THE OLD ARMY

Evening Star, Issue 19764, 14 January 1928, Page 15

THE OLD ARMY

TALES 0F A GALLANT COMPANY PAGES OF FORGOTTEN WARS CHARACTER THE FOUNDATION [Written by Cyrano, for the ‘Evening Star.’] ft is said that tire old British Army lied in the Great War, and especially the Ypres salient. To recalUome of »g desperate struggles there in October and November of 1914 against tre uendous odds is to think again of the ifie in ‘The Revenge’—“God of bating, was ever a battle like this in the .•oriel before?” It is more correct, owever, if wo think of the old Army s the army of martinets and pipeclay, f massed formations, set ways, and nthinking valor, to say that it died ■i. the South African War In the

... t .lve years between chat war and 1914 , new army was born, of which it is .ot too much to say that it was the uost efficient force that ever has taken he field in modern times, and perhaps ii any times. Von Ivluck himself, I he-

•eve," has paid it the major compliment, md since it threw all his plans out of ;ear he ought to know. Beyond that -tonth African War stretches a past in •vhlch all over the world the old army ought, an army otten badly led, alvnys shockingly paid, treated frequently with incredible stupidity and harshness, cheered as heroes in the hour ot victory, and afterwards allowed to die in workhouses; an army that lost more from disease than from the weapons of its enemies, an army which through all the horrors of war and climate and all the provocations of political and professional blundering maintained an amazing level of patience and valor. We may think wo know a good leal of its history; no doubt every decently informed man has some knowledge of Albuera and Waterloo, Balaclava and Lucknow, but a book like

‘ A Gallant Company.' by Sir John Fortcscuc, which is the subject of this article, reveals the extent and darkness of our ignorance ol this amazing record. This is a book olf the beaten track, and it explores territory extraordinarily rich in human as well as military interest. THE BAD OLD DAYS. Thirty years ago Sir John Fortcscuc, who has a personal interest for New Zealand, in that ho was on the stall' of one of our Governors, began a study of British military records that has home fruit in the longest and most authoritative history of the army. There are several volumes, and Sir John has not yet reached the Crimean Wav. it has been a labor of love, for bis money return has not exceeded that of a rank and file clerk. Few will read his many-volumed masterpiece, but ‘ A Gallant Company’ (Williams and Norgate), which consists of gleanings in this vast field, is published in popular form, and should be a popular .success. Sir John is no fire-eater. The supreme value of the book lies in its insistence on the value of those virtues which shine through the brutality and filth of war and in its inexhaustible sympathy and admiration for the private soldier. The more one reads the more one wonders that, considering his origins and the treatment he received, the private soldied did what he did. Certainly ho was given a magnificent lead by his officers. This book opens with some examples of how, in the days when there were no anaesthetics, men bore operations. It was a point of honor not to utter a sound under the knife. At Ciudad Rodrigo Colborne was struck on the shoulder by a musket ball, which broke off a piece of the bone. Ho was treated by the surgeons and returned to duty, but it was found that the ball had broken the arm in a second place, and was embedded in the bone. The surgeons proceeded to dig it out. Even Colborno’s iron heart could stand only five minutes of this at a time, and it was three days before the ball was extracted. An ensign who had his arm shattered at the storming of St. Sebastian calmly stood up outside bis tent while the surgeons took it out of the socket. George Napier relates that while he lay wounded in a Portuguese hovel ho was visited by one of Ins men who had been in action that day. It was some time before Napier noticed that tlie man had only one arm. The arm had been amputated, and the man had walked nine miles to visit his officer, on the pretext of " forgetting the anguish.” Sir John is careful to say that such fortitude can be matched in other armies. At Waterloo a French cavalry officer, having been wounded in the arm, went back, Lad the arm taken off, and returned to take command ot his squadron. The ravages from disease were awful. Men were sent to fight in tho tropics in their heavy English clothes, and c-vcn when they were convalescent from fever were returned to barracks to be fed on salt pork. Sir John gives a most interesting account of the capture of St. Lucia from the French in 1778, a brilliant affair, in which the army combined with the navy. The soldiers were landed in “soft” condition—that is to say, they had been crowded on transports with only biscuits and salt pork to eat, and a limited supply of water—and they were called upon to do some heavy marching over mountain and through forest under full kit and home uniforms. Th response was magnificent. “ And what came of it in the end? These noble soldiers, and many of the sailors, too. were mostly dead of yellow fever within six months. _ That was the rule in the West Indies in those clays.” Did you know that the British fought in Haiti ? They did, but it was the climate that drove them out. There is no written record of the war in Haiti by a participating officer, for there were few survivors. One battalion was actually extinguished from, colonel to drummer boy. THE BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE.

Tens of thousands of Englishmen of our time have read in Sir Henry Newbolt’s stirring verses how Gillespie “ came to false Vellore ”; how he rode up to the gate under the fire of the mutineers; how the remnant of the English guard above made a rope of their belts and drew him up; and how Gillespie dressed the line of the survivors and led the charge that “swept the wall like a stream in spate ”; but how many, of us know anything about Gillespie? Sir John Fortescue, delving into records which now interest only the specialist, pieces his life story together, and presents it here, and confiing himself to the old days before the Victoria Cross was instituted, accounts Gillespie the bravest man that ever wore the King’s uniform. It was an amazing career; Gillespie was as able as he was brave, and wisely humane into the bargain. This little man was so skilled in fence that when he came upon eight armed ruffians murdering his black servant, he killed six of them with his sword. By his promptitude and daring at Vellore he saved India. Yet Sir John likes best to think of him “as a little man in white, cheering up his convalescent soldiers m the verandah of his house in Jamaica, as anxious to save their lives as he was reckless in hazarding his own.” CHARACTER OF FOUNDATION. One gets from this record—for the most part of wars of which the average man know* nothing a lasting impres-

sion of the supreme value of character —resolution, fortitude, quiet acceptance of orders to do the impossible, serene acceptance of success, failure, and undeserved censure. Character helped to carry Britain through the Napoleonip War and the. Great War. It was in the rank and file as well as in the leaders. Sir John cites two particularly conspicuous examples in Sir Harry Smith and Lord Raglan. After he had by his extraordinary activity and courage, averted the ruin of Capo Colony, S.ni:’i was recalled as a failure. Ho bore no malice and harbored no complaint, and when in London the Minister under whom he had served invited him to dinner, he went without hesitation, and won a golden opinion from his chief. Raglan had imposed on him in the Crimea a perfectly hopeless task by a weak Government, one he himself knew to be impossible. The Allies could have walked into Sebastopol after the battle of the Alma, but the French would not act, and on no account must the French bo estranged. For the inconceivable blundering and misery that followed the Government was to blame, but it tried to make Raglan the scapegoat. Raglan refuted every charge with quiet dignity, and calmly went on with his'Mvork. By heaven, these were men, and the breed is not extinct.