Alexander Of Tunis Dead

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32016, 17 June 1969, Page 15

Alexander Of Tunis Dead

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) i LONDON, June 16. Earl Alexander of ' Tunis, one of Britain’s I foremost Army leaders I in the Second World War and a former Minister of I Defence, died early to-1 day, aged 77. His war-time fame was built as much on his masterly handling of retreats from Dunkirk and Burma as his victorious leadership in the conquest of Tunis and Italy. I After the war Lord Alexander won the admiration of the Canadian people as their Governor-General from 1946 to 1952. He was born into a leading Northern Ireland family, the i third son of the fourth Earl of Caledon. Shortly before his twentieth birthday he went to France as a second lieutenant I in the Irish Guards on the I »

outbreak of the First World ] War in August, 1914. < Twice wounded and five < times mentioned in dis- i

patches he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel by the end of the war. During the next 20 years he served in many parts of the world. After the German blitzkreig in May, 1940, Lord Alexander was given the job of evacuating British and French troops from Dunkirk. Two years later he bad to carry out a similar task—the extrication of a small British force from an almost hopeless position In Burma. He held up the Japanese advance for four months until the monsoon broke, and was credited with saving the Indian sub-continent from a dangerous situation. Perhaps his best-remem-bered victories were those in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy, which resulted in the eclipse of Field Marshals Rommel and Kesselring, and in the first unconditional Nazi surrender—that of the German forces in north Italy and west. Austria. »’

Lord Alexander was made a field marshal in November, 1944, and was raised to the peerage as Viscount Alexander of Tunis in 1946, shortly before leaving for Canada.

Early in 1952, when the Korean War was two years old, he returned to Britain to. become Minister of Defence. After his retirement from political office in 1954, Lord Alexander entered the field of business and held several directorships. Married in 1931, he is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.