SIR DUDLEY POUND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 October 1943, Page 3

SIR DUDLEY POUND

DEATH ON TRAFALGAR DAV LONG AND DISTINGUISHED NAVAL CAREER. SERVICE AS FIRST SEA LORD IN CRITICAL YEARS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 21. The death has occurred ol' Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, 0.M., G.C.8., G.C.V.0., who recently retired from his offices of First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, being succeeded by Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham. Bart., G.C.8., D.S.O.

Sir Dudley Pound’s health, far from good for a long time past, compelled him to enter hospital after his return from Washington with Mr Churchill. Sir Dudley Pound and Sir Andrew Cunningham are among the few Allied service leaders who held the same commands throughout the first four years of this war. Considering his high and responsible office, Sir Dudley Pound was very little in the public eye, and seldom came into the news except when he was photographed at Anglo-American conferences with Mr Churchill. Nevertheless, the fact that admiral and

statesman were closely associated x or more than four years, through bad times and good, in apparent harmony and mutual confidence, is in itself proof of Sir Dudley's worth as a strategist and administrator. The full story of what he did will probably not be told till the war is won.

Sir Dudley was regarded before the war as a leading authority on seamanship and ship organisation, and was said to belong to the modern school of naval strategy which preaches the doctrines of initiative and offence. Born 66 years ago, he is like Mr Churchill in having an American mother. He was at the Admiralty as a captain in the early part of the last war, commanded the battleship Colossus with distinction at Jutland, and planned the blocking expeditions at Ostend and Zeebrugge. After the war his rise was steady and he held many posts ashore and afloat. He was conspicuous at the Geneva disarmament conference of 1932, and was Chief of Staff, Mediterranean, during the Abyssinian crisis of 1935, taking over the command in the following year. He was appointed First Sea Lord in May, 1939, and worked in the closest collaboration with Mr Churchill as First Lord during the critical months before the present world conflict broke out. Appropriately, Sir Dudley was made a member of the Order of Merit immediately before the fourth anniversary of the declaration of war. His service had been rendered under great handicaps. “Periodically he has been accused of gout and ‘anno Domini’,” wrote Mr Ferdinand Tuohy last July, “but he is still there, and so is the Royal Navy—very much so.”