Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside
Encyclopedia
Field Marshal
William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside GCB
, CMG
, CBE
, DSO
, (6 May 1880 - 22 September 1959) was a British Army
officer who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the first year of the Second World War.
Ironside joined the Royal Artillery
in 1899, and served throughout the Boer War
, followed by a brief period spying on the German colonial forces in South-West Africa. Returning to regular duty, he served on the staff of a Regular Army division during the first two years of the First World War, before being appointed as the chief of staff to the newly raised 4th Canadian Division
in 1916. In 1918 he was given command of a brigade on the Western Front, but was quickly promoted to command the Allied intervention force
in northern Russia in 1919, then an Allied force occupying Turkey, and finally a British force in Persia in 1921. He was offered the post of the commander of British forces in Iraq, but was unable to take up the role due to injuries in a flying accident.
He returned to the Army as commandant of the Staff College, Camberley
, where he became an advocate for the ideas of J. F. C. Fuller, a proponent of mechanisation. He later commanded a division, and military districts in both Britain and India, but his youth and his blunt approach limited his career prospects, and after being passed over for the role of Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in 1937 he became Governor of Gibraltar
, a traditional staging post to retirement. He was recalled from "exile" in mid-1939, and appointed as Inspector-General of Overseas Forces, a role which led most observers to expect he would be given the command of the British Expeditionary Force
on the outbreak of war.
However, after some political manoeuvering, Lord Gort was given this command, and Ironside appointed as the new CIGS. He himself believed that he was temperamentally unsuited to the job, but felt obliged to accept it. In early 1940 he argued heavily for Allied intervention in Scandinavia
, but this plan was shelved at the last minute when the Finnish-Soviet Winter War
ended. During the invasion of Norway and the Battle of France
he played little part; his involvement in the latter was limited by a breakdown in relations between him and Gort. He was replaced as CIGS at the end of May, and given a role to which he was more suited; Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, responsible for anti-invasion defences and for commanding the Army in the event of German landings. However, he served less than two months in this role before being replaced. After this, Ironside was promoted to field-marshal and given a peerage, as Baron Ironside; he retired to Norfolk to write, and never again saw active service or held an official position.
, Scotland
, on 6 May 1880. His father, Surgeon-Major William Ironside of the Royal Horse Artillery
, died shortly afterwards, leaving his widowed wife to bring up their son on a limited Army pension. As the cost of living in the late nineteenth century was substantially lower in Europe than in Britain, she travelled extensively around the continent, where the young Edmund began to acquire a variety of foreign languages. This grasp of language would become one of the defining features of his character; by middle age, he would be fluent enough to officially interpret in seven, with a partial command of perhaps ten more.
He was educated at schools in St Andrews
before being sent to Tonbridge School
in Kent
for his secondary education; at the age of sixteen he left Tonbridge to attend a crammer, having not shown much academic promise, and was admitted to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in January 1898. at the age of seventeen. At Woolwich he flourished, working hard at his studies and his sports; he took up boxing, and captained the second rugby team as well as playing for Scotland. He was built for both of these sports, six feet four inches tall and weighing seventeen stone, for which he was nicknamed "Tiny" by his fellow students. The name stuck, and he was known by it for the rest of his life.
on 25 June 1899. Later that year he was sent to South Africa
, with the 44th Battery Royal Field Artillery
. He fought throughout the Second Boer War
, was wounded three times, and received a promotion to Lieutenant and his first Mention in Despatches in 1901.
At the end of the war, he was part of the small force which escorted Jan Smuts
to the peace negotiations
. He then disguised himself as an Afrikaans
-speaking Boer, and took a job as a wagon driver working for the German colonial forces in South West Africa
. This intelligence work ended unsuccessfully, however; he was identified, and escaped shortly before being caught. This escapade later led to claims that he was the model for Richard Hannay
, a character in the novels of John Buchan; it is interesting to note that Ironside himself enjoyed these novels, reading Mr Standfast
in the implausibly romantic setting of the passenger seat of an open-cockpit biplane flying from Iraq to Persia.
He was then posted to India, where he served with I Battery RHA, and South Africa, with Y Battery RHA. He was promoted to captain
in February 1908, appointed as a staff captain in September of the same year, and then as a brigade major
in June 1909. He returned home in September 1912, in order to attend the Staff College, Camberley
.
and then St. Nazaire, both large Army bases supporting the expeditionary force. By some accounts, he was one of the first British officers to arrive in France. He was promoted to major and attached to the newly arrived 6th Division at the end of October 1914, ranked as a General Staff Officer, Grade 3 (GSO3). He remained with the division, and was promoted to GSO2 in February 1915.
He was promoted to temporary lieutenant-colonel and made a GSO1 in March 1916. He had hoped to be made GSO1 - divisional chief of staff - to the 6th Division, but to his surprise he was assigned to the newly forming 4th Canadian Division
to act as its GSO1. Ironside pushed for a hard training regime, intending to get the division to the front as quickly as possible and prevent it being broken up to feed reinforcements to the other three divisions of the Canadian Corps. Because of the inexperience of the divisional commander, David Watson
- a volunteer soldier with little professional experience - he found himself almost commanding the division on occasions, noting in his memoirs that Watson regularly passed on Ironside's orders with his own name attached. On its arrival in France in late 1916, the division participated at the end of the Battle of the Somme, before being moved north to prepare for the attack at Vimy Ridge. During the final phase of the fighting at Vimy, Ironside again took unofficial command of the division, overruling an ambiguous order from Watson - who was out of contact at headquarters - to halt the attack, and personally ordering the leading battalions into action.
He remained with the division through 1917, when it fought at the Battle of Passchendale, and in January 1918 was appointed to an administrative posting, as commandant of the Small Arms School, with the temporary rank of colonel. He quickly returned to the Western Front, however, when he was appointed to command 99th Infantry Brigade as a temporary brigadier-general
at the end of March.
fighting the Bolsheviks in northern Russia, and in November given command of the force. This was his first independent command, and he threw himself fully into it; for over a year, he travelled continually along the Northern Dvina River to keep control of his scattered international forces, at one point narrowly escaping assassination. However, the Red Army
managed eventually to gain a superior position in the Civil War
and in late 1919 he was forced to abandon the White Army to their fate. In November he handed command over to Henry Rawlinson
, who would supervise the eventual withdrawal, and returned to Britain. Ironside was made a Knight Commander of the Bath, and promoted to substantive major-general
for his efforts; this made him one of the youngest major-generals in the army.
In early 1920 he commanded a military mission which supervised the withdrawal of Romanian forces left in Hungary after the Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919
, and in the summer was attached to the force occupying İzmit
, Turkey
, as it prepared to withdraw. His third overseas posting of the year was to Persia in late August, where - among other things - he appointed Reza Khan to command the elite Cossack Brigade; Khan would later seize control of the country, and rule as Shah from 1925 to 1941. The exact level of British involvement in Khan's coup is still a matter of historical debate, but it is almost certain that Ironside himself at least provided advice to the plotters. On his departure from Persia in 1921, the Shah
awarded him the Order of the Lion and the Sun
.
After Persia, he attended the Cairo Conference, where Winston Churchill
persuaded him to take command of the newly reorganised British force in Iraq; however, returning to Persia in April, the aircraft he was flying in crashed and he was invalided home after several months in hospital.
in May 1922. He spent a full four-year term there, running the college efficiently as well as publishing several articles and a book on the Battle of Tannenberg
. Most importantly for his future career, he became the mentor of J. F. C. Fuller, who was appointed a lecturer at the College at the same time, and became a close acquaintance of Basil Liddell Hart
. Fuller's views were deeply influential on Ironside, who became a supporter of reforming the Army as an élite armoured force with air support, and of forming a single central Ministry of Defence
to control the services. He argued frequently over the need for faster modernisation and rearmament, and the problem of the 'old men' still filling the upper ranks of the army; in the end, he had to be reprimanded by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir George Milne.
After Camberley he was appointed to command 2nd Division, a post he held for two years with little effect or interest - he was frustrated by the task of training an infantry force with no modern equipment - and then sent to command the Meerut district, in India, in 1928. He enjoyed life in India, but found the military situation to be equally uninteresting; the equipment was old-fashioned, as were the regimental officers and the overall strategic plans. He was promoted to lieutenant-general in March 1931, and left for England in May, where he returned to half-pay with the notional sinecure
of Constable of the Tower of London
. He was relieved from this bleakness by a posting to India as Quartermaster-General in 1933, where he travelled extensively, crossing the country to visit regiments and oversee the Indianisation process. For all this, however, it was the best of a bad job; he was still far from the War Office
, and unable to make significant impact on the Army's preparation for a future war.
, one of the corps-level regional commands in the United Kingdom, responsible for a single regular division and three Territorial divisions. Here, he realised that a European war would come sooner rather than later, and that the army was in a parlous state to defend the country. However, he found that as with his earlier posts, he could achieve little in Eastern Command - the major decisions would be made in Whitehall. He himself seemed to lose his opportunity for higher office in 1937, when he was rebuked over his mishandling of a mobile force in the annual exercises; until this point, he had been considered a possible candidate as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, but was dropped from consideration in favour of Lord Gort
, whom Ironside considered unfit for the job. Officially, Hore-Belisha
told him he was too old for the post, at 57. He was appointed an aide-de-camp
to the King in October, a purely ceremonial position, and early in 1938 accepted the offer of a posting as governor of Gibraltar
, generally seen as a quiet role in which to retire.
He was helped to accept Gibraltar by the suggestion that, in the event of war, he could be transferred to command the forces in the Middle East; as he believed no major force could usefully be sent to France, this seemed to him likely to be the main focus of British attention in the war. He took up the governorship in November 1938, and threw himself into preparing the colony for war; here, finally, he had free rein. Under his tenure, the defences were strengthened and the garrison prepared for a long siege.
In December 1938, only a month after he had taken up the post, Hore-Belisha had begun to consider the possibility of recalling Ironside to become Inspector-General of Overseas Forces. The position gave him overall responsibility for the readiness of forces based outside the United Kingdom, and it was worried by many at the War Office that he would interpret it as a precursor to being given formal command of the Expeditionary Force on the outbreak of war. However, after some debate, Hore-Belisha went ahead and offered Ironside the position in May, appointing a corresponding Inspector-General of Home Forces at the same time, both under Lord Gort. The decision to recall Ironside may have been helped by the fact that Hore-Belisha was particularly reliant on the advice of Basil Liddell-Hart, an old acquaintance of Ironside's, and was already beginning to fall out with Gort.
As expected, Ironside chose to interpret the posting as indicating that he was the presumptive commander in chief, and soon began to clash with Lord Gort over their respective powers. Whilst Gort was nominally in a more senior position, Ironside had seniority of rank and a far more dominant personality, and had concluded several months earlier that Gort was "out of his depth" as CIGS; he is unlikely to have shown much deference. He held the post of Inspector for a few months, visiting Poland in July 1939 to meet with the Polish high command. Whilst his sympathetic manner reassured the Poles, the visit may have unintentionally given the impression that Britain was intending to provide direct military assistance. He returned able to report that the Polish government was unlikely to provoke Germany into war, but warned that the country would be quickly overrun and that no Eastern Front was likely to exist for long. His warnings, however, were broadly ignored.
, the commander of home forces at Aldershot.
As CIGS, Ironside adopted a policy of rapidly building up a strong force in France, aiming to put some twenty divisions in the field. However, this force would be broadly defensive, acting to support the French army, and he aimed to influence the course of the war by forming a second strong force in the Middle East, which would be able to operate in peripheral operations in the Balkans. He strongly supported the development of a close-support air force, preferably under Army command, but at the same time argued that when a German offensive began in the West, the RAF should throw its main strength into strategic bombing of the Ruhr rather than attacking the forward units.
, and aligned loosely with the Allied forces - as well as interdicting the ore supply, and could potentially force Germany to commit troops on a new and geographically unfavourable front. The plan was enthusiastically supported by both Ironside and Churchill, but opposed by many other officers, including Gort - who saw his forces in France being depleted of resources - and Newall, the Chief of the Air Staff.
Planning continued through the winter, and by March 1940 the force, of around three divisions, was prepared to sail. On 12 March, however, Finland sued for peace, and the force had to be abandoned.
Norway was the first time major British forces were committed to action during the war, and the flaws in the command system quickly began to show. War Cabinet meetings were dragged out at great length to little effect, as did meetings of the Chiefs of Staff, both to Ironside's great frustration. He also found it hard to cope with Churchill's mood swings and insistence on micromanagement of the campaign, and a gulf began to grow between the men. Ironside's main contribution to resolving the campaign was to insist on a withdrawal when the situation worsened, and he pushed through the evacuation of central Norway at the end of April despite ministerial ambivalence.
he clashed with the French generals Billotte
and Blanchard, whom he considered defeatists. He wrote: "I lost my temper and shook Billotte by the button of his tunic. The man is completely defeated." Although Billotte was supposed to be co-ordinating the British, French and Belgian armies' operations in Belgium, Ironside took over the job himself, ordering Gort and Blanchard to launch a counter-attack against the Germans at Arras
. This attack achieved some local success, but the German onslaught proved unstoppable. The French commander-in-chief, General Weygand
, so resented Ironside's actions that he said he would "like to box Ironside's ears."
His appointment as Commander-in-Chief Home Forces was announced to the public on 27 May, succeeding Sir Walter Kirke. Ironside was succeeded as CIGS by his deputy, Sir John Dill
. In his new command, Ironside had a force which amounted - on paper - to fifteen Territorial infantry divisions, a single armoured division, fifty-seven home-defence battalions, and the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard). However, all of these were deficient in training and organisation, as the operational units had already been sent to France. They were also lacking in equipment; the force as a whole had almost no modern artillery or anti-tank guns, and the armoured division had just a small number of light tanks.
The deficiencies with equipment led to an overall lack of mobility, which coupled with the limited training of the units meant that very few were capable of organised offensive counter-attacks against an invading force. As a result, the only way they could practically be used would be to commit them to static defence; Ironside planned to steadily pull units away from the coast and into a central mobile reserve, but this was not possible until they were trained and equipped for the role. He threw himself into the details of the strategy, laying out plans for the static defence of village strongpoints by the Home Guard, patrols of "Ironsides" armoured cars
to strengthen the divisions, and light artillery mounted on trucks as improvised tank destroyers.
He agreed to release two divisions for the "second BEF" in early June, but was dubious about Churchill's decision to bring home forces from the Middle East and India; even after the fall of France and the potential collapse of the defences in Britain, he still held to his pre-war position that "[it] is essential to hold the East firmly, whatever happens here". By mid-June, he had begun to collect a scanty mobile reserve - the 8th RTR, with infantry tanks, and six regiments of armoured cars beginning to form - and the pillboxes
and coastal defences were being prepared, though he emphasised to the local commanders that the latter "are only meant as delaying lines, and are meant to give the mobile columns a chance of coming up to the threatened points".
The fall of France led to a brief interlude where the Cabinet debated sending Ironside on a diplomatic mission to meet Charles Noguès, the French commander in North Africa and a personal acquaintance of Ironside's, but decided to retain him in Britain and send Lord Gort instead. On June 25, he was called to the War Cabinet
to brief them on the plans for home defence; his system of defence in depth
provided for:
The plan was "on the whole" approved by the Cabinet, and by the Chiefs of Staff later in the week. He was clear in his diaries that he saw the static focus as an undesirable option - "[the] eternal preaching of the defensive and taking cover behind anti-tank articles has been the curse of our tactics" - but that it was the only practical way to make use of untrained and badly-equipped forces. By early July, he was optimistic that more troops could soon be pulled out of static positions and used in a mobile role, with the Home Guard taking over the local defences, but strongly resisted orders from Churchill to pull divisions out of the coastal areas before they could be effectively replaced.
On 19 July, he was summoned to the War Office and informed that he was to be replaced by Alan Brooke as C-in-C Home Forces, effective immediately. The formal reason was that the Cabinet wished to have someone with recent combat experience in command, and Ironside accepted the dismissal gracefully - "I was quite prepared to be released. I had done my best ... I can't complain. Cabinets have to make decisions in times of stress. I don't suppose that Winston liked doing it, for he is always loyal to his friends.
at the end of August. He was raised to the peerage in the New Year Honours
, as Baron Ironside of Archangel and of Ironside in the County of Aberdeen, and retired to the country with his family. He was never given another military posting, and was avoided by the Army establishment; he rarely visited London, and never spoke in the House of Lords.
He turned to lecturing and writing books, including a study of the Archangel expedition, and farming his estates in Norfolk. After almost two decades in retirement, having survived a driving accident, he was injured in a fall at his home; he was taken to Queen Alexandra Military Hospital in London, where he died on 22 September 1959, aged 79. His coffin was escorted to Westminster Abbey
with full military honours, and he was buried near his home in Norfolk. His son, Edmund
, succeeded him in the peerage.
Ironside kept a diary throughout his life, starting as a subaltern at the turn of the century, with the goal of keeping a clear recollection of what had happened during the day and allowing him to reflect on the day's events. These were written directly into bound foolscap volumes, a page or more a day, each night; throughout his life, he totalled some twelve volumes and the best part of a million words. He did not ask for these to be destroyed on his death, though their content was sometimes quite contentious, but did write a will - in 1930 - asking that they not be published. In the late 1950s, however, a former colleague persuaded him to allow extracts to be published as part of an account of the run-up to the Second World War, although he died shortly before it saw print. This was published as The Ironside Diaries: 1937-1940, edited by Colonel Roderick Macleod and Denis Kelly, in 1962; the material was selected from May 1937 to his retirement in June 1940, and published as numbered daily entries with editorial notes.
A second volume, High Road to Command: the diaries of Major-General Sir Edmund Ironside, 1920-1922, was published in 1972, edited by his son
; this covered the period from 1920 to 1922, during his service in the Middle East. The book was assembled by Ironside shortly before his death and, whilst it drew heavily on the diaries, it was written in a more conventional narrative form rather than as a strict day-by-day account, with editorial remarks kept to a minimum.
(DSO) in the 1915 King's Birthday Honours. Ironside was given the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun, Third Class
in 1922.
He was promoted to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in the 1938 King's Birthday Honours. In June 1939 he was made a knight of the Venerable Order of Saint John
.
Official despatches
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Field Marshal
Field Marshal is a military rank. Traditionally, it is the highest military rank in an army.-Etymology:The origin of the rank of field marshal dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of the king's horses , from the time of the early Frankish kings.-Usage and hierarchical...
William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside GCB
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
, CMG
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
, CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
, DSO
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
, (6 May 1880 - 22 September 1959) was a British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
officer who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the first year of the Second World War.
Ironside joined the Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
in 1899, and served throughout the Boer War
Boer War
The Boer Wars were two wars fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republiek van Transvaal ....
, followed by a brief period spying on the German colonial forces in South-West Africa. Returning to regular duty, he served on the staff of a Regular Army division during the first two years of the First World War, before being appointed as the chief of staff to the newly raised 4th Canadian Division
4th Canadian Division
The Canadian Corps - 4th Canadian Division – World War I:The 4th Canadian Division was formed in the Britain in April 1916 from several existing units and others scheduled to arrive shortly thereafter. Under the command of Major-General David Watson, the Division embarked for France in August of...
in 1916. In 1918 he was given command of a brigade on the Western Front, but was quickly promoted to command the Allied intervention force
Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
The Allied intervention was a multi-national military expedition launched in 1918 during World War I which continued into the Russian Civil War. Its operations included forces from 14 nations and were conducted over a vast territory...
in northern Russia in 1919, then an Allied force occupying Turkey, and finally a British force in Persia in 1921. He was offered the post of the commander of British forces in Iraq, but was unable to take up the role due to injuries in a flying accident.
He returned to the Army as commandant of the Staff College, Camberley
Staff College, Camberley
Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, was a staff college for the British Army from 1802 to 1997, with periods of closure during major wars. In 1997 it was merged into the new Joint Services Command and Staff College.-Origins:...
, where he became an advocate for the ideas of J. F. C. Fuller, a proponent of mechanisation. He later commanded a division, and military districts in both Britain and India, but his youth and his blunt approach limited his career prospects, and after being passed over for the role of Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in 1937 he became Governor of Gibraltar
Governor of Gibraltar
The Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Gibraltar is the representative of the British monarch in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. The Governor is appointed by the British Monarch on the advice of the British Government...
, a traditional staging post to retirement. He was recalled from "exile" in mid-1939, and appointed as Inspector-General of Overseas Forces, a role which led most observers to expect he would be given the command of the British Expeditionary Force
British Expeditionary Force (World War II)
The British Expeditionary Force was the British force in Europe from 1939–1940 during the Second World War. Commanded by General Lord Gort, the BEF constituted one-tenth of the defending Allied force....
on the outbreak of war.
However, after some political manoeuvering, Lord Gort was given this command, and Ironside appointed as the new CIGS. He himself believed that he was temperamentally unsuited to the job, but felt obliged to accept it. In early 1940 he argued heavily for Allied intervention in Scandinavia
Franco-British plans for intervention in the Winter War
During the early stages of World War II, the British and French Allies made a series of proposals to send troops to fight against the Soviet Union, which had invaded Finland as a consequence of the Nazi-Soviet Pact...
, but this plan was shelved at the last minute when the Finnish-Soviet Winter War
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
ended. During the invasion of Norway and the Battle of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
he played little part; his involvement in the latter was limited by a breakdown in relations between him and Gort. He was replaced as CIGS at the end of May, and given a role to which he was more suited; Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, responsible for anti-invasion defences and for commanding the Army in the event of German landings. However, he served less than two months in this role before being replaced. After this, Ironside was promoted to field-marshal and given a peerage, as Baron Ironside; he retired to Norfolk to write, and never again saw active service or held an official position.
Early life
Ironside was born in EdinburghEdinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, on 6 May 1880. His father, Surgeon-Major William Ironside of the Royal Horse Artillery
Royal Horse Artillery
The regiments of the Royal Horse Artillery , dating from 1793, are part of the Royal Regiment of Artillery of the British Army...
, died shortly afterwards, leaving his widowed wife to bring up their son on a limited Army pension. As the cost of living in the late nineteenth century was substantially lower in Europe than in Britain, she travelled extensively around the continent, where the young Edmund began to acquire a variety of foreign languages. This grasp of language would become one of the defining features of his character; by middle age, he would be fluent enough to officially interpret in seven, with a partial command of perhaps ten more.
He was educated at schools in St Andrews
St Andrews
St Andrews is a university town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle.St Andrews has a population of 16,680, making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....
before being sent to Tonbridge School
Tonbridge School
Tonbridge School is a British boys' independent school for both boarding and day pupils in Tonbridge, Kent, founded in 1553 by Sir Andrew Judd . It is a member of the Eton Group, and has close links with the Worshipful Company of Skinners, one of the oldest London livery companies...
in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
for his secondary education; at the age of sixteen he left Tonbridge to attend a crammer, having not shown much academic promise, and was admitted to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in January 1898. at the age of seventeen. At Woolwich he flourished, working hard at his studies and his sports; he took up boxing, and captained the second rugby team as well as playing for Scotland. He was built for both of these sports, six feet four inches tall and weighing seventeen stone, for which he was nicknamed "Tiny" by his fellow students. The name stuck, and he was known by it for the rest of his life.
Boer War
After attending the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich he was commissioned into the Royal ArtilleryRoyal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
on 25 June 1899. Later that year he was sent to South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, with the 44th Battery Royal Field Artillery
Royal Field Artillery
The Royal Field Artillery of the British Army provided artillery support for the British Army. It came into being when the Royal Artillery was divided on 1 July 1899, it was reamalgamated back into the Royal Artillery in 1924....
. He fought throughout the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
, was wounded three times, and received a promotion to Lieutenant and his first Mention in Despatches in 1901.
At the end of the war, he was part of the small force which escorted Jan Smuts
Jan Smuts
Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM, CH, ED, KC, FRS, PC was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various cabinet posts, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948...
to the peace negotiations
Treaty of Vereeniging
The Treaty of Vereeniging was the peace treaty, signed on 31 May 1902, that ended the South African War between the South African Republic and the Republic of the Orange Free State, on the one side, and the British Empire on the other.This settlement provided for the end of hostilities and...
. He then disguised himself as an Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
-speaking Boer, and took a job as a wagon driver working for the German colonial forces in South West Africa
South West Africa
South-West Africa was the name that was used for the modern day Republic of Namibia during the earlier eras when the territory was controlled by the German Empire and later by South Africa....
. This intelligence work ended unsuccessfully, however; he was identified, and escaped shortly before being caught. This escapade later led to claims that he was the model for Richard Hannay
Richard Hannay
Major-General Sir Richard Hannay, KCB, OBE, DSO, Legion of Honour, is a fictional secret agent created by Scottish novelist John Buchan. In his autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door, Buchan suggests that the character is based, in part, on Edmund Ironside, from Edinburgh, a spy during the Second Boer...
, a character in the novels of John Buchan; it is interesting to note that Ironside himself enjoyed these novels, reading Mr Standfast
Mr Standfast
Mr Standfast is the third of five Richard Hannay novels by John Buchan, first published in 1919 by Hodder & Stoughton, London.It is one of two Hannay novels set during the First World War, the other being Greenmantle ; Hannay's first and best-known adventure, The Thirty-Nine Steps , is set in the...
in the implausibly romantic setting of the passenger seat of an open-cockpit biplane flying from Iraq to Persia.
He was then posted to India, where he served with I Battery RHA, and South Africa, with Y Battery RHA. He was promoted to captain
Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)
Captain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force...
in February 1908, appointed as a staff captain in September of the same year, and then as a brigade major
Brigade Major
In the British Army, a Brigade Major was the Chief of Staff of a brigade. He held the rank of Major and was head of the brigade's "G - Operations and Intelligence" section directly and oversaw the two other branches, "A - Administration" and "Q - Quartermaster"...
in June 1909. He returned home in September 1912, in order to attend the Staff College, Camberley
Staff College, Camberley
Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, was a staff college for the British Army from 1802 to 1997, with periods of closure during major wars. In 1997 it was merged into the new Joint Services Command and Staff College.-Origins:...
.
First World War
Ironside's two-year course at the Staff College, which he found unstimulating, was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914; on 5 August, he was appointed as a staff captain, and assigned to Boulogne-sur-MerBoulogne-sur-Mer
-Road:* Metropolitan bus services are operated by the TCRB* Coach services to Calais and Dunkerque* A16 motorway-Rail:* The main railway station is Gare de Boulogne-Ville and located in the south of the city....
and then St. Nazaire, both large Army bases supporting the expeditionary force. By some accounts, he was one of the first British officers to arrive in France. He was promoted to major and attached to the newly arrived 6th Division at the end of October 1914, ranked as a General Staff Officer, Grade 3 (GSO3). He remained with the division, and was promoted to GSO2 in February 1915.
He was promoted to temporary lieutenant-colonel and made a GSO1 in March 1916. He had hoped to be made GSO1 - divisional chief of staff - to the 6th Division, but to his surprise he was assigned to the newly forming 4th Canadian Division
4th Canadian Division
The Canadian Corps - 4th Canadian Division – World War I:The 4th Canadian Division was formed in the Britain in April 1916 from several existing units and others scheduled to arrive shortly thereafter. Under the command of Major-General David Watson, the Division embarked for France in August of...
to act as its GSO1. Ironside pushed for a hard training regime, intending to get the division to the front as quickly as possible and prevent it being broken up to feed reinforcements to the other three divisions of the Canadian Corps. Because of the inexperience of the divisional commander, David Watson
David Watson (general)
Major General Sir David Watson, was a Canadian journalist, newspaper owner, and general.Born in Quebec City, Quebec, the son of William Watson and Jane Grant, Watson was a journalist with the Quebec Morning Chronicle...
- a volunteer soldier with little professional experience - he found himself almost commanding the division on occasions, noting in his memoirs that Watson regularly passed on Ironside's orders with his own name attached. On its arrival in France in late 1916, the division participated at the end of the Battle of the Somme, before being moved north to prepare for the attack at Vimy Ridge. During the final phase of the fighting at Vimy, Ironside again took unofficial command of the division, overruling an ambiguous order from Watson - who was out of contact at headquarters - to halt the attack, and personally ordering the leading battalions into action.
He remained with the division through 1917, when it fought at the Battle of Passchendale, and in January 1918 was appointed to an administrative posting, as commandant of the Small Arms School, with the temporary rank of colonel. He quickly returned to the Western Front, however, when he was appointed to command 99th Infantry Brigade as a temporary brigadier-general
Brigadier
Brigadier is a senior military rank, the meaning of which is somewhat different in different military services. The brigadier rank is generally superior to the rank of colonel, and subordinate to major general....
at the end of March.
Russia and Persia
Ironside remained with 99th Brigade for only six months; in September 1918, he was attached to the Allied expeditionary forceAllied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
The Allied intervention was a multi-national military expedition launched in 1918 during World War I which continued into the Russian Civil War. Its operations included forces from 14 nations and were conducted over a vast territory...
fighting the Bolsheviks in northern Russia, and in November given command of the force. This was his first independent command, and he threw himself fully into it; for over a year, he travelled continually along the Northern Dvina River to keep control of his scattered international forces, at one point narrowly escaping assassination. However, the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
managed eventually to gain a superior position in the Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
and in late 1919 he was forced to abandon the White Army to their fate. In November he handed command over to Henry Rawlinson
Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baron Rawlinson
General Henry Seymour Rawlinson, 1st Baron Rawlinson, GCB, GCSI, GCVO, KCMG , known as Sir Henry Rawlinson, Bt between 1895 and 1919, was a British First World War general most famous for his roles in the Battle of the Somme of 1916 and the Battle of Amiens in 1918.-Military career:Rawlinson was...
, who would supervise the eventual withdrawal, and returned to Britain. Ironside was made a Knight Commander of the Bath, and promoted to substantive major-general
Major-General (United Kingdom)
Major general is a senior rank in the British Army. Since 1996 the highest position within the Royal Marines is the Commandant General Royal Marines who holds the rank of major general...
for his efforts; this made him one of the youngest major-generals in the army.
In early 1920 he commanded a military mission which supervised the withdrawal of Romanian forces left in Hungary after the Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919
Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919
The seeds of the Hungarian–Romanian war of 1919 were planted when the union of Transylvania with Romania was proclaimed, on December 1, 1918. In late March 1919, the Bolsheviks came to power in Hungary, at which point its army attempted to retake Transylvania, commencing the war. By its final...
, and in the summer was attached to the force occupying İzmit
Izmit
İzmit is a city in Turkey, administrative center of Kocaeli Province as well as the Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality. It is located at the Gulf of İzmit in the Sea of Marmara, about east of Istanbul, on the northwestern part of Anatolia. The city center has a population of 294.875...
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, as it prepared to withdraw. His third overseas posting of the year was to Persia in late August, where - among other things - he appointed Reza Khan to command the elite Cossack Brigade; Khan would later seize control of the country, and rule as Shah from 1925 to 1941. The exact level of British involvement in Khan's coup is still a matter of historical debate, but it is almost certain that Ironside himself at least provided advice to the plotters. On his departure from Persia in 1921, the Shah
Ahmad Shah Qajar
Ahmad Shah Qajar was Shah of Iran from July 16, 1909, to October 31, 1925 and the last of the Qajar dynasty.- Reign :...
awarded him the Order of the Lion and the Sun
Order of the Lion and the Sun
The Order of the Lion and the Sun was instituted by Fat’h Ali Shah of the Qajar Dynasty in 1808 to honour foreign officials who had rendered distinguished services to Persia. In 1925, under the Pahlavi dynasty the Order continued as the Order of Homayoun with new insignia, though based on the...
.
After Persia, he attended the Cairo Conference, where Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
persuaded him to take command of the newly reorganised British force in Iraq; however, returning to Persia in April, the aircraft he was flying in crashed and he was invalided home after several months in hospital.
Interwar period
After recovering from his injuries on half-pay, Ironside returned to active duty as commandant of the Staff CollegeStaff College, Camberley
Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, was a staff college for the British Army from 1802 to 1997, with periods of closure during major wars. In 1997 it was merged into the new Joint Services Command and Staff College.-Origins:...
in May 1922. He spent a full four-year term there, running the college efficiently as well as publishing several articles and a book on the Battle of Tannenberg
Battle of Tannenberg
Battle of Tannenberg may refer to :* Battle of Grunwald , also known as the First Battle of Tannenberg* Battle of Tannenberg , also known as the Second Battle of Tannenberg...
. Most importantly for his future career, he became the mentor of J. F. C. Fuller, who was appointed a lecturer at the College at the same time, and became a close acquaintance of Basil Liddell Hart
Basil Liddell Hart
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart , usually known before his knighthood as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was an English soldier, military historian and leading inter-war theorist.-Life and career:...
. Fuller's views were deeply influential on Ironside, who became a supporter of reforming the Army as an élite armoured force with air support, and of forming a single central Ministry of Defence
Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....
to control the services. He argued frequently over the need for faster modernisation and rearmament, and the problem of the 'old men' still filling the upper ranks of the army; in the end, he had to be reprimanded by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir George Milne.
After Camberley he was appointed to command 2nd Division, a post he held for two years with little effect or interest - he was frustrated by the task of training an infantry force with no modern equipment - and then sent to command the Meerut district, in India, in 1928. He enjoyed life in India, but found the military situation to be equally uninteresting; the equipment was old-fashioned, as were the regimental officers and the overall strategic plans. He was promoted to lieutenant-general in March 1931, and left for England in May, where he returned to half-pay with the notional sinecure
Sinecure
A sinecure means an office that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labour, or active service...
of Constable of the Tower of London
Constable of the Tower
The Constable of the Tower is the most senior appointment at the Tower of London. In the middle ages a constable was the person in charge of a castle when the owner - the king or a nobleman - was not in residence...
. He was relieved from this bleakness by a posting to India as Quartermaster-General in 1933, where he travelled extensively, crossing the country to visit regiments and oversee the Indianisation process. For all this, however, it was the best of a bad job; he was still far from the War Office
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government, responsible for the administration of the British Army between the 17th century and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence...
, and unable to make significant impact on the Army's preparation for a future war.
Preparation for war
He returned home in 1936, recently promoted to full general, to lead Eastern CommandEastern Command (United Kingdom)
-History:The Command was established in 1905 from the Fourth Army Corps and was based in London. Among the formations raised under its supervision in World War I was the 12th Division. Its headquarters was initially located at Horseguards in London. During World War II the Command relocated to...
, one of the corps-level regional commands in the United Kingdom, responsible for a single regular division and three Territorial divisions. Here, he realised that a European war would come sooner rather than later, and that the army was in a parlous state to defend the country. However, he found that as with his earlier posts, he could achieve little in Eastern Command - the major decisions would be made in Whitehall. He himself seemed to lose his opportunity for higher office in 1937, when he was rebuked over his mishandling of a mobile force in the annual exercises; until this point, he had been considered a possible candidate as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, but was dropped from consideration in favour of Lord Gort
John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort
Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort, VC, GCB, CBE, DSO & Two Bars, MVO, MC , was a British and Anglo-Irish soldier. As a young officer in World War I he won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of the Canal du Nord. During the 1930s he served as Chief of the...
, whom Ironside considered unfit for the job. Officially, Hore-Belisha
Leslie Hore-Belisha, 1st Baron Hore-Belisha
Isaac Leslie Hore-Belisha, 1st Baron Hore-Belisha PC was a British Liberal, then National Liberal Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister. He later joined the Conservative Party...
told him he was too old for the post, at 57. He was appointed an aide-de-camp
Aide-de-camp
An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...
to the King in October, a purely ceremonial position, and early in 1938 accepted the offer of a posting as governor of Gibraltar
Governor of Gibraltar
The Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Gibraltar is the representative of the British monarch in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. The Governor is appointed by the British Monarch on the advice of the British Government...
, generally seen as a quiet role in which to retire.
He was helped to accept Gibraltar by the suggestion that, in the event of war, he could be transferred to command the forces in the Middle East; as he believed no major force could usefully be sent to France, this seemed to him likely to be the main focus of British attention in the war. He took up the governorship in November 1938, and threw himself into preparing the colony for war; here, finally, he had free rein. Under his tenure, the defences were strengthened and the garrison prepared for a long siege.
In December 1938, only a month after he had taken up the post, Hore-Belisha had begun to consider the possibility of recalling Ironside to become Inspector-General of Overseas Forces. The position gave him overall responsibility for the readiness of forces based outside the United Kingdom, and it was worried by many at the War Office that he would interpret it as a precursor to being given formal command of the Expeditionary Force on the outbreak of war. However, after some debate, Hore-Belisha went ahead and offered Ironside the position in May, appointing a corresponding Inspector-General of Home Forces at the same time, both under Lord Gort. The decision to recall Ironside may have been helped by the fact that Hore-Belisha was particularly reliant on the advice of Basil Liddell-Hart, an old acquaintance of Ironside's, and was already beginning to fall out with Gort.
Second World War
His appointment on 3 September 1939 as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) came as something of a surprise to Ironside; he had been led to believe he would be appointed as the commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force, and indeed had already despatched his assistant to Aldershot to begin preparing his headquarters. The reorganisation was politically driven; Hore-Belisha had fallen out heavily with Gort during 1939, and the outbreak of war provided an excellent pretext for Gort to leave Whitehall. This left the post of CIGS vacant, and after heavy lobbying by Churchill, Ironside was chosen over Sir John DillJohn Dill
Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill, GCB, CMG, DSO was a British commander in World War I and World War II. From May 1940 to December 1941 he was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, and subsequently in Washington, as Chief of the British Joint Staff...
, the commander of home forces at Aldershot.
As CIGS, Ironside adopted a policy of rapidly building up a strong force in France, aiming to put some twenty divisions in the field. However, this force would be broadly defensive, acting to support the French army, and he aimed to influence the course of the war by forming a second strong force in the Middle East, which would be able to operate in peripheral operations in the Balkans. He strongly supported the development of a close-support air force, preferably under Army command, but at the same time argued that when a German offensive began in the West, the RAF should throw its main strength into strategic bombing of the Ruhr rather than attacking the forward units.
Norway
His enthusiasm for peripheral operations led him to the plans for Allied intervention in Scandinavia; rather than the limited approach of simply mining Norwegian waters to stop Swedish iron-ore shipments to Germany, he argued for landing a strong force in northern Norway and physically occupying the orefields. If successful, this would allow the resupply of Finland - then fighting the Soviet UnionWinter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
, and aligned loosely with the Allied forces - as well as interdicting the ore supply, and could potentially force Germany to commit troops on a new and geographically unfavourable front. The plan was enthusiastically supported by both Ironside and Churchill, but opposed by many other officers, including Gort - who saw his forces in France being depleted of resources - and Newall, the Chief of the Air Staff.
Planning continued through the winter, and by March 1940 the force, of around three divisions, was prepared to sail. On 12 March, however, Finland sued for peace, and the force had to be abandoned.
Norway was the first time major British forces were committed to action during the war, and the flaws in the command system quickly began to show. War Cabinet meetings were dragged out at great length to little effect, as did meetings of the Chiefs of Staff, both to Ironside's great frustration. He also found it hard to cope with Churchill's mood swings and insistence on micromanagement of the campaign, and a gulf began to grow between the men. Ironside's main contribution to resolving the campaign was to insist on a withdrawal when the situation worsened, and he pushed through the evacuation of central Norway at the end of April despite ministerial ambivalence.
Battle of France
Ironside himself was sent to France in May 1940 to liaise with the BEF and the French in an attempt to halt the German advance. He was not well-qualified for this task, having a deep dislike and distrust for the French, whom he considered "absolutely unscrupulous in everything." At a conference in LensLens, Pas-de-Calais
Lens is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is one of France's large Picarde cities along with Lille, Valenciennes, Amiens, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Arras, and Douai.-Metropolitan area:...
he clashed with the French generals Billotte
Gaston-Henri Billotte
Gaston-Henri Billotte was a French military officer, remembered chiefly for his central role in the failure of the French Army to defeat the German invasion of France in May 1940. He was killed in a car accident at the height of the battle.Billotte was born at Sommeval, in the Aube...
and Blanchard, whom he considered defeatists. He wrote: "I lost my temper and shook Billotte by the button of his tunic. The man is completely defeated." Although Billotte was supposed to be co-ordinating the British, French and Belgian armies' operations in Belgium, Ironside took over the job himself, ordering Gort and Blanchard to launch a counter-attack against the Germans at Arras
Arras
Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
. This attack achieved some local success, but the German onslaught proved unstoppable. The French commander-in-chief, General Weygand
Maxime Weygand
Maxime Weygand was a French military commander in World War I and World War II.Weygand initially fought against the Germans during the invasion of France in 1940, but then surrendered to and collaborated with the Germans as part of the Vichy France regime.-Early years:Weygand was born in Brussels...
, so resented Ironside's actions that he said he would "like to box Ironside's ears."
Home Defence
In his diary on the afternoon of 25 May, Ironside wrote that "I am now concentrating upon the Home Defence .... [The Cabinet] want a change to some man well-known in England. They are considering my appointment." That night, he spoke to Churchill, offering to take up the new post, and - again from his diary -His appointment as Commander-in-Chief Home Forces was announced to the public on 27 May, succeeding Sir Walter Kirke. Ironside was succeeded as CIGS by his deputy, Sir John Dill
John Dill
Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill, GCB, CMG, DSO was a British commander in World War I and World War II. From May 1940 to December 1941 he was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, and subsequently in Washington, as Chief of the British Joint Staff...
. In his new command, Ironside had a force which amounted - on paper - to fifteen Territorial infantry divisions, a single armoured division, fifty-seven home-defence battalions, and the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard). However, all of these were deficient in training and organisation, as the operational units had already been sent to France. They were also lacking in equipment; the force as a whole had almost no modern artillery or anti-tank guns, and the armoured division had just a small number of light tanks.
The deficiencies with equipment led to an overall lack of mobility, which coupled with the limited training of the units meant that very few were capable of organised offensive counter-attacks against an invading force. As a result, the only way they could practically be used would be to commit them to static defence; Ironside planned to steadily pull units away from the coast and into a central mobile reserve, but this was not possible until they were trained and equipped for the role. He threw himself into the details of the strategy, laying out plans for the static defence of village strongpoints by the Home Guard, patrols of "Ironsides" armoured cars
Humber Light Reconnaissance Car
The Humber Light Reconnaissance Car, also known as Humberette or Ironside, was a British armoured car produced during the Second World War....
to strengthen the divisions, and light artillery mounted on trucks as improvised tank destroyers.
He agreed to release two divisions for the "second BEF" in early June, but was dubious about Churchill's decision to bring home forces from the Middle East and India; even after the fall of France and the potential collapse of the defences in Britain, he still held to his pre-war position that "[it] is essential to hold the East firmly, whatever happens here". By mid-June, he had begun to collect a scanty mobile reserve - the 8th RTR, with infantry tanks, and six regiments of armoured cars beginning to form - and the pillboxes
British hardened field defences of World War II
British hardened field defences of World War II were small fortified structures constructed as a part of British anti-invasion preparations. They were popularly known as pillboxes by reference to their shape.-Design and development:...
and coastal defences were being prepared, though he emphasised to the local commanders that the latter "are only meant as delaying lines, and are meant to give the mobile columns a chance of coming up to the threatened points".
The fall of France led to a brief interlude where the Cabinet debated sending Ironside on a diplomatic mission to meet Charles Noguès, the French commander in North Africa and a personal acquaintance of Ironside's, but decided to retain him in Britain and send Lord Gort instead. On June 25, he was called to the War Cabinet
War Cabinet
A War Cabinet is a committee formed by a government in a time of war. It is usually a subset of the full executive cabinet of ministers. It is also quite common for a War Cabinet to have senior military officers and opposition politicians as members....
to brief them on the plans for home defence; his system of defence in depth
Defence in depth
Defence in depth is a military strategy; it seeks to delay rather than prevent the advance of an attacker, buying time and causing additional casualties by yielding space...
provided for:
-
-
- A defensive "crust" along the coast, able to fight off small raids, give immediate warning of attack, and delay any landings.
- Home Guard roadblocks at crossroads, valleys, and other choke points, to stop German armoured columns penetrating inland.
- Static fortified stop lines sealing the Midlands and London off from the coast, and dividing the coastal area into defensible sectors
- A central corps-sized reserve to deal with a major breakthrough
- Local mobile columns to deal with local attacks and parachute landings
-
The plan was "on the whole" approved by the Cabinet, and by the Chiefs of Staff later in the week. He was clear in his diaries that he saw the static focus as an undesirable option - "[the] eternal preaching of the defensive and taking cover behind anti-tank articles has been the curse of our tactics" - but that it was the only practical way to make use of untrained and badly-equipped forces. By early July, he was optimistic that more troops could soon be pulled out of static positions and used in a mobile role, with the Home Guard taking over the local defences, but strongly resisted orders from Churchill to pull divisions out of the coastal areas before they could be effectively replaced.
On 19 July, he was summoned to the War Office and informed that he was to be replaced by Alan Brooke as C-in-C Home Forces, effective immediately. The formal reason was that the Cabinet wished to have someone with recent combat experience in command, and Ironside accepted the dismissal gracefully - "I was quite prepared to be released. I had done my best ... I can't complain. Cabinets have to make decisions in times of stress. I don't suppose that Winston liked doing it, for he is always loyal to his friends.
Retirement and writing
A month and a half after his resignation as Commander in Chief of Home Forces, Ironside was appointed a field marshalField Marshal
Field Marshal is a military rank. Traditionally, it is the highest military rank in an army.-Etymology:The origin of the rank of field marshal dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of the king's horses , from the time of the early Frankish kings.-Usage and hierarchical...
at the end of August. He was raised to the peerage in the New Year Honours
New Year Honours
The New Year Honours is a part of the British honours system, being a civic occasion on the New Year annually in which new members of most Commonwealth Realms honours are named. The awards are presented by the reigning monarch or head of state, currently Queen Elizabeth II...
, as Baron Ironside of Archangel and of Ironside in the County of Aberdeen, and retired to the country with his family. He was never given another military posting, and was avoided by the Army establishment; he rarely visited London, and never spoke in the House of Lords.
He turned to lecturing and writing books, including a study of the Archangel expedition, and farming his estates in Norfolk. After almost two decades in retirement, having survived a driving accident, he was injured in a fall at his home; he was taken to Queen Alexandra Military Hospital in London, where he died on 22 September 1959, aged 79. His coffin was escorted to Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
with full military honours, and he was buried near his home in Norfolk. His son, Edmund
Edmund Ironside, 2nd Baron Ironside
Edmund Oslac Ironside, 2nd Baron Ironside is a British hereditary peer, who sat in the House of Lords from 1959 to 1999. Prior to entering the Lords, he served in the Royal Navy and worked for Marconi; on the death of his father, Field-Marshal Lord Ironside, he inherited the peerage in...
, succeeded him in the peerage.
Ironside kept a diary throughout his life, starting as a subaltern at the turn of the century, with the goal of keeping a clear recollection of what had happened during the day and allowing him to reflect on the day's events. These were written directly into bound foolscap volumes, a page or more a day, each night; throughout his life, he totalled some twelve volumes and the best part of a million words. He did not ask for these to be destroyed on his death, though their content was sometimes quite contentious, but did write a will - in 1930 - asking that they not be published. In the late 1950s, however, a former colleague persuaded him to allow extracts to be published as part of an account of the run-up to the Second World War, although he died shortly before it saw print. This was published as The Ironside Diaries: 1937-1940, edited by Colonel Roderick Macleod and Denis Kelly, in 1962; the material was selected from May 1937 to his retirement in June 1940, and published as numbered daily entries with editorial notes.
A second volume, High Road to Command: the diaries of Major-General Sir Edmund Ironside, 1920-1922, was published in 1972, edited by his son
Edmund Ironside, 2nd Baron Ironside
Edmund Oslac Ironside, 2nd Baron Ironside is a British hereditary peer, who sat in the House of Lords from 1959 to 1999. Prior to entering the Lords, he served in the Royal Navy and worked for Marconi; on the death of his father, Field-Marshal Lord Ironside, he inherited the peerage in...
; this covered the period from 1920 to 1922, during his service in the Middle East. The book was assembled by Ironside shortly before his death and, whilst it drew heavily on the diaries, it was written in a more conventional narrative form rather than as a strict day-by-day account, with editorial remarks kept to a minimum.
Honours
He was awarded the Distinguished Service OrderDistinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
(DSO) in the 1915 King's Birthday Honours. Ironside was given the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun, Third Class
Order of the Rising Sun
The is a Japanese order, established in 1875 by Emperor Meiji of Japan. The Order was the first national decoration awarded by the Japanese Government, created on April 10, 1875 by decree of the Council of State. The badge features rays of sunlight from the rising sun...
in 1922.
He was promoted to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in the 1938 King's Birthday Honours. In June 1939 he was made a knight of the Venerable Order of Saint John
Venerable Order of Saint John
The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem , is a royal order of chivalry established in 1831 and found today throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, Hong Kong, Ireland and the United States of America, with the world-wide mission "to prevent and relieve sickness and...
.
Further reading
- Quinlivian, Peter (2006). Forgotten Valour: The Story of Arthur Sullivan VC. Sydney: New Holland. ISBN 978-1-74110-486-8.
Official despatches
- Operations carried out by the Allied Forces under my Command during the period from 1 October 1918, to 11 August 1919
-
-
- in the
- Operations carried out by the Allied Forces under my Command during the period from 11 August 1919, to 27 September 1919.
- in the
- in the
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External links
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