Norman Armour

Norman Armour (October 14, 1887– September 27, 1982) was a career United States diplomat whom The New York Times once called "the perfect diplomat". In his long career spanning both World Wars, he served as Chief of Mission in eight countries, as Assistant Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and married into Russian nobility. He was the United States Ambassador to Canada, Haiti, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, and Guatemala.

Armour was born in Brighton, England, while his parents were vacationing there. He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and graduated from St. Paul's School, and from Princeton University in 1909. In 1913, he graduated from Harvard Law School, before returning to Princeton to study diplomacy. His first posts were to Austria in 1912 and France from 1915–1916 before formally entering the Foreign Service.

One of his first assignments in the Foreign Service was as Second Secretary in the United States embassy in Petrograd in the Russian Empire, beginning in 1916 (during World War I). After the collapse of Czarist Russia, the Bolsheviks seized control of the government and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central powers, which marked their exit from World War I. (These events precipitated the Russian Civil War which would lead to the formation of the Soviet Union in 1922.) Prior to the formal signing of the treaty, the United States partially evacuated their embassy, but Armour remained as part of the limited staff. On July 25, the Russian authorities ordered the diplomats out of Petrograd and a new legation was set up in Vologda. The North Russia Campaign, an Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War, further destabilized the situation and resulted in the legation becoming essentially under siege. (The Russian army had already attacked the British consulate and killed its Attache.) At this point, the order of events for Armour becomes somewhat unclear.

According to news reports of the time, Armour was arrested and brought back to Moscow, where he and other Americans (diplomats and otherwise) were allowed to flee the country on August 26, by train to Sweden, arriving on September 5. Later, it was revealed that Armour had during this period used a fake Norwegian passport and, disguised as a courier, sneaked back into Petrograd and arranged for Princess Myra Koudashev of Petrograd to escape the country. Contrary to the contemporary reports, his obituary in the New York Times also says that he did not travel in the refugee train from Moscow, but rather escaped himself to Finland, still disguised as a courier, where he caught up with them.

On November 2, shortly after they arrived back in the United States, the two announced their engagement. They were married February 2, 1919 in Brussels, Belgium.

Née Myra Sergueievna Koudashev, Mrs. Armour was a daughter of a first marriage of Tatar Prince Serguey Vladimirovich Kudashev, to a Russian Countess of the Nieroth family, being born in Saint Petersburg, 7 April 1895.

Over the following years, diplomat Armour served in a number of embassies and consulates, including those in Belgium, The Netherlands, Uruguay, Italy, the United States Department of State (1922–1924), Japan (1925–1928), and France (1928–1932).

In 1929, after the death of Myron T. Herrick on March 31, 1929, Armour was made Chargé d'affaires and Head of the Embassy in Paris until the selection of a replacement. This was Armour's first time as Chief of Mission. He was also an extremely popular social figure in France and he and his wife were often written about in American newspapers, flaunting the Parisian high life.