257Breese, p. 161.
258Sonia Purnell claims that the company of Javelin mutinied and the leaders were removed from the ship never to be heard of again, but this episode took place later in the war. Daily Mail, 7 April 1999.
259It is confirmed in MB1/K129, Hartley Library. George VI discusses the offer with Mountbatten, RA GVI/PRIV/DIARY/1940: 9 December.
260Mountbatten later claimed, contrary to the testimony of other officers, that the Germans had machine-gunned the survivors in water. Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), p. 63.
261Ziegler, p. 145.
262Coote to Hough, 26 September 1990, Hough papers and Bless This Ship, p. 172.
263Morgan, p. 309.
264Ibid., p. 307.
265Stark to Pound, 15 October 1941, MB1/B14, Hartley Library and PREM 3/330/2, TNA. Pound sent the letter to Churchill, who sent it to King George VI.
Chapter 12: Combined Operations
266Throughout his career, Mountbatten would be criticised for empire-building and extravagance.
267Robert Henriques, From a Biography of Myself (Secker & Warburg, 1969), p. 54. Waugh’s ‘Marchmain House’ in Officers and Gentlemen is based on Combined Operations.
26812 November 1942, Ben Pimlott (ed.), The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton 1940–45 (Jonathan Cape, 1986), p. 518.
269Murphy, p. 137.
27031 May 1943, Michael Davie (ed.), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (Weidenfeld, 1976), p. 538.
271Murphy, p. 128.
272Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (eds.), Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke War Diaries 1939–1945 (Weidenfeld, 2001), p. 236.
273Graham Payne and Sheridan Morley (eds.), The Noel Coward Diaries (Weidenfeld, 1982), p. 7.
27412 December 1941, Noel Coward Diaries, p. 13. Four days later the Mountbattens were at Coward’s forty-second birthday with John Gielgud, Celia Johnson and David Niven.
275Noël Coward, Future Indefinitive (William Heinemann, 1954), p. 210.
276Barry Day (ed.), The Letters of Noel Coward (Methuen, 2007), p. 467.
277The filming is recounted in Coward’s Future Indefinite, pp. 210–31.
278Coward to Mountbatten, 17 September 1941, MB1/A48, Hartley Library.
279Churchill had considered making Mountbatten First Sea Lord in 1942, replacing Dudley Pound. In the end Pound stayed and Andrew Cunningham succeeded him in 1943.
280Neither Alan Brooke’s diary nor the records of the Chiefs of Staff sustain Mountbatten’s interpretation, but he later claimed, ‘the minutes rather blurred over the clash’, cf. correspondence with Stephen Roskill, MB1/K20b, Hartley Library.
Chapter 13: The Dieppe Raid
281In a handwritten note on the minutes of 1 June 1942 – the first meeting of Combined Force Commanders that Mountbatten attended – Baillie-Grohman had added that ‘a battleship was refused “by the highest authorities”, the reason being that, should the battleship be sunk, we could never claim Dieppe as a victory; and it was highly important at this period to be able to report a victory.’ GRO 22 NMM, National Maritime Museum.
282Unpublished manuscript, Before I Forget, John Hughes-Hallett, p. 168, MB1/B47.
283RA, 12 July 1941, George VI diary.
284F.R. Hinsley, et al., Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, vol. 2 (HMSO, 1981), p. 695.
285Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S Churchill 1941–1945 (Heinemann, 1986), p. 198.
286Churchill to Ismay, 15 August 1942, CAB 120/66, TNA.
287Ismay to Churchill, 16 August 1942, CAB 120/69, TNA.
288Peter Murphy interview, FO 898/375, TNA.
289The report is at MB1/B33, Hartley Library.
29025 October 1942, GRO/26, National Maritime Museum and ‘Lessons to be drawn from the Assault on Dieppe’, November 1942, GRO/28, NMA.
291Lyman Kirkpatrick, Captains Without Eyes (Westview Press, 1987), p. 192.
292Montgomery in his memoirs claimed he would not ‘have agreed to either of these changes’. The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery (Collins, 1958), p. 76.
293After Dieppe was captured in 1944, it was revealed that the gun emplacements were hidden during daylight hours and therefore could not have been picked up by photographic reconnaissance.
294Montgomery memoirs, p. 77.
295‘You may be surprised to hear that my responsibility was confined to the initial conception and plan. The plan was subsequently changed and the raid did not take place under my command.’ Mountbatten to Raymond de Boer, 19 June 1962, DEFE 2/1795, TNA.
296David O’Keefe, One Day in August (Knopf, 2013). If so, it was a costly exercise given an Enigma machine was recovered from a captured U-boat within two months of Dieppe.
29723 December 1942, COIS (42) 355 meeting, Ismay 2/3/245, King’s College London.
298See Adrian Smith, Mountbatten: Apprentice War Lord (Tauris, 2000), pp. 233–4 for examples of the favourable press coverage, not least on Mountbatten.
29915 June 1942, Kenneth Young (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart: 1939–1965 (Macmillan, 1980), p. 174.
300Mountbatten to Alan Brooke, 31 August 1942, MB1/B18, Hartley Library.
301Roberts’ fate was to be relieved of his command and sent to run a recruiting depot.
302Alanbrooke War Diaries 1939–1945, p. 350.
303‘My Time with Mountbatten and Other Political Topics’, Head of Secretariat, p. 7, MB1/B53, Hartley Library.
304Arthur Marshall, Life’s Rich Pageant (Hamish Hamilton, 1984), p. 156.
305Haydon to Mountbatten, 8 October 1942, MB1/B28, Hartley Library.
306Interview Dr Brooks, Ziegler, p. 212.
307Morgan, p. 320.
308Hough, Edwina, p. 161.
309‘Habbakuk’ was abandoned in favour of the cheaper option of conventional aircraft carriers and after Allies gained access to airfields on the Azores and the development of long-range aircraft, which allowed convoys to be protected in the Atlantic.
Chapter 14: Supremo
31031 May 1943, John Barnes (ed.), The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries 1929–1945 (Hutchinson, 1988), pp. 890, 893.
3116 August 1943, Alan Brooke diary, p. 437.
312Pownall private diary, Ms 350 A 3002 4/2/13, Hartley Library.
31328 August 1943, MB1/N41, Hartley Library.
314Mountbatten to Edwina, 21 August 1943, BA S144, quoted Ziegler, pp. 224–5.
31528 October 1943, Brian Bond (ed.), Chief of Staff: The Diaries of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, vol. 2 (Leo Cooper, 1974), p. 117.
3169 December 1943, IV/Som 3a, Ismay papers, King’s College London.
3173 December 1943, Somerville to Ismay, Ismay 4/30/2, Ismay Papers, King’s College London.
318Mountbatten, Eighty Years, p. 146 and John Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten (Hutchinson, 1968), p. 103.
319Mountbatten to Eden, 23 September 1943, MB1/C96, Hartley Library.
320Adam to Mountbatten, 21 October 1944, MB1/C2, Hartley Library.
321Ralph Arnold, A Very Quiet War (Hart-Davis, 1962), p. 153.
32222 November 1943, Pownall diary, p. 118.
323Another version was Supreme Example of Allied Confusion.
32412 January 1944, T.H. White (ed.), The Stilwell Papers (Macdonald, 1949), pp. 258–9.
325Morgan, p. 330.
326Ibid.
3272 February 1944, Ismay to Auchinleck, Ismay 4/9/6a, King’s College London.
328Rowland Ryder, Oliver Leese (Hamish Hamilton, 1987), p. 201. A picture of SEAC can be found in Elizabeth Page, A Taste of Life (Librario, 2004), pp. 51–7.
329Mountbatten to General Wheeler, 26 September 1962, MB1/J679, Hartley Library. John Barratt describes her – and Janey Lindsay – as a girlfriend, Barratt, p. 62, but Dean’s family deny this.
330Mountbatten diary, quoted Ziegler, p. 307.
331Philip Ziegler, Personal Diary of Admiral the Lord Louis Mountbatten 194
3–1946 (Collins, 1988), p. 70.
332RA GVI/PRIV/RF/24/195: Diary, p. 102.
333Mountbatten to Edwina, 5 May 1944, BA s145, quoted Ziegler, p. 307.
334Diary 1943–1946, p. 163 and Ziegler, p. 307.
335Pamela’s wartime lovers included Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, and Jock Whitney, a future ambassador to London and the ex-husband of the Mountbattens’ friend Liz Altemus.
336Duff Cooper claimed the affair was over by mid-April. The ‘walkout with Edwina is over, which on the whole is just as well as it was really over-publicised and generally badly handled’. DUFC 12/39, Churchill College Archives.
337Sally Bedell Smith, In All His Glory: The Life and Times of William S. Paley (S&S, 1990), pp. 218–19.
338Daphne Straight to Duff Cooper, 22 March 1944, DFC 12/39, Churchill College Archives.
339Interview Lady Pamela Hicks, 26 April 2017.
340Trevelyan, p. 394.
341Daughter of Empire, p. 93.
342Mountbatten to Edwina, 22 August 1944, BA S145, Ziegler, p. 305.
343Edwina to Mountbatten, 30 August 1944, BA S67, Ziegler, p. 306.
344Morgan, p. 336. It took Edwina two years to recover from the news of Bunny’s wedding.
345Ibid., p. 337.
346Ibid.
347Daughter of Empire, p. 93. Dickie had asked Edwina to choose a wedding present, which likewise wasn’t the most tactful of requests. MB1/C210, Hartley Library.
348Morgan, p. 339.
349Brian Connell, Manifest Destiny: A Study in Five Profiles of the Rise and Influence of the Mountbatten Family (Cassell, 1953), p. 110.
350Morgan, p. 342.
The Mountbattens Chapter 15: Relief Work
3519 February 1945, James Roose-Evans (ed.), The Time of My Life: Entertaining the Troops (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), p. 254.
352Morgan, pp. 343–4.
353Ibid., p. 348.
354Dennis Holman, Lady Louis: Life of the Countess Mountbatten of Burma (Odhams, 1952), p. 82.
355Philip Christison unpublished autobiography, p. 176, Imperial War Museum.
356Ziegler, p. 306, quoting BA S146.
357Private information.
358Morgan, p. 356.
359Mountbatten diary, 12 September 1945, Ziegler, p. 304.
360In May 1945, the Commander-in-Chief, Land Forces, General Leese told Mountbatten he wanted to replace William Slim, whom he felt was exhausted, as commander of the 14th Army with General Philip Christison. Slim would be offered command of a newly formed 12th Army charged with garrisoning Burma. Mountbatten said that he retained confidence in Slim, but that he could be ‘sounded out’ on the suggestion. Leese, either deliberately or mistakenly, interpreted this as support, and informed Slim of his demotion, whereupon the victorious general of the 14th Army offered his resignation. When Alan Brooke learnt of Leese’s behaviour, he immediately ordered that he should be replaced by Slim as C-in-C.
361Pownall, pp. 202–3.
362Brian Kibbins, ‘Reminiscences’, MB1/N99, Hartley Library.
363Ward had previously served with Special Operations Executive, worked at a secret radio station in Italy, and been a PA to the Australian Military Mission in Berlin before being attached to SEAC.
364Tom Driberg, Ruling Passions (Cape, 1977), p. 223.
36528 November 1945, Morgan, p. 369.
366Mountbatten to George VI, 14 December 1945, RA GVI/PRIV/RF/24/129.
367Mountbatten to George VI, 12 December 1945, RA GVI/PRIV/RF/24/131.
36817 December 1945, Duff Hart-Davis (ed.), King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War: The Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles (Weidenfeld, 2006), pp. 374–5.
369Peter Murphy to Edwina, 3 January 1946, MB1/C301, Hartley Library.
370Morgan, p. 371.
371cf. ‘Visit of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to Malaya’, CO 717/149/8, TNA.
372Interview Joyan Chaudhuri, 23 March 1973, Nehru Memorial Museum.
373Ziegler, 1943–1946, p. 304 and diary, 18 March 1946, Ziegler, p. 327.
374Mountbatten interview recorded 26 July 1967, transcript 351, Nehru Memorial Museum.
375Diary, 26 May 1946, quoted Ziegler, p. 338.
376Mountbatten to Edwina, 16 April 1945, BA S146, quoted Ziegler, p. 346 and Morgan, p. 377.
Chapter 16: Love and Marriage
377Hoey, p. 239.
378John Barratt, With the Greatest Respect: Private Lives of Earl Mountbatten and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent (Sidgwick, 1991), p. 94.
379Mountbatten to Patricia, 31 December 1953, Lady Mountbatten Papers, quoted Ziegler, pp. 573–4.
380The wedding can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhneY8v1iaU.
381Benning (1921–74) married John Henniker-Major, later 8th Baron Henniker in 1946.
38221 January 1941, Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), p. 287.
383Mountbatten to King George VI, 20 February 1944, RA GVI/PRIV/RF/24/084.
384Mountbatten to King George VI, 10 May 1944, RA GVI/PRIV/RF/24/088.
385Ziegler, p. 308.
386BA, S96, quoted Ziegler, p. 308.
387Mountbatten to King George VI, 23 August 1944, RA GVI/PRIV/RF/24/94.
388Ibid.
389Mountbatten to his mother, 28 August 1944, BA vol. XIII, quoted Ziegler, p. 308.
390Mountbatten to his mother, 9 February 1945, MB6/M/67, Hartley Library.
391Sargent divorced in 1946.
Chapter 17: A Poisoned Chalice
392RA GVI/PRIV/DIARY/1946: 17 December 1946.
393Ronald Lewin, The Chief: Field Marshall Lord Wavell (Hutchinson, 1980), p. 238.
394John Christie, Morning Drum (BACSA, 1983), p. 95.
395Julian Amery to Mountbatten, 30 January 1968, AME J 2/1/53, Churchill College Archives: cf. Julian Amery to Mountbatten, 5 February 1968, MB1/K293, Hartley Library. Mountbatten went to SEAC.
396Clement Attlee, As It Happened (Heinemann, 1954), p. 184.
397Mountbatten to Attlee, 3 January 1947, Nicholas Mansergh and Peveral Moon (eds.), The Transfer of Power, vol. IX (HMSO, 1983), pp. 451–2.
398The Letters of Noel Coward, p. 83.
399Ziegler, p. 359.
400Attlee to Mountbatten, 18 March 1947, MB1/D254, Hartley Library.
401Mountbatten to his mother, 23 March 1947, MB6/M/68, Hartley Library.
402Pamela Mountbatten, India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power (Pavilion, 2007), p. 50.
403Narendra Singh Sarila, Once a Prince of Sarila: Of Palaces and Elephant Rides, Of Nehrus and Mountbattens (IB Tauris, 2008), pp. 239–40.
404TTOP, vol. X, p. 9.
405Morgan, p. 389.
406TTOP, vol. IX, p. 303.
407Hoey, p. 204.
408Morgan, p. 391.
409Ibid.
41023 March 1947, Shahid Hamid, Disastrous Twilight: A Personal Record of the Partition of India (Pen & Sword Books, 1993), p. 150. Hamid (1910–93), the uncle of the novelist Salman Rushdie, founded Inter-Services Intelligence.
411There were 133 of these meetings from 24 March to 6 May. One problem about such record taking was it only reflected Mountbattens’ version of events.
41231 March 1947, Hamid, p. 153.
413In March 1957, Edwina wrote to Nehru, ‘Ten years . . . monumental in their history and so powerful in the effects on our personal lives’, suggesting a close relationship from the Mountbatten’s arrival. Morgan, p. 474.
414Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom: An Autobiographical Narrative (Longman, 1959), p. 184.
415Daughter of Empire, p. 119. See Ziegler, p. 367 for Mountbatten’s relationship with Nehru.
4161 July 1947, Hamid, p. 201.
41723 April 1947, TTOP, vol. X, p. 388.
418Ismay to Lady Ismay, 25 March 1947, Ismay papers III/8/1, King’s College London.
419Hastings Ismay, The Memoirs of Lord Hastings (Heinemann, 1960), p. 417.
&nb
sp; 420Ibid.
421Ibid.
422Ismay, p. 419.
4232 April 1947, TTOP, vol. X, p. 59.
424Mountbatten to King George VI, 2 April 1947, RA PS/PSO/GV1/GOV/IND 1947 Viceroy Reports.
Chapter 18: A Tryst with Destiny
425TTOP, vol. X, p. 193.
426TTOP, vol. X, p. 232.
427Estimated numbers vary from 60,000, later changed to 150,000 in the official ‘Notes on her Excellency’s Tour of the N.W.F.P. and Punjab’, MB1/Q79, Hartley Library, to 100,000 in Mountbatten’s own estimation MB2/N14, Hartley Library.
4281 May 1947, Report no. 5, TTOP, vol. X, p. 534.
429Hamid, p. 168, claims this is myth-making, that there was never a risk and it was a friendly crowd.
430Mountbatten to Attlee, 1 May 1947, TTOP, vol. X, p. 537.
431Ibid., p. 540.
432India Remembered, p. 88.
433Christie, 10 Mss Eur D 718/3 Part 2, India Office Library.
434Hamid, pp. 166–7.
43515 May 1947, Personal Report no. 7, TTOP, vol. X, p. 836.
436Contrary to Mountbatten’s claim that it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, the date had already been agreed with the India Office. PREM 8/541/10. However, it proved to be an inauspicious date for the astrologers, so it was officially changed to midnight on 14 August.
437Francis Ingall, The Last of the Bengal Lancers (Pen & Sword, 1989), p. 154. Ingall was the founder-commandant of the Pakistan Military Academy.
4384 June 1947, Hamid, p. 179.
439Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (Simon & Schuster, 2007), p. 202.
440Ismay, pp. 427–8.
441Mountbatten to Nye, 19 June 1947, MB1/D1, Hartley Library. Some of the correspondence is missing such as a ‘strictly personal’ letter from Nye, 1 July 1947.
442According to John Christie, he threatened ‘sanctions – such as withholding arms, ammunition, and other supplies – against States not agreeing to accede’. Christie Papers, MSS Eur D718/3, India Office Library.
443Charles Chenevix Trench, Viceroy’s Agent (Cape, 1987), p. 347.
444Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Proudest Day: India’s Long Road to Independence (Norton, 1998), p. 465.
445Chaudry Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan (Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 178.
446Mountbatten to Patricia, 5 July 1947, Lady Mountbatten papers, quoted Ziegler, pp. 398–9.
The Mountbattens Page 39