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Continued from Sir Charles Orr's Memoirs Volume 2
At last we reached Cape Town, and as the train rumbled into the station and finally came to a stop, a red-tailed staff officer walked hurriedly up to me saying that his instructions were to take me and my men on board the troopship without a moment's delay. She was at anchor out in the Bay with steam up, he told me, only waiting for my party before sailing. So we bundled forthwith into a waggon and driven at top speed down to the docks, where a launch was awaiting us. Arriving at the ship we climbed up the rope ladders let down for us, our kits were hauled up after us, and before we were all aboard the anchor was up and we were under weigh. I had embarked on a new adventure.
It is worth while breaking off my narrative for a moment to record the fate of my depot. The evening after I left for Cape Town the senior sergeant marched his party down to the station at Bloemfontein, in accordance with my orders, and claimed accommodation on the coal truck which had been allotted. To his dismay and annoyance he found the truck already occupied by a detachment of some infantry regiment under command of a Captain who had quietly taken possession - quite irregularly - and refused to budge, or even to listen to my Sergeant's expostulations or look at his warrant, with the result that the train pulled out of the station leaving my party standing on the platform. The Sergeant had ruefully to march his men back to camp and actually obtained accommodation and reached Pretoria 2 or 3 days later. If I had been in charge instead of the Sergeant I should of course have had that infantry detachment off the truck in no time, routing out the Railway Staff Officer if necessary, but naturally a non-commissioned officer could do nothing.
But note the consequences. The train on which I and my party were to have travelled was held up that night between Bloemfontein and Pretoria by a Commando of Boers under the famous de Wet, and every officer and man was either killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Once more, by an extraordinary coincidence - an almost incredible coincidence. I had escaped death or capture.
To return to my troopship. I found on board a couple of batteries of heavy guns and a large draft of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers who were being transferred from the battalion in South Africa to the battalion at Hong Kong to make the latter up to Full Strength. I subsequently learnt that when the Boxer War suddenly broke out in China, whilst we were at a critical point of the Boer War, the War Office cabled out to Lord Roberts to ask what troops he could spare from South Africa. The answer was, no cavalry, no infantry, no gunners except a couple of battalions of heavy guns that had been out for the expected siege of Pretoria and were no longer of any use - and had indeed never left Cape Town - because Pretoria had fallen into our hands. The War Office ultimately prevailed upon Lord Roberts to release a few officers and men of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers to take the Hong Kong battalion up to strength and at the last moment, 4 pom-pom then lying in their packing cases at Cape Town, with one officer and 4 NCOs. Hence my selection and the hurried orders from Pretoria.
If I may anticipate events by saying that the two batteries of heavy guns which had never got further in South Africa than Cape Town, never got further in China than Hong Kong, and maybe there still for all I know. They were Austrian guns of 9.45 inch calibre (Quarter to Tens) we called them in derision) made at the famous Skoda works and purchased by the War Office after the outbreak of hostilities, a flagrant and stupid waste of money, for they were never wanted and never used.
Our voyage to China was uneventful enough, After leaving Cape Town we never saw land, except for a glimpse of the Madagascan Coast on the horizon in the far distance, until we reached Singapore, where we stayed a couple of nights to coal and take on stores and water. I dined the first night with some others at Raffles Hotel and can remember to this moment the delight of having a good dinner, sitting cooled by electric fans whirling slowly overhead and being waited on by competent Chinese waiters clad in spotless white. After months of living on the fly-ridden veldt subsisting mainly on bully beef and then 2 or 3 weeks on an ill-formed old tramp which one of the Welsh Fusiliers had named the LOP (which stood for Lousy Old Packet) it was delicious to sit down to a récherché meal amidst all the luxury of the 1st Class hotel. After dinner we hired rickshaws and spent a couple of hours driving round the quaint alleys and streets of China Town, with the open booths lit by flaming gas jets or torches throwing their rays on the sweating naked torsos of Chinamen shouting their goods in raucous voices. There were the usual rows of brothels which disfigure every sea port the world over, with scantily clad girls of every nationality standing at the doors of the mean houses brazenly touting for clients. It was after midnight when we finally got back to our ship and we tried to snatch some sleep in the humid Turkish bath atmosphere which prevails in Singapore without variation throughout the year.
At Singapore we picked up Charles Dobell of the Welsh Fusiliers, a splendid fellow who became a very great friend of mine and had a fine career as a soldier, which but for ill luck might have been finer still. He had been Adjutant of his regiment when it was sent to Crete as part of an International force in 1897, and had been made a Brevet-Major the day he was promoted Captain. then at the beginning of the Boer War he had been given command of a battalion of Mounted Infantry with the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. When the Boxer War broke out and he heard that a detachment of his regiment was being sent from South Africa to China he moved heaven and earth to go with it. He managed by hook or by crook to get permission, but only a day before our ship left Cape Town, he was then with his Mounted Infantry at Pretoria. He rushed down to Durban, saw a German liner just pulling up her anchor before sailing for Singapore, chartered a launch, pursued the ship which was by then under weigh, caught her up, climbed aboard, and reached Singapore two days before we arrived. The whole incident was typical of his determination, speed of action and resource - all qualities essential to the make-up of a successful soldier, and displayed by him on many occasions subsequently.
Between Singapore and Hong Kong we ran into a typhoon, the life of which I had never seen before and have never seen since, although I have been in plenty of storms at sea. I had my sea legs by that time and didn't feel the least sea-sick but the discomfort was considerable and chairs and tables kept flying about in all directions. The person I was really sorry for was the Captain, who had been promoted from First Officer only just before this voyage and was therefore doing his first trip in command. The day before we reached Hong Kong we passed a small tramp looking terribly battered, and she made signals of distress but to my amazement our skipper ran up some signal which I did not of course understand and on his course. I was then told that a ship carrying troops was not allowed to go to the assistance of any vessel unless the latter was in extremis, and the signal which had been run up was "Cannot Stop: Carrying Troops:" Not until we reached Hong Kong and anchored safely in the roadstead did our Captain come off the bridge where he had spent 72 hours. White, haggard, anxious and unshaven he looked the picture of misery. I don't think he came through the ordeal very well, but he no doubt felt his responsibility very heavily and I should be loathe to criticise any sea Captain, a type of man for whom I have the most profound admiration, and whose courage and heroism is proverbial.
On arrival at Hong Kong we heard the news that Pekin had been relieved by the combined international expeditions and that the legations and the city itself had been occupied. Our two heavy batteries were to be disembarked at Hong Kong together with the Welsh Fusiliers, and I was to go on with my guns and NCOs to Wei-hai-wei. and there await orders. We spent two nights, I think, in Hong Kong which at that time of the year - mid-August - was oppressively hot, and then continued our voyage to Waihaiwei.
Waihaiwei had been leased by the Chinese to the British Government some years previously on a 99 year lease at the time that the Russians seized Port Arthur and the Germans Kiaochow - a none too creditable period of European imperialism. It was a first class harbour, and had been a Chinese naval base. Across the mouth of the Bay that formed a natural harbour was an island, called Leu-Kung-Tau, where the Chinese Admiral had had his headquarters. His charming house and gardens had been turned into an English Club, which incidentally proved an untold boom to the British officers, naval and military, whose duty took them to Weihaiwei. Unlike the Russians at Port Arthur or the Germans at Kiaochow we had made no attempt whatever to fortify the place, but from what I could see had spent most of our energies on making it tidy and putting up names for the tiny streets which meandered aimlessly about. You turned into a little lane only a few yards in width and perhaps 70 yards long, and a neatly painted notice-board called your attention to the fact that it was named Bond Street: Another would be called Broad Street, or New Street, or Old Street, or something equally futile; and all this was sheer waste of time and labour since there was no reason to give these absurd alleys any name at all. Naturally a sports ground had been constructed on the island, this being regarded as far more important than, say, a gun emplacement. Both on the island and on the main land, dismounted guns lay here and there half buried in the ground, showing that Weihaiwei had not long before been fortified by the Chinese, as would be only natural in the case of a naval base. I wondered why the British Government had leased the place only to leave it neglected and useless, and I have never to this day learnt the answer. I imagine that it was a case of prestige, or "face" as they call it in the Far East. The Russians and the Germans had grabbed a Chinese Chinese port apiece so some hidebound official in our Foreign Office thought we had better do the same or we should "lose face." So far as I am aware it was never fortified in any way by us and was regarded as a handy naval base and cool health resort in the Summertime for officials and their wives from Shanghai and Hong Kong.
When our ship arrived and anchored close to the island we found HMS Powerful anchored not far off. She and HMS Terrible were two four funnelled cruisers of the latest type, and it was some of "Powerful's" guns that had been landed at Durban at the beginning of the Boer War and sent up to Ladysmith and done such splendid service during the celebrated siege of that town. The day we arrived the Midshipmen and Gun Room challenged us to hockey, and the game nearly killed most of us - it certainly had that effect on me - for we had been at sea for weeks and were in consequence very soft and out of training. When I had been running for five minutes I was so terribly out of breath that I felt as if I should have to drop out of the game and be violently sick, whilst our adversaries, who had been playing every day for weeks were as fit as possible. I don't think any of my lot enjoyed that game.
I landed my men and my guns, and tents were allotted to us. I was told that a ship load of horses was on its way from India and with them were coming, besides the drivers, enough gunners to make up detachments for two guns. More guns, with officers and men, were I understood to be sent out in due course from England, and would meet me at Shanghai where I was to go as soon as the transport arrived with the horses. Once again I was to experience the irksome business of waiting, with little or nothing to do. Fighting had practically ceased in China since the Allied forces had occupied Pekin and the Queen Dowager had fled. One day a transport arrived from India with a Pathan Regiment on board, on its way to Taku, and anchored close to us. I decided to go on board and practice my Pushtu on the men and have a chat with them and recall old days in India. The first man I met on deck was a native officer, a Subedar, hanging over the side of the ship looking terribly lonely and utterly dejected. When I gave him the Pushtu greeting "Stare ma Shé" (prounced Sterry ma shey - meaning May you never be tired) he beamed with surprise and delight at hearing his own tongue spoken, grasped my hand and returned the greeting with the customary "Ma Kwarigé" (meaning May you never be poor) and remained smiling and shaking my hand unable to get over his delight. I asked him a few questions about himself and how he had left his family, and what sort of voyage they had had, and then I said "I suppose you are delighted to come out here to China to fight?" His face dropped, he looked unhappy, and after a pause he said "No, Sahib, I'm not. these Chinese are no good for fighting, they just run away like rabbits. What we all wanted to do was go out to Africa and fight those Boers. They are tough fighters, and we want to show them that we can fight well, and fight against men like that. But we're not allowed to go." "That's all right Subadar Sahib" I replied "Out in South Africa it's just a quarrel between two white folks. and we don't want you killed in such a fight. Besides, everyone knows how splendidly you fellows fight - we don't need any proof of that." (I am translating of course, for we were talking in Pushtu). "Ah Sahib", he said, "You and those who have fought us in India know. But do the people in England know?" "Of Course they do" I rejoined. "They know just as well as I do". The Subaltern was silent, and looked over the side of the water below, evidently not satisfied and with something still in his mind - I wondered what it was. Suddenly he looked up and said, rather shyly "Does the Queen Know?" Instantly I replied. "Of course she does, better than all of us. You know she has a Munshi teaching her Hindustani and knows everything about India and all of you". His hesitation vanished, a delighted smile came over his face, and then he said "Then that is all right. I am satisfied". If the Queen knows all was well. No one who hasn't talked to the Indians intimately and in their own tongue can realise what the sovereign means to these large hearted, brave, loyal people and I think still means to millions of them, though times have changed I am writing of what I heard and saw 42 years ago.
It was dull work waiting at Weihaiwei for the ship that was to bring me my horses from India, and the weeks went slowly by. With the occupation of Pekin by the Allied forces and the flight of the Dowager Empress the China War had practically come to an end so far as fighting was concerned, and I hated the inaction to which I was condemned in this out of the way Chinese backwater. The Club which I have already described was a godsend, and I sometimes had a meal there, inviting one or two friends to lunch or dine with me. When September 20th - my birthday - drew near I made up my mind to give a little dinner party to celebrate it. When, however, I asked my friend X (I forget who it was) to "dine with me on the 20th?" he replied "Very sorry old chap, but I've already accepted an invitation from B to dine with him that night." "Can't you him off and come to me instead?" I replied, "For the 20th is my birthday." He looked at me oddly for a second, "But B said it's his and that was why he was asking me." he replied, half feeling his leg was being pulled. But it was all perfectly genuine, so I took a boat and rowed off to HMS Powerful, hoping to get a Lieutenant I knew well to help me celebrate my birthday. To my disappointment he too informed me that he had already been asked by A to dine with him at the club on the 20th, "and I can't get out of it I'm afraid because it's to celebrate his birthday!" Incredible as it seems there were three of us on that little Chinese island, all with our birthdays on September 20th. Of course we all combined and celebrated our joint birthdays together with all the friends we could collect, and great fun it was.
At long last, at the very end of September a troopship arrived from Bombay with 200 military horses, in charge of which was Berkeley Vincent, a gunner just promoted Captain. He had been a Subaltern in B Battery Royal Horse Artillery, and on promotion was sent to Bombay to take charge of the 200 horses which had been collected there from every Horse and Field Battery in India, to be sent to China for the pom-pom which, with officers and men, were being despatched from the United Kingdom. Berkeley Vincent was an uncommonly nice fellow, an Irishman, though certainly anything but the 'Wild Irishman'. On the contrary he was quiet, studious and serious-minded: a fine horseman and devoted to any outdoor sport, he took his games and his sport as seriously as life in general. Incidentally, he was extraordinarily good looking, with regular features, a fresh complexion, curly light brown hair, and blue eyes. He and I were destined to be thrown very closely together during the next 2 or 3 months, and though we differed almost entirely in character and outlook, our friendship was a very real one, and I don't think we ever had anything approaching a quarrel.
The ship which brought him and the horses from Bombay had a history, not to say, a past. There was in Bombay a little old man, a Moslem, who had built up single-handed a business which found him ultimately in charge of the entire stevedoring business of that busy port. He was entirely illiterate - could neither read nor write - but he had an amazing memory for facts, faces and figures and notes of all his business transactions were made by a native scribe who always accompanied him to the P+O Company. This extraordinary old man whom I will call Abdul Hussein, was invaluable, for he could and would always supply the Company with all the labour it required, day or night, and on reasonable terms and conditions. In return for this convenience the Company made a practice of offering most of their old and worn out steamers to the old man at a cheap price. These steamers he was wont to turn into Pilgrim Steamers to take pious Moslems who wished to do the "Hajj" to Jeddah, where they disembarked and went on to Mecca by land: and these vessels would take perhaps a couple of thousand pilgrims on each voyage. Except for three or four cabins reserved for the officers, all the cabins and the dining and smoking rooms and saloon were knocked out: giving a large open space for the accommodation of the pilgrims. Abdul Hussein would find crew for his pilgrim ships by going round the docks, bazaars and the bars, and picking up any down-and-out sailor they could find who possessed the necessary qualifications - Mates' or Masters' certificates as the case might be. Having found sufficient of such crew and officers to make up the complement, he would put a scratch crew of lascars on board, fill up the ship with as many pilgrims as could be safely crammed into her, give the Master his sailing orders and start the ship off on her voyage.
Now when the Government had to send a consignment of 200 artillery horses to China, search was made for a vessel which could be chartered. This was no easy matter, for the Boer War was at its height and transports were hard to come by. By a lucky chance an officer on the staff of the Quartermaster-General's Department in Bombay happened upon one of Abdul Hussein's pilgrim ships which had just returned from one of its customary trips with the pilgrims from Jeddah. She had in her early days been the "Peshawar", one of the P+O crack liners, but in course of time she had become out of date, and after serving for some years as a cargo vessel she had been sold to old Abdul Hussein for a song and he named her the "Ashruf" and turned her into a pilgrim ship. No time was lost in chartering her, and her lower decks were speedily turned into first-rate accommodation for horses; a shed erected on the after part of the ship as a hospital for the pilgrims on her voyages to Arabia, with a few alterations, turned into a combined dining saloon and lounge. And in a few weeks the horses which had been collected at Bombay were embarked, and one of the officer's cabins prepared for the accommodation of Berkeley Vincent was was to take the horses to China. The night before the Ashruf was due to sail, the Captain - one of old Abdul Hussein's pick-ups - was carried on board dead drunk. He was promptly removed, and it was then discovered that the only remaining officer in possession of a Master's certificate was the 4th Officer, a young fellow who had been sacked by the P+O from one of their ships for drunkenness and disgraceful behaviour. This young man was therefore promoted Captain and old Hussein found some equally disreputable sailor to take his place as 4th Officer. Fortunately an officer of the merchant marine of the British India Steam Ship Company in the RNVR was appointed to accompany the ship as a sort of liaison officer between the officers, crew and the O.C. troops (Berkeley Vincent), with secret orders (as I afterwards learnt) to take over command of the ship should circumstances arise demanding such action, and meanwhile to exercise a general though unobtrusive supervisory role over the Captain.
Well, as I have said Berkeley Vincent arrived at Weihaiwei in this shop, with the 200 horses for the pom-pom, and I embarked the 4 guns and NCOs I had brought from South Africa, and took over command, as I was about a year senior to Vincent. We sailed for Shanghai early in October, and I was unfeignedly thankful to be on the move once more after so many weeks of weary waiting. Our voyage down the coast was uneventful, though it might have been less so had not our Naval Reserve Officer discovered one night that the course laid out by our bibulous young captain was set right across a sandbank on which we should infallibly have been piled up, had he not harried the Captain out of his bed and induced him to make the necessary attention of course. About the third day we entered the broad mouth of the Yangtse and steamed upstream till we reached the place where the Whangpo (Huangpu) River, on whose Western bank Shanghai stands, flows into the main river for the South, and here we anchored, within sight of Woosung fort, a large Chinese fortress constructed to defend the mouth of Whangpo. Orders came down that evening from Shanghai that we were to remain at anchor for three days before coming up to Shanghai as no wharf would be available till then. Vincent and I decided next day that we would get the Captain to let us have one of the ship's boats and we rowed across to a big American battleship, USS Oregon, which was lying at anchor not far away, as we proposed to pay a call on the Captain and officers.
Most of the ship's boats were so rotten that you could have put your fist through them. Incidentally, the funnel was so rickety that it was tied fore and aft by a strand of rusty wire to the masts. However, after some search a more or less seaworthy boat was found, the davits swung out, a scratch crew embarked to man the oars and when Vincent and I had scrambled on board the boat was lowered into the water and we were rowed across to the Oregon, wearing the best uniform we could muster, and with our swords. We climbed up the ladder and were greeted with some ceremony and great courtesy by the Lieutenant on duty who escorted us to the Ward Room. Here we found the Commander and several officers, who explained the Captain was ashore, but welcomed us warmly and asked what we would have to drink. I said I should like a whiskey and soda or anything else handy. "Very sorry" was the reply, "but we aren't allowed spirits on board. We can give you anything else - champagne, wine, beer - we have some very good light Milwaukee beer. Perhaps you have never tasted it?" Feeling somewhat embarrassed by what appeared to have been a faux pas - though this was of course years before the introduction into the States of Prohibition - I said hurriedly that I should like some Milwaukee beer very much and I had never before had an opportunity of tasting it. So a quantity of bottles were brought in and handed round, and never had I - or have I since - tasted such delicious beer. I have always disliked bitter beer - at the Shop I drank water in preference to their draught beer that was provided for all cadets at lunch - but light lager beer has always seemed to me one of the best of drinks, and this Milwaukee beer was superior to any brand I had ever tasted even in Germany.
After a while the officers asked us if we would like to go over the ship, and we gladly accepted the invitation. One officer attached himself to me and one to Vincent, and we were taken all over the ship and shown the men's quarters, the gun turrets and everything of interest. It was explained to us that no spirits of any kind were allowed on any ship in the United States Navy except for the hospital; but the men were allowed plenty of beer, and the officer's mess could have any form of alcohol except spirits. When we had been over the ship the officer who had been showing me round asked me if I would like to see his cabin, and took me off to a very comfortable little cabin adorned with photographs and pictures, and a well stocked bookcase in one corner. going up to the latter he took down a large tome entitled "Sailing Directions" and opening it said "Now I can give you what you asked for in the ward room a while ago." With these words he extracted a large thin rectangular flask, filled with exceedingly good rye whiskey - for the book was a dummy, and hollow!
Next day Vincent and I landed at Woosung and walked up to have a look at the fort. It was a somewhat prehistoric affair, like an old medieval castle, and was surrounded by a broad moat. Guarding the drawbridge spanning the moat was a Chinese soldier with a rifle reposing on his his shoulder, and clad in a quaint costume with red dragons all over it. He wore a vast sombrero-like straw hat, and looked far more like a character in light opera than a modern soldier. But this was in 1900, more than 40 years ago. Affairs in China are very different today: how could Vincent and I have guessed then what the future held?
On the third day we left our anchorage and steamed slowly up the river Whangpo to Shanghai, where we berthed in due course alongside a spacious wharf and at once started disembarking the horses.For a night or two we camped in an open space not far from the docks, and then I was shown a large field the other side of the city, bordering on what was known as Bubbling Well Road, a broad thoroughfare which led out of the town into the country, ending up in a village called Jessfield, where a wealthy merchant had built himself a magnificent house surrounded by a garden, well kept, with green lawns running down to a canal which passed the house some distance away.
To this field then we brought our horses, our men, our equipment, and all we possessed, and spent several busy days laying out the horse lines, pitching our tents, and getting the new camp into order.
We found at Shanghai a brigade of Indian Infantry - four battalions in all, one Sikh, one Baluchi, one Gurkha and one Rajput - the Brigade being commanded by Major-General O'Moore Creagh VC a fine old India warrior breezy and good-humoured with a powerful Irish brogue. He had won his VC by an act of great gallantry in the Afghan War of 1879 where he was a subaltern. Not far from our camp was a regiment of German infantry, specially raised for service in this war and commanded by one Graf von Schlippenbach, who as a freshly joined subaltern in the Prussian Guards' regiment had taken part in the battle of Gravelotte-St.Privat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and was therefore just about 50 years old. A considerable French contingent, consisting of 2 or 3 battalions of infantry and a pack battery also formed part of the Shanghai garrison, but they were completely separated from the rest of us, as the French concession was inside the old walled Chinese town up-river, whilst we were in the British and American concession further down the river. The Japanese Army was not represented in Shanghai, but several Japanese warships were anchored in the river.
General Creagh came to inspect us soon after we had arrived in our new camp, and I found to my great delight that he had an exceedingly practical mind and was only too anxious to consider and to meet if possible any requests I might make. The Brigade to which my command was attached being solely an infantry brigade, its Supply Department naturally catered for foot soldiers only and had nothing required by a mounted corps. It was prepared to obtain by contract and supply the requisite forage, corn and hay for the horses, but such things as halters, nosebags, head stalls, picketing ropes, etc were quite beyond its scope. "Go and buy what is really necessary in the town" said the General, "Whenever you can find it. Put in a statement to Major Straight, the DG and Quarter Master of the Brigade, showing the various items and their cost, and I will authorise the Field Treasury to hand you over the cash." Here was a Commanding Officer after my own heart; here was the maximum of common sense and the minimum of red tape and officialdom. Later on, he ordered me to get hold of a Chinese contractor and make arrangements with him to erect bath and plaster huts for my men and shelters for the horses. I was to make the best bargain I could and he would authorise the Field Treasury to provide me with the cash.
I must confess that my financial transactions were at times of a kind that would not bear the full light of publicity. Looking back on those days I have an uneasy feeling that if they had become known to, say, an auditor, I might very easily have found myself up before a Court Martial. The fact is that a battery of Horse or Field Artillery always has certain battery funds from which extras for the horses, not provided for by the Government but which are essential to keep the horses fit, are paid for. My hand to mouth pom-pom organisation however possessed no funds of any kind, and I was constantly being badgered by the officers for this or that which ordinarily would have been bought out of battery funds. Possibly my best course would have been to have put the case before the General and asked him if he would sanction some grant from the Field Treasury. But I knew enough of army routine to be fairly certain that with the best will in the world the General could not have allowed this without the grave risk of getting into serious trouble directly the matter became known in the Paymaster's Department, as it must in due course.
While I was puzzling over this problem I received the orders mentioned above to get a Chinese contractor to build huts and shelters. A kind and helpful merchant with whom I was acquainted was good enough to send me a Chinaman whom he recommended for the job. I took this man round the camp, showed him what I wanted and arranged that he should build two huts and two horse lime shelters at a price which we agreed between us. If it were satisfactory I said, I might give him the contract for others as well. He put up two uncommonly good huts and shelters within the time limit I had given, I drew the money - I think it was 600 local dollars (£60, the local (Mexican) dollar was worth about 2/-) - putting in the usual detailed statement, and handed over the cash.
Meanwhile however, another Chinaman had come to me and offered to build two similar huts and shelters for 500 dollars, and I gave him the contract. Altogether I had I think about 3 Chinese contractors, each trying to cut out the other, and when the huts and shelters were all completed the total average was considerably less than the original price demanded and paid.
I must interrupt for a moment to say that the experience I gained at the time of Chinese honesty and reliability made a deep impression on me which I have never forgotten. I never had a written contract with any of these Chinese contractors, though I used to make a note of the terms and show it to them. I used to stipulate that I would deduct from the contract price so many dollars for every day that the work was behind the agreed time: and so many dollars for any defect which I might find. And although I often did make deductions for one or other of these reasons, I never had the slightest trouble. And the work they put in was uniformly good. The Chinaman is famous for his "Squeezes" (Bribes) - or maybe that is a characteristic he displays only when dealing with a foreigner - and he will have little scruple in cheating you by demanding some exorbitant price for what you buy from him. But my experience is that once he has made a bargain he will carry it out to the letter. I like the Chinese and have always had a respect and regard for them and have been happy in my dealings with them. It always struck me that the poorest coolie in China has a certain feeling of superiority over the European and regard him as an upstart and a parvenu much as a member of the old English aristocracy may regard the tradesman who has made a fortune and bought a Park Lane mansion or a centuries old country house. Sometimes when a sweating and half naked Chinese coolie has run a mile in the sultry heat of August or September through the streets of Shanghai, dragging me lolling in a rickshaw, and I have handed him the few cents (about 3d) which constituted the customary fare, I have imagined that he has whispered to himself "Yes, you upstart, I take the pittance you give me, but my ancestors were highly civilised whilst yours were savages, little more than animals. You think you are my superior because you have plenty of money and I have none. But my civilisation is far, far older than yours, and you are just a parvenu."
To return however to finance. when my first two huts and horse shelters had been built and the bill - made out to myself - honoured by the Field Treasury, I saw a way to build up something like a battery fund and so solve the difficulty about providing Section Commanders with the odds and ends which they wanted for their horses. I sent in a similar bill to the Field Treasury for the subsequent huts and shelters, and the balance that was over after I had paid out the reduced charges to the other contractors I formed into a fund such as was required, and from this I was able from time to time to satisfy the Section Officers' requirements.
This was of course highly immoral if not dishonest, but I was young and keen and not disposed to split hairs, so long as I could organise my pom-pom into a first class fighting force. I certainly never suffered from any qualms of conscience: but I admit that it is not the sort of juggling with money that I would encourage in anyone else, or would probably have indulged in if I had been somewhat older and more experienced.
My canteen for the men was another matter. There I used to make quite large profits by charging a somewhat stiff price for the beer by the pint or quart when I bought it in barrels at a very reasonable price. Also, small change being very scarce in the bazaar, I found that I could get a dollar for 95 or even 90 cents of small charge, of which I of course always had a large quantity. In these ways I managed to build up quite a substantial canteen fund from which all sorts of comforts could be provided for the men.
Those eight months I spent in camp at Shanghai organising my sections of pom-pom - there were either 6 or 7 sections all told so far as I can remember - were extraordinarily interesting from a military and administrative point of view, and taught me a great deal. I have said that General Creagh had given me instructions to buy in the town whatsoever I required in the way of equipment for the horses, and 200 horses require a good deal in the way of blankets, headstalls, picketing ropes, shackles, girths and so forth, and all these articles were out in due course and require replacing. There were several shops in the city where such things could be obtained - British firms had great stores established where all manner of trade goods were stocked. But I was never able to get down to the town till rather late in the afternoon and these being English stores closed at fixed hours. I think it was 5pm. I used generally to find an immaculately dressed and rather supercilious young man behind the counter to whom I addressed my questions as to whether he could supply me with the goods I wanted. He would listen to me with a bored look and a glance at the clock and then turning to a Chinaman standing beside him and "John, fetch me so-and-so" John would duly return with the goods in question, but if the clock pointed to the closing hours the young man would immediately say "this establishment is now closed," and I would retire feeling distinctly annoyed and entirely frustrated in my attempt to buy what was needed for my horses. One day I happened upon a shop off the main thoroughfare in whose windows were displayed all the articles I wanted for the horses. I went in, and was immediately attended to by a middle-aged man with a strong German accent who placed before me all the articles of which I was in search. When I asked him what time his shop closed, he replied that he didn't generally close till six, but that in any case I had only to ring one bell and he would open the shop for me at whatever hour of the day or night I required. His goods were excellent and considerably cheaper than those in the big and pretentious English stores. Small wonder then that I found myself dealing almost exclusively with him, notwithstanding the fact that I realised that I was "buying German" instead of "buying British". Now is it surprising that the British residents in Shanghai were complaining that the Germans were jostling themselves into the Settlement and underselling long established British firms - I may add that it was the same with the shipping. More and more German ships were bringing cargo to Shanghai, cutting out by their lower freights, and more inviting facilities, the British ships which had hitherto enjoyed almost a monopoly of the ocean transport to and from that port.
That winter in Shanghai was to me a marvellous mixture of work and play. The organisation of the pom-poms was fascinating to me and I enjoyed all the difficulties that had to be overcome and the problems which such a task necessarily involved. But "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", and my enjoyment of all the fun that was going on in Shanghai was only just less than the enjoyment of my work. Shanghai in those days was a gay place. Some of the big firms, or "Hongs" as they are known in China, entertained lavishly, as did the Banks and the English people who were settled in Shanghai either in business or Municipal Service or as doctors, lawyers, etc, were most hospitable and generous. So all through the winter there were balls and dances and dinners and entertainment of all kinds, including performances by excellent dramatic companies which visited Shanghai from time to time doing their tours in the Far East. As for outdoor amusements there was a splendid racecourse at which races were held from time to time with China ponies brought down in batches each winter from the neighbourhood of Pekin so far as I remember. In order to prevent the rich men from buying up the best ponies a lottery was held every year in which tickets were balloted for giving the right of priority in the purchase of these ponies; hence the last joined employee of one of the big firms getting a very small salary might easily draw the ticket which gave him first pick while the richest man in Shanghai might find himself left with the one last pony after the whole of the rest of the batch had been disposed of. This arrangement was typical of the really sporting atmosphere which distinguished the whole of the British community in Shanghai. They were a nice lot of people.
There was also a pack of hounds - I'm not sure there weren't two - and a Drag was run two or three days a week throughout the winter. The meetings were attended by all sorts - men and women - mounted on wiry little Chinese ponies. The country which formed part of the Yangtze Delta was of course as flat as a pancake and intersected by innumerable canals of all widths and sizes. The smaller ones being jumpable, the large ones were usually bridged. It was all great fun. I used to go out on my big chestnut mare about 15 hands in height and felt as if I were riding a giant amongst the small China ponies - but I never remember jumping a canal that they couldn't jump themselves.
There was a delightful country club of which the hospitable members made us officers honorary members rather to the disgust of some of the community who had had their names down for years but had not come up for election as the membership was limited and therefore were unable to enjoy the amenities of the club except as guests. In the club grounds were tennis courts and squash courts, putting and bowling greens, badminton courts and bathing pools.
I was lucky in that a great friend of my family's, Alfred White-Cooper, had settled down in Shanghai a little time before as a lawyer, and his wife whom he had married about a year previously happened to be a cousin of mine by marriage. I called on them at the first opportunity and received from them kindness and hospitality which I shall never forget. My sisters had nicknamed him long ago "The ASP" because his initials were A.S.P. and he and his wife become my life-long friends.
When Berkeley Vincent and I first arrived and went into camp with our 200 horses in a large field allocated to us on the Bubbling Well Road, close to the well from which the Road took its name, we felt that we ought to do something to repay the hospitality that was immediately extended to us by the whole British community in Shanghai. But as a start I suggested to Vincent that we should try and get the General to dine with us at the principal club, to meet the charming Count von Schlippenbach who, as I have said, was in command of the German contingent. One morning therefore when the General came round with his Staff Officer, Major Watson of the Indian Army, to inspect our camp and horse-lines, I said to the latter as we were following round; "I wonder if the General would honour Vincent and myself by coming to dinner one night at the club to meet Count von Schlippenbach?" He replied "I think he certainly would; you'd better ask him." When therefore the General had finished his inspection, I somewhat diffidently - since I was a very junior Captain - put the question to him, and was relieved and delighted when, with his crashing Irish brogue he replied that he would like very much to dine with us; and we fixed a date forthwith, I explaining that we should expect him of course to bring Major Watson his Staff Officer with him. Next morning I went over to the German Mess and was looking to find the Count in the ante-room. He greeted me very warmly and when I asked him if he and his adjutant von Kriegsheim would honour Vincent and myself by dining with us at the Club to meet General O'Moore Creagh, he said he would be charmed. Handily the date I had already fixed with the General suited him, and I went away satisfied that all was in train. Vincent and I went down to the Club in the afternoon, saw the Secretary and arranged a private room and a special menu for the night in question. A special wine list was arranged with a different wine for each course as Vincent and I were determined to spare no expense or trouble to make the dinner a success. At last the great night arrived. The General and Major Watson turned up in dinner jackets as we had arranged and followed by the Count and his Adjutant wearing undress uniform for which the Count apologised explaining that they were not allowed to dine at a club in plain clothes. The little private room had been prettily decorated with flowers and there were drinks of all sorts on the sideboard. I as the chief host was in a mood of rather tense anxiety and and things were a bit formal to start with. But after a couple of rounds of a very potent Dutch appetizer which cheered us all up we sat down, myself at one end of the table, with the General on my right and Count von Schlippenbach on my left, at the other end Vincent had the staff officers on either side of him. I can almost remember to this day the entire menu. We began with an excellent soup, accompanied by a large glass of sherry. Fish followed, with hock and each of the other courses was accompanied by a special wine - they did things well and sumptuously in Shanghai in those days. With the remaining course we had first some Burgundy, then a glass of light claret, then some first class champagne, at least a magnum and probably more, liqueur brandy with the savoury, then came the port. So cheerily went the dinner party that all my anxiety had left me, and it was with a start, after the port had been round two or three times that I realised that I was talking to the Count (who as I have said could speak English as fluently as his own language) in the vilest German, while Vincent at the other end of the table, very flushed in the face was conveying with the General in Erse (Gaelic). I'm afraid the rest of the evening is a little vague, but I remember the General finally saying, rather inarticulately in his delightful brogue that he was afraid he must be going, and thanking Vincent and me for a very pleasant evening. All six of us in due course therefore made our way downstairs to the Hall and walked across to the bar for a final whiskey and soda. The last thing I remember distinctly is watching the General walking rather unsteadily across the Hall on the arm of his staff officer (who had taken care to keep exceptionally sober) on his way to his rickshaw, and the Count's army round my neck, vowing eternal friendship and thanking me and then Vincent for our "charming hospitality". I suppose he and his adjutant and Vincent and I somehow made our way to our rickshaws and got back to our respective camps and turned into bed, but my recollection of all this is somewhat dim.
A couple of days afterwards I was hacking down to the Races when I saw just ahead of me a rickshaw going in the same direction in which a Junior Officer was seated, whom I quickly recognised as Count von Schlippenbach when I came alongside. I pulled up and saluted him and asked him how he was. The dear old man the moment he recognised me turned to me and exclaimed: "Ah how charming to see you! Zat dinnaire, it vas charming. I did enchoy myself zo much. But de shairee, de shairee, it vas a little schtrong. I did vake up next morning vith - how you call it? - Vith my chemise on!" I dissembled my mirth as best I could and made some commonplace remark to the effect that I was glad he had enjoyed himself, and rode on - chuckling to myself both about the even and his description of it.
Our relationship with the Germans was extremely friendly - I am speaking of course of myself and Vincent and our fellow officers and the men, for I obviously can't speak of the whole of the British community in Shanghai, though I think the Germans were equally liked by them. Several times Vincent and I dined with them quite informally at their mess on the opposite side of the road and always enjoyed their company very heartily. All the officers were of course hand-picked for this Expeditionary Force of theirs as it consisted of men specially volunteering for it. The number of officers in Germany volunteering was probably colossal and only those possessing exceptional influence or outstanding abilities were chosen. Most of them had never been outside Europe before, and they told me what an impression it made on them when they discovered that every port of which they touched was either British or at any rate the English language was spoken there. This was of course true, for most of their transports had called in at Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said, Suez, Aden, Colombo, Singapore and Hong Kong before reaching Shanghai. They were therefore one and all learning English for all they were worth. I remember one evening the conversation turned to the Boer War which was at its height (1901). and I became so interested in the subject that I found myself eagerly explaining what I regarded as the reason for the contest between ourselves and the Boers, and why we, the British, were fighting. When I had finished, there was silence for a few seconds, and then one of them remarked, "Well, that's very interesting, you know we in Germany all thought that you wanted the gold mines in Johannesburg and just made an excuse for attacking the Boers and seizing their country, and found that you had taken on rather a bigger job than you had expected, though there is of course no doubt as to the final result. We didn't blame you for a moment, in fact we should have done the same thing in your place. We envied you a little, but we certainly didn't blame you. What you have just told us however throws an entirely new light on the situation, and its very interesting." This was said in the most friendly manner and it was fairly obvious to me from the faces round the table that all present were in practical agreement with the speaker. The incident made a tremendous impression on me and I have never forgotten it.
Here is another less serious incident in this odd Anglo-German relationship. Berkeley Vincent and I had been dining with the Germans in their mess and were chatting in the ante-room afterwards when I happened to mention that I had learnt the words in German of Heines' "Lorelei" when I was in Germany as a lad, and that they had stuck in my mind and I had never forgotten them. Dear old Count von Schlippenbach at once sat down at the piano and began stirring the air, and some German officers called out to me "Sing it to us!" I was feeling particularly light-hearted after a cheery dinner with lots of "Prosts!" and good Rhine wine, so I said "All right, if I can remember the words." I walked over to the piano, old Count von Schlippenbach struck up the music and to his accompaniment in its original German I sang the song right through from beginning to end. To my amazement when I'd finished there was a general rush to the piano and I found myself picked up, swung on the shoulders of some of the officers and carried triumphantly round the room, everybody laughing and cheering and obviously delighted. It was a great moment, and I felt very happy that my chance recollection of a German poem should have evoked so much enthusiasm amongst these German friends, though mingled with my happiness was the feeling of shyness and even shame when I thought of what I knew was my vile German accent. I looked across at Vincent and saw at once that the same thought was apparent in his mind, for he wore an expression of intense disapproval. He told me afterwards that he couldn't understand how I could make such an exhibition of myself or dare to sing a German song in a German mess. I laughed and said he must put it down be the wine; but somehow I was glad that I had overcome the usual characteristic British shyness which is so severe a handicap to our race in making friendship with other peoples whom we lump together as "foreigners."
My men too struck up many friendships with the German soldiers: They go about arm in arm, and between them invented a queer Anglo-German polyglot language by means of which they could somehow understand one another. "Gester tag veer metten in dee Strasse." was the sort of thing they would say to one another; and they got on famously together.
It was the French who refused to have anything to do with us, either officers or men, and kept themselves sternly aloof. The French Concession was in a distant quarter in the Old Chinese town, a picturesque part of Shanghai, well known in England because the Willow Pattern many of our plates and saucers were modelled on it. The reason for what I may call the hostility of the French was that the "Fashoda Incident" had taken place barely three years before and had humiliated this once proud nation, so that the very name of the British stank in their nostrils. We - officers and men - had of course no animosity whatever against them, but if they didn't want our friendship that was their business and we were quite content to leave it at that.
An incident occurred about this time which shows the international relationship very clearly. It was arranged amongst the allied troops that a small corps of Military Police should be formed to patrols the streets in the Shanghai city, especially at night time, in order to prevent the soldiers of any of the Allied Forces from creating disturbances or interfering with the Chinese inhabitants. General Creagh's staff officer, Major Watson, was appointed Provost-Marshall and placed in charge of this mixed corps composed of all the nationalities occupying Shanghai. One morning when my men were all in stables a young German private wearing a Provost badge came to me, clicked his heels and saluted very smartly and handed me a note from Watson the Provost-Marshall. This note informed me that one of my men the previous night had gone up to a Military Police patrol commanded by a French Sergeant and struck the latter in the face for no apparent reason. Before they could arrest him he disappeared, but the bearer of the note, wrote Watson, could recognise the culprit if he were given the opportunity; and he asked me if I would parade my men and let this private pick out the man in question if he could, as it was of course a very senior offence to assault the NCO in charge of a Military Police Patrol on duty. I at once sent round orders to my officers to fall in their men as they were - in front of the stables of each section. I then beckoned to the German private to follow me and I went round each group with him in turn. When we came to the last group the private suddenly pointed to a pink-cheeked fair-haired young driver standing in the ranks and said "That's the man". There was no need to make any further enquiry for the lad blushed scarlet and looked unmistakably guilty. I had him marched to the orderly hut where the private gave evidence which corroborated what the Provost-Marshall had already written to me. When he'd finished I asked the young driver what he had to say and he told me that he and some of his pals had been drinking in a drinking shop in the Chinese quarter and that a couple of French soldiers had come in and made offensive remarks about British soldiers, so enraged was he that he got up meaning to go for them whereupon they disappeared and he followed into the street and made for the first Frenchman he saw. I said "But didn't you recognise that it was the French Provost Sergeant?" And he replied "Nor sir, I just didn't stop to think". "Then," I said "I'm afraid you're for a Court Martial." And had him marched off to the guard room. A few days later he was tried and sentenced, I think, six months imprisonment, which was reduced by the General to six weeks "at the request of the French Commander." Personally I was delighted at the reduction of the sentence but did not quite care for the official chronicling of the fact that it was at the request of the French Commander although of course both the request and its official recognition were intended to and did no doubt make for international good-feeling. there was one queer sequel which I must record. The young offender did his six weeks "imprisonment" in the Guard Hut, at the entrance to my camp as I had nowhere else to put him. There was a fence all round the camp and the guard hut of course, faced directly onto the road. A few weeks after the sentence had been promulgated our Brigade Major, Jimmie Stewart, walked up to me one day and took me aside and said "You ought to know that we have been told that on a recent occasion when the French were doing a route march past your camp, your young prisoner was seen standing at the door of the Guard hut shaking his fist at them. I'm just telling you this unofficially so that you can take any steps you like if you think it advisable." I took the hint and it didn't occur again, but I think Jimmie Stewart and I were both rather tickled at the affair.
While on this international question it's worthwhile recording the attitude of the Japanese - of whom there was a large contingent, mostly naval, towards the European. There was an obvious desire on their part to show themselves on a complete equality in every way, with the Europeans, coupled with a rather bitter and very self-conscious feeling that they were looked upon as Orientals, and not quite civilised. When the news of the death of Queen Victoria was received in Shanghai in early 1901, it was arranged that a Memorial Service would be held in the English Cathedral, to which representatives of all the Allied Forces should be invited, seating accommodation and so on being arranged with great care. Accordingly two or three senior officers from each of the Allied contingents arrived in due course, for the service, at which I myself was present. The Japanese however, sent something like twelve or fifteen representatives, mostly naval officers, thus almost outnumbering the whole of the rest of our foreign guests. The obvious reason was that they basked with delight at the opportunity of taking part on a complete equality with other nations, in a Christian church, in a ceremony of international importance. Later on I shall give another example of the way in which the Japanese were treated by Europeans in the Far East at that time.
As I have said, it was early in October that Vincent and I arrived in Shanghai from Wei-hai-wei; and with us were the 200 horses which Vincent had brought from India, with the Indian "drivers" who accompanied them to look after them. Besides the horses and their native drivers we had only the four pom-poms which I had brought from South Africa, with the 4 NCOs and my individual batman, Driver Lack, who had been with me ever since I had started from Woolwich. The rest of the guns required to make up the contingent of pom-poms allotted to the China Expeditionary Force, together with the NCOs and men to make them up and the officer to command them were being sent from England. Until they arrived there was not much for Vincent and myself to do but keep the horses exercised and groomed and well looked after, and to lay out the camp and get everything in readiness for the arrival of the officers and men and the remainder of the guns. They arrived shortly before Christmas - eight officers, with NCO, gunners and drivers, the senior man a Major - Wilson by name - whilst all the others were Captains except for one Horse Artillery Subaltern young Geoffrey Salmond, destined subsequently to become one of the most distinguished Air Force Officers of the Great War. Besides Major Wilson, two at least of the Captains were senior to me, so a somewhat awkward situation arose. It was easily solved, however, for Wilson, a charming fellow but almost incredibly lazy, was only too glad to leave me to do all the work of organisation, whilst I didn't care an atom what rank or status I held so long as I could on with the fascinating work of organisation. It was therefore arranged that Wilson, while nominally commanding the pom-pom contingent, should do nothing and leave everything to me, called me his "Staff Officer", which the remaining 8 officers (including Vincent) should each take command of a section, with its proper complement of NCOs, men and horses, each section being organised and treated as a separate and independent unit. The arrangement worked admirably, and there was never a hitch. Wilson spent most of his time in the Shanghai Club, and never interfered with me in any way, nor did he in fact ever know what I was doing. "My dear fellow" he said, "I have complete confidence in you. Just you carry on." I don't even remember him even signing a paper or an order, and of course, the eight section commanders ran their own units independently, only coming to me when they wanted something - equipment, extra rations or forage or what not. The officers were content each to command his own section, the responsibility of whose efficiency as a fighting unit lay solely with its commander, and they spent their days energetically drilling men and horses into an efficient fighting unit.
About the middle of December White-Cooper, alias "the ASP", asked me if I would care to go for a few days at Christmas into the interior on a little shooting expedition in a local house boat with one or two others and see if we could get a few pheasants. I was delighted with the idea of seeing something, however little, of the interior and accepted with alacrity. The party consisted so far as I remember, besides the ASP and myself, of a very nice fellow called Dr Marsh, a young man recently come out to practice medicine in Shanghai, and Nuttall, a Captain in my pom-poms, and one of the very best. The ASP undertook all arrangements, including catering, and when the day came we embarked on the little houseboat with our goods and chattels and guns, and tied ourselves onto a number of Chinese vessels of all sorts which were hitched on to a small steamer, one behind the other, and constituted what was known as a "train." I haven't the time to go into the details of the trip which I enjoyed immensely and I don't remember what our bag amounted to. But the scenery fascinated me, with its canals and pagodas and Chinese villages, picturesque but incredibly smelly, and the stone statues of lion dogs which seemed to be common in almost every field. Even more fascinating were the Chinese people themselves, and their customs and their costumes and their habits, and what one could learn of their thoughts and ideas and mentality - it was one of the jolliest trips I have ever had, and I can imagine no more charming companions than the ASP and Marsh and Nuttall. It was a sad day when our leave was up, and we had to return to the rather hectic life of Shanghai.
I think it was in February that Vincent and I took ten days leave to pay a hurried visit to Japan, landing first at Nagasaki and then going on to the old capital, Kyoto. Although it was midwinter I was entranced with the beauty of Japan, Nagasaki itself is a beautiful harbour and its surroundings are worthy of it. The Japanese seem to me most attractive little people and I had a queer feeling that I was in a faerie land and that they were faeries rather than real human beings. How odd it seems today (these memoirs were written during WW2) to look back on those feelings and to realise how strangely they were divorced from reality. All the coaling is done by women, little slant-eyed ladies in white frocks tripping lightly up and down the planks connecting the barges with the ship's side, carrying on their shoulders the bags that contained the oily Japanese coal which is practically free from coal dust and therefore left their white frocks untouched. Hanging over the ship's side I watched them busy at their work, chattering to one another, laughing, throwing bits of coal at one another and obviously telling jokes, and I thought what a charming scene it was. Kyoto filled me with delight and I wandered through its quaint little streets and watched the craftsmen at their work and picked up, here and there, treasures in bronze and silver and Satsuma-ware buying them in the very shop from where they were being made, and from the craftsmen who were making them. I shan't burden these fleeing memories with descriptions of what Vincent and I did and saw in Kyoto, as the interest and beauty of the place are described in a hundred guide books that anyone can read. But there was one incident which I remember very vividly and which is worth recording. Vincent and I went out one morning to a place some miles out of Kyoto - I forget its name - where there happened to be a large military station and where we watched with professional interest some thousands of Japanese soldiers, drilling in the snow-covered ground and uncommonly well drilled, the army being as is well-known modelled on that of Germany. We were standing close to one of the gates leading to the barracks where a Japanese soldier was on sentry duty. Presently a little Japanese officer came along and as he passed the sentry the latter brought his rifle and the salute with perfect precision and stood fully at attention as if he were a guardsman on duty at Buckingham Palace and having achieved this clocklike movement he gave a deep and graceful little bow as the officer passed him and acknowledged the salute. It was a charming mixture of the precision of the West with the ceremonial courtesy of the East.
I think it was in April 1901 that General Henry Pipon, commanding the Royal Artillery of the Expeditionary Force, came down with a Staff Officer from Pekin to inspect my pom-poms at Shanghai. He was a kindly old man of the old school, conscientious and thorough, but set in a groove from which he would have thought any attempt to extricate himself as a crime against military discipline and tradition. After inspecting the camp and my office and its records, and going carefully through the horse lines, asking a number of routine questions doubtless to test my knowledge of my work, he said he would like to see a couple of sections at drill. I therefore turned out two sections at random - for all were in my opinion up to the same standard of efficiency, and that a high one - and the officers took their guns into a neighbouring field at the trot, unlimbered the guns, brought them smartly into action, and went through the usual parade motions of laying the guns on the target, loading and firing them. The old General watched the proceedings with a gleam of pleasure in his eyes natural to anyone who sees any military exercise carried out with smartness and precision. Then he pulled out from his pocked a copy of the official War Office Handbook of the pom-pom, which had been drawn up hurriedly in Shoeburyness - the great Gunnery School in the Thames estuary - when the first gun had been purchased from Vickers. At the end of the book was a tentative description of the drill suggested to be used, marked "Provisional", since it was a mere attempt to suggest a drill for a gun of which none had had any actual experience. Already in South Africa I had found that some of the details of this "Provisional Drill" were quite unsuitable in practice, and i had altered them accordingly. I saw that the General was checking the drill being carried out before him with the details of the "Provisional Drill" in the Handbook, presently his face grew somewhat stern, and he turned to me and said. "These men are not performing the drill as it is laid down here. Number 5 is bring up the belts of ammunition and not Number 3." (Each man in a gun detachment bears a number and to each number his duties are allotted, the whole attachment of course working in perfect unison.) I replied that that was so, but pointed out that the drill to which he referred was merely a "Provisional" one, worked out tentatively at Shoeburyness, but that I had found that in practice the drill which he was watching was far more suitable, enabling the gun to be fired more rapidly and effectively. "Ah, my boy," said the old gentleman, laying a kindly hand on my shoulder, "When I was your age I too thought I could improve on the Drill Book, but these Drill Books are compiled by older men with wide experience and expert knowledge, and they are wiser men than you or I. I'm sure you think quite confidently that your method of drill is better than that laid down in the Drill Book, but when you grow a little older you will find that you cannot improve on the Drill Book." I have long forgotten what the small and quite insignificant alteration was that I had made (and that all of us who used this gun adopted) but I have never forgotten the torrent of anger that swept through me as I listened to this absurd homily. However, the old man said it with all kindness and I had nothing to gain by arguing, and pointing out that the Drill Book method was merely "Provisional" in this case, still less by losing my temper. So with an effort I controlled myself and merely remarked, "No doubt you are right, Sir" or some such meaningless phrase, and in due course the parade was dismissed and the inspection concluded. I need hardly say I made no alteration in the drill, nor did the old man refer to it again, so no harm was done. But it is an excellent example of the old Army mentality that was in vogue until the Boer War had shaken some of it out of the dustbins in which it had been lying for years. Some of it lasted until 1914, and it nearly lost us the war. We meet it again in 1939-40. I hope and think that we have at long last learnt our lesson. The tendency in our citizen Army fighting today all over the world and training in England seems to me to be to encourage amongst all ranks a sturdy individuality and a constant exercise of their wits. This is the very opposite of the old idea of "Theirs is not to reason why, Theirs is but to do and die." Strict discipline there must of course always be throughout every Army; otherwise, without that, it is not an army at all, but merely an armed mob. But it is perfectly feasible to enforce adequate discipline without turning the rank and file or the junior officers into mere robots. A disciplined army in which every man knows what he is fighting for and whose wits are trained to quick observation and intense individual interest in every detail of the work he is called on to do - such an army makes the finest fighting machine in the world; and it is just such and army that the authorities in this country as well as in the Dominions and Colonies are endeavouring to train.
When General Pipon was in Shanghai he informed me that pom-pom sections were shortly to be dispersed to various parts of China. He gave me the choice of where I personally should like to go, and I said Pekin, or failing that, Tientsin.
I cannot at this distance of time recall precisely when this movement took place or where the various sections were sent. Some I know were sent to Shanhaikuan (Shanhaiguan), and I think our move took place in early May. I had a few busy weeks breaking what had been practically a Depot, and handing over to each section the details of work - accounts, register of stores, etc - which I had hitherto kept in my own hands for purposes of simplicity. I myself was ordered, as soon as I had made all arrangements for the future existence of each Section as a self-contained, independent unit, to proceed to Pekin and report myself to Headquarters there.
Before I left, General O'Moore-Creagh drew me aside one morning and said that he wanted me to remain with his Brigade, but only on condition that I were his C.R.A. ie Commandant of the Artillery. I was very much touched and thanked him warmly, but said that I had already asked to be sent to Pekin or Tientsin as I thought I had had enough of Shanghai; but I added that I had never served under any General with such complete contentment and confidence as I had felt under him, and so we parted. A few years later he was appointed Commander-in-Chief in India. A large-hearted and kindly Irishman, the holder of the coveted Victoria Cross. I shall always remember him with respect and affection, though he is long since dead (dying in 1923).
One little episode pleased me at the same time. It was the receipt of a private letter from the Colonel in charge of the Accounts Department at the base at Hong Kong. I had never met him or even heard of his name, but he wrote to thank me for the accuracy of the accounts I had sent down to the Department during my stay in Shanghai, telling me that they were the only ones in the whole Expeditionary Force that had never given him any trouble, though they were complicated by the fact that I had a number of Indian drivers on my payroll, belonging to every part of India, all of whom were making allotments to their families, to be deducted from their pay, of course in Indian currency - rupees and annas. He added that he had made representation to this effect to Army Headquarters and he hoped that might do me some good! Vain hope, but I thought his action most kindly, especially his writing a private letter to me - a complete stranger - and I wrote and said so. I have never come across a similar case in the Army, nor even I think in the Civil or Colonial Service. It is a pity, I think, that service officers do not on occasions take similar action, for it would certainly sweeten official life and relationships, and in all probability lead to greater efficiency and the smoother running of the great machine of Bureaucracy.
I left Shanghai with many regrets for the kind friends I was leaving behind but with a great eagerness to see more of China and to get closer to the scene where big events were, I thought were (perhaps too hopefully) either taking place or were at least under consideration.
I embarked on a small local coasting steamer of some 1500 or so tons, belonging to one of the big British firms established in China, bound for Taku at the mouth of the Peiho. On board I found a couple of detachments of Indian troops under orders for Taku, and as I was the only officer on board I had not only to take command, but also to take over and sign for the equipment, provisions and rations that were being sent with them. We dropped down into the Yangtze, and then made for the mouth of the river and turned North to run up the coast to Weihaiwei our first port of call. Unfortunately we fell into a young typhoon when we got out to sea, but I was so busy down in the hold taking over and weighing all the quaint native rations with which Indian troops are supplied, that I never noticed that the tiny vessel was being tossed about like a cork on the water. When at last I came on deck I found that the sea was breaking over it, and that we were rolling and pitching in a hideous gale of wind. In normal times I could hardly have failed to be terribly sea-sick, but oddly enough I seemed to have "got my sea legs" while I was in the hold, too busy to be even aware of the storm. The result was that at dinner that night I sat down with only one other person - one of the ship's officers. The other passengers and the remaining ship's officers had retired from the unequal contest, very sea-sick, and the Captain was on the bridge. By the time we reached Weihaiwei however, some 2 days later I think, the storm had abated, and from there to Taku the weather was gloriously fine. Arriving at Taku my batman, Lack, who poor little chap had been prostrated with sea-sickness practically the whole voyage, got my kit ashore, and after I had handed over my Indian detachments he and I took the train for Pekin and after an uneventful journey arrived at the terminus just inside the immense walls of that fascinating city. We were met by a Staff Officer who directed us to quarters reserved for officers of the Expeditionary Headquarters, which I found situated in, of all places, the "Temple of Heaven."
I am not going to describe Pekin. It has been described in scores of books far better than I could attempt to describe it. My narrative will confine itself to my own personal experiences. I think I spent about a week in Pekin, and there at the Headquarters I ran into a number of old friends I had made in India. It was one of those who took me one night to an amusing show got up by the Headquarters staff of the USA contingent with the Expeditionary Force as a sort of farewell to their General Commanding, General Chaffee, who was being transferred to the Philippines. Fane, who took me, was a delightful fellow whom I had known well in India, a Captain in an Indian Cavalry Regiment, and the Americans with whom he was on terms of the greatest friendship, invited him to come and bring any of his friends with him. I think 4 or 5 of us accompanied him, and we were received with tremendous enthusiasm. The USA Headquarters was accommodated in the Chinese Temple of Agriculture which was quite close to the Temple of Heaven. The Americans had got up one of the Chinese halls in the building to represent a Californian bar. The barman, in his shirt sleeves, was the Brigade-Major - a dapper quick-witted officer who really looked the part. The Chucker-out was a huge Subaltern, who also looked the part. The show was in full swing when we arrived and everyone was very cheery and they gave a great welcome. General Chaffee himself had not then arrived, but he did so shortly afterwards, on which under Fane's Command we half dozen British officers formed up either side of him and escorted him up to the bar, ourselves doing the German "Parade Stechschritt" or famous "goose-step". Arriving at the bar he was told by the Chucker-out to halt, and a very amusing speech was made by the barman, after which drinks all round were ladelled out with some profusion, and General Chaffee was called on to reply, which he did. Finally everyone present was informed that he was expected to make a speech or sing a song, standing on a special stool by the bar, and I think it must have been well after midnight when the party broke up. It was very dark and it wasn't easy to find our way back to the Temple of Heaven. I know I helped Fane out of a ditch into which he had mysteriously fallen, but in the end we all reached home safely, and General Chaffee left for the Philippines a few hours later.
They were a good lot those Americans, and after I had got back to England I received a letter from Washington asking me if I would care to become an honorary member of the Order of the Dragon, an order instituted by the American Army to commemorate the Boxer War. On my replying that I should consider it an honour to be an Honorary member of such an Order I received a really beautiful medal, in black metal with a gorgeous golden dragon raised on it, and a ribbon of yellow silk with some black lines on it. To anticipate a little, when I was serving some 15 or 16 years later in the Military Intelligence in London during the Great War, I was told by the Colonel in charge of my branch - who had himself been in the Boxer War and was like me an honorary member of the Order of the Dragon - that those who belonged to the Order were expected to wear the ribbon (This was after the USA had declared war on Germany.) I therefore dug out the ribbon and wore it with my other ribbons. I remember being stopped at least twice in London by persons who asked my pardon for their curiosity but enquired what this yellow ribbon was. Unfortunately it turned out that my Colonel was quite wrong in saying that the ribbon was to be worn, for shortly afterwards an Army order came stating that this ribbon was not to be worn since the Order of the Dragon had not been instigated by Congress, but merely by certain Army Officers in the USA. I need hardly say I made haste to detach it from my other ribbons, and both the medal and the ribbons have since hung in a glass case in my room, where they will remain till they are consigned to the dustbin.
To return to Pekin. I was there about a week during which time I managed to visit the beautiful Summer Palace some miles in the country outside the city, and also the Forbidden City, for which a special international pass was required, obtainable from Army Headquarters. No one without such a pass was allowed inside the Forbidden City, and at the Northern Gate there was a Russian guard, and at the Southern, a Japanese guard, to whom the pass had to be shown. Very lovely in many ways was the Forbidden City, and delightfully quiet and peaceful, since it was empty of inhabitants. What struck me as painfully incongruous was the collection of European clocks - most of them cheap and tawdry - in the Empress Dowager's apartments. She seems to have had a mania for them.
I found myself particularly attracted in Pekin by the British Embassy in a prominent place in the town, which had been besieged for some weeks by the Boxers after the members of others Legations had been collected in it. As it was commanded by the wall high wall of the Tartar City which was separated from it by a distance of only 2 or 3 score of yards I have never been able to understand how it was that it was not rushed by the Boxers, a couple of hundred of whom could surely have rushed it any day or night, supported by artillery or machine guns mounted on the wall. I suppose no leader appeared, and without a leader the Boxers were merely a mob. The British Minister, Sir Claude Maxwell MacDonald and his wife and daughter were in the Legation throughout the siege I believe, as well as many other British men and women, and the garrison was insignificant - a handful of marines if I remember rightly. More than once I stood and gazed at that bullet-pitted wall that stood between the British garrison and the Boxer hordes, and I repeated over and over to myself the three words a Marine had painted on to the wall the day the relief arrived "LEST WE FORGET". Somewhere I have to this day the snapshot I took of this wall, on which the words are plainly visible.
The terminus of the railway between Taku and Pekin was just inside the massive wall that surrounded the city, a great passage way having been cut in the wall to admit the railway. This railway had, by argument, been taken over by the British on the outbreak of the war, and a British army officer was placed at each important station as "Railway Staff Officer" to control and direct the traffic. At the Pekin Terminus an enormous board recorded the name of the station and directions to the office of the RSO in something like 11 languages.
Again to anticipate, when I was on my way home some months later on one of the CPR liners running between China, Japan and Vancouver, I used to talk in my rather halting German to a German officer homeward bound on the same ship. There happened to be no other German on board, and as he could no other language than his own he found himself at some disadvantage. A few days before we reached Vancouver he said to me, as we were chatting in the smoke room, "Please pardon me for saying so, but I always thought that officers of the British Army were not very good linguists perhaps because you live on an island. But I find it exactly the contrary. Going up on the train from Taku to Pekin when I first came out to China (and this is the first time I have been out of Germany) I found at each station a British Staff Officer talking French, German, often Italian or Russian as well; and here are you, talking German to me. I think the officers of the British Army must be the best linguists in the world." I smiled inwardly, but I had no intention of disabusing him of the ideas that he had imbibed and which he would no doubt take back to Germany with him, so I said lightly that every cadet at Woolwich of Sandhurst, and in fact every public schoolboy, was taught French and possibly German too as a matter of course; and that many either then or afterwards took up Italian or Spanish or Russian. I did not however inform him that the entire army in India had been combed to find any officer who spoke a couple of foreign languages, and that the half dozen or so officer whom he had heard at the railway stations were about the only officers who could talk any language but their own, and possibly a little poor French or German at that.
To return once more to Pekin, I received orders when I had been there a week or ten days to go down to Tientsin and take over a section of pom-pom which was at the moment commanded by a Gunner Major called Hope Biddulph, who was ordered home on promotion. So the following morning I started off with my faithful batman/groom, Lack, in the train that travelled daily from Pekin to Taku, and in the afternoon we duly detrained ourselves at Tientsin. I was taking down a horse I had brought for a brother officer, and Lack travelled with it in an open horse-box, with a German trooper on one side and a French Zouave, complete in scarlet breeches and blue jacket, on the other. I observed with some amusement before our train had left Pekin that young Lack had established somehow complete domination over both his next door neighbours, and was giving them orders (I mean of course of signs, and vigorous language of which neither understood a word), which they meekly and automatically apparently obeyed. Yet Lack was quite a youngster - I doubt if he was over 20 - and one of the meekest and least aggressive of men; but I think he had character. Incidentally he had rather gone to pieces during our first month or so in Shanghai where I had managed to engage a Chinese cook, and Chinese grooms for my horses. Up til then he had been groom, cook, butler and valet to me. The moment he found himself with spare time on his his hands, he fell into rather evil company and took to drinking more than was good for him. I was busy over my work and did not notice his back-sliding till one morning he was late in call me, the next day I discovered to my disgust, through the slip-shod and thick way he answered some question I asked, that he had been drinking. I thereupon told him what I thought of his conduct, and I promptly dismissed my Chinese grooms and handed my horses over to him again and put him on his honour to backslide no more, with the result that he turned over an entirely new leaf and never gave any more trouble. Very sad I was when I parted company with him on the parade ground at Woolwich a few months later. We had been round the world together, meeting first on the parade ground at Woolwich, going out to South Africa together, then to China, then home via Canada, back to the same old Woolwich parade ground, and I had a very genuine affection for him, which I think he reciprocated.
I arrived at Tientsin and took over the Section from Biddulph and established myself in the quarters he had occupied. This Section was the only one organised as a Horse Artillery Section, that is to say, the gunner, instead of sitting on the guns and limbers were all mounted, thus making the unit infinitely more mobile - the exact difference in fact between Field and Horse Artillery. The pom-pom and its carriage are of course far lighter than either the Horse or Field Artillery gun of the period, so that with the gun detachments all mounted it could move at the gallop and with great speed: and the horses were the pick of the Horse and Field batteries in India. Outside Tientsin was a big open plain, where all the troops of the international military force stationed there could carry out their drills and manoeuvres without getting in each others' way. We had, besides ourselves, French, German, Russian, Italian and Japanese troops garrisoning Tientsin, but of these only the German and the Japanese had mobile artillery with them. The German battery (I think there was only one) was drawn by mules, bought in the country, the Japanese by sturdy little Japanese ponies less than 14 hands in height. I took a silly pride in taking my section out on to this open ground and drilling it near the German and Japanese batteries, for I could of course make rings around them whenever I chose to drill my section at the gallop, which I not infrequently did.
The Chinese city of Tientsin is walled, as Pekin is. The foreign troops were all quartered in the foreign concessions outside the city, and to go into the Chinese City was to me something of an excursion. I think it was Biddulph who told me of a shop in the Chinese City where silks and satins and all sorts of Chinese goods and objets d'art could be bought cheap; he said he thought it was a sort of Thieves' Kitchen, and that its stock consisted of articles taken by the Chinese owners from local Chinese houses whose owners had fled when Tientsin was entered by foreign troops the previous year. I must explain that, on the outbreak of the so-called "Boxer Revolution" in 1900, Tientsin (where we and the French both held concession areas) was besieged by the Boxers, and in fact underwent a siege comparable in intensity and length of time to the famous and of course much better known Siege of Ladysmith. It was relieved ultimately by our naval forces which had landed at Taku and who fought their way up to Tientsin. When the relief took place, many of the well to do Chinese fled, and fires broke out in the crowded town. I remember when I was at Weihaiwei dining with a young officer on one of H.M. cruisers who had taken part in the relief of Tientsin. He described to me the scene in the city when he entered it with his men, and how he came upon a deserted pawn-shop in a street ahead half consumed by fire. "I don't hold with looting", he said. "It's too much like stealing. But there was a shop full of watches and jewellery, whose owner had fled and which itself was doomed with all its contents, to be burnt to a cinder in a few minutes. So I just walked in and took a couple of articles as souvenirs, and if you come down to my cabin after dinner I'll show them to you." When I went down shortly afterwards he opened a drawer to look for a beautiful little watch, set in pearls, and a model of a shoe, of solid silver - a favourite expedient the Chinese have for preserving any silver they may have. These shoes are worth - or then were - about seven pounds sterling. I certainly didn't blame the young officer for his very modest "loot". I only wish others in that Expedition hadn't been so meticulous. Certainly the British Army was by no means the worst, but it was by no means blameless.
After Biddulph left I went down into the Chinese city and found the shop of which he had told me. It contained a vast amount of Chinese staff, good, bad and indifferent, and rather reminded me of a famous and much advertised place in Covent Garden, London, belonging to a well known firm of second-hand goods merchants, where one can buy almost anything one wants. I found a very handsome mandarin's gown, of lovely silk, with gilt buttons which I think I was able to secure for something like 10 or 15 Mexican dollars (20 or 30 shillings) and I brought it home and had it ultimately turned into a charming opera cloak for my wife. But so far as I can recall, that is the only time I went to the shop, and it was only thing I bought. Somehow buying loot didn't seem to me to differ very much from looting. I may have been over-meticulous, but I don't like the idea of stealing other people's property, and I could very well do without Chinese loot.
I think I have mentioned when writing of Shanghai, the extraordinary hatred which the French military contingent showed to the British, the result of course of the severe blow to their national pride caused by the enforced surrender of Colonel Marchand to Kitchener in Fashoda after the battle of Omdurman. If it was bad in Shanghai and it was bad, it was worse still, I found, in Tientsin. French officers and French soldiers would throw sour and threatening glances at any British officer or soldier who passed them, and our Headquarters were kept in a state of continual anxiety lest some chance incident might start a brawl which might very well end in bloodshed between the military forces of the two nations. Sunday was the most dangerous day, since it was observed as a holiday by the French as well as ourselves, and the chance of a row was considerably increased thereby. Shortly after I arrived in Tientsin I received secret orders from the Headquarters Staff to be ready to turn out the following Sunday with as many mounted men as I could muster, in case trouble arose. This meant that I had to have all my detachment horses saddled up, and all my gunners with their swords on (they had no other weapons), and standing to all day, while I myself of course had to be fully equipped and ready to take action at any moment throughout the entire day. Luckily nothing happened, and I am glad to say that no untoward event took place all the time I was in Tientsin. I warned my men to take no notice of any Frenchmen, and they all played the game, as I knew they would. But I confess it was a ticklish time both on that Sunday and several subsequent ones. Oddly enough Colonel Marchand himself, the hero of the Fashoda incident, was in Tientsin at the time, holding a staff appointment at French Headquarters. I used to see him often in the evenings, riding round the race course which lay not some distance outside the Concessions, and where I used to frequently go to exercise my horses in the comparative cool of the evening. He never looked my way, as there was no reason why he should. Indeed he seemed to keep himself very much to himself, for I never remember seeing him otherwise than alone. Most of the French officers - and the Russian and Italian officers as well - were to be seen every evening sitting outside the cafés drinking aperitifs. But I never once saw Colonel Marchand except on the race course.
An incident occurred that summer while I was in Tientsin which illustrates very well the kind of anti-British feeling that, as I have said, the French entertained towards us. The line of railway and the road from Taku to Pekin were on the north bank of the Peiho river, while the Concession and the city of Tientsin lay on the south bank. All supplies for the troops of all nationalities came up from Taku either by rail, road or barge, and for convenience each nationality established a pontoon bridge for itself across the river, so as to connect with the railway station on the north bank: and when a convoy of barges came up or went down the river, these pontoon bridges were drawn and moved to the bank in order to leave the channel clear and let the barges pass.
One morning a couple of our barges started from Tientsin to bring up supplies from Taku. They were manned as usual by Chinese, and had as escort a handful of Australians, ratings from HMAS Protector who had been turned into a sort of Military Police, since there was no naval work to be done and the cruiser was idle in port. As the second barge passed the French pontoon, its stern bumped into the latter, whereupon a French soldier standing on guard cursed the Chinese polesman who was steering and struck him with his fist. One of the Australians lying on deck basking in the sun witnessed this brutal and wholly unjustified assault. He sprang to his feet in a fury and was in the act of jumping on the pontoon to deal with the Frenchman when the current swept the barge downstream. Beside himself with anger and baulked of his revenge the Australian stood for a moment shaking his fist at the Frenchman, and yelled at him, "Waterloo, you b___, Fashoda, you b____"
I can't say I enjoyed those 3 or 4 months of stifling heat in Tientsin. Endless drilling of my sections on the open ground outside the Concession grew very monotonous, as did "Stables" every day, morning and evening. The Boxer War had reached a period where fighting had ceased altogether, yet we were still on a war footing, but were just marking time. It was interesting of course to watch the troops of the various nationalities, their methods of drill, their turn-out, their discipline, behaviour, and so on. I remember thinking that in regard to physique the Russians took first place (my own Horse Artillerymen - the pick of the British Army - excepted of course), the Italians second place, the French easily last. But the appearances of the handfuls of troops of various nationalities at that moment quartered or camped in Tientsin was no sort of criticism by which to judge either the armies or the people whom they represented. The Italians, for instance, belonged to the crack Bersaglieri whilst the French detachment had been sent from the the so-called Colonial Army for Annam and Tonkin, and the men looked anaemic and pigeon-chested. The Zouaves I had seen in Pekin were of a very different type, of excellent physique, and always smart in their picturesque and colourful uniform.
How could I help, however, chafing at this long period of inaction, especially when the war in South Africa was still going on, and the papers were full of accounts of engagements with the Boers, who were carrying on a very gallant and extremely efficient guerrilla warfare under such leaders as de Wet, Smuts and others. When I left Cape Town in July 1900, Lord Roberts had occupied Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, President Kruger had fled, and the collapse of the Boers was expected at any moment. Now, twelve months and more later, the end was nowhere in sight, and for all one could see, the war might go on for months longer. I scanned every telegram and every paper for news of the war, and noted to my deep disappointment that the section of pom-poms of which I was to have taken command in Pretoria was in the thick of the fighting: my disappointment increased when I read in the news that the officer who had been given command of "my" Section had not only been mentioned in despatches, but had been awarded the D.S.O.. "My D.S.O.", I shouted in my selfish and egotistic way when I heard the news. "He's got my D.S.O.!" and I paced up and down my room in those stifling quarters in Tientsin, and cursed the day I had been picked to leave Bloemfontein for China, though at the time I had thought myself the luckiest man in the army in South Africa, and so did every other officer out there. I blush to think how many weeks I sulked and cursed my fate while kicking my heels - so to speak - in China, persuading myself that I had been unfairly treated by fate and deserved everyone's sympathy. What egregious egotists young men are apt to be, and how utterly self-regarding! The only excuse I can find for my behaviour is that I was betrayed by my passion for adventure and romance. But little as I guessed it I was learning yet another of those tremendous lessons which nothing but experience teaches, or really brings home to us. For one morning shortly before I left Tientsin, I picked up the local paper, and amongst the telegrams I found an account of a surprise attack made by the formidable de Wet on one of our columns in camp; our casualties were considerable, and in the list of the killed was the name of the officer who had commanded "my" section and won "my D.S.O." In a flash the stupidity and selfishness of all my grumbling stood revealed to me. I felt both humbled and humiliated. Never again, I resolved, would I blame fate because events had not turned out just to suit my whim: I would henceforth accept cheerfully whatever fate decreed without brooding over it or grumbling. This need in no way prevent me from striving to "Rough-hew my ends", for I had and have no use for the idle fatalist who makes no effort to shape his life or the affairs with which he is connected, and leaves himself to be blown hither and thither by every passing breeze, excusing himself by saying that fate is the supreme and complete master of man and his affairs. The phrase I coined - and still use - was "no regrets", by which I meant the elimination of all brooding over things that have happened and cannot be altered, of all useless complaining about "might-have-beens". The only justification for recalling errors that one has made, opportunities that one has missed, things we have left undone that we ought to have done, and things we have done that we ought not to have done, is to stiffen oneself against repeating such blunders or omissions. It is the present and the future that demand our energies, our enthusiasms, our endeavours, our experiments, our daring and such skill as we possess. The dead past had much better busy itself burying the dead.
I never forgot that lesson which I learned in China, and I don't honestly think I have grumbled since then when matters beyond my control have turned out differently from what I hoped or expected. Why should one? Even when one is deceived, even if someone in whom one has had confidence, someone whom one has implicitly trusted, lets one down, it is cowardly and foolish to allow the event to darken one's life, or to lose faith in human nature. "Great-Heart was deceived: 'very well' said Great-Heart" as Robert Louis Stevenson puts it. A long and busy life, spent in all sorts of countries amongst all sorts of men, many of them my companions or colleagues in all sorts of situations, has shown me how much good there is in every one of us, even in the men who seem superficially utter wasters or crooks or blackguards. "Human nature" isn't perfect, neither is it wholly evil. Why not recognise this obvious fact, and cease to "lose faith in human nature" because someone has not lived up to the opinion you formed of him? He may not reach your standard in some respect, but possibly he far surpasses it (and you) in others: and in any case, are you quite positive that your standard is and must be the correct one for all other humans?
I was indeed glad when I at last received orders to hand in my guns and equipment to the Ordnance Department and turn my horses over to the Remount Department and take my men down to Hong Kong, there to await transport back to England. I need not go into all the details, and will merely record that I found myself ultimately back in Hong Kong, through which I had passed a little over a year ago, with about 170 NCOs, gunners and drivers of the Royal Horse Artillery, with orders that we were to be sent home from there by the first P+O steamer on which the Company could provide us with accommodation.
For some reason which I have never been able to fathom, all the other pom-pom officers were allowed, after handing in their guns and equipment and making over their horses, to go home as individuals, the NCOs and men being all attached to my unit, thus making up the large draft of 170 NCOs and men with myself as the only officer. Personally I had no wish whatever to go home without my men, indeed I should have protested if any suggestion had been made that my men and I should be separated. But it was another matter to find myself the only officer with a large detachment of men from a number of different batteries, some being reservists who had been called up from the Reserve, others being comparatively young soldiers who had never been out of England before, and the remainder, seasoned soldiers who had seen service in India or Egypt or South Africa. To maintain discipline with such a mixed bag under my command was not, I fully realised, going to be an easy matter. Anyone who knows anything about soldiering, and about "mixed drafts", the prospect will be recognised as un-alluring, and the task a difficult one. There was, I was glad to find, one Battery Sergeant Major in my mixed bag, an efficient NCO, though without a very strong personality; but I reckoned that he would be a loyal and trustworthy Second-in-Command - for that is what his job amounted to - and form an adequate link between myself and the rank and file - the NCOs and men. I don't think there was any Sergeant among the remainder, but there were one or two Corporals and Bombardiers, though only just a sprinkling. On one of these I knew I could rely to maintain an iron discipline amongst the men if there were any trouble. He had been in my Tientsin Section, and his name was Parfitt - Corporal Parfitt. He was, I believe, a Canadian by birth, and was about the finest physique I have ever seen, square-jawed, straight-backed, a little bow-legged, as so many powerful horsemen are. And he was a powerful horseman, with the Rough-riders certificate. I haven't seen a horse that he couldn't ride and manage. The men feared and respected him, knowing full well that he could knock out any one of them - he was a fine heavy-weight boxer - or two or three of them at once if need be. Yet he was anything but a bully, and never attempted to show off. I recognised him as far and away my best NCO and he was always quiet and self-reliant and respectful and loyal in all my dealings with him. there was no detail of drill that he didn't know, and he inspired the men with something of his own smartness and quickness of movement. When he was in charge of a gun-team or detachment, the men would "jump to it" as if they were attached to electrical wires.
On arrival at Hong Kong at the very end of August, hottest time of the year, I was accommodated with my men in barracks in the centre of the town of Victoria, and was informed by Headquarters Staff that, as soon as passages could be obtained for us on a homebound P+O we should be sent home. Meanwhile there was nothing to do, other than keep my men fit and if possible out of mischief. We had no guns of course, nor horses; we had not even a carbine, nor any weapon except the gunners's swords. I felt pretty desperate and hoped the period of waiting before embarkation would not be long. To keep us all fit I used to take the men out every day in the comparative cool of the morning for a long route march to the "Happy Valley", where the Race Course and Polo Ground was situated, from which we would return soaked with perspiration, and I used to get us all the bathing parades I could. The men made friends with the Garrison gunners whose barracks were a little way up the hill, and with the men of the Royal Welch Fusiliers who were in their summer quarters at "The Peak" ie the summit of the island of Hong Kong, Connected by a tiny funicular railway.
A few days after I had arrived a Staff Officer from Headquarters came to see me and told me that the P+O Agents said that it was just possible that they might have accommodation for my men and myself in a home-going ship about the end of September or a little later, but certainly not before. The news staggered me. The prospect of keeping my men kicking their heels in Hong Kong for four or five weeks, with all the effect that this must have on their discipline and morale, appalled me; and I said so, and asked if pressure could not be put on the P+O by cabling to the War Office. The officer said he feared it would be useless, but that he was now going round to see the Canadian Pacific Agents to see if by chance they could do anything, as they maintained a regular service across the Pacific between Hong Kong and Canada. What transpired I heard later. After ascertaining the exact number of officers, NCOs and men for whom accommodation would be needed the CPR Agent asked how soon it might be required, and he was informed "As soon as possible". "Would Tuesday of next week do?" he enquired, and was told "most certainly". "I will call on you in an hour's time", he said. And an hour later he called at Military Headquarters and said, "We can take your detachment next Tuesday and contract to convey them to Woolwich." This sounded almost too good to be true, but there was still one obstacle - the cost, which the Staff Officer pointed out was bound to be higher by that route, in which case it would be necessary to cable home to the War Office and ask to obtain sanction, which he feared was not likely to be given. The Agent thought a moment, and then promised to return in 24 hours time asking that nothing should be done in the interval. Next day he returned at the same hour. "See here", he said, "My company is prepared to contract to convey your party from here to Woolwich for the same charge which the P+O would make, and to have everything ready for their embarkation and departure on our ship which sails from here for Nagasaki, Yokohama and Victoria next Tuesday". And so it was arranged. I learnt afterwards that the CPR had taken this action because it was anxious to secure the contract for all military movements in future between the UK and the Far East; and whether they made a profit or loss over this particular transaction was of no great concern to them. It would be a useful test of their own transport organisation, and if successful - as they were confident it would be, and as indeed it proved to be - it would form an excellent precedent and be a first class advertisement.
I need hardly say I was overjoyed when I heard of it, for not only did it mean a speedy departure from Hong Kong, but it would be far more interesting journey both for myself and my men to go home via Japan and Canada, than by the long, hot and tedious sea route via Singapore and the Red Sea. One lurking doubt only beset me; would such a voyage impose too great a strain on the discipline of my motley draft, as I could not even consider keeping them on board ship at the Japanese ports, and we should no doubt have some days delay in Canada? It wasn't very pleasant, I mused, being the only officer and bearing the entire responsibility. I decided to put the matter to the men themselves, and win their help and cooperation. So next morning I collected them all in one of the large barrack rooms in an entirely informal way, lit up a cigarette and told them they could smoke, seated myself on the edge of a table, swinging my legs, and addressed them more or less as follows: "Look here, men, as I have already told you we are going home via Japan and Canada, and every one of us has the chance of his life of seeing something of those countries, so I mean to give you all as much shore leave and liberty as I can. But remember that no Jap and probably few if any Canadians have even seen a British soldier before, and by what they see of us they are going to judge the whole British Army for the next 20 years at least. I want you therefore to play the game and give these people the best possible impression of the conduct and bearing of the British Army. I shall start at the outset by ignoring King's Regulations in so far as taking notice of concern entries on your Regimental Defaulter Sheet - we'll forget all about that and I shall start you all off as if you had clean sheets. What I do ask you to do is to behave decently when get on shore - let's have no drunkenness and no kicking up rows, and no incivility towards any of the people. Go about in twos and threes, and if any of you happen to see a pal taking a drop too much or getting a bit too lively, don't wait till he commits himself and then report him or bringing him up before me. Just get hold of him and take him quietly back to the ship and put him to bed before has time to disgrace you and me. I shan't appoint any Military Policemen or send out picquets. I want the whole lot of you to be your own Police. One more thing, I'll arrange for decent liquor on board and as much as the average man wants. Don't try drinking the filthy stuff they'll try and sell you on shore. Any questions? Right, Then think over what I've said, and let's show the Japs and the Canadians that the British soldier is the finest and best behaved soldier in the world, and the Horse Artillery - the old "Right of the Line" - the finest branch of it. That'll do. Break off".
It was a risk and an experiment, but it paid off. All those long weeks between embarking at Hong Kong and dismissing the parade at Woolwich barracks I never had any trouble with the men, though we have one colossal "beano" which I'll describe later.
The CPR turned up trumps and all the arrangements made were first class. The Senior Staff Officer pointed out to me that this was an experiment which would concern and interest the war Office very materially, and he instructed me therefore to make a careful report of all details, and send it up to the War Office after my arrival in England and also report myself in person in case they wanted to ask me any questions.
Everything went without a hitch, and we embarked with all our kit and belongings on the appointed day. I had consulted the Sergeant Major about various details affecting the comfort of the men, and had decided to have two issues of beer daily - one at midday just before their dinners, and one in the evening about 6pm when they often had a sort of mild Sing-Song or Concert. Physical Drill and Kit Inspections were carried out daily, and I got up sports and concerts and entertainments of all kinds, for which the passengers very kindly gave prizes. Nagasaki was our first port of call, and there we stayed a full day, coaling, and I arranged for rickshaws for any of the men who wanted to see something of the countryside, though most of them preferred to roam round the town, having meals at some of the little Japanese restaurants and buying all sorts of curiosities to take home. Yokohama was potentially a big problem, for there we stayed a day and a night, but all went well, and the men, given full liberty and placed, so to speak, on their honour, behaved very well. The weather was not very good during the long run across the Pacific and there was a good deal of sea-sickness amongst the men, but that wasn't very serious. The Captain of the ship - I have forgotten both his name and the ship's alas - was one of the most delightful men I have ever met. I used to sit at his right hand at meals, and I generally played bridge with him after dinner in his cabin. Tall, dark and good-looking he was a charming companion, with a sense of humour and a tremendous pride in his profession, and - although I didn't discover it for some time - a touch of genuine religion hidden away under all the rest of his characteristics. Notwithstanding the fact that there were several parsons on bard, some holding much exalted positions in the Church, he always took the Service in the Saloon on Sunday mornings, leaving to the parsons the job of preaching. It used to amuse me quietly to watch him glance rather fiercely round the congregation when he came to the bit in the prayer book about "All who profess and call themselves Christians." On the words "profess and call themselves" he used to dwell with an almost vehement emphasis. So far as he himself was concerned, my experience was that he practised what he preached, for I had seldom met a man who lives up so sincerely and yet unostentatiously to Christian principles. An odd thing about him was that in any rough sea he was always sea-sick. Poor fellow, he had been 40 years at sea, he told me, and had never got over this terrible curse; but I need hardly say that it never interfered one iota with his work or his duty, in fact I doubt if many of the Ship's Company knew it.
On the whole I enjoyed the voyage and had just enough work to keep me busy and just enough leisure to have plenty of fun. "Meridien Day" when we crossed the 180 degree of Longitude was, I confess, an eye-opener to me, for we had to put an extra day in our diaries which was called on our menu cards "Meridien Day". I had not realised before that in travelling from East to West one had to insert an extra day into the calendar when crossing the 180 degree meridian, or deduct one travelling the other way.
The voyage from Japan to Canada is necessarily a little tedious, since at no point does one sight land, and I was glad when we reached Victoria, on the island of Vancouver, the capital of British Columbia. Here I was met by a bevy of reporters and photographers and also by a staff officer who had made all arrangements to take us out to the Combined RA and RE barracks where we were to be accommodated during our stay. It was not very far from the naval base of Esquimalt (with the accent heavily on the second syllable "Esk-WI-malt"), so during our fortnight's stay me men had a great time both the gunners and sappers, and with the Navy, and I myself was given quarters and made very comfortable in the mess.
It appeared that TRH the Duke and Duchess of York (afterwards King George V and Queen Mary) were due to arrive in about a week's time, and orders had arrived that I and my draft were to be detained in Victoria to form a Guard of Honour when needed, though we had nothing with us but our khaki uniforms, and that had seen better days. We were lucky in striking the very best time of year - September - and both the Garrison and the people of Victoria were exceedingly kind to us in every way. They even gave us free passes up the railway to see one of the Lakes in the interior of the island, and also free passes to watch one or two first class La Crosse matches. I made friends not only with the Gunner and Sapper officers and their wives and families, but with the Naval officers at Esquimalt also and was taken by the latter for a three-day fishing expedition to the lakes, which I enjoyed enormously. My men behaved amazingly well, considering the many temptations offered them, and I had practically no trouble of any sort. I was present myself at the handsome State building when the Royal Party arrived and the Duke and Duchess were received officially by the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province. A day or two later I was ordered to provide a Guard of Honour of I think 100 men when the Royal Visitors were due to attend a big function at the Agricultural Hall. On the way down I said to one of my Corporals who happened to have been present at a very famous episode in the Boer War at Sanna's Post (not very far from Bloemfontein), where he had been wounded in the arm, "Well, Corporal Sandford, I expect when you get back home you'll tell your people how HRH fell you out and asked you to tell him about Sanna's Post." The poor man, one of the shyest I have ever known, did not guess that I was joking - for it never crossed my mind that any such thing would happen - and, blushing to his eyes, said "Oh no, Sir, I'd never tell a lie like that." Actually, after the Duke had done down the line of my men as I had drawn them up, and finished his formal inspection, one of his Aides-de-camp came up to me and said, "His Royal Highness hears that one of your men was at Sanna's Post, and if so he would like to have a talk with him." I promptly "Fell out" Corporal Sandford and marched him up to the Duke, who made him describe the whole engagement, although at first the poor man was so embarrassed that he could hardly speak. As we were marching back that evening I said to the Corporal, "Well, you see I was right' and you'll have to tell your people all about it directly you get home."
My men formed the Guard of Honour on the quayside a few days later when the Duke and Duchess were leaving, and the Duke made us a very gracious little speech. Afterwards I was seized by Prince Alexander of Teck (the Queen's brother, afterwards created the Earl of Athlone) and taken down to the wardroom where he gave me a very welcome drink and questioned me closely about the situation in China. More than 20 years afterwards I chanced to meet Lord Athlone at Governor's House in Gibraltar. We recalled this conversation, which I found he remembered very well.
We were kept in Victoria about two weeks, and I then received orders to embark for Vancouver where arrangements had been made to take my men across to Montreal by the Canadian Pacific Railway, there to take ship for England. Somewhat unfortunately the day of embarkation fell on a Saturday and the small steamer which had been chartered to take us over to Vancouver and the mainland was timed to leave at midnight. This meant that I should have to parade the men and march them off from the barracks about seven o'clock in the evening as it was a good hours march to the quays, and I wanted to get them all on board by eight or nine o'clock, and certainly not later. On the Friday morning the Sergeant Major told me that the men were asking for an advance of 2 or 3 dollars of their pay. For obvious reasons I demurred, and said I would make an issue of pay at Vancouver on Sunday before we started on our long train journey across Canada. The Sergeant Major later approached me again and said that the men particularly wanted the money because it was their last day in Victoria and all wanted to repay some of the hospitality they had received, and many had contracted small debts which they were anxious to discharge. I was told at the same time that they had all been invited to Esquimalt on Saturday evening to have a final meal and "sing song" before they left. I realised that I had no right whatever to withhold from the men their week's pay, and also that their reasons for wanting it were sound, so with some misgiving I gave in, and told the Sergeant Major to fall the men in for pay at 12 midday on Saturday.
On Saturday evening the men gave me an early dinner about 6.30 and at 7pm after bidding goodbye to the officers I went to the parade ground. It was almost dark, and on my arrival the Sergeant Major with rather uncertain steps and in a slight thick voice came up to me and reported "All Present". The kits and equipment had been already sent down to the ship by waggon. I saw at a glance that the line of men drawn up before me was swaying somewhat, and I realised in an instant that their sailor friends had entertained them right royally, for there was hardly a man wholly sober. However, they obeyed the word of command quite readily, and moved off in comparative order, preceded by the band of the RA and RE. We hadn't gone a mile however before we were met by the brass band of the Town, and shortly afterwards we were in the outskirts of the town itself. It is hardly necessary for me to point out what this led to - a detachment of soldiers who had made themselves very popular during their two weeks stay in Victoria marching through the streets, preceded by two brass bands, on a Saturday night. Civilians fell in and marched with the men, headgear was exchanged, arms were linked, and by the time we reached the Docks my command consisted not of a detachment of Horse Artillery, but of a seething mob of soldiers and civilians inextricably mixed together. I saw at once that the only thing to do was to get my men somehow pushed up the gangway and on to the ship, see that no civilians accompanied them, get the roll called, and push off from the quayside. The Sergeant Major was reasonably sober and helpful and I instructed him to herd the men as best he could on to the gangway and so on to the ship, and I hurried on board to see the master of the ship to get him to shove off directly the men were on board. He, however, said that "his orders were sail at midnight", and nothing would budge him from this position until at last I suggested in desperation that when I gave him the word he should push off from the quay and anchor in the harbour until the hour of sailing arrived; and this, with some persuasion, he finally agreed to do. I then went back on shore, where I found my men singing and shouting, embracing and embraced by civilians of both sexes, though the Sergeant Major had managed to get some on the ship. Looking round in a seemingly vain search to find some NCO or man on whom I could rely my eyes fell on a tall, well-built gunner, an Irishman named O'Connor who was by no means one of my best characters though he was powerfully enough built to deal with anyone. It so happened that 2 or 3 days previously I had got into a train to go into Victoria and had seen O'Connor and another gunner sitting in front with the collars of their jackets undone and in rather a 'happy' mood. I was myself in plain clothes, so said nothing: but next morning I called him and his friend up and told them that as I had been in plain clothes I didn't wish to take any action on what I had seen, but explained that by their behaviour they brought disgrace on the Regiment, and that though for the reason I had given I had no intention of taking official notice of it I begged them to remember their duty in maintaining the good name of our Regiment and warned them that if I found them at any future time misbehaving themselves in public, I should remember this incident. Whether this attitude of mine had had any influence on O'Connor I don't know, but to my surprise - for he was a fairly heavy drinker - I noticed that was dead sober. He came up to me and saluted the moment I called him, and I explained that I had somehow to get all the men on to the ship, and that I relied upon him to help me. He was on no account to allow any civilians on to the gangway. "That's aroight sir" said he in his Irish brogue. "Just leave it to me and I'll do it." And he did. In less time than I could believe possible he had chivvied all the men on to the ship, rough-handled all the civilians who tried to follow, the gangway was up, the roll called, and every man was on board except Warrant Officer of the Ordnance Corps who had been attached to my draft at the last moment (Not himself a Gunner of course. He was the only absentee when the roll was called, and in a few minutes we were safely anchored out in the harbour, and at 12 midnight we sailed for Vancouver. What happened to the Ordnance Corps Warrant Officer I don't know and didn't care, and don't think I have ever heard.
It was rather a bedraggled looking lot of men who fell in next morning on the quay at Vancouver, but as there was no one to meet them at that early hour, I didn't mind, and was only too thankful to have got them all safely across. A little later the long train that was to take us across Canada pulled up alongside and I duly entrained the men. Our journey across was uneventful. The first part, through the Rockies, was picturesque in the extreme but where we got to the flat prairie land the scenery was monotonous and dull. The day after we left Vancouver I found one man missing when the roll was called in the evening. It was Corporal Parfitt! He had slipped away and deserted somewhere after leaving Vancouver City, no one knew when or how. He was the only deserter I had during the whole journey from Hong Kong to Woolwich. I heard rumours that he deserted to join the Canadian Frontier Force Police, a splendid body of men to whom such a man would indeed be a welcome recruit, but whether this tale was true or not I cannot say.
At every station at which we stopped even for a few minutes, I let the men out, and they ran up and down the platform, or kicked a football, or played leapfrog; anyhow they kept fit and cheerful. Again I had made arrangements with the CPR - whose whole organisation was beyond praise - for a liberal supply of beer, so they got their beer at or before the midday meal, and at 6 o'clock in the evening as before.
When we arrived at Winnipeg I was met by a CPR official who said that the Company would much appreciate it if I were to go ahead of the men to Montreal so that they could discuss arrangements for their accommodation before they actually arrived. I willingly agreed and left the Sergeant Major in temporary command. On my arrival at Montreal I found that the Company had already arranged for accommodation for me at the Place Viger Hotel - a suite consisting of of sitting room, bedroom and private bathroom for which it occurred to me that I should have to pay a prodigious price, but I felt it would sound stingy and churlish to demur. I may interpose here that when I was leaving 3 days later I asked for my account at the office, and was promptly informed somewhat to my consternation that the Company had given orders that no account was to be submitted to me, as I was their guest! Actually I believe the Place Viger Hotel was owned by the Company; anyhow my protests were in vain, and I was allowed to pay nothing, not even for my drinks!
The day after my arrival in Montreal I was entertained at lunch at the St James' Club by the Director of the CPR, a big affair, which I found a little embarrassing as I did not of course know a soul there. After lunch a string of men (there were no ladies present) was brought up and presented to me, and it occurred to me that the last two were very anxious to know about affairs in China, for they asked a number of questions which I answered or parried as best I could. How could I guess that they were pressmen greedy for copy? But I knew it next morning when I picked up the daily paper and saw in huge headlines "Arrival of the Royal Horse Artillery. Captain Orr is pleased with their reception. Says the Russians are in Manchuria and mean to stay there." I had indeed said something of the sort, rather light-heartedly, never dreaming that it would promptly appear in the local papers, and as an authoritative opinion. For days I was on tenterhooks dreading the wrath of Downing Street might fall heavily on me for my rash excursion into an area of foreign politics which was at that moment studded with mines which any indiscretion might explode, possibly precipitating a European War. Nothing happened, however, and I was able after a few days of trepidation to breathe freely again and laugh at myself for my foolish fears. The incident nevertheless taught me one more lesson which I have never forgotten. A 'calculated' indiscretion is quite often a useful adjunct to policy; but a careless and thoughtless indiscretion merits almost any punishment which may befall the author if it, varying of course with the importance of the subject.
It was not to myself alone that the generous-hearted people of Montreal extended their hospitality. They treated my men right royally and the night before we sailed gave the whole draft free seats in the best theatre in the City - and an excellent show it was.
The day after my arrival I was taken down by one of the CPR officials of the office of the Shipping Firm on which passages were being arranged for myself and the men. (The CPR had made themselves responsible for arranging the entire trip from Hong Kong to England. As a matter of fact this shipping firm was afterwards taken over and incorporated in the CPR.) I was very civilly received by the Agent, who after a few preliminaries asked me if I would mind if my men were accommodated in the 2nd Class instead of special 3rd Class arrangements being made for them. explaining that it would cost the firm a certain amount to arrange the bunks, mess tables, wash house, canteen etc, and that on this trip they happened to have plenty of 2nd Class accommodation available, more than enough for all my men; he added that his firm proposed to make no variation in the cost, which would be the same as for 3rd Class accommodation. With an inward smile I replied that if such an arrangement saved them expense and inconvenience and did not entail any extra cost to the War Office, I would raise no objection. So all my gunners and drivers as well as the NCOs when home across the Atlantic in fine style as 2nd Class passengers and I amused myself during the voyage picturing some of these stable lads - as many were before enlisting - being called by a steward and asked what they would be pleased to take for breakfast
The embarkation took place without a hitch, and all arrangements worked perfectly. There were very few passengers, but we just had a bridge four, which was fortunate, as the weather was far too cold to be long on deck. It was late October and we passed a good many icebergs, whilst from Rimouski onwards through the Gulf of St. Lawrence there was almost continuous fog and the siren sounded with hardly a pause for 48 hours on end. I had met on the train a very delightful couple who with their 3 small children had been paying a visit to other people in Winnipeg, and I found to my great joy that they were to be fellow companions of mine on the voyage home. Thus began a friendship with Harry and Bessie Stobart which I am glad to say is as firm today as it was then, more than 40 years ago. Our voyage across the Atlantic was entirely uneventful, but I was glad indeed when we caught the first sight of home - my own county of Londonderry in fact. Arriving at Liverpool I found a staff officer awaiting me, and a special train ready to take us straight to Woolwich. I need hardly say that I lost no time entraining the men and their baggage, and about five in the evening our train pulled into the station at Woolwich, having stopped nowhere, even circumventing London by some circuitous route. At Woolwich we were met by the Gunner Band and marched up to barracks in fine style to lively music, and I dismissed the men on the very parade ground from which I had marched my draft on that dark and bitterly cold winter morning just a year and a half before. So far as I remember there were only 3 of the men on parade that evening who had been with my original draft and accompanied my right round the world, and one of them was my faithful batman and orderly, Driver Lack.
I had to stay a few days in Woolwich to settle up accounts and details about my draft, and I made a fair copy, which I transmitted to the War Office, of the detailed report of my journey which I had been ordered in Hong Kong to prepare and send in. I drew it up with great care and dividid it into three parts - the voyage from Hong Kong to Canada my stay at Victoria and the journey across to Montreal, and the journey from Montreal to Woolwich. I even drew diagrams of the compartments on the train across Canada, and gave specimens of the menus provided on board ship and on the train. But I did not forget that the Colonel of the Staff at Hong Kong had specially instructed me to call personally at the War Office in addition to submitting a report in writing, so that I might give any information that might be required, and answer any questions. I therefore duly went up to London and presented myself at the War Office - then some dingy old buildings on the South side of Pall Mall - a regular rabbit warren. After sending in my name, with the business for which I had some, I was directed to a waiting room, where I kicked my heels in some impatience for over an hour. At long last a messenger entered the room and beckoning me to follow him, led me along several passages; finally on reaching a door he knocked, they opened it and showed me in. A senior officer was seated at a table writing, and for at least 2 or 3 minutes continued to do so without paying the slightest attention to me. Then he looked up with a frown, signed the paper on which I had written my name and my business, and said with indescribable rudeness, "Well, what do you want? Why have you come to see me?" I choked down my wrath and said firmly "I came sir, because I was ordered by Colonel X at Hong Kong to report to you personally. I had no wish to see you and am merely obeying orders." This evidently somewhat stumped him, and he said rather harshly, "Well, it was very wrong of him. Why did he order you to see me?" "I imagine, Sir," I replied, "that it was because I have just brought a draft of 170 men from Hong Kong by a new route, that is to say, via Japan and Canada, and he though you might be interested to hear about it. I have already submitted a detailed report in writing." "Very well", he said, seeming wholly mollified, "I'll look through your report when it comes before me, and if I want to ask for any questions I will send for you. And now you're home," he countered, most amiably, "What do you want to do with yourself?" "I want to go back to South Africa at once, if that is possible." I replied - it was October 1901, and the Boer War did not end till May 1902. "Do you indeed?" said the General with a sneer. "You are the last man in England to go, as you have been there already, and it is those who haven't been there who have the prior right to go."
With that I left him, boiling with anger and wishing I had never gone near the War Office. However, my orders in Hong Kong had been to "report in person", and that I had done. Of course, I heard no word more from the War Office, but oddly enough my friend Mrs Stobart, who was a great personal friend of the then Quarter-Master General, one Sir Henry Stephenson, I think told me a year or two afterwards that he had described to her how he had been considering this very question of the route via Canada to the Far East as a possible alternative to the usual one via Singapore, and that looking up the records in the War Office he had come across a "First rate report by a young Gunner Captain who had brought a detachment of Horse Artillery home that way from the Boxer War; and that this report had given him every detail he wanted to know." This was good hearing for me as he hadn't even remember the name of the "Young Gunner Captain" who had submitted the report and was of course entirely ignorant of the fact that he was a friend of Mrs Stobart's. So I learnt one more lesson - that if one put one's whole heart into a bit of work, however trivial it might seem, there was always the probability that it would turn out in the long run to be of use to somebody or for some cause, even if at the moment it seemed to have been thrown aside contemptuously and regarded as useless.
As soon as I had finished up my work at Woolwich I hurried down to my mother and sisters who were now comfortably settled in the charming house between Camberley and Aldershot where I had found them when I returned from India just two years previously. I was told from Army Headquarters that I was to consider myself on leave until it had been decided to what battery I was to be posted, for I was still of course on the "Seconded List" as I had been ever since I joined the pom-poms. But before I go on with my story I must record the memory that remains vividly with me yet of one night at the Woolwich Mess - one of the weekly "Guest Nights" which every mess holds as a matter of course when the regimental band plays and regimental traditions are specially honoured. Woolwich is of course the Heart of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, whose motto is "Ubique" - Everywhere and units of which are scattered over the entire globe. The Mess Quarters therefore are large and spacious, and on Guest Nights in particular seldom less than 60 or 70 gunner officesr and their guests sit down to dinner. The RA String Band is always in attendance, and it is as good an orchestra as can be heard anywhere and its programme is chosen with taste and discrimination and trash is rigorously excluded. There are usually three tables, two long ones stretching down either side of the room, each accommodating about 30, and a shorter one joining them at one end of the room at right angles to them. At this table sits the Mess President and the senior officers and their guests, while at the other end of the room there is a slightly raised dais on which is the orchestra. Large and handsome candelabras adorn the tables with a score or more of silver cups and ornaments presented from time to time during the last couple of centuries by batteries or individuals, each with a history, and all polished to perfection. The tables themselves are of the finest mahogany, without speck or flaw, reflecting in their highly polished surface the light from the candelabras, and down the centre of each is stretched a white cloth of the finest linen, leaving a wide margin on either side for the plates, spoons, forks, knives, glasses, etc... The Mess Sergeant, a tall figure of dignified appearance, rules his subordinates with a gentle but rigid rod of iron, and the whole drill is so perfect that one hardly hears the noise of plates or knives or forks at any moment of the dinner and everything seems to go as smoothly and noiselessly as if some system of electric machinery were the motive power.
The dinner is served with the same noiseless efficiency, and then, just before the wine is passed around, the mess Sergeant takes his stand behind the mess President, while two stalwart mess waiters take up a position on the further end of each of the side tables and grasp the cloth in their hands; a signal from the mess Sergeant, a dexterous and swift jerk of the cloth by the waiter, and the cloth is whirled off the table in an instant, leaving the bare mahogany uncovered and shining in a perfect bit of drill which must need months of practice before it can be performed in this faultless manner. The wine is then handed round and when all glasses have been filled the mess President raps on the table, rises, and in accordance with centuries old practice, utters the four words: "Mr Vice, the King." The Vice-President and all present rise and the former says, "Gentlemen, the King." The band plays the national anthem and all raise their glasses to their lips, murmur "The King" drink their health, and after a slight pause resume their seats, and the buzz of conversation begins once more. The Bandmaster is then generally summoned to "high table", a chair is placed for him just behind the President, a glass of wine is poured out for him, and he chats somewhat deferentially with the President for five or ten minutes, when he asks and is given leave to withdraw. The ceremonies are over, and soon all get up from the table and crowd into the ante-room, the car room and the billiard room. If the guest night happens to coincide with some important occasion or regimental function, heaven alone knows when it will be over or how much rowdiness may not be indulged into the early hours of the morning. Many weird tales are told of historic guest nights at the Woolwich Mess, as I personally have never been present at more than one guest night there - and that an exceptionally quiet, hum-drum one, I need not go out of my way to record any of these tales. One thing that occurred that night however I have never forgotten. The man beside me was a Major commanding a Field Battery in Woolwich whom I had known well in India, and in the course of conversation he asked if I were a Freemason. I replied that I was not and had never given it any thought, but had always admired a big and well-equipped hospital a short distance out of Dublin which I was told was provided by Freemasons for children - boys and girls - of the members of the Craft. Before dinner was over I had agreed to become a candidate for initiation, and my friend promised to propose my name in his lodge and to make all arrangements. His Lodge, I found, was the Ubique Lodge, for which only officer and warrant officers of the Royal Artillery were eligible and which met - and still meets - once a quarter in London. To anticipate a little, I was duly initiated (with two other brother officers) and three months later "passed" to the second degree. Being due to sail for South Africa before the next meeting, I was "raised" to the 3rd degree, and became a "Master Mason" in a Aldershot Lodge, but so far as I remember I never attended another meeting in my own or any other Lodge till something like 20 years later when I was Colonial Secretary in Gibraltar, where I was suddenly raised "from the floor" i.e. without holding or having held any Lodge office to the giddy height of District Grand Master. But that is another story which must come later.
My business in Woolwich and London over, I hurried home to my mother and sisters, who had begun to be somewhat impatient at the long delay. It was delightful to be home with them again, and the house which my mother had bought some 2 or 3 years before near Frimley Green and and where I had found them on my return from India, just after they had moved in, was now looking charming. It had been built by and purchased from an artist who evidently had some odd ideas about houses, one of which was that no country gentlemen's house was complete without a billiard room and a Turkish bath! He had also faced the house the wrong way, and most of the south wall was taken up by a large greenhouse, the rest being practically blank with only a tiny window giving light to his precious Turkish bath. The latter - which of course had an ordinary bath as well as the rest of the appliances - was on the ground floor, next to the drawing room. It was in fact the only bathroom in the house, so that whoever wanted a bath was obliged to come down the front stair case and pass round to the back of the drawing room, whose windows faced east, its southern side being entirely blocked by the greenhouse. As for the billiard room, this was built at the back of the house across the excellent stables and coach house, and had a glass roof. As both of the long sides (and I think the further wall as well) were outside walls getting the full force of wind, sun, rain or snow, this vast and ugly rectangular room was apt to be a furnace in summer and certainly was an ice-house in winter. So far as I remember, it had no fireplace, but my mother put in a big stove, and instead of a billiard table we installed a full size ping pong table which gave my sister and myself infinite fun throughout the winter, and lots of exercise, and kept us warm - the mere picking up of the balls being enough to do this, as every ping pong player knows. My mother handed the room bodily over to me, and I could use it as I pleased, smoke to my heart's content, fill it with all my belongings and rubbish and generally enjoy myself in it. I have a sort of notion that she even put a piano in it - we had a lovely Broadwood in the drawing room, but this was a less high-brow one, which I could punish as much as I pleased.
Highbridge was certainly a charming little home, with a pretty garden, and a lawn sloping down to the picturesque and long disused canal which was nearby flanked by a rustic towpath overhung with trees and bushes, and looking far more like a pretty stream than a man-made canal. My eldest sister had a Canadian canoe which was kept through the summer moored at the bottom of the canal (it was usually drawn up during the winter and kept in a tiny shed), and we could run down at any moment, get out the paddles, jump in and paddle ourselves for a couple of miles or more on this fascinating little stream, amongst woods and heather without meeting a soul unless it were one of the village folk making his or her way along the towpath. My mother's gardener, an old man of the name of Pack, was a character - one of the old type, slow of speech and movement, but hard working, efficient, and honest to the last degree, When I found that he had done his eight years in the Army in his young days I was of course delighted, and many was the talk I had with him about India and old times and Army customs while he dug and planted and weeded and I stood by idly and smoked my pipe. And he was kept pretty busy, for besides the lawn and flower garden and greenhouse there was a fairly large kitchen garden, with fruit trees and strawberry beds and currant bushes, and the whole place was kept scrupulously neat and tidy by old Pack. We had also a bit of wood - mostly graceful silver birch trees - in which primroses and bluebells and daffodils used to rest in springtime.
When my mother first bought the house, a great stretch of open moor, heather and gorse and bracken, lay just across the little used road that passed our front gate. Leading from Aldershot to Bagshot. This road climbed till it reached a spot when one obtained a marvellous view over the surrounding country - Chobham, Bisley musketry ranges, Brookwood and so on - and at all times of year a fresh and bracing breeze blew on this ridge, making one's blood race through the veins and giving me a strangely exhilarating feeling of space and power and adventure and burning happiness. We had at Highbridge a little dog cart and a fast trotting little pony which old Pack used to look after, and we used to take my mother out for drives when the weather was fine. I have said before how much she loved nature, and the buds and flowers and trees and all living things, and beauty. But, my sisters and I used to go about mainly on our bicycles, surely one of the most useful and simple modes of conveyance ever invented.
How, in such circumstances and such surroundings could I be otherwise than happy? I was of course wickedly spoilt by my mother and my three sisters, who used to make me sing my Albert Chevalier and other songs to which one of them would play the accompaniment, and tell over and over again my old stories about events in India and the vagaries of my brother subalterns and so forth. Naturally I played up to such an appreciative audience. What young man of 30 wouldn't? And enjoyed it all. Most of all I loved chaffing my mother, that shy, reticent, innocent, pure-hearted, selfless little soul, in her widow's cap and with her marvellous capacity for intense joy and intense sorrow, both hidden under that self-imposed curtain of reserve which was part of her very nature. Whenever I sang Chevalier's "My Old Dutch" I used to take a step or two towards her, sitting and knitting in her chair, and I would make absurd gestures of affection, pretending that I was an old man addressing her as my "Old Dutch" in our declining years:-
"We've been together now for forty years" (I used to change it to 30)
"And it don't seem a day too much."
"There ain't a lady living in the land"
"As I'd swap for my dear Old Dutch..."
Nor was there. How vividly it all comes back to me. I had half a dozen pet names for her. "the Little Weasel" was one of them, done solely to a riddle with which she had once proudly puzzled me, "What is the difference between a stoat and a weasel?" "One is so easily distinguished while the other's totally different." It all looks very petty and perhaps childish when one jots it down, but it is all part and parcel of the deep love and affection which existed between my mother and me during those last years of her life, which we were both too reserved every to show openly, but which in some queer way showed itself in this indirect way, by making a sort of joke of it all. She loved being chaffed, and to me, looking back, I think it was the way I chose, unconsciously or sub-consciously, to express my devotion to her.
Yes I ought to have been happy that winter in that charming home with my mother and sisters, a devoted family if there ever was one. Christmas came, and we, with my brother Herbert who came down from London where he was now practising as a doctor, gave a performance in the Village Hall of the Tinted Venus dramatised by my sister Mindie from Anstey's novel. What fun it all was! But so far as I was concerned there was one fly in the ointment. It was the winter of 1901/02 and the Boer War was still dragging on. Bloemfontein and Pretoria had fallen more than eighteen months before, but the sturdy Boers were waging with undiminished success a highly efficient guerrilla warfare. Our columns were vainly trying to entrap Boer contingents amongst the block houses and within the long miles of barbed wire fences with which Kitchener had covered the country, but against the lightly equipped, very mobile Boer contingents our comparatively heavily weighted and slow moving columns could make little headway. The elusive De Wet not only escaped with ease from the many nets spread for him, but all too often made a successful surprise attack on one of our camps or cut off a supply column or brought off some other camp and added to his fame as a guerrilla leader. How could I, reading accounts of these and similar happenings everyday in the morning paper, remain at home, safe, idle and carefree? Yet when I had applied at the War Office immediately on my return from China, I had been roughly informed that I was the very last man to be sent out since I had been there already, and that if anyone were sent it would be someone who had not been there already. A rotten answer I though, but there it was. My whole military upbringing had taught me not to worry the War Office in war time over what was in fact a purely personal matter. Early in January came instructions from the War Office. I was posted to a battery at Weymouth and was to report myself there directly my leave was up. A cold shudder ran down my back. A battery at Weymouth! And I had been on active service, first with mountain guns, and then with pom-pom for over six years with hardly a break. In due course I said goodbye to my mother and sisters and took the train for Weymouth.
I do not care to recall the miserable couple of months or thereabouts that I spent there. It was Fort Brockhurst again, only worse if possible. We had so far as I remember a few old guns intended for the defence of the "fort", and we used to train our men over and over again, day after day, to man, load, and drill - at least the NCOs did, and the officers supervised them. As before, I as Captain had no specified duties, except to supervise the subalterns who supervised the NCOs and to loaf about in the orderly room where the Major carried out the administrative duties and dealt out mild justice to defaulters. In the mess the subalterns used to discuss whether they were going to play hockey next afternoon or whether they could borrow or hire a mount for some meet of the hounds in the neighbourhood. They used apparently to be much run after by all the young ladies - who outnumbered the young men in Weymouth by at least six to one - and in consequence they were utterly spoilt, and used languidly to say that they had been pestered by so and so to play mixed hockey Tuesday or go to a dance on Friday but that they were going to pay no attention to these invitations or were going to turn them down. It made me furious to listen to them, and I used sometimes to tell them what I thought of their manners and behaviour. But what else can one expect in a garrison town with scores of unattached young ladies with nothing on earth to do except occasionally take mother's dog for a run? Thank heaven things have changed now, and girls after leaving school or college take up some work - which as often enough takes them away from home and releases them from their mother's apron strings - just as naturally as their brothers do!
I hadn't been a week at Weymouth before I had put in three official application for three different things:
1) to be transferred to a battery already or going to South Africa or again sent out to pom-poms.
2) To be seconded for the Yeomanry raised specifically for South Africa.
3) To be granted two months leave to go to Paris to study colloquial and higher French in order to qualify as an interpreter
All these applications received the usual stand and reply from Headquarters that my application had been noted but that there was little prospect... etc... etc...
How those two months wore themselves out I do not know and cannot remember. Occasionally I would go up to town on Saturday morning and return on Sunday night, as that did not count as leave. At last one morning I received to my intense joy a communication from the War Office to say that my application for 2 months leave to go to France and study the language had been considered and that it was granted, subject to the condition that I might be recalled at brief notice if my services were required. With the utmost alacrity I packed my few possessions, hurried back to Highbridge for a night or two with my people, and then took the night mail for Dover and was in Paris next morning.
My brother, who had studied French in Paris a few years previously and spoke it very fluently and with a really good accent, had given me the name and address of the old French gentleman and his wife with whom he had boarded, and who had taught him so efficiently. I cannot now remember the name of this dear old Frenchman, a Parisian to his fingertips, who had all his life been a clerk in the Credit Lyonnais and having now retired on a small pension, kept with his wife a humble and frugal little sort of boarding house close to the Parc Monceau. Having forgotten his name I will refer to him as Monsieur X. Unfortunately his wife had died since my brother was there and he was not a widower. And it was his wife - a kindly, shrewd, practical woman - who had taught my brother his excellent French. The old man himself was a dreamer, and going blind with cataracts, and he lived entirely in memories of the past; he knew every stone of his beloved Paris by heart, and every incident in its history. The 'boarding-house' was run on such frugal and spartan lines that there was nobody to call one in the morning, and no hot water obtainable unless one sallied out oneself to the kitchen when one might - if it pleased the cook - be given rather grudgingly a tiny jugful which would just suffice for shaving. By bad luck I struck an exceptionally cold spell of winter weather (it was about mid-February) with some snow and hard frost, so getting up int he morning and washing in ice-cold water was not alluring, and as the morning cafe-au-lait and rolls was only served in the dining room from 8 to 8:30 one had to be out of bed before 8. For baths I was dependent on an establishment in the next street which provided quite good hot baths, and I used to go there most evenings but the arrangement was, as may be imagined, hardly an ideal one.
On most mornings I used to read the paper aloud to Monsieur X, and then we would go out for a walk, if the weather permitted. Taking my arm (on account of his blindness) the old man would start off, explaining in rapid French that this morning he was going to show me a real gem of old Paris - some tiny, hidden museum, or some relic of old bygone days - chattering away at such a rate that I soon gave up all attempts at trying to follow his voluble French, and would merely make some vague observation when, if ever, he paused for a moment and seemed to expect it.
After a week of this life I became really desperate, nothing but French was ever spoken - or so far as I knew or understood - at any meal . And the other 'boarders' - there were I think 3 besides myself, all like me, young men, but whose nationality appeared to be French - rattled away at a rate that left me bewildered and dumb. I told myself that I should never learn to speak or understand French. What was the use, I said to myself, of having won the prize for French at Bath College when it only meant that I knew the plural of chou and caillon, and all the intricacies of every irregular verb? The bitter cold, the early morning wash in icy water, much as I disliked them, were nothing tot he feeling of being alone amongst a bunch of foreigners, hardly a word of whose language I could really understand, and with whom I found it impossible ever to converse. In the afternoons I would go off and see the 'sights' of Paris - Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's Tomb, and so on; or I would stroll aimlessly about, gaze into the shop windows, or mingle with the crowds in the evening, and wonder if I could possibly bear this sort of existence for two whole months. France was, at that time, as I had found in China, bitterly Anglo-phobe, and it did not help to cheer me in my loneliness and despondency when I saw great posters in the streets depicting British soldiers bayonetting Boer women. One evening I went to the Grand Opera to see 'Siegfried' - at that unsophisticated period of my life merely a name, if that. The famous Jean de Reski was taking the principal part, and I remember to this day the scene where he hammers the sword into shape, but in my then mood the splendid music made little or no appeal, and I found the evening rather long, and was glad when it came to an end. Another evening I went to see Sarah Bernhardt in some play of Sardou's - I forget the name and everything about it, and only remember my utter inability to follow the French, even when the divine Sarah spoke. I went on another occasion to hear Berlioz: 'Damnation of Faust' and was thrilled by the magnificent drinking song which into it and which I don't believe I heave heard since.
Then one morning, when I had been in Paris just 10 days and was at the lowest ebb of despair, I found on the breakfast table a long blue envelope which I recognised at a glance as being a War Office communication. I snatched it up, tore it open, and found a letter informing me me that I had been appointed 2nd in Command of the 33rd Battalion of Imperial Yeomanry, with the temporary rank of Major, and that the Battalion in question was about to be raised at Aldershot, and that I was to report for duty there at once. I felt like a man who receives a sudden and unexpected reprieve from a life sentence. It took me no time to pack my few things, settled my little account, say goodbye to dear old Monsieur X and thank him for all his kindness to me, despatch a telegram to my mother telling her my good news and saying that I wold be with her next morning. I crossed the Channel that night, and was back at Highbridge next day. I then rushed over to Aldershot - a bare 5 miles away and found the Commanding Officer and the Adjutant of the embryo battalion of Yeomanry and already installed there with their wives in a small hotel and in rooms respectively, and I duly reported and introduced myself to the former. Who should it be, to my delight and amazement, but Patterson, the already famous author of "The Man Eaters of Tsavo", the book which recounts the successful killing of a pair of man-eating lions in East Africa by the young engineer who was sent out to help in the construction of the Uganda Railway, and performed this feat whilst in charge of a party engaged in building a bridge over the Tsavo River. A lithe, blue-eyed Irishman, with a charming smile and a delightful touch of the brogue, he gave me his hand and a warm welcome, and I realised in a moment that here was a man under and with whom I should love to serve. He and his wife gave me tea while he ran over his plans. So far the War Office had sent him, besides and Adjutant, and Quartermaster and a Veterinary-Surgeon, about half a dozen officers, all of whom had already served in South Africa, and so far they had raise a score or so of men. But Patterson wasn't the man to let any grass at all grow under his feet, and I could see that he was a man, not only of action, but of rapid action and decision, and I had no difficulty in believing him when he said he meant to have the whole Battalion up to strength and ready to sail in a couple of months time at the latest. I explained to him that my home was only 5 miles away, and asked him if he would mind, instead of finding some billet in Aldershot, I remained with my people, bicycling or hacking over every morning directly after breakfast. he said he thought it was an excellent arrangement, and had no objection whatsoever. The Adjutant - one Cochrane who had been through the siege of Kumasi and received a DSO for his good work - then turned up, and after we three had discussed plans, I returned to Highbridge in the highest spirits, and I need hardly say how delighted my mother and sisters were to hear that I was to remain on at home with them till my Battalion should sail for South Africa.
I was indeed lucky, for this job I had been given was one after my own heart, if only because it was essentially one concerned with men as human beings and individuals. I must admit also that my vanity was touched by finding myself a Major (though only a temporary one) only a couple of years or so after being promoted from Subaltern to Captain - a harmless little bit of vanity which I hope I kept very closely to myself, realising anyhow that it was in the sense a reward for merit, for the temporary rank merely accrued to the job I had been given as 2nd in Command for the Regiment.
To make things clear I'm afraid I must describe as briefly as I can the organisation of a battalion of Imperial Yeomanry as carried out during the Boer War. The Yeomanry were really Mounted Infantry, and were designed to fight the highly mobile Boers and beat them if possible at their own game. Each battalion consisted of four squadrons, commanded by Captains, and each squadron consisted of four troops, each commanded by a Subaltern. There were almost 40 NCOs and men in each troop, thus making up a total for the Battalion of almost 640 NCOs and Men, with 24 officer, and a Lieutenant-Colonel in Command, a Major Second in Command, an Adjutant, a Veterinary Surgeon, 4 Captains (commanding Squadrons) and 16 Lieutenants (commanding Troops). I may be wrong about the number of rank and file, for I don't hold figures easily in my mind and I am writing of a great years ago. But I am certainly right about the officers, and think I could give the name of every one of them 24 officers if I were to search my memory carefully.
The Second in Command was in much the same position as the Captain of a battery of artillery, that is to say, he had no clearly defined duties as had every other officer - Adjutant, Squadron Commanders, Troop Leaders etc - but must be always ready to take over command if the C.O. were absent. And of course he was available for any odd jobs that the C.O. might care to turn him on to. I certainly never had an idle moment, and the Colonel and I took care that no one else had either, for it takes a lot raise and train properly a mounted corps of between six and seven hundred men. Most of our officers were sent us by the War Office - and there were at least 2 other Yeomanry regiments being raised in Aldershot at the same time, as well as others elsewhere. So far as I remember, every one of them had already served in South Africa, most of them as NCOs or troopers in the first batch of Yeomanry. As for the men, they were from every walk of life, and we had plenty of applicants to pick from, as the high rate of pay - five shillings a day and all board - was a tremendous magnet. They should of course have been yeomen, country lads who could ride a horse and handle a gun of sorts; in actual fact a large proportion of our recruits had never been on the back of a horse in their lives, and hardly any knew what to do with a rifle. We hadn't a horse until several weeks after we had begun organising, and then we were sent three or four hundred horses of a sort, mostly of the cob class, many of the Argentines.
The Colonel, the Adjutant and I spent long days in the office looking over would-be recruits, testing them, plying them with questions, rejecting those who were obviously unfit, enlisting - subject to passing the medical tests - those who seemed likely to suit. We had no NCOs, so we had to give stripes to those who seemed most fitted for them. I remember one day a subaltern coming up to me rather mysteriously and saying that he had a friend who wanted to join up, and who he thought would make a good NCO as he was of splendid physique and well educated. "I may as well tell you, Sir", he said. looking rather mysterious "that he was once in the Gunners, and was in fact in charge of P.T. (Physical Training) in Malta but he got into trouble and had to lave the Regiment, and has been knocking about the world ever since, sailing before the mast, digging for gold in Alaska, and all sorts of things. But I think you'll find, Sir, that he has all the makings of a fine disciplinarian, and I am certain that he will play the game." I told the Colonel, and in due course a very fine figure of a wearing a neat suit of clothes and a bowler hat arrived, and was duly marched into the office. Patterson knew a man when he saw him, asked him a few questions, and there and then enlisted him, appointing him a Squadron Sergeant Major on the spot. I may say that it was one of the best applications ever made in the Battalion. He turned out a splendid NCO and a fine disciplinarian. The men feared and respected him realising that he could knock any two of them out if they tried any nonsense, and wouldn't hesitate to do so; and he could make the men of his squadron 'Jump to it' and did so.
There was a corporal in the same squadron who had been a naval officer, but had been obliged to leave the Navy - drunk, I fancy. He was quite a young man, in his late twenties I think, and oddly enough the subaltern commanding his troop had also been in the Navy and had fought at Magersfontein as a midshipman. For some reason, I think from inability to pass some exam - he had to leave the Navy and had been sent to us as an officer: he was only 19 or 20 and a nice lad but the ex-naval officer who served under him as a corporal was a bad influence, and I never was quite in my mind about that troop.
So, in a few weeks, by dint of real hard work, we got our Battalion together, and actually up to the establishment number. Our very first job after teaching the recruits the elementary barrack square drill was to march them to the rifle range and put them through a quick and intensive course of musketry. Now I, as a Gunner, was lamentably ignorant of the art and science of musketry, but I happened to be the only regular officer in the entire battalion expect one of the subalterns who happened also to be a Gunner. Patterson was at that moment looking over a new invention of his for carrying the rifle on horseback, to which I shall refer later, and it looked as if it were up to me to put the Battalion through its musketry course. Naturally I was not going to give away my entire ignorance of musketry, nor did I disclose the fact that Gunners always despise such things as rifles or carbines, and invariably refer to them all contemptuously as 'hand-guns'. Pondering over the matter, a happy idea struck me. I summoned the four Squadron Commanders to my office and explained that I was going to place each the sole responsibility for training their men in musketry; that I would come down to the range frequently and exercise a general supervision, but I promised that I would not interfere with them unless it appeared absolutely necessary; and I added that it was an urgent matter to teach the men quickly, and I hoped they would enter into a friendly competition with one another as to which Squadron would first train all the men to be efficient shots and turn out the maximum number of real marksmen. The plan worked better than I had ever dreamed it would. The Squadron Commanders were a good lot and keen, and put on their metal and not interfered with they set about training their men on the range with the utmost ardour. I used to ride down every day and look very wise and examine the figures sent in from the butts and compliment such officers and men as seemed to deserve it, and in a marvellously short time we had a really good shooting battalion of whose record at the butts we were all very proud.
Teaching the men to ride was another thing, but that too we achieved far sooner than I could have imagined possible. Indeed it took longer to teach the men to groom, feed and properly look after their horses than to ride them.
I have said that we had to wait a considerable time before we got any horses at all. And the very day after we had received our first batch of about 200, orders came that the General Office Commanding the Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot (under whose command the newly formed Yeomanry had been placed) was coming to inspect us the next day. He would, it was announced, first go round the horse lines and see the men at stables, and then inspect kits in the barrack rooms. It didn't give us much breathing space to teach the men the elements of grooming their horses, but the Colonel and I and the officers and NCOs did the best they could and hoped all would go well. The next day the General turned up with a couple of staff officers and an ADC, a dapper little cavalryman, exquisitely turned out but somewhat gruff in manner, and Patterson and the Adjutant and I were there to receive him. Off we started for the stables where the men were grooming their horses. We hadn't gone very far when the General stopped and asked one of the men what was the first thing to do when he started to groom a horse. The man made some absurd answer - I forget what - whereupon the General flushed angrily "Call this a mounted Corps!" A little later he stopped again and asked another man how much corn the horse got a day. The man looked puzzled and said "I give him one of those tins full at feeding time." "Pshaw", said the General again flushing angrily, and strode on. One or two other similar incidents occurred, the General displaying an angry contempt which really depressed and terrified me, following meekly in the rear, but I saw Patterson's face getting harder and more set and I felt that he was resenting these contemptuous criticisms with all his heart. At last we had gone through the whole of the stables and the General stood with his staff officers round him looking as black as thunder and muttering "A pitiful show!, A pitiful show!" and waited to be conducted to the barracks for the kit inspections. At this moment, to my amazement, Patterson took a few steps forward, clicked his heels, saluted, and standing right in front of the General, looked him straight in the face, and said firmly but with the utmost respect "I wish to say, Sir, that I consider your criticisms of my officers and men most unfair. As I have already informed you, we have only had our horses three days and most of the men have never groomed a horse before or seen him in a stable. In the circumstances I submit, Sir, that the criticisms you have made are not just, and that the show we have put up has, all things considered, been quite a good one." I, standing a few feet away, was absolutely staggered, and thought I must have taken leave of my sense and was imagining things. Brought up as I had been since my earliest days at "The Shop" in the old fashioned traditions of Army conduct, I simply couldn't imagine a junior Lieutenant-Colonel addressing an Inspecting Major-General in such terms as these. Visions of an irate General ordering the immediate arrest of an insubordinate junior flashed before my eyes. To my astonishment nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, the General looked unmistakably uncomfortable. There was a minute's pause (which seemed to me more like five), and then the General replied mildly and I thought rather shame-facedly "Oh, er, I didn't realise that you had only had your horses three days. Hm, Hm, in those circumstances I agree, Colonel Patterson, that your officers and men have done very well, and it reflects credit on you and them." A pause. "And now I will go round and inspect your barracks and kits." Off we went, and the General was affability itself, and full of compliments about our barracks and kits and all the rest. "I have seen many a regular regiment put up no better show" he remarked at the end. And from that moment h always treated our battalion with peculiar favour, and Patterson especially.
I had learnt yet one more lesson, and one I have never forgotten. It entirely modified my old traditional army ideas, indeed it revolutionised them. Possibly the policy which I tried to pursue during my subsequent career in administrative work in the Colonial Service had its seeds sown in the incident I have just described and my reactions to it. I described it in later life as the 'Policy of the 3Ps: Patience, Politeness and Persistence.' 'Persistence of course covers a clear-cut notion of what you are aiming at, and the resolute pursuit of that aim, quietly and without fuss, but steadily and persistently, even in the face of great opposition and bastions of entrenched privileges.
I'm afraid it wouldn't interest anyone if I were to describe the work of raising that battalion of Yeomanry in Aldershot, and looking back I marvel that we were able in 3 months - from mid-February to mid-May in 1902 - to organise a really useful unit of fighting men, and mounted men at that, from the few hundreds of raw lads and inexperienced officers whom we managed to collect, equip, train, discipline and teach the arts of war, the use of firearms, and the management of horses. I can only say that it was work after my own heart, and that I enjoyed every minute of it. I found in Patterson almost an ideal colleague, if I may so call my C.O. - he certainly always treated me as such. He had had a remarkable career. Throwing up his job as a junior engineer on the Uganda railway construction staff when war threatened in South Africa, he came home and enlisted in the first batch of Yeomanry, and went out as a trooper. On the voyage out he got his Corporal stripes, and soon after the arrival of his battalion in the Cape his quickness, energy, courage and initiative were recognised and he was given a commission. A few months later the Captain of his Squadron was killed and he was promoted in his place. So well did he do that when, at the end of eighteen months, all the first batch of Yeomanry was, under the terms of its original contract, demobilized and sent home, he returned a Captain and a D.S.O. He was then attached to the depot of the Norfolk Yeomanry and given later the temporary rank of Major. Finally, when the third batch of Yeomanry was being raised early in 1902, he was offered and accepted command of one of the battalions to be raised - the 33rd - of course with the substantive rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
Quick-brained, with unlimited oral as well as physical courage, he never shirked responsibility, was always cheerful, high-spirited and optimistic and gave his men all his trust and confidence and in return received their loyalty and devotion. While he loved the practical side of soldiering he hated the routine side, while the letter of any regulation as opposed to its spirit he held in contempt and the slightest vestige of red-tape was anathema to him. He could do anything with the men, either by enforcing the sternest discipline or by using a bit of Irish blarney, whichever seemed to him to fit the particular occasion. The whole of my time with the 33rd Imperial Yeomanry was to me an entirely new military experience, seeing that I had been trained ever since I joined the 'Shop' in all the traditions and discipline of the Regular Army, and here was I, the only Regular officer in a rapidly-raised, amateur, irregular corps. Of course I realised in a flash the moment I first met Patterson that I should need to modify a great many of my ideas and fit myself tactfully into my new environment. And Patterson certainly met me more than half way. I fancy his quick intuition took in the situation, and he was more than content to leave me to improvise all the detailed part of the organisation, trusting me entirely to see that we kept within the bounds of Army Regulations, whilst all the same time he let me share fully with him in all the training work of the men - teaching them to ride and shoot and drill and march.
I have said that Patterson hated the ordinary hum-drum details of peace-time soldiering and was more than content to leave them all to me. He had also a quick, inventive brain, and for some time he had been hammering away at devising some sort of method of carrying the rifle when mounted that would obviate the difficulties of the trooper slinging his rifle over his shoulder on the one hand, or balancing it in a sort of bucket attached to the saddle, on the other - the only two methods so far thought of. In the first case, not only did the troopers bear the extra weight of the rifle, but what was worse, the time taking in disengaging it and struggling to get it over his head and shoulders, placed him in a position of great disadvantage when suddenly called upon to use it, as was so often necessary when operating against our very quick and mobile enemy, the Boers. In the second case, if man and horse were suddenly parted, when for instance the horse was killed, or stumbled and threw the man, or the man had to dismount in a great hurry, man and rifle were necessarily parted, even if only for a few seconds, with results could often proved disastrous and sometimes fatal. Patterson therefore proceeded to invent a method of carrying the rifle, by means of a small rest attached to the saddle, and a strap through which the man's upper arm was slipped, thereby circumventing all the disadvantage of both the other methods. The rider could not be detached from his rifle, no matter what happened to the horse, and at the same time he could get it into position for firing, if necessary from his hip, in a few seconds, whether he remained mounted or had to fight on foot. It was quite a simple arrangement, and one marvels that no one ever thought of it before, but it needed a certain amount of experiment to get the details perfect, and Patterson was engaged on these experiments most of the time we were at Aldershot. So the actual work of enlisting officers and men and training them fell largely on my shoulders, to my great satisfaction and to Patterson's as well. Moreover, while we were training he was laid up for several weeks with a badly wrenched ankle, which kept him either in bed or on his sofa for some considerable time, during which I proudly had command of the Battalion. It happened this way. We had been out at mounted drill one morning in the Long Valley, and Patterson though he would end up by a grand charge in column of Squadron down the valley. He was leading by some fifty hards with his trumpeter behind him, the Squadrons following at the gallop with their officers in front, when suddenly his horse put his foot in a rabbit hole and came down with a crash, pinning Patterson under him. The officer commanding the leading Squadron with great presence of mind reined up and signalled the halt, the others behind following suit. I galloped up from the rear to see what had happened, and the harmed Patterson lay for a minute or two, looking white and dazed, and clutching one of his ankles. "It's all right old chap" he said to me as I dismounted and came up to him. "I'll be all right in a second - just a bit dazed you know." And in another couple of minutes he had risen to his feet, put his unharmed food in the stirrup while the trumpeter held his horse, swung his leg over the cantle of the saddle, and was sitting calmly in the saddle before I knew what had really happened. "Take Over" he said to me "and take the men back barracks. I think I'll ride home to get my ankle seen to; it's got a bit twisted." To my amazement, and contrary to all my dry-as-dust notions of discipline, every man in the regiment stood up in his stirrups and cheered like mad waving their caps. Patterson looked surprised and pleased, waved his hand, and rode off at a walk, looking pale and evidently in considerable pain, but sitting bolt upright in the saddle, as if nothing had happened. I took over, and marched the men home, but Patterson who had got his right leg twisted under the horse when the latter fell, had had the ankle badly and painfully twisted, and was on the sick list several weeks.
Rapidly indeed did those three months pass for me, and I was in the seventh heaven of bliss. My only fear being that we might not get out to South Africa before the war ended, for the Boers could not obviously hold out much longer. I got Patterson and his wife (a Belfast woman, a B.A. and LLD, cultured, though to tell the truth rather dull) and Cochrane the Adjutant and his wife (a jolly, sprightly little lady) over to a lunch party at Highbridge to meet my mother and my sisters and one or two officers from the neighbouring camp, and afterwards they came over occasionally to tea. At long last, about the end of April, we got news that we were to sail for Cape Town about the middle of May, but rumours came - which proved soon to be true - that Lord Roberts was coming to Aldershot shortly to inspect the Yeomanry before sailing. There were either one or two - I forget which - Battalions besides ourselves training there. I need hardly say that both pieces of news caused the most tremendous excitement throughout the whole Battalion. We were all, of course, mad to get to South Africa at the first possible moment; whilst the very name of 'Bobs' was a household word in the Army. An inspection by him was an honour which we had never expected in our wildest dreams. The short time we had before his visit was spent in polishing up ourselves and our equipment, putting the last shine on the horses' coats and hooves and generally getting ourselves ready to look our very best. At last the day arrived - a perfect day of bright sunshine in early May. At breakfast at Highbridge that morning I said to my sisters "I wonder what the little man will say." "Why, of course" remarked my sister Mindie with a mischievous smile "'"He will ask you about your medal ribbons." "Don't be silly" I replied, and glanced with due disdain at the modest three I was wearing - the Indian Frontier, the Boer War (for since the death of Queen Victoria the medals struck in her name had already been issued to those who had been out there), and the rather rare China medal, which had just recently been issued.
At noon, when Bobs was due to arrive, the 33rd were drawn up in line the Colonel and the officers in front and I as Second in Command, on the right flank. For the last time I smoothed the mane of my charger, a handsome looking chestnut mare, gave her a dig with my heels to make her stand up well and look her best and watched the procession approaching. Yes, there was little Bobs, sitting bolt upright on his white charger, and surrounding and following a bevy of staff officers, amongst whom I spotted Major Phipps-Hornby in the handsome gold-Laced uniform of the Horse Artillery with the familiar and picturesque busby with white plume and scarlet busby bag. I had known him in India, and he had won the Victoria Cross at Sanna's Post two years before. When Bobs arrived at the spot where I was sitting motionless on my horse, his keen eye glanced at me and he reined up for a moment. "I see you have been in South Africa already", he said to me, "and also in China. When did you get back?" "About six months ago, Sir." I replied. "Well, well," said Bobs, "I wish you luck." and passed on, while Phipps-Hornby smiled at me and said "Not tired of scrapping yet?" and then I noticed the orderly who was bringing up the rear of the procession. He was in Horse Artillery uniform, surely the smartest in the Army, with its busby and its "yellow belly" as the rest of the army designates the short, tight fitting, yellow-striped jacket the Horse gunners wear, and the broad scarlet stripe on their dark blue riding breeches. Powerfully built, looking as smart as if he had just come out of a lunch box, who should it be but my old friend Gunner O'Connor who had stood by me when I was trying to disentangle my men from from the Canadian civilian crowd when embarking my pom-pom draft at Victoria, Vancouver Island, a few months before! I saw that he recognised me, and I have him a broad wink and a smile, at which he blushed but looked terrible pleased, and that the last I ever saw of him. But I reflected that he had been a pretty bad hat when I took over that draft at Hong Kong, yet here he was, specially selected as orderly to the staff attached to Bobs during his brief Aldershot visit. He must indeed have turned over a new leaf I thought. I wondered idly what had made him do so. Anyhow I was absurdly glad. Surely these human contacts are what makes Life the glorious adventure and romance that it can be if one so wills it.
I will skip all the rest of our Aldershot adventure, and of my leave taking of my mother and sisters. It had been a delightful three months for all of us, and my mother bore the parting with her usual courage and reticence, smiling as she said goodbye and kissed me with a "Take care of yourself dear boy, and come back soon." We embarked with another battalion of Yeomanry - the 34th at Southampton on a troopship taking our other details, and a number of Army padres and doctors and nurses, and dropped down the Channel on an evening in mid-May, past the needles where I had been camped for a month as a shy, gauche little subaltern just thirteen years before. I had certainly tasted something of my ambition for "romance and adventure" since then, though not nearly enough to satisfy my voracious appetite.
Our voyage out was uneventful - even 'crossing the line' was of course no novelty for me, though the ship's company got as usual a lot of fun out of it. We called at St. Helena and dropped a few passengers there. mainly nurses I think, as a Prisoner of War camp had been established there - but unfortunately we were none of us allowed nor in fact had we time, to land, which was a great disappointment to me as I had read up as a subaltern all I could get hold of about Napoleon - always a hero to me - and should dearly have liked to wander round Longwood House and steep myself in its history and traditions. Finally, we reached Cape Town about the end of May, and received orders to go on to Durban, where fresh order, we were told us, would await us. On June 1st we dropped anchor in Durban harbour, to hear that peace has been signed with the Boers the day before - the now historic Peace of Vereeniging of May 31st 1902. We had arrived too late!
It is no use pretending that the humanitarian side of it had much, if any place, in my mind. I may as well admit frankly that I received the news with full-hearted disappointment, and thought only of my own personal, selfish frustration. I had for months thrown my whole heart and soul into turning out a unit of fighting men, keen, efficient, well-drilled, capable of taking on any Boer Commando that we might come up against. "The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes..." I found myself quoting automatically from Omar Khayyam. Here were we, arrived in South Africa after that long period of intensive training at Aldershot, just one day too late, and of no more use than a bit of rusty scrap iron. It was a bitter disappointment. Somehow I don't think the men felt it at all as I did. They were under contract with the government to serve for a year, the lowest paid of them was secure of his five shillings a day and all found. They had arrived in Southampton at the very best time of year - practically mid-winter - and had now no hardships to which to look forward. Patterson with his cheery optimism didn't seem to mind much. With his engineering qualifications and his inventiveness and energy he realised that opportunities untold lay before him in a great country, just ravaged by three and a half years of war and needing reconstruction in every branch of human endeavour. It seemed to me - I regret my selfish attitude, but there it was - that I was the only one really overwhelmed with this bitter disappointment. Anyhow, I had to keep my feelings and disappointment to myself since there was no one to sympathise, and to get on with my job. Indeed, there was plenty to do, for disembarking a regiment of Yeomanry with all its equipment and kit is no easy task, or getting them into camp ashore. So I soon put my own personal feelings into cold storage, and flung myself into the work I had to do - the panacea for all evils.
We were only kept in Durban a couple of nights having received orders on landing that we were to proceed to Volksrust in the Transvaal, just over the Natal border, and take over the horses of a regiment which was being disbanded. We entrained, so far as I remember, at night and reached Ladysmith in the early morning, and were there informed that the train would stop for about a quarter of an hour before going to the Transvaal. All the officers jumped out and rushed to the buffet to get hot coffee and buns or whatever was going, for no one had had any food since the previous evening and everybody was feeling pretty peckish. Incredible to relate, not a single officer gave a thought to the men. I immediately got hold of the burly Quartermaster who was on his way with the others to the buffet, and ordered him somewhat peremptorily to get out some supplies of biscuits and bully beef that we were carrying with us, and distribute them amongst the men in their carriages, so that each man could get at least some food to carry him on till we reached our destination. I should have liked to tell the officers what I thought of their conduct but unfortunately the C.O. and the Adjutant and the Quartermaster formed the head of the procession that made for the buffet, and it is hardly conducive to discipline to reprimand one's own Colonel before his officers!
The journey from Ladysmith to Volksrust was interesting, for the line wound through the Drakensberg Mountains, and we passed Laing's Nek where our redcoats had suffered defeat at the hands of the Boers in 1881 when they attacked them there, some time before the crowning disgrace of Majuba Hill, at the foot of which we were destined to camp for the next few weeks. The border town of Natal is Charlestown, and from there to Volksrust in the Transvaal is a matter of only a couple of miles or so. Arriving at Volksrust we took over the tents and camp of the disbanded regiment, as they stood, as well as the horses, and speedily settled down. In camp with us was a Battalion of the Scots Guards who had been right through the war from the very beginning and had fought in most of the important engagements. It happened that the Medical Officer attached to them was an old friend of mine, so the day after our arrival, I strolled over to see him after evening stables, how those of us who had been through the war, or, like myself, had returned after previous service in it, considered that new and smart uniforms, medal ribbons, buttons and badges of rank, etc made us look as if we were new arrivals fresh to the war, so that we took a pride in wearing rather old, possibly patched tunics and breeches, and looking rather shabby and rough, with frayed medal ribbons and so on, thinking that everyone we met would realise that we were old hands who had been 'through it'. I have never forgotten the impression I got when I walked over to the Scots Guards mess and found every officer, NCO and man almost immaculately turned out, neat, tidy and smart as if they had only arrived in South Africa a few weeks before. How they achieved this I have no notion, but ever since that day I have had an unbounded admiration for the officers and men of the Guards. One is well accustomed to the meticulous smartness which they display in their scarlet tunics and with their huge bearskins when on guard at St James, or Buckingham palace. But that they should lose no iota of their discipline and smartness after three and a half years of rough and hard campaigning when everyone else was trying to look battle-worn is a tribute to the immense esprit de corps which inspires them. Of their fighting qualities I need say nothing - their record stands for all time and has never to my knowledge suffered any sort of tarnish. I came back that evening feeling a good deal more humble than when I set out, cured of my 'old soldier' snobbery, and proud of an army which could through the centuries produce and maintain a body of fighting men like the Brigade of Guards the 'Household Troops' as they are sometimes called.
Volksrust stands at an altitude of well over 1200 feet above sea level and is swept by winds from the great Drakensberg range of mountains which overhang it so that in winter it is one of the coldest places in the Transvaal. A few days after our arrival we heard that a number of Boer Commandos were to assemble at a spot some 25 miles away and there surrender their arms in accordance with the terms of the Peace Treaty, and that Generals Botha and Smuts and General Bruce Hamilton were to be present. Colonel Patterson and I at once decided that we would ride out and watch the ceremony, and Captain Wright who commands D Squadron asked if he might accompany to us to which Patterson readily agreed. We were to start at 6, taking food for the day in our haversacks, as we reckoned that we shouldn't be back before sunset.
All that night a hurricane blew, and I got practically no sleep, expecting any minute that my tent would be carried away by the wind. At 5:30 I got up and dressed, slung on my haversack with provisions, my water bottle, field glasses and camera and sallied out into the dark, and was soon afterwards joined by Patterson and Wright. An icy gale was blowing, and everything was hard with frost. We had our horses saddled, and shivering with cold we made a rough breakfast of icy cold cocoa, sausage and bread. Then, mounting our horses, we started off and at the same moment the dawn began to break - a truly lovely sight, the sky all colours, windswept clouds scurrying across, pink and purple with a background of pale gold. But it was too cold to stop and admire the scenery, and we pushed rapidly on, picking up in the town a sporting old person who had come out with us as the 'Assaye' who had got leave from Patterson Patterson to accompany us. We made a party of 5, with 7 horses, for the Colonel was taking a young subaltern as orderly officer, with a led horse and Wright and I were taking a spare horse between us. As we crossed the spruit (dry watercourse) outside Volksrust the sun rose above the horizon, and directly we got on to the open veldt we broke into a canter. The track, for it was no more, to Wakkerstroom led along a valley with hills on either side, and every mile or so we passed a blockhouse with its little garrison of some half dozen men. It was lovely riding over the open veldt in the keen air of the early morning. At last we reached a narrow nek, and crossing it we saw the little town of Wakkerstroom lying at our feet. We called a halt, eased the saddles, ate some biscuits, divested ourselves of our thick khaki overcoats and strapped them on to our saddles. We then moved on again, and finally reached the place where the Surrender of arms was to take place about 11 o'clock and about a quarter of an hour later General Bruce Hamilton arrived.
Continued at Sir Charles Orr's Memoirs Volume 4
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