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Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart (5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963) was a British Army officer and recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" in various Commonwealth countries.〔http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30685433〕 He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."〔Happy Odyssey, p. 89〕 After returning home from service in the Second World War, he was sent to China as Winston Churchill's personal representative. While ''en route'' he attended the Cairo Conference. In his memoirs, Carton de Wiart wrote, "Governments may think and say as they like, but force cannot be eliminated, and it is the only real and unanswerable power. We are told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these weapons I would choose."〔''Happy Odyssey'' p. 271〕 Carton de Wiart was thought to be a model for the character of Brigadier Ben Ritchie Hook in Evelyn Waugh's trilogy ''Sword of Honour''.〔The English author Christopher Sykes (1907–1986) Waugh's biographer (in 1975), felt that the fire-eating officer in the Sword of Honour trilogy, Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook, "...bears a very strong resemblance to..." Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart VC, a friend of the author's father-in-law. Waugh was familiar with Carton de Wiart through the club to which he belonged.〕 The ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' described him thus: "With his black eyepatch and empty sleeve, Carton de Wiart looked like an elegant pirate, and became a figure of legend."〔Williams, ODNB〕 ==Early life== Carton de Wiart was born into an aristocratic family in Brussels, on 5 May 1880, eldest son of Leon Constant Ghislain Carton de Wiart (1854–1915). By his contemporaries, he was widely believed to be an illegitimate son of the King of the Belgians, Leopold II.〔Michael Korda, ''Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia'' ISBN 978-0-06-171261-6, p. 236〕 He spent his early days in Belgium and in England. The death of his Irish mother when he was six prompted his father to move the family to Cairo so his father could practise international law. His father was a court magistrate, well connected in Egyptian governmental circles, and was a director of the Cairo Electric Railways. He learned to speak Arabic. Carton de Wiart was a Roman Catholic. In 1891, his English stepmother sent him to a boarding school in England, the Roman Catholic Oratory School, founded by Cardinal John Henry Newman. From there, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, but left to join the British Army at the time of the Second Boer War around 1899, where he entered under the false name of "Trooper Carton", and claimed to be 25 years old. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Adrian Carton de Wiart」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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