THE CAVALRYMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 30, 6 February 1933, Page 6

THE CAVALRYMAN.

There was a touch of unconscious _ swagger in his walk, the gait that goes with jingling spurs and sword clanking in its scabbard, the hearing of the old trooper. That powerfully framed, big shouldered, drooping moustached figure, over six feet, striding along a Wellington street, always suggested, or rather ,proclaimed, the veteran mounted man. No foot-slogging soldier could ever achieve the commanding cavalier-like poise of the long-trained Dragoon Guardsman. There went a man who was a perfect product of the Regulars of the Victorian days, who knew more about the soldiering business than any general knew, for he was an old sergeantmajor of the old red-coat army. Thirty years as a trooper and a non-com. of the Forces had made of this Kilkenny lad a soldier of the type that Kipling delighted to write about. He had helped to chase Arabi Pasha over the sands of Egypt, and he knew India from end to end in the days of Lord Roberts. He knew horses and he knew men. Thousands of recruits had passed through his hands, he had shepherded scores of raw young subalterns through the beginning of their military careers. His troop, his squadron, his regiment, he schooled them all. He lived the army life of "Soldiers Three"; Ortheris and Mulvaney and their like were his comrades and his problems. For that old cavalryman, Captain James Henry, who died a few days ago in Wellington, one felt the admiration that is the due of a fine man physically and mentally, an example to the young generation in discipline and in the value of' long-sustained training to a desired end. Captain Henry received his commission in. the South African War in a mounted constabulary corps, but it was Her Majesty's Dragoons that claimed him for the best part of his life. A champion swordsman, a first-rate rifle shot,_ he was unexcelled in his regiment. When he gained his captaincy and had a local command in South Africa he showed that liia long regular army service had not disqualified him for the task of dealing tactfully with a hostile people. In Wellington he did duty for nearly twenty years as inspector for the S.P.C.A., and his care for dumb animals and his efforts to prevent and punish cases of cruelty were what were to have been expected from one who all his life loved horses and taught their handling. A good soldier and a chivalrous and humane citizen. —J.C.