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Continued from Sir Charles Orr's Memoirs Volume 1
To return to my narrative, we remained in camp at Kanbat for nearly 2 months. We had a certain amount of light sniping onto the camp the damage for which was negligible. One night one of our natives attached to the hospital in some menial capacity had a bad dream and thought the camp was being attacked and rushed yelling in the inky darkness towards where our battery mules were picketed. We all turned out instantly and stood to arms, no one knowing the cause of the alarm, but as nothing happened we all turned in again, it was not very long before dawn, and an hour or so later when we were having morning stables, a frightened figure emerged from one of the bundles of chopped straw which was used for forage for the mules. It was the hospital attendant who had gone to ground there and hidden himself in terror.
While we were at Kanbat a Sapper subaltern who was a friend of mine was transferred to another post, and asked if I would take over the job of local military correspondent for the Pioneer newspaper which he had been doing at the request of Roddy Owen. There was nothing in it he said. All I had to do was to send a telegram direct to the Pioneer Newspaper at Allahabad when any event of any interest occurred - such as serious sniping causing casualties, or convoys of troops passing through in any number. I must of course be very careful to take each such telegram to the officer commanding the camp to be censored before I despatched it, but as the OC was the Major commanding my Battery there was no difficulty about this. The Pioneer would pay me some small sum - I forget how much - for all such messages. It seemed an admirable way of earning a little money, so I agreed to take the job on. And from time to time I sent a brief telegram reporting any incident which seemed important enough, and these telegrams surely appeared in the paper "From our correspondent at Kanbat".
Towards the end of June it had become very hot in the valley and Headquarters decided to move all British troops up to the high ground where it was cooler, and my Battery received orders to move up to the Janbatai Pass a couple of marches to the North where there were already two batteries of British infantry and the HQ staff of the 2nd Brigade. The night before we were due to move a large convoy came on its way to Chitral with stores, and the subaltern in charge dined with us. He told me that two of the mules had been washed away when the convoy was fording Panikora River, and added that there were other convoys behind and the system was running splendidly and the stores for Chitral were going up in large quantities. Next morning before my Battery started I thought I would send a telegram to the Pioneer and earn my last few rupees, so I compiled a telegram repeating briefly what the convoy officer had told me, took it to my Major as usual to censor and pass, and sent it off.
A couple of days later we had settled down in bivouac on a ridge just below the top of the pass, and were enjoying the delightfully cool air after the heat of the valley. Some days later, the Major sent for me, looking rather disturbed, and showed me a telegram from the Chief Staff Officer of the Expeditionary Force, transmitted to him by the officer who had assumed command of the post at Kanbat when he and the Battery left. It ran, "Who is the Pioneer correspondent at Kanbat?" What, we wondered, could Expeditionary HQ want to know this for? However, the answer had to be sent giving my name. Almost immediately a further message arrived, "Who sent the telegram of the ?th of June?" The Major and I instantly got hold of the latest Pioneer and searched its columns anxiously, and discovered that the telegram referred to the one I had sent off on the morning of our departure. But what could have prompted these enquiries? There was not a word or a line in the telegram that was not completely innocuous - a couple of mules drowned crossing a river, a little sniping, a long convoy going through, convoys of stores for Chitral well organised and functioning splendidly, what harm could there be in any of this rather dull routine report? A day or two passed, and then the copy of a circular telegram to all units in the Force arrived, calling attention to King's Regulation Numbers 20 and 30 which laid down that no one on active service was to send any communication for publication to any newspaper unless he had previously obtained permission from the Headquarters to act as a correspondent - and so on at some length with great sternness. Both the Major and I were thoroughly scared - he was obviously as much at fault as I was, since he had not only allowed me to send the telegram, but had himself censored each one. For days I awaited some terrific reprimand from Headquarters, possibly even orders for my court martial.
Incidentally at the same time, news from home told us of the defeat in Parliament of the Liberal Government, the PMs resignation, and of a Conservative Government taking its place with a General Election to follow immediately. Little did my Major or I guess that my Kanbat telegram and the change of government at home had an odd connection. What had happened was this. The events in Chitral had seriously disturbed the Imperial Government, and once the garrison had been relieved, the Liberal Government then in power decided to withdraw altogether from that part of the Frontier and not to replace the Political Officer and his military escort. The Government of India however was strongly opposed to any such withdrawal, both on military and political grounds, and represented that the step would be fatal to its whole Frontier Policy. The Imperial Government (or rather the Secretary of State for India and his Council in Whitehall) proved adamant however, and insisted that when the whole situation had been cleared up and the Expeditionary Force had returned to India and disbanded, Chitral should be abandoned and not reoccupied. Now it was well known that the Liberal Government which had a small majority over its Conservative opponents, was likely to fall at any moment and be replaced by a Conservative Government. And the Viceroy's Government in India knew that the Conservative Party was in favour of retaining Chitral. Therefore stores were quietly being sent up to the fort so that when the time came for the Expeditionary Force to return to India the Government of India would be in a position to say that it was impossible to withdraw from Chitral until the stores and supplies had been consumed or disposed of. Imagine then the perturbation in Simla when a telegram from the Line of Communications appeared in the leading newspaper reporting the passage up the line of big convoys with stores for Chitral! The Viceroy, the Commander-in-Chief, the entire hierarchy of the Government of India must have quaked in their shoes - and all this in consequence of my apparently harmless little telegram from Kanbat. But my lucky star was once again in the ascendant. The appearance of the telegram - of course unnoticed by any but those in the know - practically coincided with the fall of the government at home, and the latter event decided the fate of Chitral in favour of the Government of India. So all was well. But I often wonder, suppose the Liberal Government had not fallen when it did, and suppose someone had spotted that telegram and repeated it in London, whether there might not have been a first-class political upheaval. In that case the young artillery officer who sent the telegram to the press would in all probability may have fared badly, especially in view of the fact that he had, though in all innocence broken the King's Regulations for the Army in doing so. I had been quite aware of course that no officer or soldier on active service could send news of the operations to the press without previously obtaining permission, but I - and my Major too - had imagined that the fact that the Sapper subaltern from whom I took over the job had been requested to do so by the accredited correspondent of the "Pioneer", Major Roddy Owen, as his agent so to speak, was ample authority, combined with the fact that no communication was ever sent without first being submitted to and passed by the officer commanding the post. The events reported were of course of those most trivial nature, and had not my apparently harmless telegram nearly disclosed a political plot which for obvious reasons the Government of India desired to keep a deep secret, Headquarters staff would never have dreamed of taking any notice of it. But it was a narrow shave for me.
We remained in camp on the Janbatai Pass for about 2 months before the Expedition received orders to return to India. I enjoyed those two months, for we had alongside us two Scottish regiments of whose officers we used to see a great deal, and very delightful fellows they were, and I had some very good friends. One of the first nights we were there, before our tents had arrived and while I was therefore sleeping in my tiny 'tent d'abri' I was waked by a shot fired from apparently quite close. I sat up for a moment wondering whether I ought not to go out and investigate matters as the sniper sounded uncommonly close, but decided that there was no need to do so, so lay back again on this blanket on which I was lying, and the next moment I heard another shot, and the canvas of the tiny tent just over my head seemed to shake, but I heard the sentry nearby call the Sergeant of the guard, and I dropped off to sleep again. Next morning when I got up, I found two small holes in the tent made obviously by a bullet passing through. On going out to question the Sergeant of the guard I found that two shots had been fired into the camp by a sniper from close by, but though the Sergeant had immediately sallied out with one of his men in the direction from which the shots seemed to come, he could find no trace of the sniper, who had evidently made off. I made the Sergeant show me whence the shots had seemed to come from, and we decided that the sniper had been aiming at the sentry posted on the guns just behind my shelter tent, and this accounted for the holes. He had missed the sentry with both shots but had hit the tent with his second. If I had remained sitting up a few seconds longer the bullet would have gone through my head - another lucky escape.
At last, about the end of September I think, the Brigade received orders to break up camp and take the road back to India. We were all glad enough to go, now that the fighting was all over. For myself I had enjoyed every minute of it and would not have missed one day; intense heat, bitter cold, pouring rain, alarms and excursions, all these made life all the more real and for this reason brought me far more joy than discomfort. I felt that I was at last doing some genuine soldiering, not merely living through the routine of peacetime training. True I had taken part in but one battle, and even then I had been almost a spectator from a distance, and only one solitary bullet had even come our way. But marching, and sleeping on the ground, and bivouacking, and accompanying infantry patrols, and standing to arms before dawn, and living for six months in the open air for the most part in glorious sunshine, all in enemy territory made those months for me a time of glorious adventure, something I had longed for ever since my early childhood.
Our march back to India was marked, so far as I was concerned, by only one incident worth recalling. It took place somewhere between the Panikora and the Swat rivers, and we had our tents with us. We had arrived late in the afternoon and had pitched our camp near some broken ground. The night was very dark and a light rain began to fall about midnight. I was roused for a deep sleep in the early hours of the morning by a shot being fired closed by and I heard the sergeant of the guard questioning the sentry. "It was one of them damned rifle thieves" the latter said. "I saw something crawling about amongst the tents and I gave a shout and 'e made a dash for an opening and I took a shot at 'im." Well it was none of my business so I rolled over and went to sleep again. It seemed no time before I was again roused by the battery trumpets sounding reveille, so I rolled out of my blanket and groped about in the half light for my clothes which I had left on the ground beside me the night before, with my "Sam Brown" leather belt and my sword. But where was my sword? I couldn't find it, and I flung back the fly of the tent to let in more light. I turned everything in the tent upside down, including my blankets, but there was no trace of the sword, and at long last the truth flashed on me. The rifle thief of last night had crawled into my tent, hoping to find a rifle and had seized the only weapon he could find - my sword - and made off with it. Had I waked and sat up, or had I even stirred in my sleep there is no doubt he would instantly have buried in my body the sharp knife which these tribesmen always carry in their hands on such occasions. It was well that I had been sleeping so heavily. As soon as I was dressed I went off to the Political Officer who was accompanying the Brigade and told him the story and asked if there were any chance of getting back my sword, especially if I were to offer a substantial reward, explaining that it had been my father's sword before it became mine and that I there had strong sentimental reasons for wanting to recover it. He said he would do what he could, and he did send out messages to the surrounding chiefs and tribesmen offering a reward and "No Questions Asked"; but it was all in vain and I never saw the sword again. I daresay it is at this very moment being worn with pride by some local chieftain, and I can now after the lapse of nearly 50 years wish him joy of it.
We arrived back in India about the beginning of October. I had hoped to get my year's leave home next spring as the two other subalterns - both my senior - had had theirs during the two preceding years. Unfortunately however the senior subaltern had been sent to hospital with typhoid a month before we got back, and was to be invalided home on long sick leave, so my chance of getting leave next spring seemed hopeless. My sisters had however written that my mother, who had just returned with them from a visit to my sister Joy in Australia, was very anxious to see me, as it was six years since I had left home, and they asked if it was not possible for me to get leave, even for a short time. I found that it was indeed feasible for me to get ninety days of what was called "Privilege Leave", a type of leave which had the advantage of being on Indian pay at the time. Allowing 3 weeks for the journey from Rawalpindi to London (travelling overland from Brindisi) and another 3 weeks for the journey back, I reckoned that I should get just about seven weeks actually in England. So with a light heart I applied for and was granted 90 days privilege leave, packed a few things, and took the train for Bombay, a journey lasting the best part of 3 days. At Bombay I went on board the P&O on which I had previously booked my passage, having taken a 2nd Class return ticket to London via Brindisi, and within an hour we were off. How wonderful it felt to be actually on my way home after six long years in India: it seemed almost too good to be true, and I sometimes wondered if I shouldn't wake up one morning to find it all a dream. The voyage was entirely uneventful, but I made plenty of friends and we all decided that we had much more fun than the unfortunate individuals who were travelling 1st Class - and I believe it was true. The Red Sea was not nearly so sultry as I had known it six years before, and in due course we reached Port Said and went on board the P&O Osiris, one of the fast boats that carried mail and passengers to Brindisi, for the Marseille route was not at that time used. On arrival at Brindisi we had to pass through customs, and on being asked if I had anything to declare I remarked casually that I had a broken box of cigars which I produced. I had bought it in Bombay just before sailing and it was the cheapest kind of Indian cigar, the box of 100 costing I think 4 rupees - almost 5s/6d - I had smoked about half on the voyage, and the sea air had made the remainder so sodden that they were almost unsmokable. The Italian Customs Officer took the box solemnly away, and after some time returned and demanded something like 18 lire as duty. I was distinctly amused and asked whether one could not take a few free of duty for use on the journey. He replied, only ten, whereupon I selected ten of the least sodden that I could find, and handed him back the box saying he could keep it and welcome, which he did.
The journey in a de luxe train up through Italy and via the Mont Ceris tunnel was a continual joy to me, and the scenery in that autumnal weather, so delicious to me after the tropical heat of India, was superb. And had I ever tasted anything like the cup of rich chocolate that was brought me in the morning? I am afraid that, looking back, I must admit ashamed as I am of it - that the fact of getting back to England on leave thrilled me and occupied my thoughts far more than the idea of seeing my mother and my sisters again. I suppose it is the nature of youth to be selfish and self absorbed, and it is idle to blame them for being what is just natural to youth. Now that I am old I hope I shall be able to recall enough of my youth to prevent me from judging the younger generation harshly when they show precisely the same traits of self-absorption which I can see so plainly in myself when I look back over the past.
The train journey from Brindisi to Calais took, so far as I can remember, only 24 hours: then came the Channel crossing - and I defy anyone after a number of years abroad not to feel a lump in their throat when "the White Cliffs of Dover" come once more into sight. I have found the same effect on catching my first glimpse of the Needles, or of the lush grass at the foot of the red Devonshire cliffs as one approaches Plymouth Harbour. The mere memory of these sights stirs me to this day - but it was perhaps that first return home after so long an absence in India that moved me most and stirred in me a deeper emotion than any subsequent home-coming. At Dover the special P&O express was awaiting us, and in a short time we were rushing through the lovely countryside on our way to London Victoria at last, and the Customs. I put my luggage in the cloakroom - there was very little of it - and sallied out with my mind fixed on going to the War Office and reporting myself, since my instructions in India had been "to report immediately to the War Office on my arrival either in person or by letter". Had I but realised it, all that was necessary was to send a letter to the War Office when I reached my home, formally reporting my arrival in England and giving my address. But in my ignorance I imagined that it was incumbent on me to go to the War Office and report myself in person. I was with a genial, big hearted Australian called Bathgate with whom I had made friends on board ship and who was coming home on a visit to this country with which hew was well acquainted, and he said "You'll need a topper if you're going to the War Office, Otherwise you can go as you are so long as you keep that big overcoat on," I was wearing a long, well-cut overcoat with a velvet collar which I had bought from a brother subaltern in India just before I left. So I duly bought a "topper" and went off to the War Office and arranged to meet Bathgate at the Club after I had reported myself. Having no visiting cards of my own, I bought a packet of blank cards, inscribed my name on one, and presented myself at the War Office asking if I might see the Deputy Adjutant-General, Royal Artillery, incidentally the most senior artillery staff officer on the Army staff - I knew of no one else. Being asked my business I said it was to report my arrival from India. I was taken upstairs and through some long corridors, shown into a small waiting room and told to wait. There I waited for something over an hour, till at last a messenger came in and bade me follow him. I was taken along a passage, at the end of which the messenger stopped before a large door at which he knocked. "Come in", said a voice and I wearing my overcoat and with topper in hand, was ushered into a room where a stern-looking, grey-haired man was seated behind a large desk. He motioned me into a seat and continued writing for a while, making me feel desperately sly and nervous. At last he looked up and said quickly and rather harshly, "I don't know what your name is? I can't read your card. It looks like ON.... Anyhow, what d'ye want?" I replied meekly that my name was Orr and expressed regret that I had written it illegibly but that my hands were rather cold: that I had just arrive on leave from India, and had merely come to report my arrival as I had been instructed to before leaving India. This humble explanation seemed to mollify him somewhat, and he asked me in rather less harsh tones what my Battery was and where it was stationed. I told him the 3rd Mountain Battery, stationed at Rawalpindi after just returning from the Chitral Relief Expedition. At this he appeared slightly more interested, but asked where in the course of the campaign we had many - or any - casualties, to which I replied "Only one, Sir", and was not altogether surprised when commented ironically "I thought that would be about the number." He then dismissed me, tellling me to send in the report of my arrival and my address when I reached home that night, and turned to his papers once more. I realised later that I had stupidly taken up the time of a very senior officer busy with important matters of administration and that my visit to the War Office had been wholly unnecessary.
I joined Bathgate at the Club, and he promptly took me off to his tailor to be measured for some clothes, as after six years in India I had little or nothing fit to wear in England, especially in winter. At last all was done, and it was time to think of getting home to my mother and sisters, to whom I had sent a telegram from Dover announcing my landing time and saying I would come down when I had reported myself at the War Office. By this time it was past six. I said goodbye to Bathgate, returned to Victoria Station, got my luggage out of the cloakroom and duly departed for Brasted in Kent where my mother was then living. It was a slow journey with one change, and by this time of course it was quite dark. On my arrival at the little country station I found no cab or conveyance of any sort, but the stationmaster assured me that the village was only a mile away, so I left my one trunk at the station and taking the suitcase which contained all my immediate necessities I took a short cut across a field pointed out to me by the stationmaster and started off to walk. On reaching the village I enquired for "The Quarry" - my mother's house - and was diverted to a narrow lane leading out of the village and told I should find the gate of the rive to the house about a quarter of a mile up the lane on the left. There was no difficulty about this, and I was soon making my way up rather a steep drive, at the top of which I could see the lights of a house. By this time I was feeling thoroughly excited about meeting my mother and sisters once more, and being in a gay and mischievous mood, instead of going to the front door I crept cautiously round to a room where I saw a light, and looking in I saw through a gap in the curtains my mother and sisters sitting round the dinner table evidently just finishing the meal. I knocked loudly on the window pane, whereupon all my sisters jumped up, gave once glance at the window, and then made a rush for the front door and the next moment I was being dragged into the house amid tremendous excitement. My little mother, hiding her emotions as best she could embraced me with sparkling eyes, and my sisters clamoured to know what on earth I had been doing all the afternoon and why I was so late. "We've been to meet every train", they said "but at last gave you up, and now we've just finished dinner, but sit down and we'll soon get you something to eat." What a home-coming it was! I had been a raw lad of barely nineteen when we had last met, and here was I now, a hardened warrior (in my estimate at any rate) of 25. As for my sisters, they had spent something like 4 years in Australia and returned across the Pacific by way of Canada, so we had plenty to talk about.
The seven weeks slipped by all too quickly. I invested in a bicycle and learnt to cycle after a fashion, an accomplishment which my sisters had learnt long before. On one occasion I hired a horse and with my sister Lucy who had been leant a mount by an uncle of ours who lived at the neighbouring village of Westerham, rode to a meet of the hounds some ten miles away. The result was that in my journey to train to London next day to visit my tailor I preferred to spend most of the time standing looking out of the window, rather than sitting down, which I found strangely uncomfortable.
One amusing event is just worth putting down. I had told my sisters that when I wanted to blow off steam I was in the habit of exclaiming "Godfrey Daniel, blast and furnace maker", since it sound like an awful outburst of swearing and thus relieved one's feelings. A night or two later I was singing one of the Chevalier songs that were then all the rage, and I was in the middle of it when suddenly my sister who was playing my accompaniment shifted her chair and by an unfortunate accident shifted it on to my best corn. I stopped singing, grasped my foot in the hand and burst out "Godfrey Daniel, blast and furnace maker!" My poor little mother who hadn't heard this rather feeble joke, thought that I was using the most dreadful language. Not only that, but that my sisters were actually laughing at it. In her agitation at this incredible display of blasphemous language at that point on the part of her son after six years of absence, and the callus way in which her daughters greeted the outburst with laughter my poor little mother rose from her chair, her cheeks burying with shame, and buried her face in the music shelf pretending to look for some music. The moment I saw this I realise what was the matter and I rushed to her and seized her in my arm and told her it was all a silly joke, repeating the utterly harmless word I had used. But so deeply shocked had she been that it was difficult to make her see any joke in it or to comfort her, and it took her some time to get over it. I was careful ever after not to play off on her again any such foolish practical joke
All too soon came the day when I was to leave and take the overland route to Brindisi. After an early dinner the cab arrived that was to take me and my luggage to Sevenoaks where I was to pick up the train for Dover. We all tried to be merry, and "the little mother" as I always used to call her put a brave face on it as I kissed her and said goodbye. Then the cab drove carefully down the steep gravel drive with my mother and sisters waving to me, and my journey back to India had begun. Of the journey itself, I remember little and there is nothing to chronicle except that at Aden we heard the thrilling news of the Jameson Raid in South Africa and of the seriously strained relations between ourselves and the United States over some debt collecting quarrel we had with Venezuela. Christmas Day we spent between Aden and Bombay, and then came the long train journey to Rawalpindi which I reached early in the new year of 1896 and found my battery on the eve of its march down to Amballa, to which station it was being transferred and then to little Jutogh, a suburb of Simla. for its summer quarters.
The distance from Rawalpindi to Amballa by road is not far short of 200 miles, and the route is by the Grand Trunk road, a broad though in those days, very dusty highway. I throughly enjoyed those few weeks on the march. Our rate of progress was between 15 and 20 miles a day with occasional halts for a couple of nights at some of the larger stations through which we passed. Each night we pitched our camp, and there was usually just time after evening station to go out with a gun and shoot - or try to shoot - something for the pot. We spent a couple of nights at Amritsar, the sacred city of the Sikhs, where I was able to go see the famous Sikh temple: and a couple of nights at Lahore, where there was more sightseeing to be done in and last, towards the end of January we reached Amballa and there went into camp until it was time to go up to Jutogh. It was of course familiar to me as I had been there three years previously when I was first appointed to the Mountain Artillery. We spent the three months of the remainder of the "Cold Weather" (which in India lasts officially from October 15th to April 15th) on strenuous drilling, manoeuvres and practice camp. And then marched up to Jutogh and took up our quarters there for the hot weather in most comfortable hut barracks amongst the beautiful scenery and in the perfect climate of the Himalayas in summertime.
Jutogh is a bare three miles from Simla and is situated on the same ridge, a good though rather rough mountain road connecting them. One could ride into Simla in twenty minutes, going easy, but at night it was usual to send into Simla for a rickshaw, the only method of getting about in that hill station other than on horseback, since carriages of any kind were not allowed any more than are motor cars to this day. Two batteries were quartered at Jutogh, our own and one other, and there was also a detachment of British infantry from a battalion at another hill station some 20 miles away. The Mess House, which also contained quarters for half a dozen subalterns, was a charming little two storied house, surrounded by a pretty garden and grounds; and dotted about in the vicinity were bungalows for the married officers. The huts in which the men were quartered and the mule lines and native drivers quarters were some little distance away. The whole station was a delightful one, and we used to sit down to dinner in the mess about a dozen officers on ordinary nights and more of course on guest nights. Simla was a very gay place. Besides Viceregal Lodge, there was Snowdon, the residence of the Commander in Chief, and Barnes Court the summer residence of the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, and the whole hill side was dotted with the bungalows of the Government officials and Army Headquarter Staff Officers and their wives, as well as numerous visitors spending the hot weather in the hill station capital of India. Practically every night throughout the season there were dances and dinners and concerts and theatricals, and during the day there were lunches and tea parties, gymkhanas, picnics and all sorts of gaieties. By an odd custom the calling hour in India was (and probably still is) not the afternoon but between 12 and 1. Ladies invariably had a little tin box with their name painted on it and a little slit in the top just wide enough to take a visiting card, and this they used to hang on the gate of their house during "Calling Hour" when they did not wish to be "At Home" or were actually out. This was a most convenient situation for everybody concerned, for one could do one's duty to at least a dozen hostesses by riding round and dropping one's cards in such boxes as were displayed (it was easy to do it without even dismounting), and if one did want to see anyone, the absence of a box on the gate was such an indication that the lady was at home.
Of course subalterns in general hate this business of paying calls; certainly we all did at Jutogh. But the senior officers felt (and rightly) that it was incumbent on the two batteries, since they were the only troops at Simla, to enter into the social life of the capital - the mess used to give at least two big garden parties at Jutogh during the year, as well as numerous dinners and concerts and so forth. All officers were supposed, besides writing their names in the books at the Viceregal Lodge and at the Commander in Chief's and Lieutenant Governor's, to call on all the big wigs and their wives, both civil and military. The Colonel of the two batteries, who was somewhat of a martinet, also told off two or three of us subalterns to leave cards on everybody else who was anybody, and I was one of those told off about this duty. So frequently at the beginning of the season I used to have to hurry into plain clothes directly after morning stables, jump on my pony and canter into Simla, and then ride round dropping visiting cards into tin boxes, hurrying back to lunch when all was done.
Balls at Vice-regal Lodge were tremendous functions, very formal and very splendid, with scores of fine looking native servants clad in vice-regal scarlet, and the guests in a dazzling variety of uniforms. The then Viceroy of India, the Earl of Elgin, an undistinguished man of rather less than medium height with a white beard, hated these social functions which must have been to him one of the most disagreeable functions he had to perform. He used to return to bed as soon as supper was over, about 1 am, and we used to watch the solemn procession going slowly and solemnly up the stairs. The Viceroy and Lady Elgin surrounded by their staff in glittering uniforms and preceded and followed by scarlet-clad native servants each holding a long lighted candle. When the procession had disappeared the whole atmosphere of formality vanished and the guests let themselves go and throughly enjoyed the rest of the night.
That summer of 1896 remains in my memory as six months of continuous gaiety and frivolity - it was Kipling's India and Kipling's Simla. But actually a subaltern in a mountain battery had precious little time for gaiety or frivolity, for his work kept him busy practically the whole days. And as these mountain batteries were always kept fully mobilized and ready to go off on active service at literally a few hours' notice, we had to be always on our toes, always keyed up to concert pitch. I have said already more than once that I loved the work and every detail of it, and our great aim in our drill was speed and perfection, for in hill warfare every minute, almost every second counts, and much depended very often on the speed with which a battery - or even a couple of guns - could be brought into action. And besides drill and stables and orderly room and the daily routine there were battery institutions such as the Canteen and Sergeant's Mess and the Grocery Shop each of which was supervised by one of the subalterns, and very good training it was. I certainly learnt a lot during the time I ran the Grocery shop - "Coffee Shop" I think we used to call it thanks to the very capable corporal who was in immediate charge under my general supervision. We stocked all sorts of tinned foods, as well as such things as bootlaces, stationery, razor blades, shoe polish - everything that Thomas Atkins required in fact, and it was just like running a small shop. Almost everything we ordered out from England from some semi-wholesale firm which supplied goods at a remarkably low price. We had of course to calculate the cost of transport from England out to our battery station, and fix the price of every article so that while settling to the men as cheaply as possible we could still make a nice margin of profit for the "Coffee Shop Fund". This was a fund which the Major relied on for many expenses incurred for the comfort and amusement of the men. How many hours did I not spend pouring over the books with my corporal working out the prices at which various articles should be put on sale. Some of the articles were or became unpopular with the men, in which case we had to mark them down almost to cost price or even blow: but to make up for this we would increase the price of some other article which happened to be in great demand. There was stock-taking also once a month, and at rare intervals I would come down and hold a surprise stock-taking to guard against the possibility of any irregularity, a thing unfortunately apt to occur if the same routine is continued for a long time without any changes. Yes, I learnt a great deal from experience in being in charge from time to time of one of the battery institutions.
Apart from work however, there were endless things which occupied one's time during that gay and busy Simla season - dinners and dances, gymkhanas, amateur theatricals, picnics, it was all very hectic. We used also from time to time to get up entertainments for the men "gaffs" or "sing-songs" we used to call them, and there was quite a lot of talent of a sort amongst the men of the two batteries. Songs, clog-dances, theatricals, Christy's minstrel shows, we jumbled them all together, and we were always rehearsing something or other. It kept the men occupied and amused instead of getting bored and sitting drinking in their canteen; and it helped enormously to maintain a delightful camaraderie between officers and men.
One of the great features of Simla Society was the Simla Amateur Dramatic Society which owned a well-designed little theatre of its own and put on comic operas, burlesques and lays throughout the season. The famous 'B.P.' of later Boy Scout fame made a tremendous hit playing Huntley Wright's part in the Geisha, and a certain Major Crowe who was on the staff of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab (who as I have already said, had his summer quarters in Simla) made an equally great hit in the name part of "Charley's Aunt". Incidentally I had one of the principal parts in this play in which my major and his wife - who were both uncommonly good actors - also took part. It is surely one of the most amusing plays ever written and has been revived again and again in London, with its well known poster showing "Charley's Aunt" in "her" bonnet, rushing along holding "her" skirts so high as to show almost the whole of the under-graduate trousers underneath, with the caption printed in immense capitals - "Charley's Aunt still running!" The lines of the play are so amusing that the whole cast was usually in fits of laughter through all of the many rehearsals, and we were all afraid that we should be unable to keep our faces when the actual performance came on. It was rather nervous work for me, for when the curtain first rises it displays an under graduate in his room in college trying to write a ltter to the young lady with whom he is supposed to be in love, and his soliloquy takes up tow or three minutes before anyone else appears on the scene, and has somehow or other to hold the audience during those first critical moments of the opening of any play. And I was that undergraduate. However, all went well, and we had a large and enthusiastic audience for the three nights that the play ran - no play ever ran for more than a few nights, for there were not enough people in Simla to fill the theatre for longer.
A brother subaltern and I had what in retrospect was rather an amusing experience towards the end of the season, though we didn't think it so at the time. We went off together on a small shooting expedition taking food and provisions for one night as we only intended to be away two days. The only servant we took with us was Gray's cook, to whom Gray had rather casually left the responsibility of seeing that sufficient food and the necessary cooking utensils were brought with us. We made a fairly early start, packing in our haversacks enough food to last us till dinner, and directing the cook to make for a certain little hut where we had decided to spend the night, we duly set off. After a long day's shooting we arrived, tired and very hungry at the hut, expecting to find hot baths and good dinner awaiting us. What was our arrogance when we found not hot baths, no dinner, and no cook. Our few carriers were there, with our camp beds and bedding and with the cook's hamper and cook's utensils, and told us that "Cookie" after walking many miles had complained of a pain and gone back to Jutogh, ordering them to go on. Gray was infuriated, but there was nothing for it but to open the hamper and find out what there was to eat. We discovered some cold meat, some rather stale bread, a couple of eggs, a small packet of tea, and some rice. We satisfied our hunger with some of the cold meat and bread, spread out our bedding and retired to rest. Next morning we woke at daybreak and sent one of our carriers down to the stream hundreds of feet below us, with the only saucepan we could find, to bring up water, whilst the others were turned on to make a fire. When the man returned with the water we boiled the eggs, then made tea using the same water, and had a reasonable breakfast. Then, seeing that we had a long day before us and the amount of bread and meat left was not very much, one of us - I forget which - suggested that we might make a rice pudding. We accordingly filled the saucepan half full of rice, it being already half full of water, and put it on the fire to boil. Presently boil it did, and the rice swelled and swelled and overflowed the saucepan until it seemed to be pouring down the hillside. I am afraid that our attempt at making a rice pudding was not a success, though we did in fact eat some of what was left in the bottom of the pan after the rest had disappeared down the hillside, and I am glad to say that neither of us felt any the worse for it. We got back to Jutogh that evening and were indeed delighted to return to hot baths and a good dinner. Gray's cook had no excuse to make for his desertion of us but merely said that he found it a long way. whereupon Gray, who was an irascible man, promptly dealt him out the punishment he deserved.
So at last October came round and the exodus from the hills back into the plains began. The Viceroy, the Commander in Chief and the Lieutenant Governor all separated with their staffs, the Government Officers transferred themselves from Simla to Calcutta - the latter and not Delhi, being then the winter capital of India - and the whole of Simla society left and dispersed itself amongst the various stations from which it had come. Our two batteries likewise left our pleasant quarters at Jutogh and marched down once more to Umballa where we were to spend the winter in camp until the hot weather set in again the following spring and we returned to the hills. But I had other arrangements. A young subaltern in the Black Watch, Lord George Stewart-Murray who had been with us for a short time at Jutogh and had then been taken on the staff of the Viceroy as extra ADC asked me if I would like to go to Kashmir with him to shoot stag as he thought he could get permission through the Viceroy's influence to shoot in the Maharajah's of Kashmir's own preserves. Needless to say I jumped at the offer and my major raised no objection to my getting the necessary six weeks leave. So early in November young Murray and I started off for Kashmir. The route was of course familiar to me, for I had been over it six years before during my first year in India. The journey to Srinagar the capital took about a week and was uneventful. On our arrival we were met by one of the Maharajah's staff who brought with him two of the Maharajah's best shikaris who were to take us to the valley were the best stag shooting was likely to be found, and to remain with us and give use their services. After a couple of days spent in Srinagar collecting supplies and making various arrangements we started off with the shikaris for the valley which was some 2 or 3 marches away from where we were to make our camp and establish our headquarters, and on arrival these had our tents pitched, and settled down.
Our camp was in a lovely valley miles away from any human habitation and amidst the most lovely mountain scenery. Practically every day Murray and I were up while it was still dark and after a breakfast consisting mainly of cocoa we would start off in the early dawn each in our own direction with our own shikari and taking a couple of natives to carry our luncheon basked and oddments. It was bitterly cold in those early mornings, for the season was November, but the cold was dry and exhilarating and we very soon got warm climbing. To George Murray dear-stalking was familiar from his earliest childhood, for his father the Duke of Atholl, owned large deer forests in Scotland, and he and his brothers were brought up to deer-stalking. To me it was new and exciting, and my shikari was of course an adept at the game, and I placed myself entirely in his hands. Actually stag were that season by no means plentiful for some reason or other, and there were many days when neither Murray nor I saw a sign of one. But even so I found those days on the mountain side enthralling, and the weather was perfect, with a bright sun and keen pure air, and never a sign of rain or mist - very different I imagine from deer-stalking in Scotland. We were climbing all day, up great hills and then down into deep valleys, sometimes following a herd of elusive deer for hours at a time without getting a shot, and sometimes seeing nothing at all. We would take perhaps a couple of hours off in the middle of the day for lunch, and would get back to our camp for a late tea, when Murray and I would compare notes on our day's events. We managed to get one or two fairly good heads, but so far as I was concerned I was not out for trophies! What I revelled in was the climbing, the mountain air, the magnificent scenery, and the excitement of following a herd of deer and watching them through my glasses and trying to approach them without their getting my scent or being aware of my presence. I made one terrible mistake for which I must say my shikari was just as responsible as I was. One morning not very long after my shikari and I had left camp and had begun climbing the hillside we spotted in the rather dim light a herd of deer moving along a ridge ahead of us. This was very exciting, and through our glasses we could see that leading the herd was a stag with what appeared at that distance and in the dim light a fine pair of horns. My shikari and I at once manoeuvred to move round to the leeward and cut the herd off and get within range so that I could get a shot. In doing this we lost sight of the herd behind a fold in the ground, but soon picked it up again with our glasses, moving in the direction in which we were going, and evidently quite unaware of us. Every now and then the herd would disappear and then reappear, moving in single file, but at long last my shikari and I reached a spot from which, unless the herd changed its direction, it would soon be within range. Here I took up my position, lying down with my rifle pointed at the particular spot where I expected the herd to appear. The range was between two and three hundred yards, and I sighted my rifle carefully and waited, my shikari lying beside me in a great state of excitement. At last the leader of the herd appeared, and actually halted for a moment, apparently to see if the herd was following, thus giving me a splendid broadside shot. "Shoot, Sahib", whispered the shikari excitedly at my side. I held my breath, took careful aim, pulled the trigger and to my immense delight saw the deer fall and begin rolling over and over down the steep hillside into the valley below, whilst the rest of the herd disappeared in a flash. The shikari sprang up with his face beaming and started off down into the valley with his knife ready to 'hillal' (cut the throat of (halal)) the stag if it was not dead when he found it. I lit a cigarette and prepared for a long wait as I knew the shikari might have considerable trouble finding the stag. And a long wait it was - more than an hour - and when at last the shikari returned his face wore an expression of great anxiety and concern. "It's a doe, Sahib!" he gasped out. What had happened was that a doe happened to take the place of the stag which had been leading, just before the herd came in to view before I fired, and I had shot her instead of a stag. And to shoot a doe was a crime that the Maharajah would never forgive, more especially in his own preserves.
The shikari explained that he had covered the body with leaves to prevent its being discovered, and he implored me to say nothing about the incident to anyone, and I did not in fact tell even Murray till we were on our way back to India, with the consequence that I went about for some days feeling like a criminal, and so I fancy did my unfortunate shikari.
Murray and I had one or two good days after bear as a variation from deer-stalking, and I was lucky enough to get a fine specimen with a splendid skin which I eventually brought home, together with a couple of heads of deer I shot. The end of our leave came all too soon, and in December I found myself back in camp in Umballa with my battery. The "cold weather" passed with the usual manoeuvres, drills, practice camps, and at last came April when I was due for my long awaited leave home. I had planned to go and stay a few days at Lucknow for the Races with some friends I had made in Simla, on my way down to Bombay, but for some reason - I forget what - I gave up the idea. Instead, I accepted an invitation from my old "Shop" friend, Webb Gillman, now a subaltern in a battery of Horse Artillery at Meerut, to stay a week with him, and very much I enjoyed my visit. I found Gilly as cheery and as wild as ever, and I had an exceedingly good time with him.
I watched with immense interest the finals of the All India Regimental Polo Tournament which was won by the Durham Light Infantry (the only infantry regiment that ever won the cup) under the famous Colonel de Lisle, after a most exciting match with the 16th Lancers. "Gilly" had, besides his two chargers, a stand of something like six ponies, and was quite a shining light at station polo, though he took some mounting as he weighed a good twelve stone. That summer he achieved the feat of winning the 'Kadir Cup' at pig-sticking - the ambition of every man who ever chased a pig in India, but was one of the best and boldest men on a horse I have ever seen.
Meerut as a station had a peculiar interest for me, for in my early days in India I had read up everything I could find about the Indian Mutiny, and it was at Meerut that the Mutiny had first broken out, one Sunday in June of 1857 when the British troops were all in church and without their arms. It is for this reason that in India the troops always parade for church with their rifles and carry them with them to church, whereas elsewhere they go to church unarmed. I went therefore on Sunday to morning service in the same little church to which the troops had gone just 40 years before, and was deeply stirred when I pictured the scenes that had taken place in Meerut on that historical day. History - and more specifically the history of my own people - had always stirred my deepest interests and emotions, and I never missed an opportunity of visiting the site of any great historical event, more particularly if it concerned anything that formed part of British history. It was for this reason that I cut short my visit to Gilly so that I might spend a couple of nights with my old battery which had moved from Allahabad to Delhi and was now quartered in the fort there. So I said farewell to the cheery and hospitable Gilly and took the train for Delhi where I received a warm welcome from the only one of my former brother officers still serving with the battery. The whole of the next day I spent wandering with immense interest and emotion over the celebrated Delhi Ridge just outside the City Wall, to which our troops had clung with desperate valour during weeks of tropical heat, and from which they had finally advanced to the storming of the Kashmir Gate where General John Nicholson, that Homeric character, still worshipped almost as a God amongst many of the Indians, was mortally wounded. What an epic is the whole of the Indian Mutiny. No English boy or girl in any walk of life ought to be allowed to grow up without having read the account of that British saga.
Next day I set out on the last lap of my long journey to Bombay, and after one night in the train reached my destination and went straight on board the P&O Australia on which I had booked my passage. I had taken a 2nd Class return, and this time was going the whole way by sea to London since there was no hurry as I had a whole year's leave before me. I found my cabin at once, and there ran straight into Reggie Bond, an old friend, now a captain in the KOYLI (King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry), who was also going home on leave and travelling like me - and most young officers - 2nd Class. He and I had been at Bath College together, where he had attained the distinction of being the youngest boy to get his colours for cricket. But like all good sportsmen and decent fellows he was entirely unspoilt and remained charming and modest all his life. We sailed next morning and I soon settled down to life on board ship. Their second class took up the whole of the stern of the ship and the accommodation was very comfortable, while the food was practically the same as the 1st class, the main difference being that instead of having dinner at 7 we had a sort of high tea at 6:30. But we had a great deal more fun than the 1st class passengers had, as some of the latter admitted ruefully to me: and as we were not allowed to go over to the 1st Class part of the ship, our friends used to come over to us. One of the 1st Class passengers was Aylmer Haldane of the Gordon Highlanders with whom I had struck up a great friendship on the Chitral Campaign although he was several years older than I was. He was coming home with his General Lockhart, who was destined subsequently to command the troops in the Tirah Campaign, in which I was to meet Haldane once more. Later still he was to come into my life to help me make one of the most critical decisions of my career.
Of the voyage itself there was nothing of any interest to chronicle, of if there was I have wholly forgotten it. We duly reached Tilbury and disembarked, and I took the train with my belongings for Camberley where my mother had taken a small furnished house while she and my sisters looked round in the neighbourhood for a suitable house to settle down in. Once more there was a great and joyous family reunion, and my first act was to buy a bicycle so that I could accompany my sisters - all indefatigable cyclists - in their rides round the neighbouring country. What stands out most vividly in my memory was our expedition to London on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. It was a glorious day in mid-June, with a brilliant sun, clear blue sky, and slight breeze which tempered the heat. We started for Camberley at some unearthly hour. I think it was 5 am and did not return til after midnight. I think my sisters had seats somewhere from which they could view the procession, but I watched it standing by the kerb at Pall Mall just behind the row of troops lining the streets and opposite the entrance of St. James's Square. I remember to this day watching first the detachment of Life Guards go by in their brass helmets and steel cuirasses sparkling in the sun, their scarlet tunics, white breeches and long black boots, and the white plumes of their helmets fluttering in the breeze. Behind them came a battery of Horse Artillery, the men in their yellow braided jackets and busbies with scarlet bush bag and white plume, the carefully groomed horses with their coats shining brilliantly, the harnesses polished up to the highest degree and sparkling in the bright sun-light. Then a cortege of foreign princes and members of every royal family in Europe in handsome uniforms of every description, and finally the Royal Carriage drawn by its famous team of cream ponies with their postilions, and the Little Old Lady herself in her dress of sombre black, bowing and smiling in acknowledgment of the cheer that resounded along the entire route. It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of a young subaltern home on leave from one of the outposts of Empire as he watched the magnificent procession pass slowly before his eyes on that brilliant June hot day in 1897. They cannot have been very different from those of a young Roman centurion a score of centuries previously as he watched a triumphal procession pass along through the streets of Rome on its way to the Capital. My heart beat faster and my breast swelled with pride in the thought that I was a member and a servant of the greatest and most widespread Empire the world had ever seen, over whose flag the sun never set and which held sway over millions of people of every creed and colour. It was a heady and intoxicating draught that I draw of that day, but there was undoubtedly pride of race mingled with vainglory, and an unconscious feeling of belonging to a race superior to any other on the face of the earth, yet I can recall that the uppermost thought in my mind that I was called to devote all my time, brains and energy to the maintenance of this Empire, to the exclusion of all personal desires or passions, in the interests of mankind, and I trace to that hour the birth in me of the idea that the British Empire with its democratic foundations and its ideals of truth, liberty, justice, fair play and respect for the individual man was, under God, the instrument by which peace and welfare and happiness and liberty would be secured for the peoples of the earth for all time.
I remember only vaguely what happened during the remainder of the day. I think the whole family met for a sort of supper about half past six at the house of an uncle who had a place in St. George's Square. And when dusk came we all wandered round London watching the fireworks and displays and crowds, finally tumbling, tired out, into a train at Waterloo leaving some time after 11. When we reached Camberley about midnight my sisters were fast asleep, but I happened to be awake so I slipped quietly out of the carriage, and then put my head in and roard out "North Camp! North Camp! All change for Camberley!" (Some of the trains by which we used to travel went to North Camp, Aldershot, where one then had to change into one for Camberley, only 4 or 5 miles distance.) I don't think my sisters appreciated the joke at that moment as much as I did. But it was a memorable and exciting day, and one that none of us would have missed for the wealth of the Indies.
The summer of 1897 must I think have been a singularly fine one - at any rate I can recall nothing but a series of glorious summer's days and my sisters and I went for long and delightful excursions on our cycles. I had no intention however of spending the whole of my long leave in idleness. I was still too young to work for the Staff College, but I decided to take up the study of Russian since I found that if one could pass a preliminary examination in the language one might be granted a year's leave for further study in Russia, to qualify as an interpreter. Accordingly, I bought a Russian grammar and devoted a short time each day to studying that somewhat difficult language. It is a bad way to start learning a new language merely from a book - and a grammar at that - and I must admit that I found it abominably dull and heart breaking: but I knew from experience that the start of any task was almost invariably hard and dull, so I persisted with all the resolution I could summon in wrestling with the maddening complexity of Russian declensions, and hoped that by degrees I should begin to make some headway. Then one day the papers published news of an outbreak on the Indian frontier, and of a punitive expedition being prepared: the weeks went by, and more outbreaks occurred, and before long the frontier was in a blaze. Preparations to deal with the situation were put in hand, expeditionary forces organised, and at last I read one morning in a telegram from Simla published in the papers that No. 3 Mountain Battery - my battery, then at Jutogh - was one of those ordered on active service. For a few days I waited feverishly for a telegram summoning me back to India to join my batter, but none came. I went to the War Office, but was greeted coldly and told me that they had no news, and as the days went by I realised that the Government of India had no intention of recalling me to join my battery since in that case they would have to pay my passage out. There was nothing for it therefore but to give up the rest of my leave and rush out at my own expense. After all, I should have had the best part of 3 months in England in glorious summer weather, and what more could I ask for? I certainly wasn't going to remain kicking my heels at home when my battery was ordered on service. At this moment a kind old Scotch relative chanced to send me a cheque for twenty pounds as a present. This decided me to go immediately overland to Brindisi and catch the outward bound P&O at Port Said. I hurriedly packed my things, said goodbye to my mother and sisters, and caught the Continental Express from Victoria. How lovely France and Switzerland and Italy looked in that lovely September weather as we rushed through in the hurrying train. But I had decided to make the most of my journey by stopping a few hours at Rome, a city I had never seen and had always longed to see because not only of its far favoured beauty but still more of its imperial traditions. I found that I could arrive there at 3 in the afternoon and then at 6 catch a train which would take me across country to Brindisi and land me there just in time to catch the fast P&O "Ferry Steamer" due to carry mails and passengers to Port Said.
On arrival in Rome I accosted the first Thomas Cook Tourist man I saw on the platform and told him that I had three hours to spare before my train left, and wanted to see all that I could of Rome. He promptly summoned an English speaking guide, chartered a carriage and instructed the guide to take me round in the carriage and show me all he could in three hours. Off we started, and I was taken first to St. Peter and then to the Colosseum and then to the other "sights" of the city, my guide all the time chattering of this that and the other in perfect English. "There are 365 churches in Rome" he told me, "one for every day of the year: yet Rome is the most godless city in all Europe." The first part of his assertion was probably true: the second most assuredly not. But my guide was a cynic. When the conversation turned however to Abyssinia it was he, not I, who turned it into this channel - he dropped his cool cynicism, his eyes sparkled, and he broke out into passionate vituperation against, not the Abyssinians, but the French and the Russians. Only a few months before the Emperor Mendelik of Abyssinia, had inflicted a terrible defeat on the Italians at Adowa, and it was alleged that many of the Italian prisoners taken by the Abyssinians were cruelly and shamefully mutilated. My guide, it turned out, had been in the army in Abyssinia, through he had never got beyond the base and had not been present at the battle of Adowa. The stigma of defeat at the hands of a primitive and barbaric race (as he regarded the Abyssinians) had embittered him, as it had so many Italians and he firmly believed that Mendelik's victory was due to the fact that, as he expressed it, "thousands of Russians and Frenchmen" were fighting in his ranks and had provided him with artillery and weapons of all sorts. I listened with some humane interest, knowing nothing about the facts myself, but I think I should have seen a good deal more of the sights of Rome had my guide not been so carried away by his feelings regarding the shame and indignity suffered by his nation at the hands of a "tribe of barbarians." As it was, I was only just in time to catch my train, and after an uncomfortable night's journey I reached Brindisi and within a couple of hours we were heading for Port Said in RMS Osiris at some 24 knots. Again there was nothing eventful about my voyage to Bombay or the long train journey from there up to the frontier. I found my battery in the Reserve Brigade some miles beyond Peshawar, infuriated because the two other Brigades were pushing up into the Afridi country and had already had some preliminary fighting with the tribesmen, while here were we, idle in camp, not having even crossed the frontier.
As I am writing merely my own personal memories, and not history, I do not propose to say anything in general about what is known to history as the Tirah Expedition 1897 - 98. The 1st and 2nd Brigades under General Lockhart (whom I have mentioned before) fought their way over the Sampagha and Arhanga Passes into the valley of Tirah, the heart of the territory occupied by the Afridis, the most formidable tribe on the frontier. There General Lockhart held several parleys with the local chieftains with indecisive results; but when December came and the snow began to fall in the passes, recognising it was impossible to keep the troops in Tirah, General Lockhart decided to withdraw back to the frontier, and made his arrangements accordingly.
Meanwhile we in the Reserve Brigade had remained camped on the level ground at the entrance to one of the valleys - the Bara Valley - leading to the Interior, chafing at our inactivity to which we seemed doomed. At last we received orders to break camp and proceed a short distance up the valley and find a suitable camping ground and await orders. Our route lay through a narrow defile which continued for several miles until the valley opened out and gave more room for movement. The next day the advance guard moved off at dawn, followed by the four battalions that had made up the Brigade. Then came the baggage, and behind it a very strong rear guard. My two guns were detailed to accompany the rear guard, the rest of the battery marching with the main body. The rate of progress was incredibly slow, for it was only possible to march up the valley in single file, and moreover the heights on either side had to be 'crowned' by detachments of infantry to guard against hostile tribesmen attacking the flanks. actually it was late evening before the main body and the whole of the long baggage train (there was nothing of course but pack transport) had left the camp, and not till then did the rear guard move off. Notwithstanding the long wait, I was in high spirits, overwhelmed with joy that we were at least on the move towards the front after our incredibly dreary sojourn in camp doing nothing. I set off briskly with my men and the two guns and the mules, glad also to have for the moment a little command of my own instead of being a mere unit in a battery. But I did not reckon on what was in front of me, though I might have guessed from the simple fact it was some 12 hours since the advance guard had left camp, and here were we of the rear guard only just beginning to move off. Presently there was a block in front, and I was forced to halt; ten minutes passed and the pack mules in front began to move slowly on, and I followed: but we had only gone a few yards when there was a another block, another halt, and then further progress for some yards till once more we were stopped by another block. Darkness fell, the night air grew chill, and we struggled on, halting and pushing on, halting again, and I grew desperate thinking of my mules with the great heavy guns and gun carriages and loads strapped tightly on to the top of their backs. This dreary funereal procession must I know be infinitely worse for them than for my men or myself, or even for the baggage mules whose loads were slung on either side of them and therefore formed a very much easier burden than the guns, balanced on the top of the gun-mules backs and swaying at every step they took. But there was nothing I could do. To halt and take the loads off for half an hour would mean blocking every man and animal behind us, for no one could pass in that narrow defile. By the early hours of the morning I was cold and stiff and hungry and could with difficulty keep myself from going to sleep, and it was not til just before dawn that we made camp. I hope I may never spend such a night again.
Our new camp was on broken ground in the valley with great high hills all round, and we had pickets on the heights day and night and built a low wall of loose stones round the entire camp, since we were now in enemy country and had to take every precaution against attack. Presently we heard that the 2nd Brigade was coming down the valley from Tirah, the 1st Brigade marching by another valley some way further west, and that both were being constantly attacked by the tribesmen more for the sake of the loot they could pick up than from a desire to kill. One afternoon our Brigadier, General Hammond VC received news that the 2nd Brigade was not far from our camp, marching down the valley with tribesmen attacking both flanks and the rear, so he hastily collected a small force to go out and met them, and to my intense delight my two guns were to accompany the force. In less than half an hour we were making our way up the valley and before long we heard the sound of distant firing ahead of us and on turning a bend we saw on the top of a ridge running parallel with and overlooking the valley a considerable number of tribesmen, shooting at something down in the valley which we could not see but knew must be the 2nd Brigade advance guard. "Get your guns into action at once and shell those men up there" shouted the General to me, and I immediately had the guns whipped off the mules and brought into action. Now in those days each battery was provided with a range finding instrument worked by two gunners which gave approximate ranges, but for practical purposes the range was found by what is called sighting shots and the system of "bracketing". That is to say, a shell would be fired at the range suggested by the rangefinders - say 1800 yards: If it fell short another round would be fired at say 2200 yards, and if this fell beyond the target the latter would be said to have been "bracketed" and the next shell would be fired at 1900 yards and so on until the exact range was found. Then and then only could a shrapnel shell be fired, the time-fuze being set at the exact point shown on the table for that range. It is clear that with our old muzzle loading 7 pounder mountain guns, where the operation of sponging-out had to be performed after each round, and then a cartridge, followed by the shell inserted in the muzzle and rammed home, the process of finding the correct range must inevitably take some time. However perfect the drill was and however rapidly the men worked and constant practice resulted in our keen and well trained men working at lightning speed. So in this case, almost before the General had spoken the words I had got the guns into action and loaded, the range finders had given me their computation of the range of the ridge along which the tribesmen were scattered, and I had fired the first shell. Anxiously I watched through my glassed for the shell-burst, but though heard a faint bang I could see nothing, and it was impossible to guess whether the shell had fallen over or short of the ridge, for a small intervening ridge hid everything but the summit. In a hurried guess that the shell had fallen over the ridge I shortened the range by 200 yards and fired another shot, but the result was the same - no sign of a shell-burst, merely a distant bang. There was nothing for it to try hastily a number of ranges, looking steadily through my glasses in the hope of seeing a shell-burst: but it was not till I had fired something like 7 or 8 shells that at last I saw one burst just below the ridge, whereupon I immediately shifted to shrapnel and was glad to see a couple burst beautifully in the air just short of the top of the ridge. But it was too late! The target had been a fleeting one, and the tribesmen had left that ridge and disappeared out of sight. The General, a peppery man, who had been standing close to my guns the whole time and who knew nothing whatever about gunnery, was glowing with rage. "The most pitiable exhibition of gunnery I have ever seen!", he cried, "Pitiable, if you can't do better than that I might just as well never have brought you out with me." And with those scathing criticisms he turned on his heel and stumped off. Shortly afterwards the rear of the 2nd Brigade began to appear, and the order came to me to return to camp. How utterly crestfallen I felt as I made my way back to camp with my two guns. From then on the General would no doubt put me down as utterly incompetent, and in my bitterness I felt myself to be a total failure. When I got back to camp and reported myself to the major and told him all about it he was however very comforting and reassuring. The general, he said, knew nothing about gunnery or he would have realised that the finest battery in the world would have been unable to do better. But I remained very sore over my apparent failure on the very first time I held an independent command on active service.
I must here anticipate my "memories" so as to relate the sequel to this, to me, distressing event. A couple of months later our Brigade was in the Khyber Pass, and three times a week we had to send out a small force to picket the heights and guard the road where convoys of supplies came through from Peshawar. A couple of our guns always accompanied this force and remained the whole day in a central spot in the valley whence it could command all the surrounding ridges and heights and shell any tribesmen who might collect and fire on the convoy or the pickets. One day I was on duty with my guns at this spot, watching with my glasses the hills all round for any sign of the enemy, while my men were in position round the rungs ready to leap into action at a word from me. The General with a couple of his staff officers was standing close by, when suddenly fire was opened from a sangar, neatly hidden in the hills, at some of our infantry making their way up to the top of the ridge. Fortunately when I was on duty a few days before I had got the exact range of the sangar, though the General of course didn't know this. The moment therefore that fire was opened from the Sangar I gave the order to load the guns with shrapnel with the correct length of fuse, and fired each gun in quick succession. A few seconds later two little white puffs appeared in the sky just in front of and above the sangar, and the shooting ceased. The General was delighted. "Bravo, my boy" he called to me, "An uncommonly pretty piece of shooting." I felt that I had at last retrieved my honour and the battery's.
When the 1st and 2nd Brigades had returned to Tirah my Brigade was ordered with the 2nd to Fort Jamrud where the Khyber Pass debouches on the plains of India, some 20 miles from Peshawar. After a halt of some days here we were ordered to open up the Khyber Pass and set up our camp at Landi Kotal. On Christmas Even 1897 therefore we advanced up the Pass, and meeting with little opposition camped that night in Ali Masjid, an old disused fort in the middle of the Pass. Next day, Christmas Day, my battery was sent into an adjacent valley in support of part of the 2nd Brigade which was engaged on what would today be called "mopping up operations." but we saw only a few scattered tribesmen during the whole day, and towards the evening we returned to Ali Masjid. The following morning the whole Brigade moved on to Landi Kotal, the infantry covering the heights as we advanced along the valley, and by mid-day we had reached our destination. Landi Kotal lies at the Afghan end of the Khyber Pass, and from it one gets a magnificent view of the plains of Afghanistan, lying at one's feet, with the town of Jellalabad faintly visible in the far distance. A rough, rocky and windy path leads down to the level plain, at the foot of which is a stone pillar marking the frontier between India and Afghanistan.
It was very pleasant to leave the narrow enclosed valley which constitutes the Khyber Pass all the way from Jamrud, and to come out into a wide area, still of course enclosed by rugged and rocky hills, but dotted with little mud villages, each with their watch tower and their encircling mud walls. They were of course now deserted except for a homeless looking old man or woman whom one could see standing at the door of their houses, and a few children. At Landi Kotal itself there was a so-called "fort" consisting mainly of a high rectangular wall, built of mud brick, some 60 by 40 yards in extent enclosing open space with some huts inside. This in peace time was garrisoned by a detachment of Khyber Rifles, an irregular body raised from amongst the tribes themselves for keeping the pass open on certain days during the week for the safe passage of caravans between Indian and Central Asia. This small corps was officered by 2 or 3 British officers seconded for the purpose and was very efficient as a kind of police body. By an odd arrangement which the Government of India had made with the tribesmen (The Khyber and and its neighbouring country was inhabited by a branch of the Afridis called the Zakka Khels) the Pass was to be open to caravans on three agreed days during the week. During the remaining days the inhabitants were at liberty to carry on their interminable tribal quarrels without let or hindrance - an odd arrangement which worked perfectly satisfactorily. When the Afridis rose and attacked our outposts on the frontier most of the Khyber Rifles deserted and joined their own kinsmen, as was only to be expected, and the Khyber Pass was in the hands of the tribesmen until it was re-occupied by our and the 2nd Brigade at the end of 1897.
Our brigade, consisting of 2 British and 2 Native Infantry battalions, and my battery, formed a camp surrounded by a stout zariba, outside the so-called fort, which was reserved for the Brigadier and his staff and a few sappers and auxiliary troops. We were packed fairly tight together so as to render the camp more easily defensible, but we had our tents and could make ourselves reasonably comfortable.
In the summer the Khyber is about as hot a place as one can imagine, for there is no shade and the sun beats down pitilessly all day on the rocks and stones which retain its heat till the whole atmosphere seems to be like the draught from a furnace. In the winter on the other hand it is bitterly cold, for the wind from the snow covered Afghan hills comes sweeping through the Pass, and day and night a sort of icy blizzard blows. We all dug a six foot square hole under our tents, which just took our beds and a camp chair and table, and down in this dug-out, protected from the wind, we could keep reasonably snug and warm at night. Fortunately, living in the open or in tents for months together one gets used to excessive heat and cold, and I can't remember minding either particularly. We cleaned a good deal of the level ground round the camp to make football and hockey grounds, but the Khyber seemed to grow stones, for if you cleared a space of all the stones one day next morning you would find them there in almost as great a quantity - at least so it seemed. Association football and hockey one could play on a bit of bare, rocky ground, but later some enterprising spirits proposed to start rugby football and polo and proceeded to clear the necessary extent of ground of as many stones as possible and then to put on it a layer of stable rubbish from the mule lines. The result was not so good as it might have been: for in a rugby scrum where more or less all of us "bit the dust" as the saying goes, it was not dust but stable manure that we bit and that we found filling our mouths. Polo was less comic, for although the soft stable refuse made it possible to gallop without ruining the ponies, the hardest drive would not carry the ball many yards and if one "topped" the ball at all it simply became embedded, and somebody had to dismount and hunt for it in the litter and pick it out. Still it was all great fun and first class exercise and we thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the keenest polo players was a tall subaltern in the Scots-Fusiliers whom I knew well and liked. Some years later he went to Nigeria and commanded a battalion of the West African Frontier Force (I didn't meet him as he was serving in Southern Nigeria, then a separate unit from Northern Nigeria), and afterwards he took up flying and was one of the first to join what was then known as the Royal Flying Corps, and won great fame during the Four Years War. He is now Viscount Trenchard.
For the first few months the Zakka Khels were in open rebellion but there was no serious fighting. Our troops had to picket the Pass every day along its whole length - our Brigade from Landi Kotal, and the 2nd Brigade from Ali Masjid and Jamrud - and the tribesmen contented themselves with sporadic sniping, or sometimes in concerted attacks on some of our rearguards as the pickets returned in the evening. About five miles from Landi Kotal the narrow pass opened out into a broad valley about half a mile in width, and in this open space were scattered a few native houses with their great walls of mud and high watch towers. These were deserted when we first arrived, but after a few weeks some of the old folk returned furtively, and we took no notice of them, for so long as their fighting men did not put in an appearance, we had no objection.
This open bit of valley served as the base for all our pickets, and two guns of my battery always went with the infantry and remained here in this central position, ready to plant a shell in any spot in the surrounding hills where the enemy might show signs of activity. On one occasion some tribesmen began firing from the shelter of a sangar at a detachment of our men climbing the heights to picket them, and I was ordered to shell the sangar. My first ranging shot fell about 50 yards over the target and burst in the hill well above the sangar, whereupon to my great annoyance a tribesman jumped up and waved a red flag signifying "A Miss" in the manner customary on any rifle ranges. It was a good joke - evidently the tribesmen had served in the Indian Army and had a sense of humour - I could not help being amused by his impudence. I replied by shortening the range by 50 yards and bursting a shrapnel just over the sangar: there was no more shooting, and although I doubt whether it inflicted any casualties - for these tribesmen took cover in the rocks directly they saw the gun fire - it certainly shifted them from the sangar.
I came across amongst my papers the other day a programme of sports, very crudely printed by some native printing press, a sort of hand-bill giving a list of all the events. These sports, according to it, were held at Landi Kotal on some date, I think in April 1898 under the patronage of Brigadier General Hammond VC Commanding the Brigade, and the document ended with the printed signature "C.W.J. ORR, Lieut RA, Hon Secty". I had totally forgotten that I had run those sports, but I remember now what fun they were and how thoroughly we all enjoyed them. Of course the men of the Brigade were busy for weeks beforehand training for them, and that is the kind of thing that keeps troops fit and keen when serving for long months at a time on lonely outposts such as the Afghan end of the Khyber Pass. At that time too I was appointed Camp Provost (pronounced "Provo") Marshal. In addition to my normal battery duties and besides being work that interested me very much and took up most of my spare time, it brought me an extra 150 rupees (nearly £10) a month, a most useful addition to my pay. This appointment was made when affairs in the Pass had quieted down sufficiently to make it possible to introduce into camp a few native traders who set up a sort of bazaar (in the Indian sense) in one corner of the camp that was allotted to them and sold the troops - British and Native - all sorts of odds and ends they wanted, both food and dry goods and bootlaces and so on. It was the duty of the P.M. to look after these traders, make rules and regulations to see that they behaved themselves and did not charge unfair prices for their goods, kept their grass or mud huts tidy and the whole place clean and sanitary, and so on. There was ample scope for work and organisation and the kind of administration and discipline which always attracted me and there was also a human element to be dealt with, for I had to know every one of the traders personally and be always on the look-out for any rogues, for they were past-master in all artifices. I had authority to punish them summarily for any offence either by fine or whipping, and as my assistant I had a splendid little sergeant of the Royal Scots Fusiliers who was quite first class at his job.
When the hot weather came in I determined to start learning Pushtoo (Pashto), the language spoken throughout the frontier on India and by all Pathans (pronounced "Puttains"), the generic name given to the whole of the fanatical Muslim tribesmen who inhabit these regions. I managed to find amongst the traders in my bazaar a little old man who knew Hindustani and Pushtoo and a little English and I engaged him to teach me Pushtoo. I must confess that I nearly gave up my self-imposed task a dozen times. The first steps in learning any language are both hard and dull, and tempt one to despair. As the hot weather advanced and the heart in the daytime became appalling we used to do our battery drills to exercise in the comparative cool of the early mornings and finish by 11:30 am. Then we would sit down to a late breakfast, after which we dispersed to our tents, stripped our uniforms and lay down for a siesta til about half past three: tea in the mess tent followed about 4, and from 5 to 6 evening stables, and then a game of polo or football, a hot bath, dinner, and early to bed. This daily routine obviously left little time for study, so I used to get my native teacher to come round to my tent between noon and one o'clock when everyone else in camp except the sentries was asleep, and I used to wrestle with his assistance with the difficulties and complexities of the Pushtoo language, the perspiration pouring down my face in the gruelling heat and with sleep threatening every moment to overwhelm me. Every now and then I would drop off to sleep for a moment, then wake with a start, pull myself together and apply myself once again to the accursed grammar, or the Pushtoo history or poem I was trying to translate, then lulled once more by the droning voice of my teacher I would drop off to sleep again. Finally I would blurt out "Enough, Ahmed Shah, I can do no more today. Be off and let me go to sleep, and come again at the same hour tomorrow."
So passed those hot grilling days in the Khyber Pass. And gradually the tribesmen began to cease even to snipe, and some even of the young men - Jawans, as they were called - crept quietly back to their villages and set to work to till their land, looking as innocent as could be, as if they never had fired a shot at anyone, least of all a 'sahib'.
One day when I was on duty with my two guns at the spot I have previously described it occurred to me that I might wander off into one of the near-by native houses and see if I could find some old tribesman on whom I could practice my Pushtoo. So leaving my senior Sergeant in charge and telling him where I could be found if wanted I strolled off, and on arrival at the house I came across an old white-bearded tribesman, with an infant in his arms evidently suffering from some acute eye disease. I saluted the old man in Pushtoo, whereupon his eyes brightened with surprise and pleasure and he invited me into a bare room with a floor of baked mud where we squatted down together and in my rather halting Pushtoo I began a conversation with him. I asked him to let me see the child in his arms, and I expressed my dismay at the running sores on the child's eyes and said next time I came I would bring some ointment. This in fact I did a few days later when I was again on picket duty, having obtained it from the doctor, and after that I used regularly to visit the old man whenever I was on duty.
I think it must have been about the middle of July that I attained two months leave to up to go up to Kasauli, a small station in the hills not very far from Simla to attend a class of instruction in the subjects on examination in which every subaltern had to pass, before he could be promoted.
There were about 17 of us in all who joined the class, belonging to a variety of regiments, cavalry and infantry, British and Native, and a very good lot of fellows I found them. My greatest friend amongst them was a subaltern in the 15th Fusiliers, named Roberts usually known as "Bobbie", a wild fellow who had lost an eye at polo a year previously when a polo ball crashed into the glasses he was wearing. This terrible accident had no effect on his high spirits or his cheeriness. He was one of those happy-go-lucky men who regard life as something out of which their great aim is to get all the fun possible, and who take the knocks with just the same imperturbable good humour as anything else, good luck and ill luck being all the same to them. It is odd that I should have struck up the peculiar friendship with him and he with me that we did, seeing that our characters differed so entirely. Possibly the link was that we were both in love with life, enthusiasts for adventure, enjoying everything as it came along. Several of the class were serious-minded, taking copious notes at all the lectures, reading up the text-books with the utmost assiduity, and applying themselves most of their waking hours to the work in hand. They seemed to me dull, narrow-minded fellows, for whom I hadn't much use, but so far as I can remember I worked fairly hard myself as I had no intention of failing in any of the subjects, and indeed I was keen to do well in the exam. But once I had finished the day's lectures I liked to be free to enjoy the rest of the afternoon and my nights in company with Bobby Roberts and other friends of his kind.
At last the course came to the end and we had to face a three days' examination in the five subjects - Tactics, Military Law, Surveying, Fortifications, and Administration I think they were - one painful, wet day being taken up by trudging with a plane table and prismatic compass for miles over the hillside, making a survey of the surrounding country. I spent an hour or two helping one of the class who was in difficulties and had almost given up in despair, though I didn't feel very much in better shape myself. However both surveys got done somehow and we returned home, dripping with both perspiration and rain, and I handed my sodden sketch map in, wondering if I should scrape enough marks to qualify. The papers in the other subjects I didn't find very difficult, and I hoped that with luck I might get through. Our last night Bobby Roberts and I gave a dinner party to about half a dozen others in the class, and a rather hectic night followed. Next day we broke up and went back to our several stations, each of us leaving with the Instructor a stamped addressed envelope containing a sheet of paper on which the five subjects for examination were recorded with blanks left for the marks we had gained in each. He promised to fill in the marks as soon as the results were out, and post the envelopes to us. A "pass" required 50% of the marks allotted to each subject. If one obtained 80% or over in any subject, one was recorded in the Army Gazette as "distinguished" in that subject, and if one obtained 75% of all marks in all the subjects combined, a "special mention" was recorded.
I was glad to bet back to my battery and my Provost Marshall work in the Khyber, though I found Landi Kotal intolerably hot after the cool air of the hills. But by now it was early September and the cold weather season was not far off. Hostilities with the tribesmen, I found, had more or less petered out and the Zakka Khels were were filtering back into their valleys in the Pass and getting busy on their farms - always a good sign. It was good to resume my duty on picket, and the first day I strolled off to renew my acquaintance with my old friend with the white beard, who greeted my as if he were really pleased to see me. I brought him some more ointment for the child, whose eyes seemed better. I felt that I must now settle down in real earnest to work on my Pushtoo - I which I hadn't touched for nearly two months - as the examination for the Higher Standard was to take place in the Peshawar the first week in October and I had only about 3 weeks left. There was, I feared, little hope of my passing it, for languages did not come easy to me, and my two months break had prevented me from making the progress I had hoped. I had about managed to pay off a certain amount of my debts after a year of active service, but I needed the 800 rupees (about £56) very badly which was the reward fixed by the Governor of India for passing the Higher Standard in Pushtoo.
One morning shortly after my return to the Khyber, the mail from India came in and brought me a letter addressed to me in my own handwriting. For a moment I was puzzled; then I remembered the stamped addressed envelope I had left with our Instructor at Kasauli, and I tore it open hurriedly. Had I passed my promotion exams or had I failed? What about that sodden sketch map? I glanced at the sheet of the paper - I still have it somewhere - against each of the five subjects, two figures had been inserted by the instructor, the maximum allotted to each subject, and another figure representing the marks I had gained. And below were scribbled the words "Bravo! Distinguished" in all the subjects, and a "Special Mention." In all the subjects except one the maximum was 500, and a glance at the paper showed that in each of these I had scored over 400. In the last subject the maximum was 300 and I was credited with 240. On the back of the sheet the Instructor had very kindly recorded the marks scored by the other members of the class, and I found that my total was the highest on the list. I could hardly believe my eyes. Not that it really matter all so long as I passed in the five subjects, for it was in no way a competitive examination, but it was encouraging to me to have done so well. Surely I might manage to pass the very difficult examination for the Staff College when the time came if i could do so well in my promotion exam? I may as well add that it never did in the slightest good to have been gazetted as "distinguished" in all the five subjects for promotion. It didn't accelerate my promotion by one day, nor was it regarded as the slightest recommendation for any military appointment on the staff or otherwise not that I ever supposed or expected that it would: but the iron rule of promotion by seniority then existed in the Army, at any rate in the junior ranks, and there was little incentive to work hard or take a special interest in any work.
One day, about a week before I was due to go into Peshawar for my Pushtoo exam I was on duty with my two guns in the Pass and as usual, in the heat of the day, I strolled over to my friend the Zakka Khel. As usual he brought me into his darkened room with the hard mud-baked floor, and as we entered I saw to my surprise a couple of young men already seated on the floor. "Hallo, hallo" I said to them as I took my seat between them and the old man, "So you have got tired of fighting at last and have come back to your farms?" "Oh no, Sahib," one of them replied with emphasis. "We have never fought against the Sirkar. We never should. When the troubles began we got up and went to Jellalabad and have been there ever since, but now that things seem to be quiet once more we have come back to till our lands." I didn't believe a word they said and I was fairly convinced that they had been fighting with the tribesmen all along - why shouldn't they? - but I just smiled and said nothing and began talking about other things. Presently some turns of the conversation made me tell the story of how some months before I had fired a shell at a sangar not far from where we were sitting, and a man promptly jumped up and signalled a miss. The old man lay back his head and rocked with laughter. "Why, there is the Jawan who did it!" he cried, pointing to the young man opposite. "Hallo, Hallo!" I said turning to the young man who was looking scared and dismayed. "So, Master of truth, you came from Jellalabad to wave a flag?" For a moment the young man hesitated, dumb-founded, not knowing what to do or say. Then he caught the amused expression on my face, realised that all was well, and lifting the skirt of his long white robe showed me a scar where a bullet had obviously gone through the calf of his leg. "That's what I got that day, Sahib" he said, and I shall remember it for the rest of my life. The ice was now broken and we fell to discussing the fighting of the last twelve months. "You men are brave and fight well," I said, "but what is bad about you is the way you come out and kill our wounded when the fight is over. It is shameful to kill a wounded and helpless man in cold blood. Your wounded we pick up and take into hospital and tend with exactly the same care as our own wounded and when they have recovered we send them back to you." "Ah no, Sahib" replied one of the young men. What we do after a fight is this. We go out and we examine all the wounded you may have left behind and you hardly ever leave any - and if we find that they are so severely wounded that they will certainly die, we 'release' them." [The expression he used was Khalass Kow-wum, which literally means, 'release'] "If, on the other hand", he went on, "we find they were not seriously wounded we take them then into your camp and hand them over to you... as we did with that Sergeant a few moons ago." This was delightfully ingenious. So far as I know, in all the frontier fighting that has ever taken place during the past 200 years, there is only one instance when the tribesmen ever brought in and handed over a British soldier who had fallen into their hands. That was at the very end of the fighting in the Khyber some months before when the tribesmen did actually bring in a Sergeant of the Royal Scots Fusiliers who had been wounded and had been captured by them. They were at the time making overtures for peace and I imagine that they considered the unparalleled act of mercy on their part a good gesture. I doubt if a similar instance has ever occurred again.
Once confidence between us was established these young men talked freely and openly. It was no doubt a new and wonderful experience for them to find themselves talking in their own tongue to a British officer, still technically an enemy who was obviously friendly and interested in their affairs. I told them I expected to be promoted captain next year and to be sent back to England, which I should regret because I loved India and enjoyed serving there. I explained that I didn't want to serve in England where there was always peace and never any fighting, and I should probably try to get out to East Africa where there was always something exciting going on, and where in fact there were Indian troops at the moment. "Then take me with you as your orderly, Sahib" said the young man. "I swear before Allah that I will serve you faithfully wherever you go and I will protect your life with mine. Take me with you Sahib. I am tired of this narrow frontier life. I want to get away from it and see the world. I will serve you Sahib. Take me!"
I was touched by the man's sincerity and ardour. I put my hand lightly on his shoulder and said "I should like to have you with me my friend, and I would trust your loyalty anywhere. But I may never get to Africa and I can make no promises. Anyhow, here is my hand in token of friendship." I stretched out my hand and clasped his for a moment, and then I bade them all farewell and walked back to my guns.
A week later I went into Peshawar for my Pushtoo examination. I found there were more than a hundred candidates and it was rumoured that orders had been given to the Examination to pass as few as possible since only a certain sum was allotted annually for language rewards, and this could not be exceeded. But all thought of the exam vanished from my mind when I found myself greeted by my old friend Philip Maud, now a subaltern in the Sappers quartered temporarily at Peshawar. he carried me off to his bungalow where he insisted I should stay so long as I was in Peshawar. We hadn't met since our Shop days and we sat up that night till the early hours, talking of old times and old friends.
My examination began next day and lasted two days being both written and oral. The first day was taken up with the two Pushtoo works which formed the text books - a long epic poem in rather flamboyant language, and a biography of a famous Central Asian conqueror, Mahmud al Ghaznavi, both presenting considerable difficulties to the student. Next day there were translations to be made from Pushtoo into English and English into Pushtoo, and then in the afternoon candidates had to engage in long conversations with Pathan sepoys and native officers - an exacting test as may be imagined. When it was all over I felt as if I had been through a mill and completely tired out. I entertained small hope of having passed, and told Philip that I feared the 800 rupees were not for me. He and I adjourned to the Club and there I fell into conversation with one of my examiners whom I had known for some years. Incidentally I made the same remark as I had made to Philip, whereupon he was silent for a moment and then said "I wouldn't worry old chap" and then turned the conversation to something else. The results of the exam were to be put up on the board next day, and we were all waiting to see them at the appointed hour. At last one of the examiners arrived with a paper in his hand and proceeded to pin it up. Out of more than 100 candidates only twelve had passed. Imagine my delight when I saw my name amongst the lucky twelve. I don't know whether I was more surprised or delighted. I certainly was both. That night I gave Philip Maud the best dinner the Club could produce, and next day I took the road back to Landi Kotal, sleeping the first night at Jamrud where I had arranged a horse to meet me, and starting off early next morning to ride through the Pass. It was at the very hottest time of the day - about 2 o'clock - that I approached the familiar spot where I so often spent the day with my guns. We had now given up picketing the Pass as hostilities were virtually at an end and even sniping had ceased. For miles I had seen no sign of life: the heat was grilling, the sun beat on the rocks and there was no breeze; the tribesmen were at that time of day taking refuge in their houses from the heat, enjoying a siesta. Suddenly I saw ahead of me a group of men sitting by the side of the road. I wondered what they were doing there in all that heat when everyone else was indoors. As I rode up I suddenly saw to my surprise that they were my friends, the old white bearded Pathan and the two young men and a friend or two of the farmer's whom I had met from time to time. "What on earth are you doing here at this time of day?" I asked in some some surprise. "We have been waiting here for two days" said the old man "We wanted to know whether you had passed your initiation (examination)."
I jumped off my horse and gave my hand to each one of them, and I am not sure that I was not more pleased with this human touch of interest and friendliness even than with passing my exam.
We had now spent a bitter winter and a grilling summer in that confined camp in Landi Kotal and more than a year on active service. The fighting seemed to be over and we hoped any day now that we might be sent back to India. Little did we guess that we should be kept there another six months, but so it was. The Government of India decided to keep our Brigade at Landi Kotal until a complete settlement had been made with all the tribes of that turbulent frontier and until it was certain that the tribesmen really meant peace. So we had to endure another winter in camp in the Khyber and our days were mainly spent in elaborate manoeuvres in the hills surrounding the camp. And when in March we at long last received our orders to go, my battery was told to attend a fortnight's manoeuvres "Under War Conditions" near Attock whilst the rest of the units of the Brigade returned to their own stations. The idea of manoeuvres after a year and a half of active service was as annoying as it was ridiculous and my Major put forth a serious protest, but was merely told in reply that no other battery could conveniently be spared and it was regretted that the order must stand. We knew of course that it was a bit of cheese-pairing economy. Attock was on the way back from the Khyber to Rawalpindi (to which my batter had been transferred from Umballa and Jutogh) and it was cheaper to let our battery take part in the manoeuvre en route than to send another battery. However, there was no more to be said, and after putting in a fortnight on these wretched manoeuvres we at last reached Pindi about the end of March 1899 and found ourselves once more in these hut barracks from which we had started just 4 years previously for the Chitral Relief Expedition. Three weeks later we were on the march up to the hills for the summer, our station being Kalabagh where I had spent the hot weather of 1894.
By this time I had completed 10 years service as a Subaltern and was well in to my eleventh year. Promotion was at that time terribly slow for the Gunner and I saw no prospect of its coming my way till the end of the year. I confess I was thoroughly tired of everlasting orderly officer duty and of constantly having to go down in pitch darkness between 11 and 12 at night to turn out the guard and tramp round the mule lines, and I looked forward with eagerness to the day when I should at last become a captain and so gain immunity from these rather tiresome duties which fell to the lot of a subaltern.
Round about July I applied for and was granted six weeks leave. I was desperately anxious before I left India to go to Kashmir once more and make the journey up to Leh, on the borders of Tibet, about which I had read all the books I could lay my hands on and which interested my immensely. I calculated that I could just get there and back in 6 weeks (which was all the leave I could be granted) though this meant travelling all the time and left no time for shooting on the way. I did not therefore take a rifle or apply for a shooting licence, but started off with a tent and the lest kit should need for a six weeks trek, and made Srinagar in three days. After laying in 5 weeks provisions there I crossed the Wular Lake and took the road up the lovely Lidder Valley which leads up to the Zojila Pass some 10,000 feet high. Never shall I forget the beauty of the valley where it opens out at the foot of the Zojila, nothing in Switzerland can beat it, and the scent of wild flowers is intoxicating. For company I had my cook and my dog Munnie, called so by me after my friend Arthur Money who had given him to me some two years before when I was in the Khyber, and I was entirely happy. The climb up the Zojila was a stiff one, and the Pass is snowbound til June; there was snow upon it when I was there. When I reached the top after many hours of climbing I found myself on the plateau which from the State of Baltistan and for the next three days my route lay in wild but fairly level country passing a certain picturesqueness of its own through not comparable with the beauty of Kashmir and its valleys. At the end of my third day's march I almost walked into a large sized camp, and was hailed by a man who introduced himself as Clarke of the India Civil Service who explained that he had been lent by the Government of India to the Government of Kashmir to make a cadastral survey of Baltistan and assess the district for taxation. His invitation to dinner I gladly accepted and he then suggested that I should join him as his guest and accompany him through part of Baltistan which he was visiting. I could, he said, send my cook and tent and stove ahead along the road to Leh, and pick them up again further on where the diversion he was making would meet that road again. I jumped at the offer as it would enable me to see something of the country and its inhabitants which I could never do by keeping to the main caravan roads and its rest houses.
So for the next few days I travelled with Clarke, and a very interesting experience it was. he was treated with utmost deference and respect wherever we went, the villagers turning out to meet him and bringing him supplies, since they imagined that by securing his good will they would get off with a lighter assessment for taxation. At last we reached the place where we were to separate, he to continue his work, I to rejoin my cook and stove on the Leh road. This entailed my making my way over a pass 18,000 feet high and Clarke and I spent the last night together in a little Baltistan village in the mountains some 15,000 feet above sea-level. It was of course above the snow line and biting cold but the air was pure and fresh and we were both uncommonly fit and we had sufficient blankets to keep us warm, so we did not mind the cold. Next morning we made a good breakfast, packed some food in our haversacks, and set off to scale the mountain pass that lay ahead of us, for Clarke and I finished painfully and laboriously the last lap of our struggle up the pass. At long last we reached the top, and there before us lay a quite smooth snow-covered slope, stretching down, down as far as we could see. At the bottom of this slope, Clarke told me, was the Leh road, and the Balti guide he had arranged for me would take me down to it. So after we had recovered our breath and rested ourselves we parted, I with profuse gratitude to the man who had showed me so much kindness and and been a charming host. To add to his kindness he had given me a letter to His Highness the Wazir Wazarat, the Maharaja of Kashmir's Deputy in Leh who ruled the entire district in the Maharajah's name, and a letter of introduction to whom was a priceless asset.
The descent to the Leh road was pleasant and easy after the struggle up the pass, but it proved interminably long, and poor Munnie and I were fairly tired out by the time we reached my camp long after dark. We had come down about 8,000 feet for the lowest valley in all Ladakh is 10,000 feet above sea level: and I blessed my cook when I found that he had a dinner and hot bath in my tent awaiting me. I turned in early and slept the sleep of the tired.
When I woke next morning I jumped out of bed full of curiosity to see my new surroundings, for I had been unable to see anything in the darkness the previous night. I was now in Ladakh and the contrast with Baltistan was extraordinary. The latter country was a high rugged plateau with high mountains at the edges. Ladakh was on the other hand a tumbled mass of mountains broken by occasional valleys and there seemed to be little vegetation and few trees, just fantastic rocks of every colour under the sun - yellow, blue, green, crimson, as if some giant had been arming himself with pails of paint, splashing colours about at random as the fancy took him. My camp, I found, was on a level bit of ground at the foot of a vast Llamaseraix (or monastery) that extended high above me, climbing to the mountain side in tier upon tier. Ladakh was at one time a province of Tibet and is even now sometimes known as Western Tibet. The inhabitants are Buddhists, and they are also polyandrists. That is to say, a woman when she marries, marries not one man alone but his brothers as well, and the younger brothers have a poor time for they have to do the fetching and carrying for the whole family and have few rights or privileges. The population of Ladakh is very small, for the simple reason that there is little soil to cultivate and it would be impossible to feed anything but a scanty population. Quite a large proportion of the male inhabitants live in the monasteries which are scattered up and down the country clinging to the steep hillsides like moss to a wall, and each monastery is self supporting, the monks tilling whatever soil exists in the neighbourhood and growing enough food to support themselves in reasonable comfort.
These monks belong to a branch termed the Red Monks as distinguished from the Yellow fraternity common in Tibet itself, and wear robes of a reddish or more correctly a terracotta colour, made of some rough cloth which becomes much stained by constant exposure to rain and snow. A common sight on the Lek road is one of these monks in his reddish garments riding a little Tibetan pony and dragging behind him a mule with his cooking pots, food and personal possessions, on his way from one monastery to another, looking all the world as the old monks must have looked in Medieval Europe seven hundred years ago.
After my strenuous day crossing the mountain range from Baltistan into Ladakh I decided to rest where I was for another night, and I took the opportunity to visit the monastery, where I was cordially and courteously received by the monks, who showed me over every part of it. There were quaint and garish paintings and representations of the Buddha to which each monk gave a twist as he passed, thereby acquiring merit - an easy way of saying a prayer I thought.
Next day I resumed my journey, and for some days the route lay along a deep and narrow valley with gigantic cliffs on either side. At last however I reached more open country and knew that I was approaching Leh. One morning I was having my breakfast in the open at a camping place where I had spent the night, and which I had shared with a small caravan on its way from Central Asia to India. My servant was superintending the packing up of my tent and equipment, and as soon as I had finished my breakfast I intended to push on. Presently the leader of the caravan came to me and said that one of his camel men was very ill and looked as if he were going to die: Would I come over and see what I could do? These men have an exaggerated idea of the power and knowledge of the "Sahib" and attribute to each one a medical skill which not one in a hundred of us possesses. I realised of course that I had neither skill nor medicine to afford relief to a sick man, nor could I ever hope to diagnose his disease, but I did not want to appear unsympathetic or unhelpful, so I told the man I would come over presently, and I went on with my breakfast. Without any very definite plan in my mind I broke off a bit of the chupatti (a sort of cake of unleavened bread) that I was eating, and rolled it into a couple of balls. I then went over to where the caravan was making read to depart, and I found the sick man lying under a stunted tree, with his eyes shut and looking indeed as if he were not long for this world. I went though the motions of feeling his pulse, made him put out his tongue, passed my hand over his stomach, called for a bowl of water, and then helped the man to sit up with his back resting against the tree, and made him take the two pills I had just made from my chupatii. I then told him that he would shortly feel better, and I returned to finish my breakfast, saying that I would come back in a few minutes and see how he was and if necessary give him some more "medicine". While I was finishing my breakfast I rolled a couple more pills, then ordered by boy to pack everything up saying I should start as soon as all the loads were ready. This done, I returned to the caravan, and was delighted to find my man still sitting up, his eyes wide open and talking to the caravan leader. Once more I went through the pretence of taking his pulse, pronounced his mind better, gave him the two fresh pills which I said firmly would complete his cure and with that I sauntered back to superintend the final packing of my cooking utensils. When all was ready I ordered my boys to start, and then I returned to the caravan. My man was up and grooming his camel, apparently quite recovered, and with blessings showered on me by the caravan leader I took my leave of them, wished them a good journey, and with Munnie at my heels turned and followed my own little caravan northwards. I had learnt yet another lesson.
The following day I reached what appeared to be a broad and very shallow river, flowing through immeasurable channels in a north-westerly direction, and this I knew to be the Indus. Beyond it in the distance I could just see the walled City of Leh, the great meeting place for caravans plying between India and Central Asia. It was for me an exciting moment when I finally reached the town and rode through an immensely broad avenue of trees to the central market place and was duly conducted to the government resthouse, a pleasantly situated little bungalow not far away. It was good to settle down for a few days in such pleasant surroundings after my long march from Kashmir, and I lost no time in sending to His Highness the Wazir Wazarat the letter of introduction which Clarke had given me. A messenger soon arrived bearing the Wazir's compliments and saying that there was to be a polo match next day and His Highness would place at my disposal a couple of his ponies and that he hoped to be able to make arrangements for a display of Tibetan ceremonial dances in my honour in a day or two and trusted that I would come as his honoured guest, to which courteous and hospitable messages I sent a suitable and grateful reply.
The following afternoon a groom came over leading two sturdy little Tibetan ponies, and mounting one of them I rode with him to the great expanse in the market place where the polo match was to be played. A motley assembly of horsemen awaited me - a couple of Ladakhians with fur caps, a couple of turbaned Baltis, and a few wild-looking men from Central Asia with nothing on their heads to cover their own flowing locks. As is well known, the game of polo is indigenous to Tibet, and it was in that country that an Englishman learnt it in, I think, the seventies of the previous century and brought it to India. Thence it was introduced into England by a famous cavalry regiment, and it is now of course played all over the world.
The game has naturally suffered some modifications since it was first borrowed from Tibet, as I found when I came to play it in Leh. To begin with, the players were not limited to four a side; that afternoon we played five a side, and I believe there is no fixed rule as to numbers. There may be 3, 4 or 5 or even more players a side. There is another peculiarity. When the ball is hit between the goal posts (usually as in the Leh market place, first two heaps of stones) it does not count as a goal unless and until one of the attacking side picks it up, either dismounting from the ponies or leaning over in his saddle and picking it up while still mounted. The player who does this immediately gallops down the ground at top speed with the ball still in his hand - ends are changed automatically whenever a goal is hit - and when he arrives at the centre he tosses the ball in the air and hits it a tremendous blow with his stick and the game goes on as before. The sticks used are very much like hockey sticks, small and handy.
Before I had been playing five minutes I found myself panting and out of breath, for although after my long march up from Kashmir I was tremendously fit, the violent exercise of galloping without a moment's pause in the highly rarified air - Leh is well over 11,000 feet above sea-level - was trying to one not used to it. I managed to get a smack at the ball occasionally but the little and hardy men from Central Asia who never seemed to tire, nipped in and out on their handy little ponies, and one needed to be as quick as lightning to forestall them. There were no definite boundaries so the ball never went out of play, and as I have explained, even the hitting of a goal did not entail one minute's cessation in the play. So far as I remember, we stopped only once for 3 or 4 moments to change ponies and this was the only breathing time we got the whole afternoon. Fortunately, after about ten minutes I got my second wind and did not again experience quite the same suffocating breathlessness, but by the time the game was over I was pretty well at the end of my tether and was glad to get back to the resthouse and have a hot bath and a rest.
The next morning I spent wandering round the bazaar and the town with an intelligent Hindustani speaking Ladakhi kindly provided by the Wazir, and I was immensely interested in the cosmopolitan population living in Leh; men and women from every country in Asia. Here I found myself in the very sort of place I had dreamed of as a youth, back it seemed in the Middle Ages - for Leh can have changed little in the last thousand years - and a whole continent away from Europe and its civilisation. After my meagre lunch a native arrived bringing me a note from the Sisters of the Moravian mission established in that wild and distant place, inviting me to come up to the mission for tea, an invitation which I gladly accepted. The whole staff of the mission, I found when I duly presented myself, consisted of the Mother Superior, Fraulein Kant, and one assistant, a girl still in her twenties. The Mother Superior told me that she had been thirteen years in Leh without once going home, but was hoping to get home on a short holiday some day. I asked if the mission had made many converts during her long stay in Leh, and she replied with a charming smile: "None yet, But we are in no hurry. They will come in time. We get the Tibetan girls to come to us here and we teach them to knit and sew so that they can make clothes for their mend-kind: We teach them hygiene so that they can keep their homes and surroundings clean: We teach them a little rudimentary arithmetic so that they may not be cheated when they go to the bazaar to buy their supplies: and as they sew or knit we read out to the bits of the New Testament - particularly the parables and the sayings of Jesus - and we tell them about Christ. But we don't try to convert them, knowing that when they are ripe for it they will come to the true faith of their own accord." What a splendid attitude, I thought to myself and what devotion. Here were these two women, both young and charming - Fraulein Kant looked no more than 40, if that, and her assistant quite 15 years younger - who had given up everything in life to come to this strangely desolate and distant spot to carry the Gospel to their fellow women living here and were content if they could but impart to them a few human, every day accomplishments, a little practical wisdom and knowledge, and the elements of the Christian faith that might, perhaps, someday bear fruit. I came away full of admiration for these devoted women, and with a feeling of deep humility when I compared my own pleasure loving, carefree life with their sublime and calm selflessness.
The night before I left on my return journey His Highness staged at his Palace the performance which he had promised me. I was conducted through the great gates into the darkness, and I was led up to a broad dais on which were seated the Wazir himself and some of his notables, to whom I was duly introduced. Refreshments were spread on a table - sweetmeats of all kinds, and wine - and I was motioned to a seat next to the Wazir and invited to partake in the food and drink provided. All the time I could hear drums and musical instruments being tested somewhere in the background, and at last a huge figure dressed in a quaint costume appeared and took his stand in the centre of the courtyard and recited what I understood to be a poem, written for the occasion, extolling His Highness and paying compliments to his guest (myself). Hardly had he concluded his address when a motley crowd of figures burst upon the scene, most of them wearing immense and most comical masks, representing the heads of animals and of grotesque human beings, and these figures began a wild dance, to the strains of equally wild music played by an orchestra hidden from view. I could not make out any particular order or pattern to the dancing: figures whirled around in all directions and flinging up their arms, presenting the wildest and most absurd spectacle with their monstrous and ludicrous masks. The dance must have lasted a full half hour, and then the music began to slow down. One by one the masked figures separated themselves from the rest, still whirling, before the dais, and steadying themselves for an instant made a profound bow to His Highness and myself, and then whirled off and lost themselves in the darkness. The music died slowly away, the courtyard was once more empty, only a few torches saving it from complete darkness. The "Devil Dance" was over.
I expressed my gratitude to my host for his kindness and hospitality, asked that my thanks should be communicated to the performers and left some money to be distributed in largess, took farewell of the Wazir and his other guests, and was escorted out of the palace and made my way home by the light of a young moon, intoxicated with the barbaric quaintness of what I had seen.
My return to my battery was uneventful and I had to make haste in order to get back before my short leave was over, but my hurried trip to that marvellous country buried away in the fastnesses of the Himalayas will always remain one of the most interesting and delightful of my wanderings.
The beginning of October brought with it preparation for our move down to the plains once more. My promotion was now very near as my name was almost at the top of the long list of gunner subalterns and I had over ten and a half years service. At the same time, there was exciting news from South Africa, and a considerable number of British troops, both cavalry and infantry had been despatched from India to Natal to reinforce the garrison. It was during our march down from Kalabagh to Rawalpindi that we heard of the declaration of war by Kruger and his government and the first clash between the Boers and ourselves as the former immediately invaded Natal. I remember very vividly reading the telegrams in the "Civil and Military Gazette" describing the outbreak of war and the fighting at Talana Hill when I was sent ahead to lay out our camp on the fifth day after we had left Kalabagh. The mail had just come in, and I had torn open the papers as we had had no letters or papers since leaving Kalabagh and in those pre-wireless days, no news of any sort. What excitement prevailed throughout the battery when it arrived at our camping ground an hour later and heard the news. Of course we all imagined that our perfectly trained and equipped army (as we thought it) would make short work of the Boer farmers, but it was somewhat disconcerting to learn that our first encounter with the latter should have apparently resulted in our being driven back, and most distressing to hear that the General in command of our advanced forces had been killed in action. He was General Penn Symons who had been commanding at Umballa when we had been stationed there 3 years before, a man of great charm and enormous energy and a highly competent soldier. We afterwards learnt that he had been picked off by a Boer - and every Boer was a first class shot with a rifle - when riding about among his troops followed by a lancer carrying a large flag. What follies were to be committed before we got the measure of the Boers, and how little did any of us dream that it would take the whole embattled might of the British Empire three and a half years to overcome that brave and hardy people.
On our arrival at Pindi I heard news of my promotion and of my being posted to a depot near Portsmouth as captain. I was to go home as soon as a troopship passage could be provided for me from Bombay. My one idea was to get home as rapidly as I possibly could in order that I might use every means in my power to join the forces in South Africa, and I was truly thankful that I had been promoted to a battery at home and not in India (In the Artillery it was a mere chance to what battery one was posted on promotion), since it would have been impossible to get out to the Boer War from India.
It did not take me long to sell off my ponies, saddles, tent, camp furniture and the rest of my few possessions. It was with regret that I left the battery in which I had spent the best part of seven very happy years, but the officers had all changed since I had first joined, and most of the men, and I was profoundly glad to leave the rank of subaltern behind me with its everlasting routine duties, and have the prospect of more varied duties as a captain. It was with high hoped therefore that I took the train to Bombay accompanied by my faithful Munnie, and in due course the long train journey was over and I found myself once more in Bombay. But here bad news awaited me, for I discovered that no dogs could be taken to England unless the owner had previously received a permit for its importation from the Board of Agriculture in Whitehall, and such a permit would take at least two months to obtain. The tragedy was that I must part with Munnie. The day after my arrival in Bombay I had tea with a cousin of mine - a major in the Sappers - and his wife who were quartered there and they took a great fancy to Munnie and asked if they might have him since I could not take him with me. Here was at least a chance of securing him a really good home, and on the day I sailed on the troopship on which a passage had been allotted to me, I called on my cousins to say goodbye, and there slipped quietly away leaving Munnie behind. The dog had been strangely quiet all morning and had never let me out of his sight. Some strange instinct seemed to tell him that something was up, though what could have put it into his head that a partying was in the offing I cannot guess. His eyes were on me all the time I was with my cousin, and I felt like a criminal when I slipped out of the door after a last affectionate pat. I heard afterwards from my cousin that he refused food for two days after my departure but soon settled down in his new home and was their faithful companion till they left India some years later, when they had him mercifully put to sleep.
The transport on which I sailed from India was, I found, taking home the wives and families of the officers and men of regiments which had been sent to South Africa and which were now in the thick of the fighting in Natal. And things were not going well there. After General Penn Symons had been killed, the force which he had commanded fell back towards Ladysmith where the bulk of the Natal Field Force was assembled under the command of General Sir George White. In those pre-wireless days news could only come by cable or telegraph, and at sea one could of course obtain none at all. Rumours therefore often took the place of news, and just as we were sailing a wicked rumour spread round the ship that Ladysmith was surrounded and and that Sir George White had committed suicide. It may be imagined what such a rumour meant to the scores of women on board whose husbands were with the force in Natal, and what terrible anxiety they went through during the week that elapsed before we reached Aden. The moment we dropped anchor the entire ship was agog for news, but when the Agent and the Port doctor came on board bringing with them a bully sheaf of Reuters telegrams, our burly Captain grasped the latter and strode off to his cabin without a word and shut himself in. His intention was obvious - to read through the news himself before anyone else saw it lest some of the wives on board should first learn of their husbands being killed or wounded by seeing the announcement in these telegrams. Actually he need not have taken the precaution since the telegrams contained no news affecting personally any individual on board, whereas they set at rest the absurd rumours we had heard in Bombay. As it was, we all gathered in a crowd outside the Captain's cabin, trying our best to curb the intolerable impatience which we all felt. A little lady whom I had known well in Pindi and who had married a great friend of mine, a captain in the Devon Regiment, was standing beside me and I was trying my best to allay her obvious and terrible anxiety and impatience, and distract her attention without unfortunately much result when suddenly she burst out; "If the Captain doesn't come out soon and give us the news, I shall go in and brain him." Fortunately for the Captain (who was 6'2" and broad in proportion) this terrible threat was not put into execution, for he emerged from his cabin shortly afterwards, and the telegrams were read aloud from the after deck. Ladysmith was indeed surrounded and the celebrated siege which was to last for nearly three months had begun.
Our next port of call was Port Said, after which we made no further stop till we reached Southampton towards the end of November. When passing Gibraltar we got into touch with the Signal Station there and asked for news on the war. "War Still Continues" was the aggravating and senseless reply.
From Southampton I went straight to Portsmouth and to the outlying fort - Fort Brockhurst I think it was called - to which was the depot I had been posted. On reporting myself to my new Major he readily gave me leave to go home at once and said if I cared to apply for a month's leave he would raise no objection, so I took the train immediately to Farnborough and drove from there to Frimley where my mother and my sisters were now settled in a very charming little house of which I had heard much from them in their letters. I arrived long after dark in a frost so hard that my driver had to dismount and head the horse when he came to a hill. How glad I was to find a blazing fire and a warm welcome and to realise that I was once more at home in England after ten years of service abroad to the East, the last five of them mainly on active service.
But it was not like my precious home-coming two and a half years previously, for the Boer War cast its shadow over everything, and I could not sit quietly at home while the country was at war and most of my friends in the army were either out in South Africa or going out there. Frimley is close to Camberley and only a few miles from Aldershot and so in strongly military surroundings and there was hardly a house in the neighbourhood which did not have at least one of its menfolk out at the war, and before the end of December there were few of our neighbours not in mourning. My mother sensed my anxiety and watched me with care-worn eyes. I was conscious that she yearned to have me at home for a few years and had been overjoyed when I was posted a promotion to a battery in England. Least of all could she welcome the prospect of my going to this war which was already taking toll of so many of our young men. Was it only for this, she must have thought, that I had come back to her after ten long years of separation? So the days passed, and I turned over in my mind how I could get out to South Africa. I was obviously tied by the neck by being in a depot battery which could not by its very essence ever leave the country. I might apply for a transfer, but on what grounds. I had only just been posted to the battery. If only there were someone in the War Office, some friend who might use his influence to get me sent out in some capacity. I procured an Army List and searched the pages that gave the list of officers on the staff at the War Office, and I found that a certain General Hay was Deputy Adjutant General, Royal Artillery, i.e. head of the branch that dealt with the postings and appointments of officers of the R.A. If anyone could get me out to South Africa, here was the man; and surely I had heard my mother speak of him as having been a subaltern under my father, and as having been very fond of my eldest sister Joy when she was a little fair-haired child of 8 or so. I asked my mother casually if this were so, and when she confirmed it I remarked that in his present position he would be able to get any Gunner officer out to South African who wanted to go. My mother said nothing, but next morning she asked me rather shyly whether I would like her to give me a letter of introduction to General Hay. I could hardly believe my ears, and replied of course that it would be just splendid if she would do so and that evening she put the letter in my hands.
One used to read of Spartan mothers who sent their sons to battle, with the words "Return either with your shield or on it", and I for one always pictured them as hard-faced, tight-lipped viragoes, rather masculine and not very human. But here the shy, loving, timid little mother deliberately and without even being asked, giving her son a document which might in her imagination very well be a sentence of death. Once again, she put aside all thoughts of herself, of her affections or fears or hopes.
The next morning I went up to London, armed with the letter of introduction, and made straight for the War Office where I duly presented it and asked that it should be taken to General Hay. I was shown in to a waiting room, and after a while the messenger came back and informed me that the General was engaged at the moment but would see me later if I cared to wait. I certainly did care, and in about half an hour's time the messenger returned and led the way along some winding corridors and finally stopped in front of a door marked D.A.G.R.A. and knocked. A pleasant voice answered "Come in" and I was ushered into the presence of a grey-haired man of about 50 who was sitting behind a vast writing table piled with papers, and who stretched out his hand with a kindly gesture as I came in and bade me be seated. He was holding my mother's letter in his hand, and he began by asking after her and how she was, and then he asked after my sister Joy and said how well he remembered her thirty years or more ago as a pretty little fair-haired child. Then he asked me about myself and my service in India, and went on to talk about my father and of how much he had admired him and of how good both my father and mother had been to him as a newly joined subaltern. All the time he had been talking I had been racking my brain how I should approach the one subject that was uppermost in my mind - my ardent desire to get out to South Africa. At last I summoned my courage, and in desperation, when he paused for a moment in his reminiscences I stammered out "I was wondering Sir, whether you would help me to get out to the Boer War?" Never before or since have I ever seen anyone change so completely in face and manner. Up to know he had been friendly, genial and charming. In an instant his face froze, and with an entire change of manner he said coldly and sternly, "If you wish to go to South Africa you must apply through the normal official channels:" then after a slight pause he added rather less coldly, "And now I must get on with my work: remember me warmly to your mother and thank her for her letter. I am glad to have seen you, goodbye." The interview was over, and I left the room feeling crushed and thoroughly uncomfortable. I ought to have realised, I said to myself that a man of that austere, puritanical type would look with severe condemnation on any attempt to gain official favours from a private friendship, even if the "favour" were that of going to fight for one's country. I wondered if my father would have been the same: I hoped not for notwithstanding his puritanical standards of belief and conduct he was, I knew, blessed with an ever present sense of humour which always carries with it the human touch and softens the sharp edges of an ultra-rigid standard of behaviour.
My leave ended a few days after Christmas and I returned to Gosport to take up my duties in the depot at Fort Brockhurst.
January 1900, the first month of the new century was one of the most miserable months of my life. Things in South Africa were going shockingly badly for us, and the 'black week' after the battle of Colenso in Natal was black for us all. Ladysmith was besieged, Mafeking was besieged, and we seemed to be able to make no headway against the mobile forces of the Boers. I longed to get out to South Africa, or if I couldn't get out, to do some real war work at home. But here was I, imprisoned as it were in this ancient fort, and for the life of me I could not find work for more than an hour or two each morning, for the Major divvied out the administrative duties, the subalterns superintended the drinks, and all that I as captain of the battery could find to do was to superintend for an hour or so each morning the fitting of the recruits' uniforms by the battery tailor - a job that any corporal could have done. By half past eleven my work - such as it was - was finished for the day and all I could do was to retire to the mess and read the papers till lunch at 1. After lunch I would go to my room and change in to plain clothes and go out for a solitary walk or ride in the surrounding country, or walk into Gosport, take the ferry across the harbour to Portsmouth and go and see one of my friends quartered there and discuss with him how we could manage to get to Africa. There was but one break in this dreadful, soul-deadening monotony when I was sent down to Southampton for a week to act as Assistant Embarkation Officer. This was very interesting work, when troop trains arrived full of khaki-clad soldiers, generally singing as Thomas Atkins always does on such occasions, and these, with their baggage and equipment, had to be checked and embarked on the troopship waiting for them. Anyone who has seen Noel Coward's Cavalcade and remembers the scene where the Yeomanry embark and where the heroine bids a brave and touching farewell to her husband, will have in their minds a complete picture, accurate in every detail, of what I saw day after day in those Southampton Docks in January 1900. What poignant scenes did I not witness and how vividly it was brought home to me that heroism and a truly lovely devotion are constantly rubbing shoulders with sordid vice and bestiality: for some of those scenes of embarkation were not pleasant to witness, whilst others caused a lump in one's throat.
Suddenly, in the middle of February our Adjutant, Captain Dodson, came to me one morning and said, "We've had circular from headquarters asking if any officer of the rank of Captain wants to apply for 'Pom Poms' in South Africa. I'm putting my name down. D'you want to send in yours?". "Do I not", I cried, "And I'll do it here and now." And within an hour both our names had gone forward officially and a few days afterwards orders came that we were seconded for duty with 'pom-poms' and were to report at the War Office in London as soon as possible. IN a frenzy of delight I went to my sister Lucy asking her to come down and help me pack up my kit, which she did. And I took no time in winding everything up and hurrying up to London. On calling at the War Office I was ordered to go down to Vickers' Works on the Thames at Erith and go through a course in the 'pom-pom', and next day found me with about half a dozen of the gunner captains gathered round a 'pom-pom' while a very competent foreman explained the mechanism to us.
I must explain that a 'pom-pom' was a glorified and enlarged Maxim Gun working on precisely the same mechanism but firing a 1 pound shell instead of a .303 bullet. These shells are packed in belts of 35 and the gun can be set to fire one singly or to go on firing till the belt of shells is exhausted. In the field it is drawn by six horses, like an ordinary field gun, and can be brought into action with great rapidity. One or two single shots are fired to discover the range of the object at which it is to be directed, and the moment the range is found the automatic switch is moved, and a stream of these little one pounder shells poured on to the object.
It is a fact I believe that the gun was offered by its inventor to the British Government some years before the Boer War, but was rejected by the War Office, which probably considered it ingenious but unlikely to be of much practical use. Possibly they were correct in their diagnosis, for what I have called its 'shells' did not in fact burst on impact since they had neither a bursting charge nor a fuse. Hence they were harmless unless a direct hit was attained on the object fired at, whereas a full gun - at that time an eighteen pounder - which required no more horses to move it, could kill or wound a very large number of men with one well-aimed shell. The value of the pom-pom I have always regarded as more morale than physical, For a sudden stream of little shells falling on one spot had an alarming effect, and whether that spot was occupied by guns, horses, men, waggons or what not, these could be counted on to clear out at speed the moment a stream of pom-pom shells began to fall in the vicinity.
Those few days spent at Vickers' works at Erith were highly unpleasant ones, for the weather was vile, with a mixture of snow, sleet and rain every day, and the mud was indescribable. Fortunately we had learnt in a few days all there was to know about the mechanics and construction of the gun, and I received orders to take over a draft of men at Woolwich on a named date in early March and embark with them at the Docks in a transport that was to take us out to South Africa. I had collected all the service uniform and equipment necessary, and I just had time to rush down to Frimley for a couple of nights with my mother and sisters to say goodbye before sailing. My mother was as brave as I knew she would be, knowing as she did that I was getting my heart's desire, and we all pretended to be in the highest spirits those last two days, whatever any of us were actually feeling. And so came the day of parting. I said farewell to 'The little Mater'. My sisters saw me off at the station, and I took the train to London, having engaged a room for the night in a little Inn in Woolwich since I was to take over my draft at 6 o'clock next morning.
An old friend of mine, then in the War Office, had asked me to dine and go to the theatre with him to celebrate my last night in England and he took me to Floradora, a very pretty little musical comedy which I much enjoyed and I reached my inn at Woolwich just before midnight, was shown my room, and I turned in, giving orders that I was to be called at 4:30 next morning. I hardly seemed to have got to sleep when I was wakened by the boots hammering at the door telling me it was 4:30. Sleepily getting out of bed I shaved, washed and dressed in uniform, packed all my things, had some coffee, and about half past five an artillery waggon came by arrangement to take my kit to the ship, and when I had seen everything put on the waggon I started to walk up to the barracks. A thick yellow fog hung over everything; it was inky black, and bitterly cold, and I stamped my feet as I walked up the hill to the barracks to get some warmth in them.
When I arrived on the barrack square I saw the dim figures of a squad of men in their great coats, each carrying his kitbag and a couple of officers with a hurricane lamp walking about in the thick fog that hung over everything. Round the barrack square were were a number of women, some crying. I don't think I have seen many more dreary or dismal spectacles in my life, and what with the darkness and the fog and the bitter cold it was impossible for anyone to feel very cheerful. I went up to the officers and was duly over over a sheaf of papers containing the details about the men and was told that all the rest of the documents, together with the men's kit would follow in a cart, and when all was ready I took over the parade, called the men to "Attention", and off we marched.
Our route lay down the hill into Woolwich, and then through some mean streets towards the river where a great swing ferry would take us across to the docks on the far side. All the way we were followed by a concourse of women, determined to see the last of their menfolk, but I had orders on no account to allow them on to the ferry, and this they knew, so they were aware that the final parting was close at hand. At last our dismal procession reached the riverside, but here the dark yellow fog was so thick that the men in charge of the ferry declined to move, and it was nearly an hour before the fog had lifted sufficiently to enable them to push off into the river. Last farewells were said, I marched the men on to the ferry, the gates closed behind them, and we nosed our way in the semi-darkness across the river to the Northern bank. Disembarking from the ferry a short march along the docks brought us to where our ship - one of the old Allan Line plying between Canada and the United Kingdom, since absorbed by the Canadian Pacific - was berthed, and I marched the men aboard at once. I found that there were already on board about 200 horses which I was to take out to South Africa, together with a contingent of drivers, and there were also some infantry drafts, mostly of the Essex Regiment. To my surprise I discovered that I was the senior officer and was therefore to be Officer Commanding during the voyage, which incidentally entitled me to a cabin to myself; and I immediately appointed as my staff officer a young subaltern of the Essex Regiment. I went round the horses and men's quarters, gave all necessary orders, and then sad down to a most welcome breakfast. By noon all was ship-shape and we were ready to sail. The Embarkation Officer wished me luck and went ashore, the tugs came fussing round to haul us into midstream, and with the men singing 'auld lang syne' we headed down river. Every ship sounding its siren the whole way down stream as they always do when a troopship sails. How grey and ark everything looked - sea, sky and shore - as we made our way down the Thames before turning South to make the Channel. I wrote a few lines to my mother and sisters and gave them to the pilot who left us shortly after we had passed Dover, and then I settled down to unpack and to plan out with my Staff Officer the routine of the voyage.
Few details of the voyage out to Cape Town remain in my memory and I think it was altogether uneventful. As the Boers had no ships there was no possible danger - an extraordinary contrast to the present day or the last the war. We might almost have been taking a pleasure cruise, and the weather was fine throughout and the sea calm. We had the usual ships ceremonies on crossing the Equator, of which I was fortunately a mere spectator, although it was my first experience of 'crossing the line': but as OC Troops I was immune from all indignities. The Captain of the ship, on whose right hand I sat at meals, was a reserved and rather silent Scotsman whom at first I regarded as something of a dull dog, but before the end of the voyage I learnt to appreciate him and to have a real affection for him. Early in the voyage he had told me that he had been with sailing ships all his life until only a couple of years before when he had been transferred by the Company, much against his will, to steam. Indeed this ship was the only steamship he had ever commanded.
For many years, he told me, he had been in command of one of the crack sailing ships of the Allan Line, of which there were four, carrying cargo between Glasgow and the Western coasts of South and North America via Cape Horn. He infinitely preferred, he said, sails to steam. Sails required real seamanship, he asserted: but whenever he spoke of his experiences at sea, a wistful look would come into his eyes and his thoughts seemed to me to turn to something tragic, something that stirred deep emotion in him, and I wondered what it was. And then one night when we were sitting together on deck under a brilliant moon, enjoying the cool after a very sultry day of tropical heat, he told me the story. He had one child only, a boy, who was evidently the apple of his eye. From his childhood this boy was set on following his father's profession and becoming a sailor, and though his father and mother both tried to dissuade him he refused to be turned from his desire. So at last, when the boy had reached the age of 15 the old man approached his employer and asked if the boy might sail with him in his own ship as apprentice. The Company very readily agreed and all arrangements were made, but a fortnight before the ship sailed the old man was sent for and was told that he was to be promoted to 'steam' and had been given command of one of the Company's newest steamers. In consequence, the sailing ship left two weeks later with his son on board under command of a new captain. A little later reports came of very heavy Atlantic storms. The old man paused in his narrative for so long that I was on the point of asking him what happened, when he continued in a voice charged with emotion. "That ship was never heard of again. There can be no doubt whatever that she foundered with all hands. And God help me I can never prevent myself from fancying that if I had remained in command of her she would have got through, and that feeling will haunt me all my life." So this was the cause of that wistful and tragic look that I had noticed from time to time come into this old merchant skipper's eyes. From that day I felt an affection and respect for him and a sympathy which was ever present with me throughout the voyage. It was one of those intensely human incidents which so often lie hidden in the experiences of men and women whom one meets casually, casting its shadow perpetually over them and making them seem perhaps dull and ordinary until a chance remark or conversation reveals in a flash the cause of their reserve.
We arrived at Cape Town as luck would have it on Easter Eve and dropped anchor out in Table Bay amidst a regular fleet of transports and freight ships. I had been worried in my mind for some time about the horses. I had lost 2 or 3 on the voyage - and how they would stand up to disembarkation, and I had talked things over many times with my senior Sergeant and planned out arrangements with him. But all my worrying soon turned out to have been - as is generally the case with worry - mere stupid waste of time and energy. For late in the afternoon a staff officer came out in a launch and brought us our orders. The ship was to go on as it was to East London, but I personally was to disembark at once and go up to Stellenbosch to join the pom-poms depot there. If I could get my kit together at once, the staff officer said he would take me ashore in his launch. I hastily summoned my batman, a cheerful youngster named Lack, whom I had selected for the job soon after we sailed, and together we packed all my hit and in less than half an hour I had handed over my command to the next senior officer and with Driver Lack climbed down the companion ladder and boarded the launch.
Table mountain is one of the most impressive sights imaginable, especially from the sea. The great gaunt rock dominates the Bay, and at its feet the town, harbours and docks spread themselves under its sheltering height.
The launch reached the docks, and Driver Lack and I together bundled our kits on to the wharf, the Staff Officer bid me a hasty farewell and hurried off, and we were left to our own devices. It was about 5 o'clock in the evening and as the town was some distance from the docks and in any case I had been told that it was impossible to get accommodation in any hotel, so crowded were they, it seemed to me that my batman and I would have to find some corner on the wharf and bed down there for the night. Whilst I was cogitating what to do a Good Angel came along in the shape of a young Embarkation Officer, who directly he saw us acted the part of the Good Samaritan and came over and asked if he could help me. When I explained the position he said that he had quarters of a sort in a shed close by which formed his office as well, and that there was room on the floor for my bed as well, I was welcome to dump it there. As for Driver Luck, he would be looked after by a corporal and two men who slept in another shed. So before darkness fell we had settled ourselves down in our new and temporary quarters, and the hospitable Embarkation Officer later on opened a tin of bully beef which with some cheese and stale bread made an excellent meal, and we turned in early and slept peacefully till dawn next morning.
Breakfast I had with my friend on board one of the ships lying alongside, and then I set off to find Headquarters and get my orders and travelling warrant. This took me most of the morning, for I did not know my way about the town and it was sometime before I got my bearings, and when I did find the Castle where HQ was established the task of discovering anyone who would attend to me proved both difficult and unpleasant. It was Easter Sunday, and such officers as were on duty seemed to resent being on duty on a public holiday and to be exceedingly peevish in consequence, and I was obviously regarded as an unmitigated nuisance by everyone to whom I applied At long last however I tracked down the officer whose duty it was to deal with my business, and I duly extracted from him a warrant for myself and my batman to travel to Stellenbosch, and I arranged for a Cape cart to take our kits from the docks to the Railway Station next morning in time for a train leaving about 10. As I was leaving the Castle I ran into an old gunner friend who happened to be serving with a battery in the Castle, and he invited me to have "Sunday Supper" as he called it with him that night in the mess at 7. An invitation which I readily accepted. When I turned up that night there was such a number of officers in the ante-room that I wondered who we should all find seats at the long mess table which I could see in the adjoining room, but my host assured me that it would be all right, and in fact it proved to be so, though we were packed so close together that one could hardly move one's arms.
Cape Town was in fact swarming with officers - staff officers of every kind, officers like myself just out from home and on their way to the front, officers down from the front on some business or other, officers on transfer and so on. The town too was full of civilians, men and women of every sort and kind on every sort of business. I was indeed thankful to get away next morning from all this hubbub. I thanked most profoundly my kind host at the Docks who had played so admirably the part of the Good Samaritan, and Driver Lack collected and loaded our kits on the Cape cart and we drove off to the station to pick up our train. The scene at the station was a busy one, and every inch of space seemed to be taken up with piles of warlike stores which were being loaded on the trucks or unloaded from waggons by fatigue parties of soldiers. I found my train however without difficulty, packed myself and Lack and our possessions into it, and before long we were puffing along slowly on our way to Stellenbosch, which lied in the heart of this well cultivated wine country almost due east of Cape Town and only a few miles from it. Here I found the "Pom pom" Depot in a big camp in pleasant grassland country through which a stream ran, and nearby was a large ostrich farm. The pom-poms were being organised in sections of 2 guns, commanded by a Captain, and with its proper complement of gunners, drivers and horses. Each section as it was organised and equipped was sent up country to be attached to whatever brigade or column that required it. The whole dept was under the command of a Gunner Major, named Crampton, and there were about a dozen Captains waiting for their turn to come, as sections were organised, to be put in command of one and sent up to the front. As I was the last to arrive I realised that some time must elapse before my turn came, and that I should have to exercise all the patience of which I was capable: but meanwhile there was plenty of work to be done drilling the men, getting the horses fit, and mastering all the details of the gun and its equipment. What odd incidents make an impression on one, sometimes so utterly trivial that there seems no reason whatever for their remaining in one's mind for an hour and yet they sprint to remembrance 40 or 50 years later. As an instance I remember the feeling of surprise with which I saw a trooper of a squadron of yeomanry which had marched in and camped beside us one evening take out from his saddle bag a toothbrush and a tin of toothpaste and solemnly proceed to brush his teeth by the side of the stream at which the squadron was watering its horses. There was of course nothing the least surprising about this, but what made it stick in my memory no doubt was that the sight of a trooper taking the trouble to clean his teeth seemed to me the height of oddity. Looking back I realise how indelibly class-conscious we were in those days, though we were entirely unaware of any such feeling and should probably have denied it stoutly and quite sincerely if we had been taxed with it. And I was unaware that most of the troopers in that first batch of Imperial Yeomanry which went out to the Boer War were young men from the universities and public schools, many of them well known in the humanity field. What in heaven's name was odd about one of them brushing his teeth as he watered his horse? The very fact that the surprise which registered itself in my thoughts had remained in my memory to this day throws an interesting light on the unconscious but immensely strong class feeling that existed in those days.
One morning some ten NCOs and men of Strathmore's Horse, a Canadian contingent of cavalry raised and equipped by Lord Strathmore at his expense and were over to our camp to be instructed in the mechanism and use of the pompom gun, as a couple of these guns were shortly to be handed over to the regiment. I was told to carry out the instruction, and did so. When I had finished, I asked if any of them would like to ask any question, whereupon one young corporal came out with an abstruse question in ballistics which was quite beyond my capacity to answer. Fortunately I had with me a very knowledgeable Master Gunner, so I turned to him and said "I think you can best answer that, Mr Hepburn", which he did. Some years afterwards when I was in the African bush in the back of beyond I came across a young engineer working on the advance survey of a railway that was being built, and whilst talking to him I noticed that he was wearing a South African medal ribbon in his bush shirt. "I see you were in the Boer War", I said. "What unit were you serving with?" "Strathmore's Horse", he replied. I looked at him for a moment and some memory began stirring in me. "Were you by any chance," I asked "one of a detachment that came to the pom-pom dept at Stellenbosch to be instructed in that gun?" "I was," he replied. "There here, my hand" I said, "for you were the inquisitive young corporal who stumped me with a question that I couldn't answer." We had a good laugh over the incident which we both remembered clearly, and it turned out that when the Boer War broke out he had just taken an engineering degree at the Royal Military College at Kingston, Ottawa, and enlisted in Strathmore's Horse directly it was formed. I have met him frequently since for he became an important railway official in West Africa.
I had not been more than 2 or 3 weeks in Stellenbosch when orders came for the Depot to move up to Bloemfontein as our forces had by this time - the beginning of May - fought their way to Pretoria and the advanced base had been shifted from Cape Colony to the Orange Free State. So our much reduced Depot - for most of the officers had gone up to the front with the newly formed units - made the long train journey up to Bloemfontein and we pitched our camp in the wide stretch of veldt on the outskirts of town. The chief things I remember during the rather dreary weeks I spent in camp there were the flies and the wind. The plague of flies was appalling. Our tents swarmed with them, and before one put any food into one's mouth it was necessary to beat off the flies with one's hands. The other side of Bloemfontein the Base Hospital was accommodated in a perfect sea of tents, and most of the patients were suffering from enteric fever: They were indeed dying whilst I was in Bloemfontein at the rate of about forty a day. The prevalence of this disease was not to be wondered at considering that the latrines throughout the camp were just open trenches, thick with flies, and these same flies swarmed over every mouthful of food we ate.
As for the wind, it would from time to time blow with gale force for days at a time, never ceasing night or day, sweeping the veldt dust before it to cover everything we possessed, tearing the tent pegs out of the ground, scattering our possessions and rattling the canteens so we couldn't sleep at night. I found myself unconsciously regarding this wind as a malicious person who took a delight in tearing across our camp and tormenting us, and I used sometimes to rush out of my tent and shake my fist at it, cursing it in the vilest language at my disposal, and after this ebullition of temper I would return to my tent, thoroughly ashamed of myself, but somehow feeling the better for my outburst.
Hardly had we arrived in Bloemfontein when Major Crampton was ordered up to Pretoria and I found myself alone, with the remnants of the Depot and instructions to 'await orders.' This continued inaction was hard to bear. In those days, before flying had come in, troops in the rear of the fighting line were as immune from attacks as if they were on manoeuvres at home, and in a sense endured all the discomforts of active service without any of the excitement, and what was worse we felt that we were not really taking part in the campaign. I tried very hard to preserve my patience, and to persuade myself that my job was to do what I was told, and not let personal considerations or desires come into the picture at all. "They also serve," I quoted to myself, "who only stand and wait." I joined forces with a gunner captain whose camp was alongside mine, and we arranged to mess together. Bloemfontein was itself a typical little Boer town planted in the midst of the veldt, with a few wide streets flanked by white houses of the Dutch pattern, and in the middle of the town was a hotel, the Post Office and the Council House. What attracted me most was the statue of a former President, Reitz, for on the stone which bore his name and the date of his birth and death and of the tenure of the Presidency, were engraved these words: "Alles zal recht komen". I used to go often in the evening and gaze at this statue and the inscription, and repeat over and over to myself. "Alles zal recht komen" - all will come right - until the words became engraved on my very heart and constituted for me a kind of philosophy, infinitely encouraging and helpful.
On May 24th, Queen Victoria's birthday, a very significant ceremony took place in Bloemfontein which I was able to witness for a point of vantage, since I was not on duty and was able to go early to the appointed spot, and I took my camera with me. Detachments from all the troops occupying Bloemfontein were paraded and took their stand in the big open space in the centre of the town, forming three sides of a hollow square. At Eleven o'clock the General Officer in command rode on to the square with his staff and took up his position beside a large flagstaff which had been erected overnight. At a sign from him the Provost Marshall rode out into the centre of the square, and unrolling a document read out a Proclamation by Her Majesty announcing that the Orange Free State was this day annexed to the British Empire and would be known henceforth as the Orange River Colony. The Union Jack was then raised up the flagstaff, the massed bands played the National Anthem and the generals called for three cheers for the Queen which was given by the troops with tremendous enthusiasm, and the simple ceremony came to a close.
My own feelings at the time were mainly I think pride in the realization that I was a citizen and servant of a great Empire, pride in the fact that I was taking a part, however humble, in the history and evolution of that Empire, and an earnest and very sincere hope that I might throughout my life be worthy of my membership of the Empire and help to maintain its reputation and its traditions. I do not think that I had any feeling of exultation that we were adding another territory to the already vast area consisting the British Empire. I certainly felt no enmity whatever against the Boers whom we were fighting, nor any wish for domination over them. I quite honestly thought they were fortunate in coming into the great commonwealth of peoples that together composed the British Empire. I had, since I came to Bloemfontein, obtained some insight into the feelings of the Boers themselves, for my gunner friend had introduced me to some people in Bloemfontein who though not Dutch themselves had been long settled in the country and were Orange Free State citizens. They were a Mr and Mrs Leviseur, with I think five daughters ranging in age from 10 to 22. The two boys were out on Commando and I naturally did not see them, but the father and mother showed me a kind hospitality and my gunner friend and I had had supper with them at least once and had been to their house two or three times. We had discussed the war quite frankly, and each of us respected the other's point of view however much we differed, and of course we differed almost entirely. They were fair and liberal minded and had a good deal to criticise in President Kruger and his government's policy and action, and in the Transvaalers as a whole. In consequence I found myself becoming a very great admirer of the Free Staters, and also understanding of the attitude of President Kruger and his people far better than I ever had before. My belief in the rightness and justice of our cause was in no degree lessened, but in my talks with this cultured, sincere and delightful couple and their family I did learn something of the Boers' points of view, and felt that if I had been born an Orange Free Stater instead of an Englishman, I should almost certainly had felt, thought and acted precisely as the Free Staters and their government had done. Thinking it all over I wrote an article based on the views I had formed and sent it to my sister Joy in Australia, who was connected with the Sydney Press, telling her that she was welcome to get it published if she thought it worth publication and could find a publisher, but it must be anonymous as I was not allowed to send articles to the press whilst was actually serving with the forces. Actually it was published in one of the Sydney papers, and there was a curious sequel. Some months afterwards I was in Shanghai and was discussing the South African war with a Shanghai resident at the Club one night, and incidentally I gave the point of view, as I saw it, of the Boers, a point of view which not many Englishmen, especially those living abroad, ever though of considering. My friend listened with some interest, and then remarked, "It's an odd thing, but I was reading only this morning an article in the local paper which expressed very much the same views as you have been describing to me. I think it was copied from some other paper, but I'll send it round to you tomorrow if you like." Next morning a boy arrived with a copy of the paper in question and with some astonishment I found it contained the very article which I had sent from Bloemfontein to my sister and which had been published in a Sydney paper. I am not of course claiming any particular merit for the article merely as a newspaper article. The point is that an attempt to give expression to the Boers' side of the case should have appeared interesting enough and novel enough not only to be published in Australia but to be reprinted in a much respected and widely read paper published in China.
I had been in camp in Bloemfontein, trying to bear enforced inaction for nearly two months when I suddenly received orders from Pretoria to come up there with the depot by rail at once, and Major Crampton wrote at the same time that I was to take command of a newly formed section, "P" section. Here was news at last. I called to Lack to saddle my horse, and I cantered off to the railway station, showed the railway staff of my orders, and requested passage for myself and men at once. He replied that all accommodation on every train for Pretoria was taken up for at least a week, and although I tried my best to persuade him that it was of the utmost importance that I and my men should get transport at once (which of course I wasn't) I could not do better than get an undertaking from him that we should be allocated the top of a coal truck the following Wednesday, just 5 days ahead. With this I had to be content, and I spent the next 2 days arranging for tents and equipment being taken over by the Ordnance Department and the horses transferred to the Remount Depot for I was to bring up the men alone - NCOs, gunners and drivers amounting to about 30. Then on Monday came far more startling news. A long telegram arrived from Pretoria to say that I had been selected to take 4 pom-pom to China where the Boxer War had just broken out. I was to hand over the depot to the Senior Sergeant who would bring it up to Pretoria and I myself was to take four NCOs and proceed immediately by rail to Cape Town where I was to go on board a transport waiting there with the 4 guns already on board and sail at once for China. I was beside myself with delight. The Boer War seemed to be practically over now that Lord Roberts had entered Pretoria with his troops, and here was a war just beginning in China. There was not difficulty whatever in getting a railway warrant to Cape Town for my friend the railway staff officer, for the trains south were going practically empty, and the very next day I was off taking with me the faithful Driver Lack, and 4 of my best NCOs. All the way down to Cape Town I found myself envied by the officers I met at the railway station who ruefully called me a lucky dog, the luckiest fellow in the whole South African Force, and indeed I considered myself so.
I remember there were 5 of us in the railway compartment on the journey down of which I was, oddly enough, the only regular officer. Of the rest, one was a Canadian, one an Australian, one an officer of a South African local corps - The Cape Rifles I think, and the other was an officer of the Imperial Yeomanry. We got on famously together during the long and rather tedious railway journey down to Cape Town and it gave me a warm feeling the companionship of the British Empire, for here were we, gathered from all parts of the world, met together for a common purpose and united by a common language, common traditions, common ideals and a common attachment to liberty, justice and fairplay.
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