Mountbatten of Burma had once been the German Prince Louis of Battenberg

Posted in Historical articles, History, Politics, Royalty, World War 2 on Thursday, 16 January 2014

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This edited article about Lord Mountbatten first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 515 published on 27 November 1971.

Mountbatten, picture, image, illustration

Earl Mountbatten of Burma

The dive bombers sank the Kashmir first, then they attacked the Kelly. Her gun crews shot down at least three of the Junkers 87s, before a bomb, dropped so close that it could hardly miss, tore a great hole in her. She started to list heavily.

“Keep all guns firing!” shouted Kelly’s captain, Lord Louis Mountbatten, realising at once that his men did not need to be told: they were firing non-stop. No-one abandoned ship: they were washed overboard as their moment came.

Mountbatten found himself by a raft. Like the other men in the water, he was covered in oil fuel. They hoisted the wounded on to the raft, as machine gun bullets ripped into the water around them, killing some of the survivors as they waited for HMS Kipling to rescue them.

The destroyer weaved in and out among the rafts as the bombs rained down. Later, the survivors from Kelly, only 50 of them unwounded, were landed at Alexandria. Their famous fighting destroyer was on the Mediterranean bottom. It was June 1941, and within two years, their already legendary commander, the dashing Lord Louis, was to find himself commanding not just a ship, but a navy and an army and air force as well.

Mountbatten’s career in war and peace is one of the major success stories of our century. The great-grandson of Queen Victoria, when he was only 14 and a cadet at the Royal Naval College at Osborne, he suffered a shattering blow.

The First World War had just broken out, and his father, head of Britain’s navy, was disgracefully forced to resign because he was of German descent. He had been in the Royal Navy 46 years, but such was the anti-German hysteria in 1914 that he had to retire from public life.

All Mountbatten’s career was in part a fight to right this wrong, which he finally achieved when he himself became First Sea Lord, in 1955, then in 1959, Chief of the Defence Staff, Commander of all the fighting services. But before that the Second World War had shot him to fame which became even greater when he was selected as the last Viceroy of India in 1947.

Some have said that his connection with royalty accelerated his career, but, if anything, between the wars it held him back! Admirals were suspicious of such a well-connected young man. But not for long. Not only was he a first-rate officer, but, being gadget-minded, he revolutionised naval signalling methods, making modern communications a major factor in the Mediterranean Fleet.

Just before the war, he became captain of a destroyer flotilla commanding the brand new Kelly. When war broke out in September 1939, he led his flotilla in one of the happiest and most efficient ships in the Navy.

Kelly’s exciting career later inspired Mountbatten’s friend Noel Coward, to make a classic film, In Which We Serve. She almost sank in 1940. During the Norwegian campaign in misty weather, the look-out suddenly shouted: “Torpedo track port!” The torpedo went right under the ship and Mountbatten saw a German motor-torpedo-boat vanishing into the mist. Then the second torpedo struck.

It looked like the end but HMS Bulldog towed her homewards, as dive bombers and torpedo-boats tried to finish them both off. Finally, with the news breaking that the Germans had invaded the Low Countries, a signal was flashed to Mountbatten to scuttle his ship and for Bulldog to head elsewhere. He refused to scuttle and demanded a tug to finish the voyage, which finally ended in the Tyne to resounding cheers from the shore.

While Kelly was being repaired, Mountbatten led his flotilla from other ships. They were in action so much that one officer made the famous remark about their commander: “I know of nobody I’d sooner be with in a tight corner than Dickie Mountbatten, and I know of nobody who could get me into one quicker!”

After Kelly finally went down off Crete in 1941, Mountbatten said farewell to the survivors, who still meet every year, often with Mountbatten in attendance. Meanwhile, he found himself in command of the newly-formed Combined Operations and its equally new Commando troops. When he told Winston Churchill that he really wanted to go back to sea, the great man brushed him aside with the words: “What can you hope to achieve except to be sunk in a bigger and more expensive ship?”

Combined Ops. was to keep up a ceaseless offensive against the enemy-held coastline of Europe until the great invasion came. Its two greatest raids were on St. Nazaire and Dieppe. The first was a triumph. The huge dry dock, the only one that could hold the mighty German battleship Tirpitz, was put out of action, and she was left skulking in Norwegian waters, unable to venture out into the Atlantic.

The Dieppe raid, however, was a costly near-fiasco, but it taught the Allies vital lessons about attacking a strongly-held coastline that had to be learnt.

Ideas, good and bad, flowed into Mountbatten’s headquarters, the best being Mulberry, the code name for the floating harbour which was sent across the Channel to France in separate pieces with the invasion forces, and which enabled the Allies to build up their strength and supplies at amazing speed.

But eight months earlier, in October 1943, Mountbatten had been given an even more vital job. He became Supreme Commander, South East Asia, his mission being to drive the Japanese out of Burma, then Malaya.

We saw earlier in this series how General “Bill” Slim and his “forgotten” 14th Army, driven to the borders of India, learnt how to fight their “invincible” enemy and win. Mountbatten was the overall commander. Arriving in the war zone, he travelled around, sweeping away depression. He refused to allow himself or his men to be downhearted even when his brilliant plan for a seaborne invasion of Burma was shelved because all landing craft were needed for the forthcoming invasion of Europe.

He saw that the Burma campaign was vitally affected by three Ms – Morale, Monsoon and Malaria. He made sure the first was raised and that his men could fight in the endless monsoon rains and win. As for No. 3, he had experts on tropical diseases flown in to assist a first-class medical staff he built up rapidly. Consequently, whereas in 1943 there had been 120 sick for every battle casualty, by 1945 the number was ten for every casualty.

He also made sure that air power was used to maximum effect to support Slim’s troops on the ground, troops led by a man he considered the finest general of the entire war. Burma was reconquered and his forces were poised to re-enter Malaya when in August 1945 Japan surrendered after two atom bombs were dropped on her.

Next there were the thousands of tortured and dying prisoners to be rescued, and his wonderful wife Edwina, head of the combined St. John Ambulance Brigade and Red Cross, took over, visiting camps however remote and bringing hope, help and saving countless lives. Together the Mountbattens organised a vast rescue operation.

The part Mountbatten played as last Viceroy of India in giving her independence and establishing Pakistan cannot concern us here, nor can his final years in the peacetime Navy. Fortunately, a popular television series was made of his life, with himself as the star, so millions around the world were able to learn the facts about one of the most remarkable men of our times.

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