Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis

Alexander spent most of the First World War on the Western Front. As a 22-year-old platoon commander in the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, he served with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in 1914. He took part in the retreat from Mons and was wounded at First Ypres and invalided home.[9] He was promoted to temporary captain on 15 November 1914 and permanent captain in the newly raised 2nd Battalion on 7 February the following year.[10]

Alexander returned to the Western Front in August 1915, fought at the Battle of Loos and was, for ten days in October 1915, an acting major and acting Commanding Officer (CO) of the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards as a "Battle Casualty Replacement". He then returned to the 2nd Battalion as a company officer[9] and, in January 1916, received the Military Cross for his bravery at Loos.[11] For service in the Battle of the Somme on 15 September 1916, he was, in October, appointed to the Distinguished Service Order (DSO),[12] the citation for which read: "For conspicuous gallantry in action. He was the life and soul of the attack, and throughout the day led forward not only his own men but men of all regiments. He held the trenches gained in spite of heavy machine gun fire."[12] In the same month, Alexander was further honoured with induction into the French Légion d'honneur.[13]

On 10 December 1916, his twenty-fifth birthday, Alexander became second-in-command (2-i-c) of the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards as an acting major.[9] By May, he was briefly acting CO of the 1st Battalion,[9] as an acting lieutenant colonel, while still only a substantive captain.[14][15] He became a permanent major on 1 August 1917[16] and was again promoted acting lieutenant colonel,[9] this time confirmed as CO of the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards, on 15 October.[17] Alexander commanded his battalion at Third Ypres, where he was slightly wounded, then at Bourlon Wood (part of the battle of Cambrai), where his battalion suffered 320 casualties out of 400 men.[9] Alexander, between 23 and 30 March 1918, had to assume command of the 4th Guards Brigade, during the British retreat from the German Army's Spring Offensive.[9][18] He once again commanded the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards at Hazebrouck in April 1918, where it took such severe casualties that it saw no further action.[9] Still an acting lieutenant colonel, he then commanded a corps infantry school in October 1918, a month before the war ended on 11 November 1918.[19]

Rudyard Kipling, who wrote a history of the Irish Guards, in which his own son, Jack Kipling, fought and was killed in action, noted that, "it is undeniable that Colonel Alexander had the gift of handling the men on the lines to which they most readily responded... His subordinates loved him, even when he fell upon them blisteringly for their shortcomings; and his men were all his own."[20]

Officers of the Baltic Landeswehr in Latvia 1920 – Alexander stands right in the middle.

Alexander in 1919 served with the Allied Control Commission in Poland. As a temporary lieutenant-colonel,[21] he led the Baltic German Landeswehr in the Latvian War of Independence, commanding units loyal to Latvia in the successful drive to eject the Bolsheviks from Latgalia. During service there, he was accidentally wounded by one of his own sentries on 9 October 1919.[22]

Alexander returned to Britain in May 1920 as a major, second in command of the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards;[9] in May 1922, he was promoted substantive lieutenant-colonel and appointed commanding officer.[23] He commanded the battalion at Constantinople (a sensitive posting in the runup to the Chanak Crisis), then Gibraltar from October 1922, then in London from April 1923 until January 1926, when he was released from that role to attend Staff College, Camberley.[24][25] Alexander was then in February 1928 promoted to colonel (backdated to 14 May 1926[24]) and was the next month appointed Officer Commanding the Irish Guards Regimental District and 140th (4th London) Infantry Brigade, part of 47th (1/2nd London) Division, in the Territorial Army[24][26][27] a post he held until January 1930, when he again returned to study, attending the Imperial Defence College for one year.[28][29] There, two of Alexander's instructors—the future field marshals Alan Brooke and Bernard Montgomery—were unimpressed by him.[30]

Alexander then held staff appointments as (from January 1931) GSO2 in the Directorate of Military Training at the War Office and (1932–34) GSO1 at HQ Northern Command in York,[24] before being made in October 1934 a temporary brigadier and given command of the Nowshera Brigade,[31][32] on the Northwest Frontier in India.[33][34] For his service there, and in particular for his actions in the Loe-Agra operations against the Pathans in Malakand between February and April 1935, Alexander was that year made a Companion of the Order of the Star of India and was mentioned in dispatches.[35][36] He was mentioned once more for his service during the Second Mohmand Campaign in Northwest Frontier Province from August to October of the same year, serving under Brigadier Claude Auchinleck. Alexander had a reputation for leading from the front and for reaching mountain crests with or even ahead of his troops.[24][37]

In March 1937, Alexander was appointed as one of the aides-de-camp to the recently acceded King George VI and in May returned to the United Kingdom to take part in this capacity in the state procession through London during the King's coronation.[38][39] Alexander would have been seen in this event by two of his Canadian viceregal successors: Vincent Massey, who was then the Canadian high commissioner to the United Kingdom, and Massey's secretary, Georges Vanier, who watched the procession from the roof of Canada House on Trafalgar Square.[40] Following the coronation celebration, Alexander returned to India, where he was made the honorary colonel of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Punjab Regiment,[41] and then in October 1937 was promoted to the rank of major-general,[42] making Alexander the youngest general in the British Army.[13] He relinquished command of his brigade in January 1938,[43] and in February returned to the United Kingdom to take command of the 1st Infantry Division.[44] In June 1938 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath.[45]

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, in September 1939, Alexander brought the 1st Division to France, where it became part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and served there for the next eight months. In May 1940, when the German Army invaded France, he successfully led the division's withdrawal to Dunkirk, where it was evacuated to England, along with the rest of the BEF. Shortly after Major General Bernard Montgomery had been appointed to command II Corps (and before that the 3rd Division), Alexander was, while still on the beachhead, placed in command of I Corps, and left the beach on the last destroyer on 3 June after ensuring that all British troops had been evacuated.[24][46][47][48] In recognition of his services in the field from March to June 1940, Alexander was again mentioned in despatches.[49]

Allied leaders of the Sicilian campaign in North Africa; (front row, left to right) General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, General Sir Harold Alexander, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, (top row, left to right) Harold Macmillan, Major General Walter Bedell Smith and unidentified British officers.

General Sir Harold Alexander, pictured here in August 1942 as Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, surveys the battlefront from an open car. To his right is Major General John Harding.

After Dunkirk, Alexander returned to the United Kingdom and continued to command I Corps, now guarding the coasts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.[50] He was promoted acting lieutenant-general in July 1940,[51] and appointed the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of Southern Command, which was responsible for the defence of south-west England.[52][53] His rank of lieutenant-general was made permanent in December 1940.[50]

On 1 January 1942 he was knighted and appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath,[54] and in February, after the Japanese invasion of Burma, was sent to India to become GOC-in-C of British Forces in Burma as a full general.[53][55] Alexander was unable to fulfil his orders to hold Rangoon, which was abandoned on 6–7 March.[56] He took personal charge of some small local engagements,[50] and was encircled by the Japanese troops in the Battle of Yenangyaung. Rescued by Chinese troops commanded by General Sun Li-jen, Alexander was able to escape. Following that, Alexander increasingly left much of the tactical conduct of the campaign to his corps commander, Lieutenant-General William Slim, while he himself handled the more political aspects of relations with Joseph Stilwell, the nominal commander of the Chinese forces.[57] Alexander was promoted to Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of Allied Land Forces in Burma, March 1942, and ordered Slim to abandon Mandalay and retreat to India.[50]

By July 1942, the British and Indian forces in Burma had completed their fighting retreat into India, and Alexander, having yet again been mentioned in despatches for his Burma service,[58] was recalled to the United Kingdom. He was at first selected to command the British First Army, which was to take part in Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa. However, following a visit in early August to Egypt by the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), General Sir Alan Brooke, Alexander flew to Cairo on 8 August to replace General Claude Auchinleck as C-in-C of Middle East Command, the post responsible for the overall conduct of the campaign in the desert of North Africa. At the same time, Lieutenant-General Montgomery replaced Auchinleck as GOC of the British Eighth Army.[57] Alexander presided over Montgomery's victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein and the advance of the Eighth Army to Tripoli, for which Alexander was elevated to a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath,[59] and, after the Anglo-American forces of the First Army (under Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson) from Operation Torch and the Eighth Army converged in Tunisia in February 1943, they were brought under the unified command of a newly formed 18th Army Group headquarters, commanded by Alexander and reporting to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) at Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ).[60] The American General Omar Bradley, who fought in the Tunisian Campaign, then commanding the U.S. II Corps, credited Alexander's patience and experience with helping an inexperienced United States "field command mature and eventually come of age."[61]

The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, with military leaders during his visit to Tripoli. The group includes: General Sir Oliver Leese, General Sir Harold Alexander, General Sir Alan Brooke and General Sir Bernard Montgomery.

The Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered by May 1943, and Alexander's command became the 15th Army Group, which was, under General Eisenhower, responsible for mounting in July the Allied invasion of Sicily, again seeing Alexander controlling two field armies: General Montgomery's Eighth Army and Lieutenant General George S. Patton's U.S. Seventh Army. After Sicily, and in preparation for the Allied invasion of Italy, the Seventh Army headquarters were replaced by those of the U.S. Fifth Army, led by Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark.[60]

Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, pictured here as Supreme Allied Commander of the Mediterranean Forces, at his Headquarters in the Palace of Caserta, Italy.

When Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Allied Commander for the planned Normandy landings he suggested that Alexander become ground forces commander, as he was popular with both British and American officers. Bradley, who after Normandy commanded the U.S. 12th Army Group, remarked that he would have preferred to work with Alexander, rather than Montgomery, as he regarded the former as "a restrained, self-effacive and punctilious soldier". Of the problems that subsequently surfaced with Montgomery's command of the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group, Bradley suspected they would not have occurred with Alexander in command.[62] Brooke, however, applied pressure to keep Alexander in Italy, considering him unfit for the assignment in France.[63] Thus, Alexander remained in command of the 15th Army Group, and, with the support of numerous Allied commanders, controversially authorised the bombing of the historic abbey at Monte Cassino, which resulted in little advance on the German Winter Line defences. It was not until the fourth attempt that the Winter Line was breached by the Allies, and Alexander's forces moved on to capture Rome in June 1944, thereby achieving one of the strategic goals of the Italian Campaign. However, the U.S. VI Corps in the Anzio beachhead, under Clark's orders, failed to follow their original break-out plan that would have trapped the German 10th Army escaping northwards in the aftermath of the Battle of Monte Cassino, instead favouring an early and highly publicised entry into Rome two days before the Allied landings in Normandy.[64]

Alexander remained in command of the 15th Army Group, as well as its successor, the Allied Armies in Italy (AAI), for most of the Italian Campaign, until December 1944, when he relinquished his command to Clark and took over as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces Headquarters, responsible for all military operations in the Mediterranean Theatre. Alexander was concurrently promoted to the rank of field marshal,[64] though this was backdated to the fall of Rome on 4 June 1944,[65] so that Alexander would once again be senior to Montgomery, who had himself been made a field marshal on 1 September 1944, after the end of the Battle of Normandy. Alexander then received the German surrender in Italy, on 29 April 1945. Further, as a reward for his leadership in North Africa and Italy, Alexander, along with a number of other prominent British Second World War military leaders, was elevated to the peerage on 1 March 1946 by King George VI; he was created Viscount Alexander of Tunis and Errigal in the County of Donegal.[66]

Brooke felt that Alexander needed an able chief of staff "to think for him",[67] while Montgomery (Alexander's subordinate in Africa and Italy) claimed to think of Alexander as "incompetent" and success was attained in Tunisia only because Montgomery lent Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, the commander of IX Corps, to organise the coup de grace.[67] However, Harold Macmillan was impressed by Alexander's calm and style, conducting dinners in his mess like those at an Oxbridge high table, discussing architecture and the campaigns of Belisarius, rather than the current war.[67] Macmillan thought Alexander's urbane manner and willingness to discuss and compromise were a sensible way to maintain inter-Allied cooperation, but Alexander's reserve was such that some thought him empty of strategic ideas and unable to make decisions.[n 1] Graham and Bidwell, however, wrote that Alexander's impenetrable reserve made it hard to judge whether or not he had any military ideas, but that he was "unable or unwilling" to assert his will over his army commanders, and that Mark Clark, who often referred to him scornfully as a "peanut" and a "feather duster", exploited this weakness.[67]

• 7 March 1936 – 19 November 1937: Aide-de-Camp to His Majesty the King (ADC)[38][108]
• 2 July 1937 – 14 August 1947: Colonel of the 3rd Battalion 2nd Punjab Regiment[41]
• 20 July 1944 – 2 August 1946: Aide-de-Camp General to His Majesty the King (ADC General)[109][110]
• 28 August 1946 – 16 June 1969: Colonel of the Irish Guards[111]
• 10 November 1949 – n/a: Colonel of the Royal Ulster Rifles (London Irish Rifles)[112]
• 10 July 1951 – n/a: Colonel of the Oxford University Contingent of the University Training Corps[113]

• 22 May 1946: McGill University, Doctor of Laws (LLD)[114]
• 1946: Queen's University, Doctor of Laws (LLD)[115]
• 1946: University of Toronto, Doctor of Laws (LLD)[116]
• 13 May 1948: University of British Columbia, Doctor of Laws (LLD)[117]
• 21 March 1949: University of California Los Angeles, Doctor of Laws (LLD)[118]
• 22 October 1949: University of Western Ontario, Doctor of Laws (LLD)[119]
• 1953: University of Liverpool, Doctor of Laws (LLD)[120]
• 1955: University of Nottingham, Doctor of Laws (LLD)[121]

Alberta

• Chief Eagle Head[91]

Geographic locations

•  Ontario: Viscount Alexander Park, Ottawa

Schools

•  Ontario: Viscount Alexander Public School, Ottawa[122]
•  Manitoba: École Viscount Alexander, Winnipeg