British Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill’s funeral on Nov. 8, 1944, prompted a flood of tributes, an uncommon outpouring in wartime Washington D.C. Orchestrated by U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, the observances included a memorial service in Washington National Cathedral, a motorized cortege along a route flanked by thousands of soldiers and interment in Arlington National Cemetery. The British field marshal’s devotion to the Allied cause was also recognized by a rare joint resolution of Congress and posthumous award of the U.S. Army’s Distinguished Service Medal.
Six years later, on Nov. 1, 1950, high-ranking military and government officials again gathered at Arlington to honor Dill, and President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of Defense Marshall unveiled a statue of Dill on horseback atop his grave—an honor accorded only one other soldier interred in the national cemetery, namely Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny, hero of the Mexican War and American Civil War. General of the Army Marshall was never one to lavish praise, but he offered this stirring eulogy:
Here before us in Arlington, among our hallowed dead, lies a great hero, Field Marshal Sir John Dill. He was my friend, I am proud to say, and he was my intimate associate through most of the war years.…I have never known a man whose high character showed so clearly in [the] honest directness of his every action. He was an inspiration to all of us.
From January 1942 until his death in November 1944 Field Marshal Dill headed the British Joint Staff Mission, representatives of the British Chiefs of Staff permanently based in the U.S. capital. He was also the senior British member of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, military leaders of both countries who developed strategy and allocated resources for coalition warfare against Germany and Japan.
But Dill’s actual role went far beyond his charter. A trusted colleague of the U.S. service
