Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay

Who was Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay?

General Hastings Lionel "Pug" Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay, KG, GCB, CH, DSO, PC was a British Indian Army officer and diplomat, remembered primarily for his role as Winston Churchill's chief military assistant during the Second World War and his service as the first Secretary General of NATO from 1952 to 1957.

Ismay was born in India in 1887, and educated in the United Kingdom at the Charterhouse School and Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After Sandhurst, he joined the Indian Army as an officer of the 21st Prince Albert Victor's Own Cavalry. During the First World War, he served with the Camel Corps in Somaliland, where he joined in the British fight against the "Mad Mullah", Mohammed Abdullah Hassan. In 1925, Ismay became an Assistant Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence. After being promoted to the rank of colonel, he served as the military secretary for Lord Willingdon, the Viceroy of India, then returned to the Committee of Imperial Defence as Deputy Secretary in 1936.

On 1 August 1938, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Ismay became the Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence and began planning for the impending war. In May 1940, when Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he selected Ismay as his chief military assistant and staff officer. In that capacity, Ismay served as the principal link between Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Ismay also accompanied Churchill to many of the Allied war conferences. For Ismay's advice and aid, "Churchill owed more, and admitted that he owed more" to him "than to anybody else, military or civilian, in the whole of the war."