Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside

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Field Marshal William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside GCB, CMG (6 May 1880 - 22 September 1959) was a British soldier who played a significant role as commander of British forces in Persia in 1920-1921. He went on to serve as Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the early part of World War II.

He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second child of Surgeon-Major William Ironside, and was educated at Tonbridge School, Kent. He joined the British Army as a field artilleryman. In 1899 he was sent to South Africa and during the Second Boer War worked as a spy. These experiences later resulted in his being used as the model for Richard Hannay, a character in the novels of John Buchan.

He was promoted to captain in 1908 and on the outbreak of the First World War was sent to France, where he served on the Western Front. He fought at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele and in 1918 reached the rank of colonel, in charge of the Machine Gun Corps.

Ironside was sent to Archangel in north Russia in 1918, and placed in command of the Allied army fighting against the Bolsheviks. The war, fought on permafrost, was very difficult and involved British, French, and American soldiers who were greatly outnumbered. Ironside was popular with his men, with stories, due to his large size, of having crushed a Boer soldier with his arms, in the Boer war. The Red Army managed eventually to gain a superior position in the Civil War and in autumn 1919 he was forced to abandon the White Army to their fate.

In 1920 he served with British forces in Izmit, Turkey. He commanded some 6,000 British troops in Persia (NORPERFORCE) with headquarters in Qazvin from 4 October 1920 to 18 February 1921. His four and a half months in Persia were known primarily for two accounts. First, his role in the discharge of more than a hundred Russian officers and NCOs of the Cossack Division and their replacement by Persians under the command of Reza Khan, founder of the Pahlavi dynasty; and second, his encouragement of Reza Khan's coup d'état of 1921. On each occasion Ironside acted on his own responsibility without authority from London. He distrusted Russian loyalties after the 1917 Revolution and with the assistance of Herman Norman, the British Minister in Tehran, persuaded the Shah to dismiss the Cossack Division's commanding officer, and every Russian under him. It was also Ironside who selected Lieutenant Colonel Reza Khan as the Russian's successor. The appointment was based on the advice of a British officer friend, attached to the Cossacks for a short time, and after several visits to their camp near Qazvin where he was much impressed by the Persian contingent. Ironside's decision "to let the Cossacks go" was, according to his diary, because he wanted a strong military commander in the capital to save the country from the Bolsheviks and chaos and safeguard the imminent withdrawal of NORPERFORCE from Persia. In return, Reza Khan promised not to hinder British withdrawal or depose the Shah.

Ironside was appointed head of Eastern Command in 1936 and served as governor and Commander-in-Chief of Gibraltar (1938-39). Ironside became Chief of the Imperial General Staff in September 1939 when he replaced General Lord Gort who had been sent to France as head of the British Expeditionary Force at the outbreak of World War II. Ironside himself was sent to France in May 1940 to liase with the BEF and the French in an attempt to halt the German advance. On May 20th, he had a lucky escape when his Calais hotel suffered a direct hit from a German bomb and he was blown out of bed. On his return to Britain, a German invasion of Britain seemed imminent, so Ironside was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Home Forces but was replaced in July that year. In 1941, he was raised to the peerage and retired from active service. Lord Ironside died in London on 22 September 1959.

[edit] Further reading

• Ironside, Lord Edmund High Road to Command: The Diaries of Major-Gen. Sir Edmund Ironside 1920–1922 Cooper, 1972

Military Offices
Preceded by The Viscount Gort	Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1939–1940	Succeeded by Sir John Dill
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New Creation	Baron Ironside 1941–1959	Succeeded by Edmund Ironside