OBITUARY

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 November 1944, Page 4

OBITUARY

FIELD-MARSHAL SIR JOHN DILL

WASHINGTON, November 4. Field-Marshal Sir John Dill, Chief of the British Joint Staff Mission to the United States, died m Washington to-day. He had been confined to an Army hospital for several months suffering from a refractory type of anaemia for which no remedy is known to science. President Roosevelt . has posthumously awarded Field-Marsha] Dill the American Distinguished Service Medal. The United States Secretary of War (Mr Stimson), General G. C. Marshall, and General H. H. Arnold have issued a joint statement paying tribute to Field-Marshal Dill General Marshall said: “No man made a greater contribution to the complete military co-operation of the British and American forces, which is the most vital requirement for an Allied victory.’’

Field-Marshal Sir John Dill was born in 1881. He entered the British Army in 1901 and saw service in the I South African ’War. Throughout the Great War he served with distinction, being awarded the D.S.O. in 1915 and the C.M.G. in 1918. He became Major-General in 1936, and a full General in 1939. At the outbreak of the. present war Sir John went to France as a corps commander. A month later he was appointed an A.D.C. to the King, and in April, 1940, he became Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff. In May, 1940, he followed Field-Marshal Lord Ironside as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and held this position until December, 1941, when he was succeeded by General Sir Alan Brooke. He attained the highest Army rank in November, 1941. In 1941 Sir John was appointed Governor of Bombay, but he did not take up this appointment. Instead, he was selected for special duties, and when the Combined Chiefs of Staff (Great Britain and the United States was established) in Washington in February, 1942, he became the leader of the British members in association with Admiral Sir Percy Noble, LieutenantGeneral G. N. Macready, and AirMarshal Sir William Welsh. Sir John was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1937 and a Knight Grand Cross of the same order in 1942.

AIR MARSHAL LINNELL.

LONDON, November 5

Aii’ Marshal Sir F. J. Linnell, who until the middle of this year was deputy Air Commander-in-Chief Middle East, was involved in a road accident in England on Friday, and died from injuries. Air Marshal Linnell was knighted in June last year by the King during his visit to the forces in Tripoli. He was previously controller of research at the Ministry of Aircraft Production.

DR. A. CARREL

LONDON, November 4

The death has occurred in Paris of Dr. Alexis Carrel, aged 71. He won a Nobel Prize for medicine in 1912, and was famous for his research into the heart. With Colonel Charles Lindbergh he constructed an artificial heart. His best-known book was “Man the Unknown.”

Only the precarious state of health saved Doctor Carrel from arrest as a collaborationist, says Reuter’s Paris correspondent. Carrel during the German occupation directed “the Institute of Radical Studies.” He was ill for several months, but French doctors refused to attend him and only a Persian doctor visited his house.