The Life and Times of Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart by Alan Ogden

Author:Alan Ogden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Part VIII

Italy 1941–3

13

A reluctant guest of Mussolini

On his return to duty on 14 May, Carton de Wiart took back command of the 61st Division from Major General Edmund Schreiber1 who had been caretaking it during Operation HAMMER. Invasion rumours began to circulate and the idea that German paratroopers assisted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) would land in Ireland took hold. It later transpired that in early 1940 the IRA Acting Chief of Staff, Stephen Hayes, had indeed drawn up Plan KATHLEEN for an amphibious assault in the Londonderry area by 50,000 German troops and sent it by a courier to Germany.2 The Abwehr dismissed it as amateurish. Such was the level of concern that on 20 June, the War Office ordered the Division to Northern Ireland. Carton de Wiart himself ‘never believed the Germans had any intention of invading Ireland’ but was very grateful ‘for any reason that sent us there, for it was an ideal training ground for troops and the division improved enormously from the moment of (its) arrival’.3 Now responsible for the defence of the whole of Northern Ireland including Belfast, Divisional Headquarters based itself in Ballymena with its units scattered across the six counties, mainly Antrim, Derry and Tyrone. Beach landing sites were identified, obstacles and pill boxes erected, and defensive positions dug and camouflaged. Brigades and battalions practiced counter-attacks on paratroop landings and coastal raiders, all the time chivvied along by Carton de Wiart who drove from unit to unit to follow the progress of training. Captain John Figges4 who was the Divisional Intelligence Officer/GSO 3 Operations remembered him as ‘a magnificent man . . . courageous . . . troops would follow him . . . brave as a lion, charming man’.5 There were of course welcome diversions like fishing and shooting.

His first GOC in Northern Ireland was Major General Hubert Huddleston6 and, like Carton de Wiart, a veteran of the South African War and the 1914–18 War in France. The two got on splendidly but, in July, Huddleston, who had only been there for a few months, was suddenly sent to the Sudan as Governor General. His replacement was Lieutenant General Sir Henry Pownall7 who had been Field Marshal Gort’s Chief of Staff at Dunkirk. Although he had served in France and Belgium in the First World War and then on the North West Frontier where he won a bar to his DSO, Pownall’s great strength was his ability as a staff officer and he had spent much of the 1930s in senior positions in the War Office. A stickler for detail who played by the book, he was not prepared to go against the decision of the Military Secretary to retire Carton de Wiart on grounds of age when he reached his sixty-first birthday. Despite his protestations, Carton de Wiart had to relinquish his command and left disconsolate, wondering what on earth he should do with himself. At least he had the satisfaction of having taken over as the Colonel of

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