Born into an aristocratic Belgian family in 1880, Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart was sent to boarding school in England before going up to Balliol College, Oxford to study Law. But when the Second Boer War broke out in 1899 the Belgian teenager was determined to be part of it. He later wrote ‘at that moment, I knew once and for all that war was in my blood. If the British didn’t fancy me, I would offer myself to the Boers.’ Abandoning his studies, he enlisted in the British Army under a false name and was sent to South Africa where he was almost immediately wounded in the stomach and groin.
After being sent home to recuperate and face the wrath of his father, who had been unaware of his son’s antics, he returned to South Africa and was later awarded a commission in the 4th Dragoon Guards. Following a brief spell in India, he returned to Europe where he spent much of his time enjoying the traditional aristocratic pursuits of hunting, shooting, fishing and playing polo. In 1907 he became a naturalised British subject and in the following year he found himself a wife - the formidably named Countess Friederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen, with whom he would have two daughters.
At the outbreak of the First World War de Wiart was sent to East Africa where he was seconded to the Somaliland Camel Corps. It was there that he suffered his next two serious wounds. While he was taking part in an assault on the mountain stronghold of the renowned Somali leader Mohammad ibn Abdullah Hasan (known to the British as the ‘Mad Mullah’) a bullet tore off part of his ear. Undeterred, he soldiered on, only to have his left eye destroyed by a second bullet. Hastings Ismay, the future secretary general of NATO, was with de Wiart at the time. He later recalled ‘he didn't check his stride, but I think the bullet stung him up as his language was awful.’
Returning to England to recuperate, de Wiart was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and fitted with a glass eye. This, however, proved to be so uncomfortable that he threw it away and opted instead for the trademark black eyepatch that he would wear for the rest of his life.
At this point many men would have felt that they had done their bit for King and Country, but de Wiart was determined not to miss the struggle that was now raging in Europe. He managed to persuade the Army Medical Board that despite his wounds he was fit for action and secured a posting on the Western Front. Indeed, his friend Ismay later said ‘I honestly believe that he regarded the loss of an eye as a blessing as it allowed him to get out of Somaliland to Europe where he thought the real action was.’
In 1915 he was fighting in the second battle of Ypres when he was wounded yet again, this time by an exploding German shell which shattered his left hand. When a surgeon refused to remove two of his mangled fingers, he tore them off himself and returned to the fray. His entire hand would be amputated later that year. 1916 saw him in the thick of the fighting on the Somme where he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions as commander of the 8th Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment during the fight for the village of La Boisselle on 2-3 July. His citation reads:
‘After three other battalion Commanders had become casualties, he controlled their commands and ensured that the ground won was maintained at all costs. He frequently exposed himself in the organisation of positions and of supplies, passing unflinchingly through fire barrage of the most intense nature. His gallantry was inspiring to all.’
As the war dragged on, Carton de Wiart’s determination to lead from the front would see him survive even more wounds. He was shot in the skull at Delville Wood where he was also injured in the ankle. And as if that wasn’t enough, he was later shot through the hip at the Battle of Passchendaele, wounded in the leg at Cambrai and finally shot through the ear at Arras. By the end of the war, he had been seriously wounded on no fewer than eight occasions. Even so, when he later wrote about his experiences, he commented ‘frankly, I had enjoyed the war.’
Between 1919 and 1921 de Wiart served with the British Military Mission in Poland, surviving both a plane crash and a shoot-out with some Red Army Cossacks. He remained in the country following its victory over Bolshevik Russia, retired with the honorary rank of major-general in 1923 and spent the next 15 years happily shooting on the Polish estate he had purchased. In June 1939, with war looming between Britain and Nazi Germany, de Wiart was recalled to the British Army and once again appointed to head up the British Military Mission to Poland. This turned out to be something of a poisoned chalice and he only just escaped the country when it was overrun by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Returning to Britain, he was handed another poisoned chalice: command of the British contingent in the ill-conceived allied expedition to Namsos in Norway. The campaign was a disaster and de Wiart and his troops were evacuated, arriving back in Britain on 5 May 1940, his 60th birthday. Although he was informed that he was now too old to command troops in action a new job was found for him as head of the British Military Mission to Yugoslavia. In April 1941 de Wiart duly set off for Belgrade but the Wellington bomber in which he was travelling developed engine trouble and was forced to ditch in the Mediterranean just off the coast of Italian-held Libya. He managed to swim ashore, helping an injured comrade in the process, but was quickly taken prisoner by the Italians.
De Wiart was eventually sent to the Italian prison for high-ranking officers in Vincigliata Castle in Tuscany. What happened next has been described as ‘the Great Escape starring senior citizens.’ Unwilling to spend the rest of the war in luxurious incarceration, the thirteen relatively elderly generals and brigadiers held there made several unsuccessful escape attempts before spending seven exhausting months excavating a tunnel under the castle walls. Finally, in March 1943, six of them made their bid for freedom and Carton de Wiart was one of them. He and a fellow escapee, General Richard O’Connor, planned to hike to the Swiss border dressed as Italian peasants. Unfortunately, a 6ft 2inches man with a black eyepatch and a missing hand wasn’t easy to disguise and after eight days on the run the pair were recaptured and returned to captivity. In fact de Wiart would not remain a prisoner for much longer because later that year the Italians, who were looking to change sides, released him so that he could help them negotiate an agreement with the Allies.
De Wiart arrived back in Britain at the end of August 1943 where he was soon given a new assignment. This time he was appointed Churchill’s personal representative to the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek.
In 1947, the battered old soldier finally retired — but there was still time for one last serious injury. On his way back from China he stopped off in Rangoon, slipped down some stairs and fractured several vertebrae. Following the death of his wife in 1949 he remarried and moved into the County Cork mansion of his new wife, Joan Sutherland. He spent his remaining years happily pursuing his love of fishing there until in June 1963 the unkillable soldier finally died, aged 83.