Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside
CMG DSO | |
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Birth name | William Edmund Ironside |
Nickname(s) | Tiny |
Born | Edinburgh, Scotland | 6 May 1880
Died | 22 September 1959 Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, London | (aged 79)
Allegiance | United Kingdom |
Service/ | British Army |
Years of service | 1899–1940 |
Rank | Field Marshal |
Unit | Royal Artillery |
Commands held |
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Battles/wars |
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Awards |
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Ironside joined the
He returned to the Army as Commandant of the Staff College, Camberley, where he advocated 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, being 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 (BEF) on the outbreak of war.
However, after some political manoeuvring, General Gort was given this command and Ironside was appointed as the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Ironside 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 raised to the peerage as Baron Ironside.
Lord Ironside retired to Morley Old Hall in Norfolk to write, and never again saw active service or held any official position.
Early life
Ironside was born in Edinburgh, 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 military pension. As the cost of living in the late nineteenth century was substantially lower in mainland Europe than in Britain, she travelled extensively around the Continent, where the young Edmund began learning various foreign languages.[1] This grasp of language would become one of the defining features of his character; by middle age, he was fluent enough to officially interpret in seven, and was proficient in perhaps ten more.[2]
He was educated at schools in
Boer War
After attending the
At the end of the war in May 1902, he was a member of the small force which escorted
Ironside was subsequently posted to India, where he served with
First World War
Ironside's two-year course at the Staff College, which he found unstimulating, was cut short by the outbreak of the
He was promoted to temporary
He remained with the division through 1917, when it fought at the
Russia and Iran
Ironside remained with 99th Brigade for only six months; in September 1918, he was attached to the
In early 1920 he commanded a military mission which supervised the withdrawal of Romanian Forces left in Hungary after the
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.[7]
Interwar period
After recovering from his injuries on half-pay, Ironside returned to active duty as Commandant of the
After Camberley he was appointed to command
Preparation for war
He returned home in 1936,
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.[37] 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.[7]
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
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 the 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
Second World War
His appointment on 3 September 1939 as
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.[43] 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 Royal Air Force (RAF) should throw its main strength into strategic bombing of the Ruhr rather than attacking the forward units.[44]
Norway
Ironside's enthusiasm for "peripheral" operations led him to 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 Swedish orefields. If successful, this would allow the resupply of Finland – then fighting the Soviet Union, and aligned loosely with the Allied forces – as well as interdicting Germany's ore supply, and could potentially force Germany to commit troops on a new and geographically unfavourable front.[45] Both Ironside and Churchill supported the plan enthusiastically, but it met with opposition from many other officers, including from Gort – who saw his forces in France being depleted of resources – and from Cyrill Newall, the Chief of the Air Staff.[46]
Planning continued through the winter of 1939-1940, and by March 1940 a force of around three divisions was prepared to sail. On 12 March, however, Finland sued for peace, and the expedition had to be abandoned.[47]
Following the German invasion of Norway in April 1940 as part of
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".
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(s) a change to some man well-known in England. They are considering my appointment".[56] That night, he spoke to Churchill, offering to take up the new post, and – again from his diary:
I was told that I had to take over the command in England and organise that. I am to be made a Field Marshal later. Not at once, because the public may think that I am being given a sop and turned out. An honour for me and a new and most important job, one much more to my liking than C.I.G.S. in every way.[57]
His appointment as
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 agreed to release two divisions for the Second BEF in early June,[58] but was dubious about Churchill's decision to bring home troops 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".[64] 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[65] – 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."[66]
The
- 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 linessealing 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,[67] and by the Chiefs of Staff later in the week.[68] 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"[69] – but that it was the only practical way to make use of untrained and badly-equipped forces.[68] 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.[70]
However, criticism of the "Ironside plan" was soon manifest. On 26 June (only a day after the plan's approval) at a meeting of the Vice-Chiefs of Staff, Air Marshal Richard Peirse pointed out that many of the RAF's main operational airfields would be overrun by an invader before they reached Ironside's principal stop line, the "GHQ Line".[71] The conclusion of the meeting was that the plan was "completely unsound".[72] Although Ironside managed to placate the Chiefs of Staff, discontent amongst his subordinates was growing; one divisional commander wrote "We have become pill-box mad".[73] There was widespread concern that troops were spending their time constructing defences rather than on the training which they desperately needed.[74] Another critic was Major-General Bernard Montgomery, who later wrote that he found himself "in complete disagreement with the general approach to the defence of Britain and refused to apply it."[75] When Churchill visited Montgomery's 3rd Infantry Division on 2 July, he described to the prime minister how his division, which was fully equipped except for transport, could be made into a mobile formation by the requisitioning of municipal buses, able to strike at the enemy beachheads rather than strung out along the coast as ordered.[76] Ironside's credibility was not improved by his association with "Boney" Fuller, a senior member of the British Union of Fascists. Finally, on 17 July, Churchill had a long drive with Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Brooke, the commander of Southern Command, whose views on creating mobile reserves held close to possible landing sites were in accordance with his own.[77]
On 19 July, Ironside was summoned to the War Office and informed that he was to be replaced by Brooke as C-in-C Home Forces, effective immediately.[58] 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."[78] On his arrival at Home Forces HQ, Brooke was astonished that Ironside had not stayed to apprise him of the situation; neither had he left him any notes except for a brief memo to say that he had arranged for Brooke to use his staff car.[79]
Retirement and writing
At the end of August, a month and a half after his resignation as Commander-in-Chief of Home Forces, Ironside was appointed a field marshal. He was raised to the peerage in the New Year Honours, on 29 January 1941, as "Baron Ironside of Archangel and of Ironside in the County of Aberdeen",[80][81] and retired to Morley Old Hall in Norfolk with his family. He never received another military posting, and ostracised by the Army establishment,[7] rarely visited London, and never spoke in the House of Lords.[82]
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,[7] and he was buried near his home at Hingham, Norfolk. He is commemorated by a memorial plaque in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral.[83]
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.[84]
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.[85]
Honours
- Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) in the 1938 )
- Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) on 1 January 1918.[88]
- Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in the 1915 King's Birthday Honours (23 June 1915).[89]
- Knight of the Most Venerable Order of Saint John in June 1939.[90]
- Mentioned in despatches(10 September 1901, 4 December 1914, 22 June 1915, 15 June 1916, 15 May 1917, 11 December 1917, 20 December 1918, 21 May 1920)
- Queen's South Africa Medal (clasps: Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal)
- King's South Africa Medal (clasps: South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902)
- 1914 Star
- British War Medal
- Victory Medal
- General Service Medal (1918) North-West Persia Clasp
- Virtuti Militari (Poland)
- Cross of St. George(Russia)
- Knight of the Order of St Anna(Russia)
- Order of the Lion and the Sun (Persia, 1921)
- Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd Class (6 February 1922, Japan).[91]
- Grand Croix de la Légion d'Honneur in 1946 (France), previously Officier.[88]
- Croix de Guerre avec Palme (France).[88]
- Order of St. Vladimir (Russia)[88]
- Baron Ironside of Archangel and of Ironside in the County of Aberdeen, in the 1941 New Year Honours (29 January 1941).[81]
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Notes
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 13
- ^ The issue of which languages Ironside spoke, and how well, is an interesting one. Cairns says that he was "credited with a working knowledge of anything from a dozen to eighteen". Bond merely notes that he was an interpreter in seven (Bond, p. 17). Harold Nicolson recorded that as a child he had learned Flemish, and during the Boer War learned 'Taal'. (Nicolson, p. 675) He was a first-class interpreter in five (German, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, and Afrikaans), a second-class interpreter in French, and had a grasp of Russian, Turkish and Persian; by the time of writing in 1940, he could speak a total of fourteen languages. (Nicolson, p. 674) Including English, this gives a total of eleven (counting Taal and Afrikaans together). In his diaries he noted that he learned Italian in 1919, and as a subaltern had learned Hungarian, (Ironside (1972), p. 8); he also notes a conversation with an old man in Persia who "spoke good Urdu" (Ironside (1972), p. 173), strongly suggesting Ironside himself spoke it well enough to pass judgement – as would many of officers who had spent significant time in India. This gives fourteen in total, with the possibility that some others are simply not mentioned.
- ^ Cairns (2004); Bond, pp. 16–17
- ^ a b c d e Quarterly Army List for the quarter ending 31st March 1915. London: HMSO. 1915. p. 630.
- ^ "No. 7095". The London Gazette. 4 July 1899. p. 4138.
- ^ a b c Ironside (1962), p. 14
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Cairns (2004)
- ^ "No. 27353". The London Gazette. 10 September 1901. p. 5927.
- ^ Ironside (1972), p. 143
- ^ "The Army in South Africa - Troops returning Home". The Times. No. 36899. London. 15 October 1902. p. 8.
- ^ "No. 28665". The London Gazette. 22 November 1912. p. 8580.
- ^ Life, 31 July 1939, p. 62. Online edition
- ^ "No. 29519". The London Gazette. 24 March 1916. p. 3180.
- ^ Ironside (1972), pp. 70–4; Cairns (2004)
- ^ Ironside (1972), pp. 74–75
- ^ Quarterly Army List for the quarter ending 31st March 1918. London: HMSO. 1918. p. 259.
- ^ "No. 30526". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 February 1918. p. 2050.
- ^ "No. 31023". The London Gazette (Supplement). 19 November 1918. p. 13711.
- ^ "No. 31488". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 August 1919. p. 9945.
- ^ "No. 31764". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 January 1920. p. 1375.
- ^ Bond, p. 18
- ^ The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7 (1991); pp. 210, 219–220
- JSTOR 4310304.
- S2CID 163139538.
- JSTOR 4299683.
- ^ "No. 32686". The London Gazette (Supplement). 10 June 1948. p. 3420.
- ^ Cairns (2004); Holden Reid (2009)
- ^ "No. 33212". The London Gazette. 19 October 1926. p. 6688.
- ^ "No. 33481". The London Gazette. 29 March 1929. p. 2164.
- ^ "No. 33748". The London Gazette. 28 August 1931. p. 5626.
- ^ "No. 33734". The London Gazette. 10 July 1931. p. 4540.
- ^ "No. 34003". The London Gazette. 8 December 1933. p. 7957.
- ^ "No. 34282". The London Gazette. 8 May 1936. p. 2985.
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 21
- ^ "No. 34568". The London Gazette. 8 November 1938. p. 6988.
- ^ Cairns (2004); Bond, pp. 19–20
- ^ Bond, pp. 19–20
- ^ Bond, p. 20
- ^ Bond [chapter on Gort], p. 37
- ^ Bond, pp. 20–21; Prażmowska, pp. 76–77, 97–98
- ^ a b Mead 2007, p. 217.
- ^ Bond, p. 21
- ^ Bond, p. 22
- ^ Bond, p. 23
- ^ Mead 2007, p. 218.
- ^ Bond, pp. 25–6
- ^ Bond, p. 26
- ^ Bond, pp. 26–7
- ^ Mead 2007, pp. 218–219.
- ^ Bond, p. 27
- ^ Jackson (2003), p. 82
- ^ Jackson (2003), p. 86
- ^ Jackson (2003), p. 87
- ^ Jackson (2003), p. 91. Jackson continues: "causing one British witness to observe that to do this Weygand would have had to climb on to a chair."
- ^ Heathcote (1999), p. 189
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 333
- ^ a b Ironside (1962), p. 335
- ^ a b c Mead 2007, p. 219.
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 340
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 341
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 344
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 342. It is unclear if the name was linked to Ironside, or simply a literal description.
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 346
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 351
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 363
- ^ Ironside (1962), pp. 368–369.
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 371
- ^ a b Ironside (1962), p. 374
- ^ Ironside (1936), p. 354
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 383
- ^ McKinstry p. 123
- ^ Newbold p. 222
- ^ Newbold p. 235
- ^ McKinstry p. 124
- ^ McKinstry p. 203
- ^ McKinstry p. 204
- ^ McKinstry p. 205
- ^ Ironside (1962), p. 387
- ^ Alanbrooke, entry for 20 July 1940
- ^ "No. 35029". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1940. p. 1.
- ^ a b "No. 35065". The London Gazette. 4 February 1941. p. 691.
- ^ Speech by Edmund Ironside, 2nd Baron Ironside; Hansard, 3 November 1965
- ^ Ironside 2018, p. 378
- ^ Ironside (1962), pp. 15–18. The diaries themselves contain a reference to "sixty volumes", in a note on 12 June 1940 (p. 363)
- ^ Ironside (1972), pp. 2–3
- ^ "No. 34518". The London Gazette (Supplement). 7 June 1938. p. 3687.
- ^ Heathcote (1999), p. 187
- ^ a b c d "Lord Ironside". Unit Histories. Retrieved 7 January 2011.
- ^ "No. 29202". The London Gazette (Supplement). 22 June 1915. p. 6117.
- ^ "No. 34639". The London Gazette. 23 June 1939. p. 4238.
- ^ "No. 32600". The London Gazette (Supplement). 6 February 1922. p. 1064.
- ^ Burke's Peerage. 1999.
Bibliography
Articles
- Cairns, John C (September 2004). "Ironside, (William) Edmund, first Baron Ironside (1880–1959)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34113. Retrieved 14 January 2008. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Holden Reid, Brian (September 2009). "Fuller, John Frederick Charles (1878–1966)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33290. Retrieved 24 December 2009. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- JSTOR 20029035.
Primary and secondary sources
- Official despatches
- Operations carried out by the Allied Forces under my Command during the period from 1 October 1918, to 11 August 1919
- in "No. 31850". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 April 1920. pp. 4116–4118.
- Operations carried out by the Allied Forces under my Command during the period from 11 August 1919, to 27 September 1919.
- in "No. 31850". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 April 1920. pp. 4130–4131.
- Books
- Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Lord (2001). Danchev, Alex; Todman, Daniel (eds.). War Diaries 1939–1945. Phoenix Press. ISBN 1-84212-526-5.
- ISBN 0-349-11317-3.
- Bond, Brian (1999). "Gort". Churchill's Generals. Abacus. ISBN 0-349-11317-3.
- Eastwood, James (1940). General Ironside. Pilot Press.
- Heathcote, Tony (1999). The British Field Marshals 1736–1997. Pen & Sword. ISBN 0-85052-696-5.
- Ironside, Edmund (1962). The Ironside diaries, 1937–1940. Constable. ISBN 0-8371-7369-8.
- Ironside, Edmund (1972). High Road to Command: The Diaries of Major-Gen. Sir Edmund Ironside 1920–1922. Leo Cooper. ISBN 978-0750963794.
- Ironside, Edmund (2018). Ironside: The Authorised Biography of Field Marshal Lord Ironside. The History Press. ISBN 978-0850520774.
- Jackson, Julian (2003). The Fall of France. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280300-X.
- McKinstry, Leo (2014). Operation Sealion. John Murray. ISBN 978-1-84854-704-9.
- Prażmowska, Anita J. (2004). Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52938-7.
- Quinlivian, Peter (2006). Forgotten Valour: The Story of Arthur Sullivan VC. Sydney: New Holland. ISBN 978-1-74110-486-8.
- Soutar, Andrew (1940). With Ironside in North Russia. Hutchinson.
- Wright, Damien (2017). Churchill's Secret War with Lenin: British and Commonwealth Military Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1918-20. Solihull: Helion. ISBN 978-1911512103.
- Other
- Newbold, David John. "BRITISH PLANNING AND PREPARATIONS TO RESIST INVASION ON LAND, SEPTEMBER 1939 – SEPTEMBER 1940". kclpure.kcl.ac.uk. King's College, University of London. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
- Mead, Richard (2007). Churchill's Lions: A Biographical Guide to the Key British Generals of World War II. Stroud: Spellmount. ISBN 978-1-86227-431-0.
- Smart, Nick (2005). Biographical Dictionary of British Generals of the Second World War. Barnesley: Pen & Sword. ISBN 1844150496.