John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort

Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort (10 July 1886 – 31 March 1946), was a senior British Army officer. As a young officer during the First World War, he was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his actions during the Battle of the Canal du Nord. During the 1930s he served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (the professional head of the British Army). He is best known for commanding the British Expeditionary Force that was sent to France in the first year of the Second World War, only to be evacuated from Dunkirk the following year. Gort later served as Governor of Gibraltar and Malta, and High Commissioner for Palestine and Transjordan.

Early life

Vereker was born in London. His mother was Eleanor, Viscountess Gort (née Surtees; 1857–1933; later Eleanor Benson), who was a daughter of the writer Robert Smith Surtees. Vereker's father was John Vereker, 5th Viscount Gort (1849–1902). and promoted to lieutenant on 1 April 1907. While studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was initiated into Isaac Newton University Lodge.

Gort commanded the detachment of Grenadier Guards that bore the coffin at the funeral of King Edward VII in May 1910.

First World War

On 5 August 1914, Gort was promoted to captain. He went to France with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and fought on the Western Front, taking part in the retreat from Mons in August 1914. He became a staff officer with the First Army in December 1914 and then very briefly served as a general staff officer, grade 3 (GSO3) in February 1915 before he became brigade major of the 4th (Guards) Brigade, commanded then by Brigadier General The Earl of Cavan, a future field marshal, in April 1915. He was awarded the Military Cross in June 1915. Promoted to the brevet rank of major in June 1916, he became a staff officer at the headquarters of the BEF and fought at the Battle of the Somme throughout the autumn of 1916. on appointment as Commanding Officer of 4th Battalion, Grenadier Guards and, having been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in June 1917, he led his battalion at the Battle of Passchendaele, The bar's citation reads:

On 27 November 1918, sixteen days after the war came to an end, Gort was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, for his actions on 27 September 1918 at the Battle of the Canal du Nord, near Flesquieres, France.

Subsequent to this he became known as "Tiger" Gort. He won a second Bar to his DSO in January 1919, with the citation reading:

He was also mentioned in despatches eight times during the war. He studied at the Staff College, Camberley, was posted Headquarters London District in 1919 and, having been promoted to brevet lieutenant-colonel on 1 January 1921, he was posted back to the College as an instructor.

Promoted to colonel in April 1926 (with seniority backdated to 1 January 1925), he became a staff officer at London District in 1926 and then became a chief instructor at the Senior Officers' School at Sheerness. He was appointed commander of the Grenadier Guards and Regimental District in January 1930, and, after being placed on half-pay in July 1932, officer in command of military training in India with the temporary rank of brigadier in 1932.

After acquiring a de Havilland Moth aircraft named Henrietta in 1930, Gort became chairman of the Household Brigade Flying Club. On 25 November 1935, he was promoted, at the relatively young age (in peacetime, where promotion was painfully slow) of 49, to major-general. He returned to the Staff College in 1936 as its Commandant. In September 1937, he became Military Secretary to the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, with the temporary rank of lieutenant-general. On 6 December 1937, as part of a purge by Hore-Belisha of senior officers, Gort was appointed to the Army Council, made a general and replaced Field Marshal Sir Cyril Deverell as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS). On 1 January 1938, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. His appointment was generally well received in the army, although there was some resentment in his having passed over a number of much older and more senior officers, among them John Dill, Archibald Wavell and Alan Brooke, who would later become an outspoken critic of Gort. He was not especially highly regarded for his intelligence and so Major General Ronald Adam was appointed to be Gort's Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

On 2 December 1938 Gort submitted a report on the readiness of the British Army. He observed that Nazi Germany, as a result of the acquisition of Czechoslovakia, was in a stronger position than the previous year and that as a result of the government's decision in 1937 to create a "general purpose" army, Britain lacked the necessary forces for the defence of France.

On 21 December Gort recommended to the Chiefs of Staff that Britain would need to help France defend the Netherlands and Belgium, and that for that purpose the British Army needed complete equipment for four Regular army infantry divisions and two mobile armoured divisions, with the Territorial army armed with training equipment and then war equipment for four divisions. In response, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse, noted that such a commitment would be substantial. Gort also attacked as a fallacy the theory of strategic mobility by the use of seapower because in modern war land transport was faster and cheaper than transport by sea. The experience of David Lloyd George's 1917 Alexandretta project "proved that [maritime side-shows] invariably led to vast commitments out of all proportion to the value of the object attained". If a purely defensive position was taken the Maginot Line would be broken, and the British Army (with anti-aircraft defence) was only getting £277 million out of a total £2,000 million spent on defence.

Second World War

thumb|right|The [[Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester|Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, Lord Gort and Lady Gort, with staff officers at the Staff College, Camberley, prior to the departure of Lord Gort and his staff to France, November 1939]]

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Gort was appointed by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France, arriving there on 19 September 1939.

Unimpressed by Gort's qualities for command, War Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha described Gort as: "utterly brainless and unable to grasp the simplest problem". Gort dismissed his subordinates' critiques of the Allies' Plan D, including his former friend Alan Brooke's correct prediction that it would allow the Wehrmacht to outflank the Allied forces, as defeatist. The Pillbox affair, as it was known, resulted in Hore-Belisha's dismissal.

On 25 May 1940, facing overwhelming German forces, Gort decided that he could no longer support the French Army and ordered a retreat by the BEF northwards to the French coast. On reaching the coast Gort oversaw the en masse retirement of the BEF back to the British Isles, involving the Battle of Dunkirk and the Dunkirk evacuation, while France was defeated and surrendered to Nazi Germany four weeks later.

Some historians have argued that, by these actions, Gort saved the BEF,

left|thumb|250px|Lord Gort and Lieutenant-General [[Henry Pownall study a map at GHQ in the château at Habarcq, 26 November 1939.]]

Gort was appointed Inspector of Training and General Officer Commanding the Home Guard in late 1940. In 1943, he succeeded George Monckton-Arundell, 8th Viscount Galway as Colonel Commandant of the Honourable Artillery Company, a position he held until his death.

thumb|right|General [[Alphonse Joseph Georges of the French Army, accompanied by General Lord Gort, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the BEF, inspecting men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, 5th Division, at Bethune, France, 23 April 1940]]

Gort was appointed Governor of Malta in 1942 and led the defence of the island under siege from enemy forces. The Maltese Government presented a Sword of Honour to him for this role. Gort received his field marshal's baton from the King at Malta on 20 June 1943. Gort was in attendance, along with Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harold Alexander, when Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed the surrender of all Italian forces in Valletta harbour on 29 September 1943.

Gort was also present when his son-in-law, Major William Sidney, received the Victoria Cross from General Sir Harold Alexander, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the Allied Armies in Italy, on 3 March 1944 in Italy. Despite growing tensions in Palestine, Gort strove to cultivate good personal relations with both Jews and Arabs, and was greatly admired and respected by the Jewish and Arab communities.

thumb|right|Mr and Mrs [[David Ben-Gurion of the Jewish Agency being presented to Viscount Gort, the new Commissioner of Palestine.]]

During his time in Palestine, Gort's health deteriorated, and he was suffering from great pain and discomfort in his abdomen. He was in fact suffering from liver cancer, but the doctors he consulted in London were unable to properly diagnose his condition. Gort ruled Palestine at the time that the Jewish insurgency was beginning. Despite his efforts, he was unable to stem the growing confrontation between the Yishuv (Jewish community) and British authorities. On 5 November 1945, he stepped down as High Commissioner and returned to Britain. Commenting on his departure, The Palestine Post wrote that "No High Commissioner in the twenty-five years of British rule in Palestine enjoyed greater popular trust and none repaid it with greater personal kindness." Their elder son, Charles Standish Vereker, was born on 23 February 1912, and served as a lieutenant with the Grenadier Guards, before committing suicide (26 February 1941). A second son, Jocelyn Cecil Vereker, was born on 27 July 1913, but died before his second birthday.

John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort

Early life

First World War

Second World War

Arms

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links