World War II
He was recommissioned as a Rear Admiral in 1939 and served in World War II as a Naval Attaché at The Hague in the Netherlands in 1940 during the German invasion. But Dickens's role did not end with the surrender on 14 May. He evacuated to Britain by destroyer, where he was assigned as Principal Liaison Officer, Allied Navies. During this period, his efforts (and those of the Dutch naval attaché in London, Lieutenant Commander A. de Booy) were essential in forging a good working relationship between the Royal Dutch and British Navies. He served as Flag Officer in Tunisia from 1943 to 1944 and as Flag Officer in the Netherlands from September 1944 to 1945, when he retired. In 1945 he was made a Commander in the Legion of Merit (United States) and a Chevalier in the Légion d'honneur (France).
Sir Gerald Dickens died of a heart attack in London aged 83 in 1962 and was buried at sea from HMS Kirkliston off Chatham. He was the father of Captain Peter Dickens RN, the grandfather of actor Gerald Charles Dickens and great-grandfather of actor Harry Lloyd.
The State of Illinois designated 22 November 2003 as 'Gerald Charles Dickens Day'.
Read more about this topic: Gerald Charles Dickens
Famous quotes containing the words war ii, world and/or war:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“...there are perhaps only one or two things in the world which are not far more charming in desire than they are in possession.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)