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Soldier v. Non-Resister. Lord Wavell was the latest scion of a long line of soldiers. The name Wavell (spelled in 60 different ways) runs like a minor but recurring theme through a thousand years of British history. It begins with William de Vauville, a Norman kinsman of the Baron de Briquebec, who came to England with William the Conqueror. A De Vauville fought in the Crusades over the same Near East deserts where his famed descendant was to fight five centuries later. Three Wavells (the first in 1478) were Mayors of Winchester. Of a 17th Century Richard Wavell, preacher and friend of John Bunyan, it is recorded that "like Bunyan [he] was only too familiar with the inside of jails." A 19th Century Wavell discovered the mineral wavellite.
The past three generations of Wavells have produced three generals for the British Army: Lord Wavell's grandfather, Major General Arthur Goodall Wavell, soldier of fortune who fought in Central America; and the Viceroy's father, Major General Archibald Graham Wavell, who fought in several of Britain's colonial campaigns.
Archibald Percival Wavell was born (1883) near his father's barracks in Essex. He was cradled to the blare of bugles, lulled by the thud of marching feet. At the age of six, he first saw India (on the same trip he also took his first look at Egypt). A boy of few words, he noted briefly in his diary: "Went ashore at Port Said." He received a stern classical schooling at Winchester (the twelfth of his line to go there), proceeded comfortably through Sandhurst, then, like his father before him, joined the Black Watch Regiment, in which he was a kilted second lieutenant. As a subaltern he saw the tail-end of the Boer War. Later Wavell returned to India for a spell of soldiering, pigsticking, horse racing, and Kiplingesque social doings at Peshawar.
In the Ypres offensive in World War I, Wavell (a brigade major) lost his left eye. He tried concealing his blind eye with a monocle, later gave it up.
The Desert Fox. In 1917, Wavell was sent to Palestine to join the staff of Lord Allenby, master of desert warfare and conqueror of the Turks. The association marked a turning point in Wavell's career. He emerged from the campaign with: 1) an intense admiration for the military genius of Allenby, which later flowered in the biography, Allenby: A Study in Greatness; 2) two hard-won Turkish nicknames —"the desert fox" and "the greatest bloodhound." In a terse footnote in his poetry anthology. Other Men's Flowers, Wavell recalls how Lord Allenby, who had just received news of his son's death in action, quietly recited Rupert Brooke's sonnet, The Dead:
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness, Dawn was theirs,
And sunset and the colors of the earth.
These had seen movement and heard
music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone
proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; Touched furs and flowers and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white