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Dear Dickie. Last year, for reasons never publicly told, Churchill abruptly relieved Sir Roger Keyes and installed Lord Louis Mountbatten in Combined Operations. Perhaps age was the sufficient reason: Lord Louis, at 41, was 28 years the younger. Sulfurous Sir Roger fumed that War Office bureaucrats had stymied him, implied that they wanted to get their clutches on the independent Commandos.
Whatever Sir Roger had to put up with, Lord Louis apparently was given full control. So that he can deal effectively with all three services, he was recently promoted from Commodore to Acting Vice Admiral in the Navy, given honorary Army and R.A.F. titles. Today, as Chief of Combined Operations, he has Britain's only unified command. Aside from Lord Louis, only his second cousin George VI and the King's three brothers hold ranks in Army, Navy, R.A.F.
By heritage and training, Lord Louis is a Navy man. By blood and marriage, he is also related to many of Europe's royal families, including dethroned ones. His mother was Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Hesse. His father was Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg, a German who became a naturalized Briton in 1868, served 51 years in the Royal Navy and was First Sea Lord when World War I began. The name of Battenberg was too much for warring Britons: late in 1914, just a year after 14-year-old Lord Louis had become a naval cadet, Prince Louis resigned from the Admiralty. In 1917, he translated his name into English and became Mountbatten.
Young Louis was a cadet on two of Admiral Beatty's flagships (Lion, Queen Elizabeth), If his royal blood did him no harm, it did not noticeably speed his promotion: a midshipman by 1916, he was a lowly sublieutenant when the war ended.
At World War II's start, Lord Louis was a Captain in command of the Fifth Destroyer Flotilla. Three months later his flagship, the new destroyer Kelly, hit a mine in the North Sea. Lord Louis nursed her home, transferred to another flagship until the Kelly was repaired. The next May, a U-boat torpedoed the Kelly. Lord Louis & crew again brought her home. In November 1940, aboard the new destroyer Javelin, Lord Louis led an attack on three German surface raiders. In flight, the Nazi warships fired a torpedo salvo. Two torpedoes holed the Javelin. R.A.F. fighters warded off Nazi bombers which came to finish the Javelin, and Lord Louis again nursed his flagship to port.
Lord Louis then took the twice-repaired, recommissioned Kelly to the Mediterranean. On May 23, 1941, he was with the Kelly in the hell of Crete. This time, he did not bring her home. A dive-bomber found her. Within 70 seconds the Kelly sank, Lord Louis and some of his men escaped. Standing on a life raft, he led his men in a cheer for the dying Kelly. Down with her went two of Lord Louis' prized possessions: a silver cigaret lighter from his cousin, the Duke of Windsor, and a photograph of the reigning King and Queen. Both the lighter and the picture were inscribed: "To Dear Dickie With Love."
Bad Dickie. Between wars, it was possible for properly born officers of the Royal Navy to retain their standings, and still find time for play. Actually, Lord Louis did a lot of good sound Navy work, but he chose to hide the fact from his London friends, who would have disapproved.