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GREAT BRITAIN: For Services Rendered

2 minute read
TIME

Cash and kudos have been traditional rewards of Britain’s war leaders. Two months ago the Labor Government violated the cash-grant tradition (TIME, Nov. 12). But this week, in the longest New Year’s Honors List in history (some 10,000 names), it toed the line by handing them their traditional victors’ laurels.

Among the new viscounts:

¶ Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, 62, the dapper, decisive Ulsterman who was Britain’s Chief of Staff through the war’s worst years. Current assignment: a 30,000-mile tour of British trouble spots.

¶ Field Marshal Sir Harold Rupert L. G. Alexander, 54, another Ulsterman. His next assignment: Governor-General of Canada.

¶ Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, 58, Britain’s pious, blatant top field commander.

¶ Air Marshal Lord Portal, 52, long-nosed deep-voiced Chief of Air Staff who planned the air victory over Germany.

Among the new barons:

¶ Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Cronyn Tovey, 60, lean, caustic Commander in Chief of the wartime British Home Fleet, known above decks as “Jack,” below decks as “Splash Guts.”

¶ Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland (“Jumbo”) Wilson, (weight: 224 lbs.) Chief of the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington, who was Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean in 1944.

Exclusive Order. Churchill, who has rejected other honors, was one recipient of the seldom awarded Order of Merit, which means just what it says. Another: Lord Portal.

Lady Louis Mountbatten. the slim, attractive wife of Britain’s Southeast Asia Commander, became a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.

A knighthood went to Donald Coleman Bailey, the middleaged, tweedy civil engineer who devised the Bailey bridge—a series of interchangeable, easily assembled steel panels—that carried the Allied armies across the rivers of Europe.

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