5.6cm x (2.2in) x 8.5cm (3.3in) x 5.6cm (2.2in)
Silver. Box with hinged lid bearing presentation inscription ‘Lady Dill / From / The Army Surgical Dressings Unit / Washington DC / 1944’. Maker’s mark of Spratling Silver. Weight: 220g approx.
Lady Nancy Isabelle Cecil Charrington Dill (1906-1996) was a member of the Charrington brewing family and a prominent figure in the American Red Cross, which in the years 1942 to 1944 supplied the US Surgeon General’s department with the vast quantities of dressings through the mass effort of volunteer workers. Her then husband was Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill, GCB, CMG, DSO (1881-1944) who was the senior British member of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) in Washington DC.
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Hitherto, Nancy took a hands-on approach to offering medical aid to the Allied war effort. In 1940 she drove her own car to a French Mobile Field hospital in north-east France. She was transferred as a driver shortly before the German assault of 10 May to the Staff of the Second French Army Corps. She stayed at her post until 20 June. She was married to Brigadier Dennis Furlong (1897-1940) who was awarded the DSO for a rearguard action fought by his brigade on the La Bassee canal while covering the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force to Dunkirk. The brigade was largely destroyed but Furlong made it back across the Channel only to be killed by one of the infamous ‘mushrooms’, or Beach Type C mines, when inspecting coastal defences near Bridlington on 5 September 1940.
In October 1941 Nancy married the recently widowed Dill. He commanded 1st Army Corps in France and after Dunkirk was Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in succession to Lord Ironside in May 1940. However he could not get on with Churchill and was about to be side-lined with a posting to India when in the wake of Pearl Harbour America entered the war. Dill was summoned by Churchill to the Arcadia conference and then appointed to Washington DC. With the concentration of US effort in the Pacific and a cautious British approach to cross-Channel invasion of Europe probably in 1945, Dill brokered a compromise that endorsed a credible commitment in the Pacific, a combined bomber offensive against Germany, an invasion of France in 1944 and a landing on Sicily in the summer of 1943. He shrewdly reminded his successor as CIGS in London that neither side wanted to hand unresolved issues to Churchill and Roosevelt, knowing “what a mess they would make of it.”
Dill’s efforts proved so significant that Roosevelt personally thanked him. In an unprecedented gesture the US Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, invited the Dill to bring Nancy to the United States and offered them a house on ‘Generals’ Row’ at Fort Myer, Virginia. Lady Nancy Dill became very popular in Washington society and repeatedly popped up in news accounts wearing her Red Cross uniform and doing volunteer work. Field Marshal Dill died suddenly in Washington in December 1944 and was accorded a memorial service in Washington National Cathedral, a motorized cortege along a route flanked by thousands of soldiers and interment in Arlington National Cemetery. His devotion to the Allied cause was also recognized by a rare joint resolution of Congress and posthumous award of the US Army’s Distinguished Service Medal. Lady Dill afterwards settled at Hollywood House, Rathkeale, County Limerick, Ireland.