Mountbatten remained in the Royal Navy and on the outbreak of the Second World War was captain of the destroyer Kelly. Winston Churchill appointed Mountbatten head of Combined Operations Command on October 27 1941. The decision by Churchill to promote Mountbatten to vice admiral, lieutenant general and air marshall ahead of older and more experienced men upset senior officers in the military establishment. In October 1943 Churchill appointed Mountbatten as head of the Southeast Asia Command (SEAC). In 1947 Clement Attlee selected Mountbatten as Viceroy of India and he oversaw the creation of the independent states of India and Pakistan. Mountbatten plunged himself into negotiations with the principal Indian leaders as soon as he landed. He had known the Congress leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, since their time together in Singapore at the end of the Second World War. 'When Nehru began to call Edwina and me his 'dear friends', Mountbatten was later to gush, 'I began to get the feeling that we were halfway home'. On the other hand, from the moment of their first meeting on April 5, Mountbatten and Jinnah, the Muslim League leader, failed to establish a personal rapport. They discussed all the possible outcomes, and Jinnah asked for the Indian army to be divided fairly between India and Pakistan after a slow and orderly British withdrawal. There was bewilderment that the British, who ran undivided India like clockwork, could not control the horrific violence. Fingers were pointed at London for its callousness, but more specifically at the man in charge, Lord Mountbatten, for trying to rush things and thereby causing bloodshed. When Mountbatten accepted the assignment, the tentative date set was June 1948. But on reaching India in March 1947, he found that 1948 was too far, it would have to be the same year, the sooner the better. Delays would have caused greater mayhem, not less.
