Bernard Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg VC, GCMG, KCB, KBE, DSO & Three Bars

Victoria Cross Paving Stone is outside Richmond station London

Bernard Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg - Wikipedia
Lieutenant-General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg, VC, GCMG, KCB, KBE, DSO & Three Bars (21 March 1889 – 4 July 1963) was a British-born New Zealand soldier and Victoria Cross recipient, who served as the 7th Governor-General of New Zealand from 1946 to 1952.

Freyberg served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War. He took part in the beach landings during the Gallipoli Campaign and was the youngest general in the British Army during the First World War,[10] later serving on the Western Front, where he was decorated with the Victoria Cross and three Distinguished Service Orders, making him one of the most highly decorated British Empire soldiers of the First World War. He liked to be in the thick of the action: Winston Churchill called him "the Salamander" due to his ability to pass through fire unharmed.

During the Second World War, he commanded the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Battle of Crete, the North African Campaign and the Italian Campaign. Freyberg was involved in the Allied defeat in the Battle of Greece, defeated again as the Allied commander in the Battle of Crete and performed successfully in the North African Campaign commanding the 2nd New Zealand Division, including during the Second Battle of El Alamein.

In Italy, he was defeated again at the Second Battle of Cassino as a corps commander but later relieved Padua and Venice and was one of the first to enter Trieste, where he confronted Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav Partisans. By the end of the Second World War, Freyberg had spent ten and a half years fighting the Germans

 

" Freyberg served as an officer in the British Army during the First World War."

Partially true but he served in the Royal Naval Division from the beginning of the war until commissioned in the British Army in 1916. Even then he stayed with the RND in 1916.
The Royal Naval Division were fiercely proud of their Naval ranks and customs and were always wary of Army generals who tried to loosen the ties to the Navy.

Maj. General Cameron Shute in particular despised the Naval traditions.
Regards
Hugh

 

AP Herbert wrote this wonderful poem about Shute who complained about the state of Royal Navy latrines:

The General inspecting the trenches
Exclaimed with a horrified shout
'I refuse to command a division
Which leaves its excreta about.'

But nobody took any notice
No one was prepared to refute,
That the presence of shit was congenial
Compared to the presence of Shute.

And certain responsible critics
Made haste to reply to his words
Observing that his staff advisors
Consisted entirely of turds.

For shit may be shot at odd corners
And paper supplied there to suit,
But a shit would be shot without mourners
If somebody shot that shit Shute.

Regards

Frank

 

His son:

• 231225 Lieutenant Paul Richard FREYBERG, OBE, MC, LRDG & 5 Grenadier Guards: POW, E&E