Background
Bernard Cyril Freyberg was born in Richmond, United Kingdom in 1890 and reared in New Zealand from 1892.
Bernard Cyril Freyberg was born in Richmond, United Kingdom in 1890 and reared in New Zealand from 1892.
Freyberg learned the Maori language and later attended Wellington College from 1897 to 1904.
In 1914 Freyberg was a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Division in England; he also spent three years in the army, emerging from World War I heavily decorated and with the temporary rank of brigadier general.
A D. S. O. won at Gallipoli inspired Sir James Barrie's 1922 rectorial address on "Courage" at St. Andrew's University.
In 1933 he was a general staff officer at the War Office and was promoted to major general in 1935. He was made a Companion of the Bath in 1936.
With the advent of World War II, Freyberg was recalled from retirement and moved to the front lines to head the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He served at or near the front in 1940 in Egypt, in 1941 when commander in chief of Allied forces in Crete, and in 1942 in the 8th Army offensive that routed the German General Rommel from El Alamein to Tunisia.
In May 1943, he accepted the German surrender in North Africa that cleared the way for the Allied invasion of Europe; in May 1945, after his troops led the advance from Cassino, he received the Axis surrender of Trieste.
He was selected as a target by Nazi propagandists, whose broadcast reports of his desertion and death embellished the Freyberg legend, but he rose to lieutenant general and earned additional decorations: knighthood in 1941, Knight of the British Empire and Knight Commander of the Bath orders in 1942, and a third bar to his D. S. O. in 1945.
In September 1945 he was appointed governor-general of New Zealand and served until March 1952. Freyberg was created first Baron Freyberg in June 1951.
