[edit]The GOC Eighth Army, Lieutenant-General Neil Ritchie (centre, with pipe) addressing other officers in North Africa, 31 May 1942. Also pictured are Lieutenant-General Willoughby Norrie, GOC XXX Corps, and William Gott, GOC XIII Corps.
On the outbreak of the Second World War Norrie continued to serve as commander of the 1st Armoured Brigade. In April 1940 the brigade was part of the 2nd Armoured Division, which he was given temporary command of for a month between appointments of permanent commanders. Following this he was appointed actingmajor general[15] and became Inspector of the Royal Armoured Corps. Four months later he became General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 1st Armoured Division and was promoted to the permanent rank of major general in June 1941.[16]
In November 1941 the division was ordered to Egypt where Norrie found himself appointed acting lieutenant general[17] to command XXX Corps in the place of Vyvyan Pope, Norrie's fellow student at the Staff College in the 1920s, who had died in an air crash shortly before Norrie's arrival in Egypt.[18] He commanded XXX Corps during Operation Crusader with some success but his tanks suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Gazala in June 1942. He was criticised for his "cavalry" approach to armoured warfare and General Sir Claude Auchinleck, the Eighth Army commander, replaced him in July.
He returned to Britain to be appointed Commander of the Royal Armoured Corps in which role he was to give advice on armoured warfare to General Bernard Paget, the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces. He continued as Paget's advisor when Paget became commander of the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group on its formation in July 1943 but when General Bernard Montgomery assumed command early in 1944, he brought his own advisor.[19] In April 1944 Norrie was appointed Head of the Military Mission to the French Committee of National Liberation (CFLN) in Algiers, a post he held until the middle of 1944 when he was proposed by the Secretary of State for the Dominions to become Governor of South Australia.[20]
Norrie retired from the British Army in September 1944 to take up his post as Governor of South Australia. Although his substantive rank at this time was still major general, he was given the honorary rank of lieutenant general in retirement.[21]
Family
[edit]Norrie (in dinghy) and his family, with Captain Farebrother, ADC (standing, left) at Henley Beach, South Australia, December 1946
Norrie was married to Jocelyn Helen Gosling on 9 June 1922.[22] They had three children:
Diana Norrie (7 May 1923 – 6 December 1932);
Hon. Rosemary Norrie (born 28 March 1926), who married the 3rd Viscount Daventry; and
George Willoughby Moke Norrie (born 27 April 1936).
Jocelyn Norrie died on 7 March 1938. Norrie then married, on 28 November that year, Patricia Merryweather Bainbridge, daughter of Emerson Bainbridge.[22] They also had three children:
Guy Bainbridge Norrie (born 3 May 1940),
Sarah Norrie (born 27 June 1943), and
Annabel Mary Adelaide Norrie (born 23 December 1945).
Norrie also had a ward, his niece Eleanor Kerans (born 21 April 1926). She had been orphaned at an early age; when she was 16 her brother was killed in the Western Desert campaign of the Second World War, leaving her with no immediate family.
Norrie was appointed Governor of South Australia in September 1944, whereupon he was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG).[23][24] He, his family and 12 staff arrived in Adelaide in December. The Vice-Regal couple worked hard to keep the 'Empire Spirit' alive during wartime. Within two years, Norrie had travelled to every local government area within the state, and was sure to welcome servicemen returning from war. Lady Patricia, with Rosemary and Eleanor, were regular volunteers and champions of various patriotic causes. In 1945, Norrie was made a Knight of St John, an award associated with public and charitable works.
Although normally remaining neutral in regards to local politics, he was 'shocked' at the narrow rejection of Thomas Playford's bill to nationalise the Adelaide Electric Company. He privately exerted pressure on the bill's main opponents. When the bill was reintroduced in 1946, Collier Cudmore (later Sir Collier) absented himself from key divisions, allowing the bill to pass and leading to the establishment of the Electricity Trust of South Australia.[24]
Norrie's term was extended for four years in 1948. Despite his illustrious career, he would forever claim that his greatest achievement was the catching of a shark weighing 2,225 pounds (1,009 kg), with rod and reel, off Port Lincoln.[24] For part of his term as governor, his official aide-de-camp was the young Viscount Althorp (later The 8th Earl Spencer), the father of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Governor-General of New Zealand
[edit]Sir Willoughby and Lady Norrie with Mayor H. H. Podmore during a visit to Foxton, New Zealand, April 1954
Dexter, an elephant's head erased sable, tusked argent, supporting with the trunk a garb or (Norrie). Sinister, stag's head couped, holding in the mouth a branch of poplar proper, between the attired a key as in the arms pendant from a chain or (Moke).
Escutcheon
Quarterly: 1st and 4th, Ermine, on a pale Gules three helmets Argent (Norrie); 2nd and 3rd, Or, on a chevron Azure between two poplar trees eradicated in chief Proper, and a mullet of six points in base Azure, a key the wards downwards Or (Moke).
Supporters
On either side a dark bay racehorse supporting between the forelegs a frond of New Zealand fern Proper.
Mead, Richard (2007). Churchill's Lions: a biographical guide to the key British generals of World War II. Stroud (UK): Spellmount. ISBN978-1-86227-431-0.
