Alfred Wintle

At the outbreak of the First World War, 16-year-old Wintle was in Dunkirk and claimed to have "irregularly attached" himself to Commander Samson's armoured-car unit, witnessing Uhlans being shot on one occasion in Belgium.

The incident was typical, both of a series of remarkable escapes and his pride at being an Englishman (as opposed to being born "a chimpanzee or a flea, or a Frenchman or a German").

He saw action at Ypres, the Somme, La Bassée and Festubert, supposedly capturing the village of Vesle single-handedly before handing it over to the New Zealanders (who were about to attack it in force).

Wintle entrained for France with a warrant signed by a friend of his father's; he had a "moderately successful year of action" with the 119th Battery, 22nd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery (RFA).

He was impressed by an army officer with enough technical knowledge to distinguish a spectroscope from a spectrograph, and who noted details in intelligence reports which might have indicated their authenticity (or otherwise).

After chatting with Wintle on Horse Guards Parade one morning, he recorded that he was surprised to see a news headline a few days later: "Cavalry Officer in the Tower".

Then sharp at eleven Guardsman McKie, detailed as my servant, would arrive from the officers' mess with a large whisky and ginger ale.

The second charge was assaulting Air Commodore Boyle, and the third was conduct contrary to (and to the prejudice of) good order and military discipline.

Jones recalled that far from denying this, Wintle admitted the act and produced a list of people whom he felt should likewise be shot as a patriotic gesture.

The government, embarrassed by his accusations, upheld the court decision to drop all charges bar one: the assault on Air Commodore Boyle (for which Wintle received a formal reprimand).

Wintle was then sent abroad to rejoin his old regiment (1st The Royal Dragoons), and went into action gathering intelligence and coordinating raids on the Vichy French in Syria.

[5] After the Allied victory in Syria, Wintle was asked to go to Vichy France in disguise to determine the condition of British prisoners-of-war held there.

During his captivity, he informed his guards that it was his duty as an English officer to escape; he successfully did so once by quickly unhinging his cell door and hiding in a sentry box before slipping out quietly, but was betrayed and recaptured within a week.

Shortly after, he sawed through the iron bars of his cell, hid in a garbage cart, and slipped over the wall of the castle, making his way back to Britain via Spain.

In its subsequent written reasons, the House of Lords held that the burden was on the solicitor Nye to establish that the gift of the residue of the deceased cousin's estate to the solicitor in the will that he had drawn was not the result of his fraud, and that he had failed to discharge this exceptionally heavy burden so that the trial jury's validation of the gift to Nye could not be allowed to stand.

[9][10] A comprehensive analysis of the legal issues in the Wintle v Nye lawsuit is provided by Kerridge in "Wills made in Suspicious Circumstances: the Problem of the Vulnerable Testator".

An encounter with Wintle in the El Vino wine bar on Fleet Street is related in a letter to the editor of The Spectator published 8 May 1999.

One morning in the late Fifties, a West Indian workman entered what he thought was a pub and asked the proprietor for a pint of bitter.

Empurpled with rage, embroidered waistcoat at bursting point, Bower was hustling him into Fleet Street when interrupted by a crisp military command from the back of the bar: 'That gentleman is a friend of mine.

Colonel Wintle - celebrated for inspecting the turn out of his German[a] guards when a prisoner of war and for debagging a solicitor - had spoken.

Rising to greet his guest, Wintle trained his monocle on Bower and ordered, 'Pray bring us two small glasses of white wine.'

(chorus) Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket And say a poor buffer lies low; And six stalwart lancers shall carry me With steps solemn, mournful and slow.

"[14] Wintle initially wrote fiction under the pen name "Michael Cobb" stating, "For a cavalry officer, to be literate, let alone write, is a disgrace."

[16] A full-length autobiography, compiled after his death by his friend Alastair Revie from more than a million words left by Wintle, was published in 1968 by Michael Joseph as The Last Englishman.

Another short biography of Wintle can be found in chapter 13 ("Colonel 'Debag' rides again", pp 143–153) of Robert Littell's It Takes All Kinds published by Reynal & Co, New York, 1961.