Lashmer Whistler - Inter-war Years

Inter-war Years

After World War I in 1919 he was promoted lieutenant. He also volunteered to join the Relief Force being sent to support the British Garrison at Archangel. He was posted to the 45th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and saw some action on the River Dvina until its withdrawal when the White Russian army was defeated elsewhere. It was his recounting of many anecdotes about the Bolsheviks that gave rise to his nickname "Bolo". He was posted to the 1st Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment on 24 October 1919. Serving with the British Army of the Rhine, he found his company quartered in the same Ulrich Gasse barracks where he had been a prisoner of war in the previous year. However on the last day of the year he was sent to Ireland as one of the replacements for fourteen British officers who had been murdered the previous November. He remained in Ireland for four years and then went as Acting Adjutant to the Regimental Depot at Chichester. Shortly afterwards, he was sent to Hong Kong to protect British interests during civil war in China. He qualified as Italian interpreter in 1928. He was appointed Adjutant of the 5th (Cinque Ports) TA Battalion as a temporary captain on 1 May 1929, this becoming a permanent rank on 30 September 1932. In 1933 he was posted to Karachi and then to Egypt at the time of Mussolini's Italian invasion of Ethiopia. It took Whistler twenty one years after being commissioned to achieve the rank of major when in 1938 he became Adjutant of the Royal Sussex Regiment and served in Palestine until World War II. He had not qualified for Staff College, and confided in his old Harrow and Sandhurst friend Reginald Dorman-Smith that he would end his military career in command of a battalion at most. With little prospect for advancement to higher command Whistler had been seriously considering leaving the army for civilian life when World War II started.