David Niven came ashore in Normandy in the days after D-Day not as a movie star, but as a British army officer tasked with one of the most delicate jobs of the Allied campaign: keeping the Americans and British from turning on each other. The war was only weeks old when he arrived, and already the coordination between the two armies was strained. Niven worked under an American general named Ray Barker, whose assignment was to smooth over the friction between commanders like Omar Bradley, Bernard Montgomery, and George Patton, men Niven later described as arrogant leaders who were difficult to manage. On one occasion, Niven had to cross an exposed bridge under German artillery fire simply to pass between British and American lines, then make the same dangerous trip back.
The road that led David Niven to that bridge began in London in 1910, where he was born James David Graham Niven into a wealthy middle-class family of Scottish descent. His father, William, a landowner in Berkshire, was killed at Gallipoli during the First World War when David was still young. After attending private school, Niven entered the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in 1930. The academy commandant at the time was Major Boyd Browning of the Grenadier Guards, the man who would later command the British 1st Airborne Division during the Second World War.
Niven’s company commander was Major Godwin Austen of the South Wales Borderers, a regiment formerly known as the 24th Regiment of Foot. It was an early connection to a regiment that would later carry a painful family significance for Niven, though he did not yet know how deeply. As he neared the end of his training, Niven had to choose which regiment to join. His mother, mindful of their Scottish roots, urged him toward the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
Asked to list three preferences in order, Niven put the Argylls first and the Black Watch second. For his third choice, he wrote simply: anything except the Highland Light Infantry. In his autobiography, he claimed his objection was that the regiment wore tartan trousers instead of kilts. It was a joke on a serious form.
The army saw the humor differently and assigned him to the Highland Light Infantry. He joined the 2nd Battalion on Malta, where he befriended Captain Roy Urquhart, an enthusiastic officer who would later command the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. But garrison life in Malta bored Niven. Promotion was slow, and he began to question whether military life was what he had imagined.
Then his mother died. Granted four weeks of compassionate leave, he decided to travel to America. He fell in love with the country, which seemed full of opportunity compared to Malta. When he returned, he was finally promoted to lieutenant, and the battalion was posted back to England.
Still, the desire to leave the army had not faded. He booked passage to North America and submitted his resignation by telegram from the middle of the Atlantic. His early attempts at a new career were rocky, but he eventually reached Hollywood at the height of its golden age. His first paid role was as an extra, playing a Mexican for 250 dollars a day.
Through a chance encounter, he landed a small silent part in Mutiny on the Bounty, and that film brought him to the attention of legendary producer Samuel Goldwyn. Over the next two years, Niven worked his way into speaking roles before landing a major part alongside Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade in 1936. His big breakthrough came in 1938 when he starred with Flynn again in Dawn Patrol, a film about fighter pilots during the First World War. Around that time, Niven was part of what was known as the Hollywood Raj, a circle of prominent British actors dominating the film industry, including Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, and Rex Harrison.
The golden age was about to end. On Sunday, September 3, 1939, Niven was aboard a yacht off the coast of California when he heard that Britain and Germany were at war. He decided to return to Britain to fight and told Goldwyn he had been recalled to his regiment. Goldwyn checked with the British embassy, discovered this was not true, and refused to let one of his stars leave.
Niven then asked his brother to send a telegram supposedly from the Highland Light Infantry. It read: proceed immediately to depot. stop. worried.
stop. The trick worked, and Goldwyn reluctantly let him go. While traveling through Washington, D. C.
, Niven was invited to meet the British ambassador, Lord Lothian, who told him he could serve his country better on the screen. Most British stars in Hollywood chose that path. Niven wanted to serve in uniform, and he hoped to join the Royal Air Force as a pilot. His role as a fighter pilot in Dawn Patrol did not help.
The RAF was short on recruits, and many officers had no interest in an actor playing at being a pilot. His application was rejected unceremoniously. Back in London, Niven met an officer from the Rifle Brigade at a café who offered to get him into the regiment. He was commissioned as an officer in February 1940.
Shortly afterward, he encountered Winston Churchill at a dinner party. Churchill approached him, looked him in the eye, and said that Niven had done well to give up a promising career to fight for his country. Niven’s face brightened at the compliment until Churchill added that if he had not done so, it would have been disgraceful, then walked away, leaving Niven deflated. They met at a few more dinners during the war.
In late 1941, Niven asked the prime minister whether America would ever enter the war. Churchill replied that a disaster would happen soon. Weeks later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. When Niven later asked how Churchill had known, the prime minister answered simply: because I study history.
Meanwhile, Niven’s regiment was still far from the fight. While the 1st Battalion fought the Germans in France and faced defeat at Calais, the 2nd Battalion remained on transport training in the Salisbury Plains. With France lost and the evacuation at Dunkirk complete, Britain faced the threat of invasion. Then a mysterious message arrived: volunteers were needed for a special mission.
Niven and his fellow officers assumed it meant parachuting, as the Germans had done with such success. Niven was not keen on jumping from an aircraft, but it was more exciting than training on the plains. He volunteered. What he had actually volunteered for was not the paratroopers but the Commandos.
In June 1940, Lieutenant David Niven arrived in the Scottish Highlands for training. The course produced notable figures including David Stirling, who would later found the SAS, and Lord Lovat, who led Commandos onto the beaches on D-Day. Niven took part in the Commandos’ second operation, codenamed Ambassador, a raid on German-occupied Guernsey in the Channel Islands. As the war progressed, Niven was transferred to the GHQ Liaison Regiment, known as Phantom.
The defeat in France had shown that modern battlefields were fast-moving and unpredictable. Commanders often lost contact with their forward units, making it difficult to command effectively. Phantom units were highly mobile patrols of officers who moved through front-line areas and reported back. They were the eyes and ears of the commander, equipped with radio motorcycles and even carrier pigeons.
Niven was promoted to major and given command of a squadron. When Britain was still awaiting invasion, Phantom units were deployed defensively, and Niven’s A Squadron found itself positioned behind the coast at Poole in Dorset, defending an area under the command of General Bernard Montgomery. By early 1944, with the Allied invasion of Normandy approaching, Niven was seconded from Phantom, serving as a lieutenant colonel, and began working with the American General Ray Barker. Their role was to prevent the miscommunication that had hampered British and French operations in the First World War.
In this war, that meant building working relationships between the British and the Americans. Niven survived several dangerous situations during the campaign. On one occasion, he followed the Canadians into the liberated Belgian city of Bruges. He and another officer found a restaurant in the city center and sat down to eat.
As they were leaving, they were stopped by a Canadian patrol who asked what they were doing there. When Niven explained, they were told to leave immediately because the Germans were counterattacking. Half an hour later, the Germans had retaken the city center. Niven also found himself caught up in the Battle of the Bulge.
Driving through the chaos of retreating Americans during the initial German advance, he ran into trouble, though not from the enemy. One reason for the early German success was that soldiers had infiltrated behind American lines disguised as American troops, cutting communication lines. In the panic that followed, a man in British uniform claiming to be a British officer was met with suspicion by eager intelligence personnel. A patrol stopped him and angrily demanded he prove he was not German by naming the winner of the 1940 baseball World Series.
Niven replied that he had no idea, but he knew he had starred in a film with Ginger Rogers in 1938. Recognition dawned, and he was allowed to pass, smiling. At the end of the war, Niven was discharged and joined fifteen thousand American soldiers returning home across the Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary. Hollywood was calling again, but not before General Barker presented him with the American Legion of Merit.
Niven went on to enjoy a brilliant film career, winning three Golden Globes and an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1958. He died in Switzerland in 1983. As for his connection to the Zulu War, it was never through the films Zulu or Zulu Dawn. It was a family link.
Niven’s father had married Henrietta Degacher, born in 1877, the daughter of Captain William Degacher of the 24th Regiment of Foot, later the South Wales Borderers. William Degacher joined the army in 1859 and was commissioned into the 24th, where he served alongside his brother Henry, who commanded the 2nd Battalion by the time of the Zulu War in 1879. William served in the 1st Battalion and was promoted to captain, then brevet major for the campaign. This was the first time both battalions of the 24th had served together.
On the morning of January 21, 1879, the 2nd Battalion, under the elder brother Lieutenant Colonel Henry Degacher, left Isandlwana with Lord Chelmsford. Only one company remained behind, commanded by Lieutenant Frederick Godwin Austen, the same surname as Niven’s company commander at Sandhurst. The brevet Major William Degacher was with the 1st Battalion left at the camp. When Chelmsford departed, the commander of the 1st Battalion took charge of the camp, and William Degacher assumed temporary command of the 1st Battalion.
Later that morning, the camp was overwhelmed by a massive Zulu assault and the British garrison was wiped out. Isandlwana was the worst defeat the British army ever suffered at the hands of African enemies. Among those killed were Lieutenant Godwin Austen and Major Frederick Degacher, David Niven’s maternal grandfather.