Polo & More, Singapore 2017 Polo & More, Singapore 2017 | Page 22

Lord Louis
Mountbatten
The polo legacy of a brilliant
naval officer.
By Alejandra Ocampo
Compliments pololine.com
“
P
olo is a wonderful sport, one which
combines several skills: one must be a
good rider and there is the challenge of
striking the ball at speed. But the best thing
about the sport is playing with friends. I was
never a natural polo talent, nor a good rider at
the beginning: I had to work hard to be good. I
had to study the game. I watched English and
American films in slow motion and analysed the
players hitting the ball. I also remember that my
team and I used to come up with tactics around
a billiard table. As polo is amateur, I had to do
everything myself. I remember one time I was
speaking to an international player, and I asked
him advice about how to hit the ball. He said: ‘My
dear Dickie, hit it quickly! Hit it like a snake!’”
(Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten
of Burma, in his book “The Life and Times of Lord
Mountbatten”, by John Terraine, 1968.
Lord Louis Mountbatten was not only an
outstanding naval officer, war hero and diplomat,
but also a passionate polo player. He reached a
5-goal handicap and left an invaluable polo legacy,
being a mentor to several important members of
the polo family: his nephew, Prince Philip, as well
as Princes Charles, William and Harry.
Prince Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas
George of Battenberg was born on June 25, 1900,
in Forgmore House, Windsor, son of Prince Louis
of Battenberg, 1st Marquis of Milford Haven,
and Princess Victoria of Hesse and Rhine. On his
mother’s side, he was the grandson of Princess
Alice, second daughter of Queen Victoria, making
him great grandson of the famous monarch. He
had three siblings: Alice of Battenberg, Louise
(later Queen of Sweden) and George, second
Marquis of Milford Haven.
In 1917, due to tensions with Germany caused
by the First World War, King Geroge V decided
to change the surname of the royal household
from Saxe Coburg Gotha to Windsor due to the
marriage of Queen Victoria to German Prince
Albert. At the same time, the King ordered the
His Royal Highness Duke of Edinburgh & Lord
Mountbatten at a polo match
Lord Mountbatten on his wedding day to
Edwina Ashley on 18th July 1922
modification every German surname in the family.
That is how Battenberg became Mountbatten. Louis
was therefore Lord Louis Mountbatten, but to his
closest friends, he was Dickie.
Louis was home schooled until the age of ten.
At thirteen he entered the Royal Naval College at
Dartmouth, before going on to serve in the Second
World War. Between wars he pursued a career in
the navy, specialising in communications. In 1922
he married the Honorable Edwina Ashley at St.
Margaret’s Church, London - the greatest social
event of the year. A year before his wedding Louis
had accompanied his cousin David, Prince of Wales,
to India. That is where he discovered polo, the sport
which would captivate him for the rest of his life,
and to which he would become a great advocate.
Clare Milford Haven, an avid polo player, married
to George, current Marquis of Milford Haven,
great nephew of Lord Louis, remembered Louis’
introduction to polo in India in an interview: “He
was not a natural rider in his youth, but the future
Lord Mountbatten definitely fell in love with polo
(...)”. In his diary entry for December 1921 he wrote
enthusiastically, “It was one of the best mornings of
my life (...) I played my first ever polo match. I played
two chukkas, the eighth and the eleventh. I think the
average handicap of the players in India is five, but
it is undoubtedly one of the best things in India (...)”.
In India Louis played matches with the Maharaja’s
22
team, against his cousin. That first interaction with
polo was the beginning for a long love affair. Clare
Milford Haven recalls what Lord Louis wrote to his
mother: “For the first time in my life I am excited
about a sport. Soon I will be playing polo more
than anything else!”.
After their wedding Lord Mountbatten and
Lady Edwina moved to Aldstean, West Sussex,
near Cowdray Park Polo Club, founded in 1910, the
epicentre of English polo at the time. Lord Louis
Mountbatten already had his polo team, Aldstean,
and competed in several club tournaments. His
naval team were the Bluejackets, and from 1930-
1931 they stood out in tournaments at Hurlingham,
Ranelagh and Roehampton. In terms of his naval
and public service career, in 1937 he was promoted
to Captain, and later served in the Second World
War commanding HMS Kelly, which was torpedoed
in 1943 during the battle of Crete. By orders of
Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, Mountbatten
became the first chief planner of Operation Overlord,
which came to an end with D-Day, the Allied
Invasion of Normandy, on June 6, 1944. In 1943
Churchill appointed Mountbatten the Supreme
Allied Commander South East Asia Command, with
promotion to acting full Admiral. During his time
in that post, his command oversaw the recapture of
Burma from the Japanese. A personal high point was
the reception of the Japanese surrender in Singapore.
After the war he was named Earl of Mountbatten
and Burma, and he became the last Viceroy of
India (1947) and the first Governor-General of the
independent Dominion of India (1947-48), from
which the modern Republic of India emerged in
1950. Mountbatten then went back to his naval