no wish to learn anything. I'd become a recent disciple to the cult of sunbathing. And if you indulge long enough, you attain a kind of nirvana, the suspension of all thought and action, highly to be recommended for life in prison. My only intensive study was the life and love story of the most charming little lizards who inhabited our terraces and, like me, had an urge towards the sun. Phil Neame later wrote that Carton de Wight faced captivity in a wonderful way. He was always cheerful and even-tempered, sympathetic

and helpful to everyone. I think he showed less signs than anyone of the stress on nerves and temper imposed by inactivity. Another of his fellow prisoners, Dick O'Connor, who I mentioned, wrote that he was a remarkable man. Great courage, resolution and integrity. But added to them was a real kindness and understanding of human nature. He was impatient with modern tactics, which he found too slow and too complicated. His one idea was to get at the enemy in the shortest possible time. Risk for him existed only to be taken.

Garden Dwight's sunbathing, though, didn't mean he'd gone soft. My chief pleasure at Salmone was the walks, as I think I am one of the few men who enjoy walking for its own sake, without trying to get anywhere or trying to kill something en route. With my mania for exercise, I do not understand any pace under four miles an hour. Some of my fellow prisoners grumbled at me and said, I took all the pleasure away from a walk by walking so fast. They were removed from their first prison,

it was a pleasant hillside town midway up Italy, to an imposing fortress, Vincigliata Castle in Tuscany. He called it the most horrible looking place I've ever seen, surrounded by walls, ramparts, bristling with armed guards. Life having become disagreeably rigid with enforced discipline, we instinctively organized ourselves into a more or less civilized community, keeping up certain standards which were important to us, like changing for dinner, having baths twice a week,

saying good morning, and keeping off politics and religion. They felt like prisoners. It was a grim time. They played cards, but Carton de Wight always lost. Neame also always beat him at backgammon. There was a weekly classical concert which Carton de Wight didn't like, as classical music was beyond me. He preferred musicals. He hated every minute. Personally, I made no searching discoveries of my soul and still less of anyone else's. For living in such close proximity with one's fellow beings makes one positively shy of intimacy. It's shattering to be faced with it every day. Although this castle was a bitter disappointment with its impregnable and unrelenting appearance. The actual move acted as a tremendous impetus

and spur to our escape plans. From the moment we arrived in Vincigliati, we never thought of anything else at all. They made a first attempt at escaping, which was foiled when the commandant found some of their plans during a search. Carton de Wight refused to go outside after that, kind of went on strike, but he did climb the 120 castle stairs 20 times a day with a 20 pound pack on his back and several sweaters on. Next up, O'Connor tried to get away by jumping over the wall, but he was spotted.

And then the guards got tougher. There was barbed wire and floodlights. And Colton de Wight was pleased because they seemed to be keeping around 200 Italian troops away from the active theatre of war. With heightened security, they turned their attention to the passages beneath the castle, which he thought, by right, ought to have led into a lovely lady's boudoir in a neighbouring villa, or at any rate, somewhere outside its own radius. But no, they all led to one another. Like a dog chasing its tail. So, in the absence of any tunnels, they set to work digging one themselves, with broken kitchen knives and a small crowbar. These weapons could never have chiselled their way through rock and stone but for the inflexible will and fixed determination of the men who wielded them For seven months, for four hours a day, the tunnel was

Our breath and life, and almost our food Their progress was inches some weeks, feet in others Apparently two foot nine inches was their weekly record Meanwhile, another officer made forged ID papers using pictures cut out of classical music catalogues. My double looked the most awful thug to me but the rest found it a remarkable likeness and I lost another illusion. It's astonishing how they kept at it. Sometimes progress was reduced to nothing, and yet these legends kept going. In fact, the purpose, the exercise, the routine kept them alive and vital. The cooperation was thrilling. And at the end of March 1943, there came a stormy night that they'd

been waiting for. They wanted lots of noise, they wanted sentries in their boxes sheltering from the rain. Neame gave the word, they all went up and changed, and they filed into the tunnel. O'Connor and I were the last to go, and as I crawled along that tunnel, I had no nostalgic feelings. I was praying that I might manage all the obstacles in front of me without holding the others back. They had all been so good in letting me in on all the escape plans, and never made me feel that I was an embarrassment or not pulling my weight. And I didn't want them to regret having taken me with them. The moment they were out of the tunnel and off the road.

I took a deep breath and suddenly felt myself to be three times my size. We were free. And freedom is a precious thing and worth the highest price a man can pay. The different teams parted ways with a handshake. He and O'Connor headed to the mountains. There was no point getting a train, as Carton de Wight was so recognisable. They were 250 miles from Switzerland. They had two weeks of food in their backpacks. By the end of that first night, he had a bad bad blister and he regretted not going for walks. After 32 miles of hiking they stopped at a farm. It was night two in the open so they asked for shelter. They slept with the cows. The farmer gave them a fine meal and O'Connor

who'd learned Italian jabbered away to the whole family as to the manor ball. The farmer gave them a fine breakfast and refused payment. That day we had the most beautiful all walks over wild mountainous country, carpeted by strongly scented violets, and we felt it desecration to stamp them down with our heavy hobnail boots. The sun shone and we gloried our escape from prison bars. They kept at it. Things got complicated when they reached the Po Valley. It's intensively farmed and populated.

It's very flat. And it was here in the Po Valley that their luck ran out. They were stopped by two policemen who asked for their papers. They found no fault with the papers. But unfortunately, they proved to be that rare thing, men with an instinct. The policemen questioned them, and eventually the two

escapers owned up. The police were absolutely thrilled. They insisted on them sitting on their cart and chatting all the way back to the HQ, telling them to be sure to tell the authorities exactly who captured them. They were taken back to the castle where they were greeted by the commandant with great chivalry. He was a most charming man who bore us no ill will for causing him a lot of trouble, for which he later paid a heavy price by being imprisoned in a fortress. They had covered 150 miles on foot with heavy loads. Of the other escapees, two did make it to Switzerland. One was picked up in Milan and Phil Neame got within 100 metres of the Swiss border,

but he was caught jumping off a freight train. Though it was disappointing to have been caught, I felt so invigorated and exhilarated after our eight days of liberty that it saved me from any feeling of depression. Dick and I had covered 150 miles with good loads on our backs, and with our United Ages making 116. Mine took 63 of them. We had nothing to be ashamed of, and beyond my now completely skinned toe, we were twice the men we'd been when we started. I personally never felt better in my life. His punishment was to be

locked up in his room for one month. It was not a hardship but a privilege. He settled back into his routine. The Commandant was eventually replaced with a despicable individual called Vivani. He imposed more annoying restrictions on them. He was petty, he was hateful. Carton de Wyatt simply writes, I long to meet the gentleman again in more equal circumstances. In the middle of August 1943, the prisoners received some very remarkable news. Carton DeWyatt had been summoned to Rome. They wondered whether it might be in connection with an Italian armistice, or whether the Italians might simply be sick of me and intending to have me shot. Two grand cars turned up, one for him and one for his non-existent luggage. Happily, the whole atmosphere bore no resemblance to a firing squad.

As Carton de Wight was whisked away to Rome, a fellow imprisoned general wrote, We all felt like going into mourning, friends and foes alike. Few people have claimed so much admiration and respect. Once in Rome, he was put in a fancy apartment and fed a delicious meal. He met with the Italian deputy chief of staff who brought along a tailor. The Italian government would be delighted to provide me with an adequate wardrobe. I felt quite faint of the thought of myself in a bright green suit with padded shoulders and a wasp waist, and I replied nervously that I had no objection, provided I didn't resemble a gigolo.

I chose two white silk shirts of excellent quality and an unassuming dark reddish tie, and I waited the suit with bated breath. It was ready for me the next morning, completed in 12 hours without a fitting, and was as good as anything that ever came out of Savile Row. High praise. After a bit of to and fro, the Italians admitted that they wanted an armistice, and they thought that if they sent Carton de Wyatt to the Allies with a negotiator, he would be a token of their good faith. But before he did anything else, he went on a tour around Rome, and this one, Dad, is for you. I had been to Rome as a small boy, with my father, and must have endured a surfeit of sightseeing from which I've never recovered.

I can endure the outsides of buildings, but not the insides, and mural paintings and headless, armless, and almost pointless sculptures leave me quite unmoved. Well, there you go, Dad. You took me to Rome when I was a small boy, and we had a surfeit of sightseeing, but I have recovered, and that's why we're still doing history together. They flew off to Lisbon, where the Italians hoped that talks were going to take place. Beyond a few Italian AA guns loosing off at us, the journey was quite uneventful. The British Embassy were not thrilled to see

Carton de Wight and his Italian general. The Italian insisted that he had to go to London, but the British Foreign Office told him to go and check in with General Eisenhower in North Africa. Now, the deal had been that Carton de Wight would get his Italian counterpart to London, so by rights he should have gone back to Italy and back to prison. He was quite prepared to do so, although he was saddened by the prospect. Now, happily, the Italian general said, don't worry,

of course there's no need to go back to prison. Carton de Wight had done all he could to get him to London. So Carton de Wight was able to fly home. Once he landed, he was interviewed by the head of MI5, then by Clement Attlee, as Churchill was away in Quebec, and the director of military intelligence. For the first time in my life, I felt really important, like the chief character in one of Mr. Buchan's stories. The Italian armistice was announced on the night of September the 7th, and the next morning, I was a free man.

For some extraordinary reason, totally unmerited, it was assumed by the world that I had manipulated the armistice with Italy, and for a few days I achieved a cheap notoriety as embarrassing as it was inconvenient. He received mountains of letters and had to dodge newspaper men all over the place. mountains of letters and had to dodge newspaper men all over the place. But even happy to be free, he was now in that familiar position of worrying that his career was finally over. Weeks passed. I'd whined and dined ad nauseam. I'd seen all the people I had wanted to see and a great many that I hadn't. He was summoned back to the palace to see the king and was feted in the press for his daring do. He was awarded another mention in dispatches for gallant and distinguished service. He was getting frustrated though. And into the middle of rapidly advancing boredom came a ray

of light, a message from Mr Winston Churchill to go and stay the night at Chequers. Soon after he crunched up the gravel and arrived at the Prime Minister's country residence, Carton de Wight was summoned up to Churchill's room. The legendary Prime Minister told him he did indeed have another job for him. He wanted him to go east to that other great theatre of the Second World War. He was to go to China. He was going to be Winston Churchill's personal representative to the leader of the Chinese, the Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek. Carton de Wight felt very flattered, although he was a bit worried.

He didn't know much about the world after a couple of years in an Italian prison. And so, like his appointments to Poland and Norway, he was disparaging about his own qualifications for such a role. China had never figured in my book of reckonings, and I imagined it a long way off, full of whimsical little people with quaint customs who carved lovely jade ornaments and worshipped their grandmothers. I felt intrigued with the idea of setting foot in the Far East, and although reluctant to leave the war in the West, I felt I was lucky to be re-employed at all. He says he'd never met a Chinese person in his life, and the only thing he knew about them

came from romantic paperbacks. He went to India first. There, in Delhi, he first met Chiang Kai-shek when the latter passed through on his way to the Cairo summit. I could not help but be tremendously impressed with the Generalissimo. He was short, but despite this, Cardinal de Wyatt liked him and thought he lacked the showy insecurity of most dictators. Cardinal de Wyatt then joined Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo Conference, where he mixed with the great and the good. Those that impressed me most were President Roosevelt, General Marshall, Admiral King, Admiral Cunningham, and General Allenbrook. I placed General Marshall at the top of my list, for rarely have I seen a man who gave out such a feeling of mental strength and straightforwardness

which was accentuated by his physical appearance. Now he does add at this point that he left Churchill off that list of impressive leaders as he put him in a class by himself. When news came that his accommodation was ready in China, he loaded his Batman, two staff officers and a clerk, onto an aircraft with a vast quantity of stores. They were going to fly over the hump. That was the wartime term for flying from India into China,

over the Himalayas. He was nervous, particularly as by a bizarre chance, the same RAF officer who'd waved him off from Malta, Air Marshal Sir John Baldwin, now wished him luck on this flight. He very much hoped there wouldn't be another crash. Instead, it was a perfect flight. They dodged in and out of the Himalayan peaks in a perfect blue sky. As he gazed out, I could not help feeling a thrill of fear at their sharp unfriendliness. His first glimpse of China was the most unsurprising thing in the world, exactly as I had imagined it. The picture books all come to life. Terraced farms, every inch of the hillside

under cultivation. He was shown to a very nice house in the heart of Chongqing, which was the wartime capital of China. It's now a gigantic industrial behemoth slap bang in the middle of China, right on the Yangtze River. He was shown first to a lovely house, but he thought this house would get a little hot and airless in the summer. Now, there was a nice house on a higher slope that he could see. He asked for that one, but had been told the Chinese had thought it might be too much effort climbing all those steps. Nonsense, said Carton de Wight. 120 steps was fine for him after all his Italian training, so he took the higher house. Now, this is one of the more remarkable aspects of Carton de Wight's life. He became enchanted with China.

He thought it was warm and friendly. He loved walking in the narrow streets lined with vendors selling their delicious fairy tale food. He thought the men of the region unattractive. They were too muscular. They carried loads that I could not lift from the ground, swinging them easily on their shoulders. The women, however, must be the most attractive in the world. They have enchanting manners, and a confiding charm

calculated to enhance the vanity of a man by making him feel twice his size and tremendously important. Two things struck me forcibly. The first was the amount of sheer hard work the people were doing, and the second their cheerfulness in doing it. Coming from a country where hard work is unpopular and usually indulged in by voluntary workers only, I found this impressive. The language sounded strange and full of nasal intonations. Accustomed though I was to foreign languages, I could make nothing

of it. Most of the upper classes speak English, and knowing that to master Chinese was quite beyond me, I made no attempt to learn the language, although I realised that I would be missing a great deal without it. He used chopsticks, although he never mastered them. They had the unique effect of making me eat slowly, which nothing had ever achieved before. Nothing missed his curious eye. I saw no courting couples in dark lanes or side alleys, and in public their behaviour was most decorous. I have no knowledge of what goes on indoors.

And then there is this beauty. Acres and acres of the countryside were taken up by cemeteries, so much so that one couldn't help thinking that the Chinese die more often than anyone else. His biggest complaint was actually against his own government, the British government. He wrote to the theatre commander in India, I am immobilised by having no plane, but trust I will get one someday and be able to see the front. I have no idea what their army is like and have not even heard a shot fired, which is all wrong. A fate worse than death, recited Dwight. The British did eventually send him a plane to get

round China. It was a Wellington, the aircraft type in which he'd been when he crashed into the Mediterranean. So I was not particularly keen, but beggars can't be choosers. He was right to be concerned. On one trip back from India, loaded with stores and the bomb chambers filled to the brim with liquid propaganda, his euphemism for alcoholic spirits, he was told by the cockpit that they were going to crash. I felt this was a pity in view of our precious cargo,

but prepared myself for a bum. The plane smashed into the ground. No one was hurt, but I had great fears for our liquor. He asked an American engineer to jack up the plane and see what was left. The engineer said it was impossible. Carton de Wight told him there was a bottle of whiskey in it for him, at which point he took a more hopeful view of the situation. Bizarrely and happily, the whole cargo was intact. Another Wellington was sent, but crashed on landing. A third crashed on its test flight in India, and at last he got what he wanted, an American C-47, a Dakota. He spent a good deal of time with Chiang Kai-shek. He really admired him. The weakness of dictatorships, he observes cannily, was that loyalty is so important that dictators value it enormously.

In fact, they put it above all else, which means they raise loyal people to positions they're just not qualified to perform. Of the group around Chiang Kai-shek, Carton de Wight was very struck by the Generalissimo's wife, Madame Chiang Kai-shek. He calls her indispensable. She could speak English, and she was the only translator that Carton de Wight trusted. He believed that she really got what he was trying to say to the Generalissimo. Carton de Wight's very positive attitude towards Chiang and China in general differed enormously from that of the American who'd been sent to work very closely with the Chinese.

General Joe Stilwell, Vinegar Joe. America's top corps commander before the war, he'd been lined up for the job of leading US troops in North Africa. But when the Americans first joined the war in the West in late 1942, Stilwell was, well, he was just anti-British. He had misgivings about the North African operation, and so a man called Eisenhower was sent instead. Stilwell, who spoke Chinese after time there spent between the wars, was sent to China and his main job to keep China in the war against Japan. Stilwell wrote off the Chinese. He said, the trouble with China is simple. We are allied to an ignorant, illiterate, superstitious, peasant son of a bitch. This from the man who Roosevelt had sent to be chief of staff

to Chinese Generalissimo. Stilwell told Roosevelt that Chang was vacillating, tricky, undependable, a scoundrel who never kept his word. Carton de Wyatt reports that Stilwell treated Chang like a coolie, a common labourer. While Carton de Wyatt was in China, the famous photographer Cecil Beaton took a photo of him on a trip that he happened to be doing around Asia. He called him Churchill's right ear, and he said, although no English blood runs in his veins, his appearance and manner are those of the traditional English warrior, with one eye, one arm, the Victoria Cross, and as he says, very few brains. He is an adventurer in the grand manner. With his Serrano-like nose,

his one remaining eye, and his matchboard body, he is as dashing as the blade of a sword. 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. When Japan invaded India from Burma in 1944, Mountbatten, who was in charge of British troops in Southeast Asia, asked China for help. Chiang Kai-shek didn't want to because he was worried about weakening his forces in China. He was worried about being vulnerable to a Japanese offensive there. Khatun Dua agreed with Chiang Kai-shek, but he had to toe the British line, so he was in an awkward position. Chiang Kai-shek, in the end, agreed to send five divisions, and there were endless meetings which Carton de Wight found exhausting. The taking of minutes, of the wasting of hours. By the time the

Chinese troops had arrived, the tide had already turned, and sure enough, they were now sorely needed in southern and central China, where the Japanese had launched a major offensive. This offensive is often overlooked in the history of the Second World War, but it achieved extraordinary results. Japanese forces spread right out across China. Chongqing was threatened. Carton de Wight was more worried about Kunming, which is the capital of the Yunnan province, way in the south of China. Now, this was the terminus of the Burma Road, the artery that connected China with its British and American allies in India and northern Burma. But it was also the airfield on which every plane landed before or after taking on the hump flying over the Himalayas. Planes were landing every two minutes, day and night. Over 50,000 tons of supplies were arriving for the Chinese

every month. Chiang Kai-shek wanted his five divisions back. Mountbatten wanted them for his offensive in Burma. Eventually, they were extracted and brought home, and they did help to stem the Japanese advance. In December of 1944, Carton de Wight flew back to the UK and reported to the cabinet. It was one of the many trips he made. You get the impression that he really likes having a private plane. He also regularly stopped off in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to visit Mountbatten and brief him. And while he was there on one occasion in 1944, he was invited aboard the East Indies fleet to watch an attack on Sabang, a port on a small island north of Sumatra in Japanese-occupied Indonesia.

He sat on a deck chair on the bridge of the mighty battleship Queen Elizabeth, which then opened fire on Sabang Harbour. Now that was the first time its enormous guns had fired in anger since Gallipoli in 1915. The noise was all hell let loose. The attack was a success, and his time with the Admiral Commanding, Admiral Somerville, was very enjoyable. I defy anyone to have a dull moment in his convivial company. Back in China, he had a very enlightened view of the Chinese that you might not have predicted from his life and writings thus far. I really enjoyed this passage in his memoir. By now, I felt I was really getting to know, like and understand the Chinese.

The foreigners who had been in China for some time, known as China hands, thought me absolutely useless, for they felt that I had no background or knowledge of either the country or the people. Personally, I found my own judgment no worse than the opinions of the so-called experts, who seemed to me to be too full of prejudices and apt to make out the Chinese to be quite unlike any other living mortals. To me there was no difference. They had the same loves, the same hates, the same tragedies, hopes and despairs, and I found it was only their customs which were different, not their characters. found it was only their customs which were different, not their characters. In China, the family comes first, and they regard a bad relation as better than a good friend, which is in direct opposition to us in the West, where relations seem only sent to try us.

The predominating trait of the Chinese is their humour, which makes them more merry than witty, trait of the Chinese is their humour, which makes them more merry than witty, and full of laughter. Like the French, they are highly civilised and love the good things of life. They neither eat to live like the English, nor live to eat like the Teutons. They eat and drink because it breeds friendliness and good manners, and promotes a pleasant bonhomie even in matters of business. It's not easy to disagree when the palate has been mollified with a delicious food and warm rice wine, a fact not sufficiently appreciated by certain foreign ministers. While he was in China, Khatun Dhuwa, of course,

dealt not only with the government of China, as recognised by Britain and America, but the powerful communist forces that controlled swathes of the country under the leadership of Mao Tse-Tung. in America, but the powerful communist forces that controlled swathes of the country under the leadership of Mao Tse-Tung. Khatun Dua met Mao and was not impressed, nor was he impressed with the effectiveness of his armed forces. As to the fighting capabilities of the communists, I do not consider they contributed much towards

defeating the Japanese. They excelled in guerrilla warfare, which had a nuisance value, but no more, and their refusal to cooperate with the central government's forces at the time of the Japanese advance in 1944 put those forces in a serious position by compelling them to leave troops on the communist front when every soldier was needed against the Japanese. troops on the communist front when every soldier was needed against the Japanese. This refusal showed the communists in their true light that they were communists before they were patriots, and that they put a political creed above their country. Carton to Wyatt believed, and most intelligents agreed, that the communists had done very

little to stem the Japanese advance, despite having nearly a million men under arms. The communist plan does seem to have been to let the government and the Japanese beat each other to a pulp while they built up their forces. Now, lots of people thought this, but Carton de Wired has possibly the unique distinction of having said this to Mao's face. He had dinner with Mao and Zhou Enlai one night in Chongqing. Mao lectured him on the superiority of the communist system, but when he got on to how hard they were fighting against the Japanese, he tried my credulity a little too far, and I cut short any further fabrications. I told him that what they were really doing was to keep looking over their

shoulders to see what the generissimo was doing first. To my surprise, Mao Zedong took no offence and merely laughed. Another of their leaders asked me why I had never been to Yan'an to see their set-up. I answered quite frankly that I hated communism, and that if I went up there it might be taken as a sign that I was interested in them, and besides, that they would bombard me with their propaganda. He admits that Chinese forces were badly led. He thought their officer class was poor, but he thought their soldiers were impressive.

He said in a report to his superiors that they were cheerful and up for lots of work. He obviously hugely regretted that the British and American governments didn't support the Nationalists against the Communists more wholeheartedly. There were elements, particularly in Washington DC, who, believe it or not,

were quite sympathetic to the Chinese Communists, seeing them as kind of horny-handed rural democrats fighting to take down the aristocratic feudal ancient order represented by Chiang Kai-shek. He wrote a report to London in 1945 with a characteristic solution to the communist problem with a clarity so often lacking in official reports. Things here are far from bright. I never saw a solution to the communist question, except by giving them a good beating. And as they keep on attacking towns, I hope the Generalissimo will go for them one of these days. While looking back on the subject in his later memoir, Cartendoy articulates what I think we can call a sort of realist philosophical approach to

grand strategy. Governments may think and say what they like, but force cannot be eliminated. And it is the only real and unanswerable power. We're told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these two weapons I would choose. In the summer of 1945, with the atomic bombs and the Soviet invasion of the Japanese Empire in Manchuria, the war came to an end. Cardinal Dwight flew to Singapore to watch the surrender. He thought the Japanese looked... Insignificant.

And he... Could not help wondering how they'd kept us occupied for so long. From there, he flew to Britain and was astounded that Churchill had been booted out in the general election. Our great war leader, the world's most loved and admired man, and my particular boss, had been ousted as Premier and Britain was now a socialist country. Being so far away I had no inkling of the overwhelming change which had swept over the face of Britain. It was ingratitude, walking hand in hand with politics. The aftermath of war breeds discontent. The people are no longer buoyed up to danger.

Camaraderie disappears with the last bomb, and they desire change at any price, whether for better or for worse. But in the case of Mr Churchill, it was a cataclysmic blow, for he was rooted in the heart of England as no one man had ever been before. Winston Churchill sent a message to Carton de Wight. He said, I am deeply grateful to you for the splendid work you have done. I was always proud to be represented by a man like you. Thank you for your kind expressions. Now, strangely, Carton de Wirt found that he actually liked Attlee, Churchill's successor, and he liked his Foreign Secretary Bevan very much,

and so he consented to continue his job in China on their behalf. But the sudden toppling of Churchill made him weaker in the eyes of the Chinese decision makers. As Chiang Kai-shek attempted to rebuild China, he travelled all over the country with him. He fell in love with Beijing, describing it as one of the finest cities in the world. Chiang Kai-shek moved his capital to Nanking, which Carton de Wight didn't like much, but it did enable him to make an hour and a half fast walk up the 2,000-foot Purple Mountain every day. He obviously took the steepest path.

He visited Japan. He flew over Hiroshima, which he thought looked like any other bomb city. Then, a real surprise. Sankai Shek asked him to quit his job with the British and become his personal advisor. Carton Dwight was thrilled. He loved China. He had no plans, no home, no job. Poland was out of the question now, occupied by communists, and he knew that in China... The opportunities for shooting were limitless. Shooting of all kinds, he could have added.

He flew home to resign. He stopped off in Vietnam to see how things were going there and met the French governor that was trying to re-establish French control. Then he stopped in Rangoon in Burma and stayed in the house of an old army friend, Brigadier Duke. And it was here, in this safe, unlikely haven, that this veteran of a hundred battlefields, this unstoppable force of nature, met his Waterloo. Carton de Wyatt slipped on the coconut matting in his leather-soled shoes and fell down the stairs. I hit my head on the wall, knocking myself almost unconscious, broke my back, crushing a vertebra,

and was very lucky not to break my neck. Entombed in plaster, he made his way back to the UK. Field Marshal Wavell, the Governor General of India, feted me on champagne to try and cheer him up. He stopped in Cairo and Athens, a celebrity guest at every point, and then he was checked into hospital in the UK. For seven months they operated on me, nursed me, UK. For seven months, they operated on me, nursed me, housed me and fed me, and all with unremitting kindness and skill. And no man has more reason to be grateful to them. Not only did they mend my back, but they tidied me up inside and outside too, excavated all sorts of odd bits of scrap iron, and sent me away a fitter, if not a wiser man. Tragically though,

he felt he couldn't say yes to the offer from Chiang Kai-shek. He didn't want to take the job if he was crock and useless. He later wrote, I love China, her people and her country, and had found great happiness there, and I could not have wished for a pleasant of faith than to go back and be of some use to the Generalissimo and Madame. But it was not to be. Without Carton Gouart's help, and probably more importantly that of the US government, Chiang Kai-shek lost his civil war. Nanking fell in January 1949, Beijing a couple of days later. On the 10th of December, Chiang Kai-shek left the Chinese mainland for his island sanctuary on Taiwan, just as Mao declared the birth of the People's Republic of China. But Carton de Wyatt would

only read of that in the newspapers. At the age of 65, lying in a hospital bed, Carton de Wyatt knew that he'd served in his last active post. But there was still life in him yet. A regular visitor to hospital was Joan Sutherland, a divorcee 20 years younger than him, who nursed him through the injuries and ended up becoming his partner. When his estranged wife died in 1949, that death released him from an unhappy marriage. In 1951, he married Joan, and with the royalties from the fabulous memoir from which you have heard such wonderful extracts, he bought a place in County Cork where he could hike and fish and shoot till he dropped. He apparently drank a bottle of champagne before lunch every day. Even a carton de wire dies eventually. But he was lucky, even in his end. He died in his sleep at 83 on the 5th of June 1963. He left no papers,

he certainly left no great fortune, but he left something infinitely more valuable, an unmatched reputation. The Spectator published a profile of him in his later years. The General has a fierce eye, a soft voice and the best manners in the world. He's a good judge of risks and has never refused one that he liked the look of. His standards of conduct are high and rigid. He's a very fastidious man, fastidious in his likes and dislikes, in his quite extraordinary consideration for others, in his dress, in the fairness which he assesses people and situations and things. His manners are impeccable. His cannons are unashamedly those of the days before yesterday. He never appears to be trying very hard. He has tremendous style. He is also very witty

and quite impossible to replace. It is a good thing that the standard of marksmanship among foreigners is not just a shade higher. And on his death, one of Britain's most senior soldiers, Lord Ismay, wrote, Carlton de Wyatt, said Lord Ismay, was a happy warrior if ever there was one. He always scorned the safe and easy way. He was literally shot to pieces, but his wounds only seemed to quicken his fighting spirit. His courage was not only superlative, it was infectious. I've seen half-trained troops follow him gaily into a tight corner as though they were veterans. No soldier of his generation was more admired or more loved. What a life. What a man. Thank you very much for listening

to this special mini-series on Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Paul Jelaine Carton de Wyatt, Victoria Cross, Knight Commander of the most excellent Order of the British Empire, Companion of the most honourable Order of the Bath, Companion of the most distinguished Order of St Michael and St George, Distinguished Service Order, etc, etc. We may never see his like again. But you will see the likes of this podcast again, lots of them. Please subscribe in your podcast feed. Thank you very much, Dad, for reading out Carton de Wyatt's words. Did you enjoy that?

Thank you, Dad. It was enormous fun. Thank you all for listening. Bye-bye. you