David Niven was one of the most beloved stars of Hollywood’s golden age, an Oscar winner who shared the screen with Errol Flynn and Ginger Rogers and worked under the legendary producer Samuel Goldwyn. But before all that, he was a young British officer who walked away from the army, built a film career in California, and then gave it all up to fight for his country when war broke out again in 1939. What few people knew, and what connects him to one of the most famous disasters in British military history, is a family tie to the Zulu War and the catastrophic defeat at Isandlwana. He was born James David Graham Niven in London in 1910, into a wealthy middle-class family with Scottish roots.
His father, William, a landowner in Berkshire, was killed at Gallipoli during the First World War, a loss that marked the family deeply. After private schooling, Niven entered the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in 1930. The commandant at the time was Major Boyd Browning of the Grenadier Guards, who would later command the British 1st Airborne Division and 1st Airborne Corps in the Second World War. Niven’s company commander was Major Godwin Austen of the South Wales Borderers.
The name carried weight: Austen was one of five men bearing that name who served in the regiment formerly known as the 24th Foot, and his uncle had been killed at Isandlwana. That was the first hint of the connection, but not the most important one. As Niven neared the end of his training, he had to choose which regiment to join. His mother, mindful of their Scottish ancestry, urged him toward the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
He was required to list three preferences in order. He put the Argylls first, the Black Watch second, and for his third choice he wrote simply anything except the Highland Light Infantry. In his autobiography, The Moon’s a Balloon, he claimed his reason was that the regiment wore tartan trousers instead of kilts. It was a joke, a cheeky answer to a serious question, and everybody has done something similar and hoped it would not come back to haunt them.
It did. Someone in authority had a sense of humor too, and Niven was posted to the Highland Light Infantry. He joined the 2nd Battalion, then stationed in Malta, where he met Captain Roy Urquhart, an energetic officer who would later command the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. Niven found garrison life in Malta dull, and promotion opportunities were scarce.
He began to doubt that army life was what he had imagined. Then word came that his mother had died. Granted four weeks’ compassionate leave, he decided to travel to America. He fell in love with the country.
It seemed exciting and full of opportunity, certainly more than service in Malta. When he returned, he was finally promoted to lieutenant, and the 2nd Battalion was posted back to England. But the promotion did little to ease his desire to leave. He booked passage to North America and resigned his commission by telegram from mid-Atlantic.
After a series of uncertain starts, he made his way to California and into Hollywood. This was the golden age, and he joined a long line of men and women chasing their big break. His first acting job was as an extra earning 250 dollars a day, playing a Mexican. Through a chance encounter, he landed a silent part in Mutiny on the Bounty, and through that film he caught the attention of Samuel Goldwyn.
Over the next two years, which must have felt like an age to anyone trying to break into Hollywood, he worked his way into speaking roles. In 1936, he landed a major part opposite Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade. His breakthrough came in 1938, when he again starred with Flynn and the British actor Basil Rathbone in Dawn Patrol, a film about fighter pilots set during the First World War. At that time, Niven and Rathbone were part of the so-called Hollywood Raj, a circle of prominent British actors who dominated the industry, including Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, and Rex Harrison.
But the golden age was about to be interrupted. On Sunday, 3 September 1939, while Niven was on a yacht off the coast of California, he heard that Britain and Germany were at war again. He decided to go home and fight. He told Samuel Goldwyn he had been recalled.
Goldwyn phoned the British embassy, discovered it was not true, and refused to let one of his leading British stars leave. In a move of typical Niven wit, he asked his brother to send an allegedly official telegram from the Highland Light Infantry with a terse message: report immediately to the depot. Stop. Troubled.
Stop. The ruse worked, and Goldwyn reluctantly allowed him to go. Passing through Washington, D. C.
, he was invited to meet the British ambassador, Lord Lothian. The ambassador told him he could serve his country better on the screen, which is what most British stars in Hollywood chose to do. But Niven wanted to serve in uniform, and he hoped to join the Royal Air Force. His role as a fighter pilot in Dawn Patrol did not help him.
The RAF had a shortage of recruits, and the last thing many officers wanted was a pretend pilot among them. His application was rejected. While sitting in a London café, he met an officer from the Rifle Brigade who said he could get him into the regiment. Niven was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in February 1940.
Shortly afterward, at a dinner party, he met Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill approached him, looked him straight in the eye, and said, my boy, you did well to give up a promising career to fight for your country. Niven’s face brightened at the compliment until Churchill added, thank you. If you hadn’t done, it would have been a damned disgrace.
Then the man who would soon become Britain’s wartime prime minister walked away, leaving Niven deflated. Niven would meet Churchill at other dinners during the war. In one recorded meeting in late 1941, he asked the prime minister whether America would ever enter the war. Churchill replied that a catastrophe would soon take place.
A few weeks later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. When Niven asked why he had said that, Churchill answered, because, my boy, I study history. Still, the assignment Niven sought remained out of reach. While the 1st Battalion fought the Germans in France and faced defeat at Calais, the 2nd Battalion was left to do transport training on Salisbury Plain.
After the defeat in France and the evacuation from Dunkirk, Britain faced a likely invasion. At that moment, a mysterious message arrived. Volunteers were wanted for a special mission. Niven and his fellow officers assumed it would be an attempt to copy the German paratroopers, who had recently achieved great success.
Niven was not enthusiastic about jumping out of an aircraft, but on the other hand, it was more exciting than driving on Salisbury Plain. He volunteered. What he had actually volunteered for was not the parachute regiment but the Commandos. In June 1940, Lieutenant David Niven arrived in the Scottish Highlands for training.
That training produced notable figures such as David Stirling, who later founded the SAS, and Mike Calvert, known as Mad Mike, who led the Chindits. Niven took part in the second Commando operation ever conducted, Operation Ambassador, a raid on the German-occupied Channel island of Guernsey. As the war progressed, he was transferred to the GHQ Liaison Regiment, known as Phantom. The defeat in France had shown that modern battlefields moved quickly and changed constantly.
Commanders often lost contact with advancing units, and they could not command effectively if they did not know what was happening. Phantom units were highly mobile officer patrols that ranged across the front lines and sent back reports. 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.
Initially, while Britain waited for invasion, Phantom units were deployed defensively. Niven and A Squadron found themselves stationed behind the coast at Poole Harbour in Dorset, which was defended by five squadrons. The general commanding those squadrons, and the man they served as eyes and ears, was Bernard Montgomery. By early 1944, with the Allied invasion of Normandy approaching, Niven was seconded from Phantom squadron, and with the rank of temporary colonel he began working with American General Ray Barker.
Barker’s role, and therefore Niven’s, was to prevent miscommunication between the Allies, something that had hampered British and French operations in the First World War. In this war, it meant building working relationships between the British and the Americans. As Niven later recalled, Barker, who was fifty-four, and his team had a tough job controlling Bradley, Montgomery, and Patton, or as Niven described them, those arrogant commanders. A few days after D-Day, Niven landed on the beaches of Normandy and began coordinating between the Allies.
At one point, he had to cross a very exposed bridge under a barrage of German artillery fire while moving between British and American forces, and then he had to make the journey back the other way. Like many of his generation, he kept much of his combat experience to himself. But he survived some close calls. Once, he followed the Canadians into the liberated Belgian city of Bruges.
They found a restaurant in the city center, and he sat down to eat with another officer. As they were leaving, they noticed a Canadian patrol that asked why they were there. When Niven explained, he was told to leave the city at once because the Germans had launched a counterattack. Only half an hour later, they retook the city center.
Niven was also caught up in the Battle of the Bulge. While driving through the chaos of retreating Americans during the initial German advance, he ran into trouble, but not from the Germans. Part of the early German success came from infiltrating behind American lines disguised as American soldiers and cutting communication lines. In the panic and confusion that followed, a man in a British uniform claiming to be a British officer was treated with suspicion by eager military intelligence officers.
A patrol stopped him and angrily demanded he prove he was not German by naming the winner of the 1940 World Series. Niven replied in his characteristic manner, I haven’t the faintest idea, but I know I made a film with Ginger Rogers in 1938. They recognized him instantly and waved him through with a smile. At the end of the war, Niven was discharged and joined fifteen thousand American troops 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 the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1958. He died in Switzerland in 1983. His wartime service may not have matched that of Richard Todd, who landed by glider at Pegasus Bridge on D-Day, but it was remarkable in its own right.
And the connection to the Zulu War was a family one. Niven’s father had married Henrietta Degacher, born in 1877, the daughter of Captain William Degacher of the 24th Foot, later the South Wales Borderers. William Degacher joined the army in 1859 and was commissioned into the 24th Foot, where he joined 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 temporarily to major for the campaign.
The Anglo-Zulu War was the first time both battalions of the 24th served together. On the morning of 21 January 1879, the 2nd Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Henry Degacher left camp at Isandlwana with Lord Chelmsford, leaving behind only one company, G Company of the 2nd Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Frederick Godwin Austen. In the camp, the 1st Battalion remained with temporary command, and William Degacher assumed temporary command of the 1st Battalion. So on the morning of the battle, both battalions were commanded by brothers, Henry with Chelmsford and William in the camp.
Later that morning, the camp was overwhelmed by a massive Zulu attack, and the British garrison was annihilated. Isandlwana was the greatest defeat ever suffered by the British Army at the hands of an African enemy. Among those who fell were Lieutenant Godwin Austen and Captain and Brevet Major Frederick Degacher, David Niven’s maternal grandfather.
That was the hidden personal link between one of Britain’s greatest film stars and one of its most famous military disasters.