Gort, John Vereker, Viscount, 1886-1946

British army officer and colonial administrator. Vereker began his active military service in the First World War, when he was stationed as a command staff officer in France and was present at the battles of Festubert and Loos (1915). In April 1917, he was appointed command of the 4th Battalion, Grenadier Guards, and was wounded at the Battle of Pilckem Ridge. Later that same year, he was wounded again in the Battle of Cambrai. Vereker distinguished himself in September 1918 as a commander at the British offensive at the Canal du Nord and breach of the Hindenburg line near Flesquières, where he sustained wounds yet led a successful advance. After the war, he attended Staff College, Camberley, where he became an instructor, and continued in military training at the same institution as well as in India through the 1930s. In 1937, Vereker was appointed to the War Office and eventually headed the Imperial General Staff (CIGS). He is noted for promoting military mobilization on the continent in anticipation of German aggression. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France. Within a year, he was a field commander responsible for countering the German advance, which was unsuccessful. He was relieved of command while at Dunkirk. In April 1941, Vereker was made Governor of Malta, successfully tending to its defences while under siege, until September 1944. He was then appointed High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief in Palestine. He resigned due to poor health (terminal liver cancer) in early-November 1945. He was awarded a viscountcy before his death in March 1946. He married Corinna Katherine Medlicott Vereker, his second cousin, in 1911; they divorced in 1925. He died in London on March 31, 1946.