The Man Who Was Larger Than Life

If you want to be a leader of a largeI number of men," Lord Mountbatten once observed, "you can't go around like a shrinking violet hiding yourself: you've got to put on a bit of an act. It must be sincere, it's no good having a bogus act. You've got to play up any qualities you have and blow them up larger than life."

Throughout a remarkable lifetime as an influential member of the royal family, as an acclaimed combat hero and strategic planner in World War II, Lord Mountbatten's considerable qualities indeed seemed larger than life. He appeared to embody, if anyone could, the very model of what Englishmen cherish as their national character. As French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing eulogized after the assassination last week: "He personified British courage, dignity and elegance."

He looked the part. Whether in ermine-trimmed robe carrying the 30-lb. sword of state beside the Queen for the opening of Parliament or in blue-and-gold naval uniform at ship launchings and sundry other ceremonies he relished, he was nothing if not regal. The wide mouth and ruler-straight gaze epitomized the braided bloodlines of contemporary European royalty. Mountbatten was, in fact, not only a cousin of Queen Elizabeth and an uncle of Prince Philip, but also related to most of Europe's other royal houses.

He lived the part. Whether commanding a destroyer in the thick of battle in World War II or, later, presiding over India's independence in the first shedding of empire, Mountbatten accumulated public triumphs with a seemingly magical ease. His relaxed charm masked a relentless drive, an occasional impatience with subordinates that verged on imperiousness, and a streak of self-acknowledged vanity. He once described himself as "the most conceited man I know," for instance. But coming from him the admission was received as more of his disarming informality.

As a patriarchal figure to whom the entire royal family turned for counsel, "Uncle Dickie," as they called him, was noted for a keen political sense and enlightened liberal conscience; he despised extremism, ridiculed narrow nationalism, welcomed a multiracial Commonwealth as a natural part of the Third World's emergence, which he foresaw long before it became a reality. Significantly, Mountbatten was an important influence in the careful royal upbringing of his great-nephew, Prince Charles. Said the future King recently: "Uncle Dickie is a person I admire almost more than anyone else."

Admiral of the Fleet, Earl Mountbatten of Burma was born at Frogmore House, Windsor, in 1900, just as the sun was passing over the yardarm of Empire. His father was Prince Louis of Battenberg, a German kinsman of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and later Britain's First Sea Lord. Queen Victoria held him in her arms as he was christened Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas. The Battenbergs called their baby son Nickie, but its Russian connotation at that time prompted them to change the nickname to Dickie, much as the family name was later anglicized to Mountbatten.

At 13, Dickie joined the Royal Navy as a cadet at Osborne, a rigorous officer-training academy on the Isle of Wight. He was soon seared by an event that is thought to have directed the course of his life: as World War I broke out his father was hounded by anti-German hysteria and forced to resign as First Sea Lord. The tears that ran down the cadet's face, according to a biographer, instilled a burning ambition to rise in the military establishment and avenge Prince Louis' humiliation.

Emerging from the war as a dashing sublieutenant who had served at the Battle of Jutland, the young lord soon married a beautiful heiress named Edwina Ashley. By World War II he was a captain in command of a destroyer flotilla; the fearless skipper's own ship, H.M.S. Kelly, was mined off Newcastle, torpedoed off the German coast and finally sunk by German dive bombers off Crete. "Abandon ship or I'm going to sink you!" his admiral signaled when he refused to leave his bridge at one time. "Try it and I'll bloody well sink you!" Mountbatten replied. Mountbatten's later direction of the disastrous commando raid on Dieppe also contributed to a growing reputation for recklessness. Nonetheless, Winston Churchill himself hand-picked the flamboyant commander first as a strategic planner for the D-day invasion, and subsequently as Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia.

After the war, Mountbatten literally made history: as the last British Viceroy and first Governor-General on the Indian subcontinent, he oversaw the birth of self-government in the Empire's biggest possession, thus breaking ground for the postcolonial era. In 1955 he vindicated his father's name when Churchill appointed him First Sea Lord. Finally, during a six-year stint as chief of the Defense Staff, he built Britain's unified defense system, which he regarded as one of his major triumphs.

Retired in 1965, Mountbatten kept busy as a committeeman and good-will ambassador, but lived alone--his wife had died suddenly five years before during a charity tour in North Borneo and his two daughters had long since married. "I'd like really to just be buried in my home town of Romsey," he placidly told a BBC interviewer who was preparing a film obituary last year. "The only thing I hope, it'll be a happy occasion."

For the outraged mourners at this week's tributes for a national hero and the other 22 victims of the I.R.A. onslaught, that will not be the case.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.