Dill, Sir John Greer.

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Britse Oorlogsmedaille 1914 - 1918VersierselVersiersel van een Ridder
Dill, Sir John Greer, born on 25-11-1888 in Lurgan, Ireland,  Dill’s father, also John Dill, was the local bank manager  Dill’s father, who died when the younger John was just twelve years old) was the local bank manager and his mother, Jane, (who died just months after her husband) was a Greer from Woodville, Lurgan. With the death of both parents, “John and his sister were then cared for by an uncle, the Reverend Joseph Grundy Burton”.
Always intended for a career in the services, Dill attended the Methodist College Belfast, Cheltenham College in England and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. John was a British commander in World War I and World War II. From May 1940 to December 1941 he was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the professional head of the British Army  and subsequently in Washington, as Chief of the British Joint Staff Mission and then Senior British Representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff, played a significant role during World War II in the formation of the “special relationship” between the United Kingdom and the United States. On the outbreak of the First World War. He became Brigade-Major of the 25th Brigade in France where he was present at Neuve Chapelle. By the end of the war he was a Brigadier and had been mentioned in dispatches eight times. Dill was promoted Field Marshal on 18-11-1941, but by this time it was clear how poorly he and Sir Winston Churchill got on. Churchill at the end of 1941 had Dill advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath  and posted him to Washington, to get him out of the way. He showed a great flair as a diplomatic military presence. In 1943 alone he attended the Quebec Conference, the Casablanca Conference, the Teheran Conference, with Josef Stalin and Viacheslav Molotov, meetings in India, China and Brazil. He also served briefly on the combined policy committee set up by the British and United States governments under the Quebec Agreement to oversee the construction of the atomic bomb. He was particularly friendly with General George Catlett Marshall
    and the two exercised a great deal of influence on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who described Dill as “the most important figure in the remarkable accord which has been developed in the combined operations of our two countries”.

Death and burial ground of Dill, Sir John Greer.

 Sir John Greer Dill served in Washington until his death from a plastic anemia, at the age of 55, on 05-11-1944 and is buried on the Arlington Cemetery in Section 32. The horse monument is over his grave.
 

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