24th May 1960

For many years my wife and children have been asking me to write my memoirs and so now that I have leisure to do so I will start calling on my numerous memories and looking up the diaries which I have kept. Unfortunately those of some years before the First World War were lost with furniture, pictures etc in storage in London destroyed by bombs.

I was born on the 8th of September in the year 1877 at a small station in Northern Bengal, where my father was engaged on Railway Construction Works, he being then 29 years of age; he had married my mother the year before, she being the daughter of a Major William Daly of Bengal Cavalry who had fought with his regiment throughout the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and was badly wounded in the head at the Relief of Delhi, which brought about his retirement to his native County of Cork where he lived to a great old age; his wife, my grandmother, was a Miss Foley, who had died some years before him; my father’s family on the maternal side had been farmers for several hundreds of years in the County of Hereford and their baptisms, marriages and burials are to be seen in the Church of England registers in the small village of Kinnersley and in the library of Hereford City; their name was Holder which derives from Free Holder from Saxon times and my great grandfather was the last of the male line; my great grandmother’s name was Prosser which is a shortening of Aprosser, also a Hereford name from Ross in that County.

Throughout the centuries that these two families had lived in Herefordshire, there must have entered some Welsh or Celtic blood as well, as my father was a red haired man of what is generally known as a Celtic type; my great grandfather John Holder, when he died left his two daughters rather badly off, as he was more interested in horses and hounds than in farming, and when his property was sold at his death, most of the proceeds were swallowed up by the mortgages. These two daughters went to London to live with an old friend of their mother’s who being comfortably off looked after them as if they were her own daughters; the elder one June my grandmother had more of the Celt in her than Saxon and she ran off with a French officer, in exile in England with Napoleon, who afterwards became Napoleon III of France. They were married at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris and a year afterwards my father was baptised there. I expect my grandmother was hurriedly “converted” to the Roman Catholic faith before the marriage. At that time in England, there was a general dislike of the French caused by the Napoleonic wars and it was probably one of the reasons that my grandmother had run off with her husband to be married in France.

My French grandfather’s name was De Fouquerelle, and his family came from Amiens or that district, and one of the streets in Amiens is called Rue de Fouquerelle, which I saw myself in 1917 when the British Army entered there. He was killed in one of the skirmishes or small fights which ushered in Napoleon III’s arrival from his exile in England. My grandmother being left a widow with a one year old baby (my father) [as a means of livelihood teaching English] was in Paris when she met a Mr John Holmes a Yorkshireman who [I understand a wool merchant in India], travelled between England and India frequently on his business. He was a widower and a kind and good man and being a staunch Church of England man, had my father as a baby baptized into the Church of England and adopted by him legally as his own son giving him his name John Holmes; I do not expect my grandmother made any objections and she probably returned to her earlier faith. My father was sent to England at an early age to be educated and probably attended some school in London, where his aunt lived, who was the younger sister of my grandmother. Her name was Martha. She had married a well to do glove manufacturer in London named John Collingwood, who when he died left her a considerable fortune, she died in 1910 aged 92 and in her will left instructions for her body to be taken to Kinnersley and buried in the churchyard there, which was done. I have no idea why the family considered Kinnersley church their parish, because their own house called Hursley House [Editor’s note: Hurstley] (still standing) was situated in the hamlet of Hursley, a mile or two distant from Kinnersley, there being also a small church there. Kinnersley church is a very ancient church dating I think from Saxon times, the Castle and Rectory both adjoin the churchyard.

When my father was about 17 having studied in England Civil Engineering besides the ordinary subjects, his stepfather died so he had to return to India to join his mother, who had not been left very well off, as her husband had left two other children, then grown up, by his first wife, who had a share of the estate, or she would certainly have returned to England to live near her younger sister Martha Collingwood, the two sisters being very attached to each other.

In a few years time she died also and my father who had been having practical experience in railway surveys and construction had by then obtained a permanent post and was stationed in Northern Bengal when he married my mother who had come from Ireland to stay with a family in Allahabad who were friends of her father and mother; she was 18 years old when I was born.

Chapter 2

Most of the foregoing that I have written was made known to me as I grew up by my mother, as my grandmother and her husband had both died before I was born, but I have verified all that I could. Now I come to my own life of which I can speak from my memories of more than 70 years; I do not recollect much of what happened before I was 8 or 9 years old and in any case those happenings are of no consequence. I know that I and my two sisters had very happy lives and we were devoted to our parents. We were brought to England occasionally in summer and when I was 9 I was left behind in the care of an extremely good man (and his wife) who was scholarly, a strict disciplinarian but kind. There were two other small boys in the house, one from British Honduras, one from France and myself from India, all of us of English blood. We lived near Wallingford in Berkshire and the River Thames had a great deal to do with our lives in the summer, as we learnt to scull, punt, swim very early on; we were also taught very carefully Latin, English, History, Geography and Mathematics and I can truly say that that groundwork given us between the ages of 8 and 15 has stood us in good stead all my life; when I reached the age of 15, my father decided that I should now be coached for the entrance examination for Coopers Hill Engineering College near Egham Surrey, and eventually pass to the Public Works Department in India, and arrangements were being made for this; when a cable came from my mother to say that I was to go out to India immediately as my father was dying; I was put on a P & O ship and arrived in Calcutta in time to see and talk to my father for a week or two before he died; he was in Hospital there and my mother, sisters and I had lodgings close by. He was buried in the Military Cemetery in Calcutta, and it so happened in 1921 when I was Assistant Commanding Royal Engineer in Fort William, Calcutta, one of my duties being to inspect and maintain the Military Cemetery in good order, I found my father’s grave, with the broken granite shaft in fairly good condition, there had been an interval of 26 years from the day I had seen him buried there and I am afraid I could not recognise any of the features of the place. I believe the now independent Indian Government is giving every facility to the British to maintain their cemeteries in India, and there must be hundreds of thousands of our countrymen and women buried all over India.

After a month or two I was sent back to England with the object of being coached for Coopers Hill, while my mother remained on to settle her affairs and to decide what she would do in the future. As in England and in most other countries, it takes a long time to get probate of a will (as I know having been Executor of two wills having a considerable sum of money each) and so a year passed.

As things were being slowly settled, my mother feared that it was going to be very difficult to pay the fees etc for Coopers Hill and wrote and told me so and asked me what I would like to do if this should be the case. I was now over 16, healthy, agile and fairly strong though not tall nor heavy and looking back I can clearly recall not minding a bit about not going to Coopers Hill (after all this had been my parents’ choice of a career for me not mine) and being full of confidence (born of ignorance!) that whatever I started doing I should soon be getting to the top and I was wondering whether to enlist or go to one of the Colonies – in fact anything which would lead to Adventure; I had read every book of adventure that I could find and those days there were many – Marryat, Henty etc etc. In some respects as I shall narrate I have had my fill of adventure in my long life and it is partly this which makes me look back on a happy life. After a little more than a year after my father’s death, my mother wrote to tell me that she was marrying again – an old friend of my father’s and hers and whom I remembered as being very kind to me when I was a very small boy. He was a Civil Engineer in a good position and in due time, a daughter and then a son were born to them; these children who were both handsome and healthy, the girl being almost beautiful were not fated to live long, the girl (my half sister) died at 17 years of age in England of pneumonia and the boy (my half brother), after doing well at school (Bedford) and becoming a first class Rugby player, was a pupil at the Daimler Motor Works at Coventry when the 1st World War broke out; he and two other pupils one of whom had a brother an officer in the Grenadier Guards suggesting they should enlist in his brother’s regiment; all three of them left for London that August and the next day enlisted in the Grenadier Guards; the training of those six months was so excellent that all three were commissioned in the Special Reserve of Officers and posted to three different regiments, my half brother to the 1st Batt. the Hampshire Regiment. On the 1st July 1916 he was killed in the Somme battle together with 17 other officers of the regiment including the Colonel commanding; he was 20 years old. His father’s name was Nixon and the boy’s name is remembered every 1st of July with the other officers killed, in the Times of that day; thus does this famous regiment keep alive the memory of their officers and men killed in war, not many other regiments do this in this way, but probably they have other methods. Of course these two deaths of these children saddened the last days of my mother and her husband, and I doubt if they ever smiled again. They are both buried in Frimley Churchyard.

In the meantime it was arranged that I should continue in my studies but when I reached 18 my desire to go into the world and do something impelled me to write to my mother and tell her that I should like to go to India, in reply my mother wrote to say that if I was determined about this, she thought that she could get me on a tea plantation at Darjeeling belonging to some friends of hers, which would be a pleasant outdoor life but meant hard work. I was delighted at the prospect and so eventually I sailed for Calcutta in a P & O ship the name of which I have completely forgotten. I was not however destined to go into tea, as at that time tea plantations were not the prosperous concerns that had been and which they again became in after years, so it was decided that I should again return to my studies in England. This was entirely against my inclinations and I inquired why I should not study in India and try and enter one of the Government Services in India. The idea did not displease my mother as she realized that I should remain near her and so after consultation with her and my step-father’s friends, she suggested to me that I should work for the competitive entrance examinations to the Government of India Civil and Military Engineering College at Roorkee in the North Western Provinces (many years later to be known as the United Provinces of Oudh) where young men were trained to become Assistant Engineers in the Public Works Department or the Irrigation Department or Government Railways. The Military Section of the College trained young men to join the Military Works Department under the Army but only with the rank of Warrant Officers, whereas the Assistant Civil Engineers were ranked as officers, though generally at that time the highest posts were held by men from Coopers Hill. There was of course a considerable difference in the curriculum between Civil Engineers’ training and that of the Military Works Section, the former being up to the standard of an English University and the latter more of a practical training without perhaps the higher mathematical and scientific studies. Roorkee had turned out many distinguished Civil Engineers such as Sir ? Willcocks who carried out most of the Irrigation schemes in Egypt and the Sudan and various others who reached high distinction in the government service, among whom were a certain number of Indian gentlemen. The Commandant of the College was a senior Royal Engineer officer and he had under him a number of distinguished men of science, mathematicians and scholarly civil engineering instructors and lecturers from English Universities. In the courseof the next two years I was coached carefully first for the qualifying examination more or less equal to the entrance examination of the London University and a year after for the competitive one for twenty vacancies in the Engineer class of Roorkee College; much to my surprise I passed in, but at the tail end of the successful students, about ten of us Europeans and ten Indians. The Indians were nearly always better than the Europeans in Mathematics especially in Higher Mathematics and in Science, but on the whole the Europeans were better at Civil Engineering and in practical work in the field. I went to Roorkee in my 20th year and began to live an independent life as we had each of us half of a comfortable bungalow completely independent of the other half, with a bedroom, dining room, study room and at the back of the compound were the kitchens for each bungalow and the servants’ quarters – we paid our fees to the College and catered for ourselves separately from the allowances given us by our parents, there being no common dining or study rooms, in short the idea being that we were now young men responsible for ourselves. The European students were enrolled in the Rifle Corps of the College, which was I think a part of the N. W. Province Light Horse and Rifle Corps; our uniform was the Light Horse one with riding breeches and tunics and we had to turn out for all drills and sham fights etc, and to practise rifle shooting at the Butts. Our recreations were tennis and swimming, cricket and football, but personally I played racquets constantly there being a first class racquet court at the College and swam as often as I could. I also used to hire a pony and take long rides in the country. On the whole I had a happy year there, but when the year’s results were published in the Government Gazette I found I had failed in Higher Mathematics, but in consideration of my having done well in Civil Engineering, in Urdu and in Surveying, I was given the choice of returning the next year with the new first year entrants and this I believe was a great concession very seldom given to a student.

Looking back I think I can say that this was a very great blow to my pride, but not so much to my inclinations and in spite of my mother’s advice to go back next year with the 1st years entrants, I determined not to accept this (pride again) and I asked my step father to try and get me a job on a Survey party to do the theodolite work and the levels as I was quite good at making survey maps, which had been a very important part of the first years course at Roorkee, also I looked forward to an outdoor life in camp living in a tent and having a horse to ride and a gun for shooting which I knew was all part of a surveyor’s life; also I could read and write Urdu – the Mahommedan script of Hindi – and of course speak it fluently. I also reasoned the more I learned of practical engineering in the field, and if I studied at the same time I could sooner go in for the examination for the Associate Membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and be earning an independent livelihood without having to go to a College or other seat of learning, and without costing my mother and step father anything. Fortunately there was a small survey party being formed by Surveyor from England who had been sent out to survey a wild part of N. Bengal with the object of searching for coal deposits; and my step father approached him as to whether he required a young student civil engineer who knew the use of all survey instruments and could make the necessary maps from the field work information; also he could speak Hindustani and knew how to deal with Indian coolies as with Indian gentlemen; he asked to see me and so I went to an interview with him. When he asked me a lot of searching questions, he then offered me the post of Assistant Surveyor which I accepted, with the reserve in my own mind that if I didn’t like him I should have leave. It turned out that he was very kind to me and explained most carefully the way he wanted the work to be done and told me to go to him on every occasion when I was in difficulty. We set out on the journey with bullock carts, hauling the tents, tools etc and several tongas by small ponies, to convey us and the staff and the coolies. The first night we stopped at a Government Dak bungalow where we re-arranged the loads etc and where I was kept busy interpreting my chief’s desires to the head man of the gang. This survey lasted a year and I think I had absorbed most of what was necessary to know for doing a location and prospecting survey in country partly jungle – and to live in a tent and be active from early morn to dusk in the open air and to withstand the heat and cold and rain.

The survey was finished by the autumn of 1899 and now feeling self confident (a failing of mine when young) I was searching in my mind what to do next. At this time a well known senior Civil engineer called Glass was getting together a large survey party for the Pekin syndicate, to go to China on a survey and prospecting expedition, and a Dr. Bathe who knew Mr Glass and was a friend of my mother and step father, inquired from my mother if I should like to join this expedition, as he had known me from childhood [and I think perhaps had been the doctor who attended my mother at my birth]. Of course this met with my enthusiastic approval – and then the Boer War broke out. The idea of going to the war as a soldier became immediately my intense obsession, but at the moment I could see no way of getting there, and so I reconciled myself to the idea of going to China, which I thought would be the next best thing and more likely to lead to a career as a surveyor and engineer. However “Man proposes and God disposes.” A certain wealthy Scotsman named Lumsden the owner of large tea plantations in Assam and who was the Lieut Colonel commanding the Assam Valley Light Horse, proposed to the Government of India the raising of a Light Horse regiment drawn from young Englishmen all over India members of the many Light Horse regiments. Three fourths of the number required he could recruit from young planters from tea gardens, indigo and coffee plantations (nearly all young men of the English public school type) and one fourth from the young men serving in Light Horse regiments in other parts of India, and he offered to give fifty thousand rupees to start a fund for the equipment of the Corps, saying he felt sure that subscriptions would flow in from the big Merchant Companies and other wealthy industrialists all over India, to equip the Corps with all that was necessary. The Indian Government got in touch with the Home Government and the War Office and his offer was gratefully accepted as the latter had recognised that the kind of troops required in South Africa to contend against the Boers, were light mobile well trained horsemen who could shoot and had military training in Light Horse regiments. The Government nominated Lt Col Lumsden to take command of the Corps to be formed and to proceed to S. Africa with it; as second in command they nominated Major Showers (originally 2nd Life Guards, later tea planter). Two Regular officers were seconded to command each of them a Company, and a Regular Cavalry officer to be Adjutant. Each trooper was to bring his own horse to be first inspected and if suitable accepted for his own use in the Corps. The Government undertook to provide the necessary sea kit for use on board ship only, transport to the seat of war, daily rations as for other soldiers, weapons and munitions of war and pay at the rate of 1 /2 (one shilling and two pence) per day and nothing else. The Corps was to provide uniforms, great coats, saddles and bridles and all horse kit, which meant these were to be bought from the fund raised by public subscription – which was done in a very short time.

I read all this in the Calcutta newspapers and my mother noticed my deep interest in the foundation of Lumsden’s Horse and of course I told her how much I wished I could be chosen for the Corps. The result was that she again spoke to her old friend Dr. Bathe and he inquired whether I would really prefer this to the China expedition; she assured him that this was the case and he said “Well, I admire the boy for that and as I know Col. Lumsden very well, I’ll see what can be done, but I understand there are over a thousand applications from all over India to fill more or less 75 vacancies, it may not be possible.” However in a week or so he informed my mother that I was to go to Calcutta at once for an interview with Col. Lumsden or his Selection Committee. One can imagine my intense joy mixed with trepidation that I left for Calcutta the next day and on arrival duly presented myself to the headquarter offices of the Corps. Col Lumsden himself saw me and put me through an interrogation as to what I could do etc, was I a horseman, and could I use a rifle and had I any military instruction. I answered these questions as modestly as I could, being very certain in my own mind that I could lead a charge with lance and sword on the enemy. I had, as it happened, gone through a strict training in mounted and foot drill, could ride though I said I never played polo which made him smile, as he knew the average young man could not afford to play polo, and that I knew the use of the rifle, but had never scored beyond being “Efficient” and never was a “Marksman”; he asked me about my life in England and how had I been educated, and did not seem to think it was a great disadvantage that I had never been to a Public School; he, as I have said was a Scot from near Aberdeen and so did not think that Eton, Harrow and Winchester gave necessarily the best training for a trooper of Light Horse which is all I aspired to be at the time. However this may be as it may be but in after years I did send my two sons to Stowe and to Cambridge, from where the elder was commissioned into the Berkshire Regiment and the younger qualified as a Civil Engineer. The upshot was that he would accept me and that I was to join as soon as possible and bring my own horse with me. I bought a young country-bred dun coloured gelding, sound in wind and limb and properly broken in, but by no means trained as a troop horse. I paid the equivalent of £40 and this horse was one of only eight which survived the march to Pretoria with Lord Roberts, all the rest, over 100 belonging to troopers in “A” company to which I was assigned, having foundered or been killed on the march. I owe my deep thanks to the Veterinary officer who helped me to buy this horse. Curiously enough we eight who had taken care of and conserved our horses were written down as good horse-masters. In my own case I think my light weight helped me and the fact that my horse was always my first care on the march and in camp and that at every camp and at every halt I dismounted and eased the girths and “made much” of him and when forage ran short as it often did, I would go out and see if I could collect some grass or grain for him. This care and love of my [first] horse has never left me and though in after years I was to own many horses I personally saw my groom clean and feed them, and it is only a few years ago after my 70th birthday that I regretfully had to give up riding, because the Municipal Authorities stopped the keeping of horses, cows and all animals except dogs and cats in the zone where I live it being considered a garden colony, which measure as a matter of fact has eliminated flies and other insects to a great extent. Well! I joined up, was allotted to a tent and to a mess and given a working uniform, boots a flannel shirt etc, a rifle and bayonet and all the other things that a trooper had to have ready for inspection by an officer. I was allotted to No 4 section A Company and in this section we had non-planters, among whom was a doctor (on leave) a schoolmaster, a judge of the Sessions Court of Lahore and his brother, an ex-officer of Egyptian Police, a brewer (son of the owners of a big brewery in the Punjab), a lawyer, an owner of a very large fruit farm in the Punjab and others. I was easily the youngest trooper in the Company and only one trooper in B Company was younger than myself. He was known as “Baby” and I was the Infant, so that probably for this reason, he and I were not dealt with as strictly as were the older men who helped us in our guidance and youth. “Baby” was killed in the First World War, whereas I was fortunate enough to survive from early 1915 in France and Belgium and end up with the rank of Lieut Colonel in 1919 there.

Chapter 3

I suppose every generation of Englishmen were taught the history of our country and became imbued with a love of adventure and an ambition to emulate the deeds of bravery on land and sea of their forefathers from earliest times and I was no exception, my desires being fired by the books of adventure I loved to read, and so it is easy to imagine my pride and happiness at being admitted as a trooper of the Queen in Lumsden’s Horse, and with men of one’s own education and way of living; what adventures we were going to have! And what deeds of “derring do” we would perform and how we would charge the enemy as at Balaclava and in the Sudan. I felt dedicated and I can look back now with amusement at my enthusiasm and my constant endeavours to imitate those who had served in the Army. Such as “A” Company Commander Captain Jim Beresford of a Sikh regiment, but more especially the one or two Regular non-commissioned cavalry men who had been “lent” to the Corps from their own regiments and who taught us all the details of how to look after one’s horse, one’s rifle and one’s accoutrements and keep one’s self fit and strong.

I hardly knew the taste of alcohol and so drink was not one of my temptations; in fact all through the campaign in S. Africa I regularly exchanged my ration of rum with the Bimbashi of Egyptian Police (a man of about 36) for his ration of jam. Years afterwards I was to see in the Times obituary columns a long account of his life, as he belonged to a well known family in Cheshire, and it truly was like a novel of adventure; he was indeed an exemplary soldier with his upright carriage and his fierce yellow moustaches and he has served in many small wars and skirmishes, but never stayed long after the fighting stopped. He seemed to think it part of his duty to help the Infant and I was fortunate to be in the same subsection of four with him, the judge from the Punjab and the fourth a Police officer from the Punjab; they were all over 30 and I realize that none of the three pushed work on to me, but rather the opposite when I was behind hand in cleaning my horse or kit or rifle one of them would take hold of the rifle or kit and finish off the job in a few minutes which I learned to do in time, as I imitated them. I think it must have been because of the Bimbashi that our subsection were nominated to be the Scouting subsection and we always every morning rode out first a half mile or so ahead of the extended column; each of the sections of the Companies, Nos 1 and 2 also had their Scouting sub-section, who rode ahead of their respective sections in extended order to draw the fire of any small groups of Boers hiding on the kopjes.

I must now return to the camp on the Maidan in Calcutta where we were all together for the first time “A” and “B” Companies and the fifty men recruited to look after the transport of the Corps, together with our horses, transport carts and ponies. Our camp was very close to the Zoo and the roaring of the lions and tigers there during the night disturbed our sleep a good deal at first. The camp was laid out in proper military style with the horse lines between rows of tents for troopers and the officers’ tents and orderly room at one end.

Reveille was sounded at the first light of dawn and as quickly as possible we went to our hoses, cleaned and groomed them and took them to the water troughs for “watering”; then back to the lines and each horse given his ration of oats and hay and the straw and dung swept away and put on the small transport carts to be taken away and burnt. Then back to our tents to wash and clean ourselves and get into uniform and to breakfast, the latter being supplied by a catering contractor. Then a parade where every man and horse, rifle and equipment was inspected by the officer commanding each section, who reported to the Company Commander that all were present and correct. After an interval, drill, firstly foot drill until we learned to march in time and obey orders instantaneously; most of us had gone through this infantry drill and so very shortly we were marching and countermarching and doing our rifle drill with fair precision. The month was December (1899) and so the weather was pleasant in the day time and cold at night. After that came mounted drill, to mount and dismount at exactly the same moment at the word of command; also forming troops and getting the horses to know each other as were always in the same order, sub-section by sub-section and to walk, trot, canter by the feel of the rein and a touch of the spur blunted on purpose. In the afternoon lectures from the officers on tactics and at times an inspection of rifles and kit – sometimes practical demonstrations by the non-commissioned officers in shoeing a horse and at other times lectures by the veterinary officer (all Regulars) on common ailments of horses and what to do in each case and how to detect any illness or indisposition in a horse and general rules how to keep one’s horse in good health. Of course we could get permits to leave the camp and go to Calcutta in the evenings – a certain percentage only; sentries were posted every evening and relieved every four hours, a proper roster being kept for these duties. In short as far as possible we were being trained to do everything as if we were near the enemy on a war footing. There is no purpose in going into more detail of the day to day happenings, but before the final inspection of the Corps by the General Commanding in Bengal, we were a compact and well trained body of men, and striving to do our mounted manoeuvres like a crack cavalry regiment; the G. O. C. complimented the Corps on its general steadiness and good drill and said he considered we were now fit for active service. How we all longed to get on board and sail, but owing to shortage of ships we did not sail till the beginning of February when the Viceroy Lord Curzon came and reviewed us and bid us farewell. The voyage was pleasant enough as regards weather, but looking after the horses, each man his own down below decks in a confined space was pretty trying and the smell of ammonia etc rather overpowering in the closed in lower deck; every afternoon, a certain number of horses were brought up at a time on to the top deck and walked around, for a specified time, then taken down and tethered again each in its place; these horses could never lie down, but were standing for three weeks and so on landing had to have a weeks rest in a field and exercised daily. On board the transport Lindula, we were continuously trained in rifle shooting at targets towed behind, though of course we had a good deal of recreation as well – boxing, wrestling, concerts at night, but we were overcrowded, sleeping on a deck on a thin straw mattress side by side with no place to put our kit except at the foot of the mattress and the food was atrocious with no fresh vegetables or fruit and the result was that most of us had mumps by the time we landed at Cape Town, which however was soon cured by the abundance of fruit and vegetables we had while in camp at Cape Town – bought by ourselves. I can truly say that never again on active service in S. Africa did we have such bad food. Some contractor in Calcutta should have been shot – or at all events the officer who passed such food for our consumption – not one of our officers.

Chapter 4

Before leaving Calcutta the whole regiment had a Church Parade Service in the Cathedral, when the Bishop of Calcutta (D. Weldon) gave a most moving sermon, the whole of which can be read in The History of Lumsden’s Horse which can be found in my library; this book was given to me some years later by Col. Lumsden himself having signed his name on the flyleaf, when I was in England on leave and met him. Incidentally he took me to the Oriental Club in Hanover Square for lunch and pointed out several ancient men lunching there, one of them being Lord Roberts brother. Of course he looked much older, but he was the same kindly man who had led us for a year in South Africa and it was with a feeling of great loss that a few years afterwards I read in the Times of his death and an account of his career. At the time I met him, he was renting a flat in Whitehall Court belonging to my sister and her husband, who had taken a house in the country near Coventry for which constituency my brother-in-law had been elected a Member of Parliament.

Chapter 5

I must now return to the events after landing in Cape Town on (I think) March 20th 1900. We were ordered to march out to Maitland Camp some miles outside Cape Town and this we did slowly as the horses after three weeks standing in the ship were still weak. Maitland Camp was then a dusty desert like place with sand flying over everything when dry, and a morass when wet, both of which we experienced there. On March 30th we received orders to entrain to join Lord Roberts at Bloemfontein and it is not difficult to imagine with what joy these orders were received. We entrained, first horses and then ourselves and then we were on our way to Lord Roberts’ Army gathered together in Bloemfontein; we were however doomed to stay there two or three weeks before the march began, while all supplies and transport were brought in, much to our disappointment as we were all anxious to be in the actual fighting line. “B” Company had not yet joined us as they crossed in another transport and were disembarked at East London and were camped somewhere there being no trains available at the time to bring them to Bloemfontein. At last Col. Lumsden called a parade to inform us that we were to start out a few days hence and that Lord Roberts had done us the honour to place us in the vanguard as the Scouts of the Column, being the best trained body of horsemen for this duty. Now I do not propose to write of the day by day activities of the Army as this can be read in many well written books of correspondents and others, but only to mention anecdotes and special incidents of the march. Before we actually started a few men fell sick and had to be evacuated to a hospital in the rear, and it was rather a joke amongst us, that many of those going sick had up to then been the most conspicuous fire eaters of the Company and curiously enough they were all rather older men than the average and in many cases big men physically; this latter condition was more especially noted on the march and it was probably due to the fact that they required more food than the smaller and lighter men which was not obtainable, the rations being cut down to the minimum owing to want of fast transport to keep up with the fighting troops; on the march our daily rations were 2 ½ Army biscuits (only eatable after being hammered with our bayonets), a ¼ of a pound of bully beef in tins, an ounce or so of jam, very little else. The rum ration was given only after a very hard days march and some fighting or on cold nights; I made an arrangement with a trooper of my subsection to give me his ration of jam for mine of rum, I being at that time completely unused to alcohol and not requiring it; I smoked a pipe and very seldom a cigarette, so that my ration of cigarettes came in useful to exchange for more jam. Of course there were many of us younger men who did the same.

Whenever we came to a farm if it were unoccupied, we being well forward of the main body were able to catch a hen or goose and sometimes sheep left behind by the Boer farmer. On one occasion we came to a large farm with a pond almost like a lake covered with ducks and in a very short time, they were captured and handed to the sub-section cooks; the officers’ batmen took care to get them their share for their officers and of course for themselves. I put it this way as the orders were strictly against looting of any sort, and so the officers had to be looking the other way. There is a story that a trooper about to plunge his bayonet into a sheep, saw over his shoulder an officer and he shouted to the sheep “that will ‘learn’ you to bite me”. Another time Col Mahon who rescued Baden Powell at Mafeking and under whose orders we came at a later day and who used to be dressed in a sort of Norfolk jacket and wore a civilian cloth cap carrying only a cane was walking on the edge of a large pond saw a trooper carrying several ducks and he called him; the trooper was of course frightened beyond measure as he had not recognised the commanding officer of the column and knew that the penalty decreed by Lord Roberts for looting was death or any lesser penalty. Col. Mahon looked at the man and said “Where are you taking those ducks?” the man replied “to my mess Sir”; “Well” said the Colonel, “this time you can take them to my mess”, which was of course done.

October 26th 1961

I am afraid nearly a year has passed since I wrote the last lines of the foregoing chapter and many events have occurred during this period; the reason I was not inclined to write more when I stopped was that one of my grand daughters (my son’s eldest) came to Mexico to spend some months with us and as she occupied the bedroom adjoining my study, she and my daughter were in and out of this room at all odd moments and it was not possible for me to concentrate on my work; then later after some months when she left for England, I had got out of the way of writing and kept postponing re-starting. The time passed and we began to make arrangements to go to England for our holiday it being the second year since my last journey. We left in May of this year and were away nearly five months returning in the third week of September. While in England our daughter Stella got married and now my wife and I are alone in our house, as she and her husband live in London. It happens that her husband Alan Lesser is being sent to Buenos Aires for a few months on business of his company (Borax Ltd) and he and my daughter will be passing through Mexico in a fortnight’s time staying with us for three days, to which we are looking forward with great joy.

May 31st 1962

Chapter 6

I will now return to our joining Lord Roberts’ army in Bloemfontein. All these months have gone by and I have not written a line, so will endeavour to start afresh. My daughter and her husband are still in Buenos Aires, but we expect them any day now, on their way Home to England, and we are hoping they will be able to stop a week at least with us. Later, as my son-in-law was due his holiday leave, he was able to stay with us a fortnight and it was a great joy to my wife and myself to have Stella with us again and looking so well and happy. Alas! They had to leave and go back to London, where they have a comfortable flat in the Western end of Pembroke Road.

27th November 1962

I will get on with our doings in South Africa, as we advanced under Lord Roberts towards Johannesburg and Pretoria.