DUKE OF CONNAUGHT

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 8 September 1928, Page 11

DUKE OF CONNAUGHT

gIXTY years ago l the Duke of Connaught received his commission in the Royal Engineers from the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Sixty years ago is a long span, nearly the lifC‘ of a man, and, since field-marshals are al ways on the' active list, . the Duke has' spent those sixty years in that, little Army which has lately written its fame all over the old world.

From the Royal Engineers to the Royal Artillery, from the Gunners to the Rifle Brigade, and then, after five years in the Brigade, to the 7th Hussars. and four years later to the command of a battalion of the Brigade, the Duke of Connaught had a- very thorough experience of the regimental side, of soldiering when, with 19 years’ service, he was promoted major-general. As the Duke of Cambridge commanded the Guards Brigade in- the Crimea, so the Duke of Connaught commanded the Guards .Brigade at Tel-el-Kebir, that first battle with breechloaders on both sides, and which in its eventual results was one of the decisive battles of the world. It was the first under the Wolseley regime and the Wolseley doctrine. It is perhaps of interest to remember that it was necessary to get a sailor to lead the force by compass, which any cadet of to-day could do., From active service in Egypt the Duke soon went to India, commanding a first-class district which included a war division; and before long, to the

COMMISSION FOR SIXTY YEARS

■huge satisfaction of India, he became Commander-In-Chief of the Bombay Army, where his presence very materially added to the people’s affection for the Crown. The command at. Aldershot practically ended his- active career.

It is interesting to realise that that career was intimately connected: with the whole gamut of changes and development which brought the longservice Army of the Crimean days to that remarkable product the Expeditionary Force, which enabled the nation to train on its model close on eighty divisions. : Front the Crimea to Tel-el-Kebir was a long way; from Eniields and smooth-bore cannon to the Martini and the Armstrong gun, from Tel-el-Kebir and Kabul to the Marne via Burma and South Africa, the Frontiers and the. Sudan, was a long way more. War in full'dress, the coatees and epaulettes of Alma giving way to the serge jackets of Egypt and Majuba or U'lundi, the Roi Batje of 1881, followed by the khaki of the South AfricaWar, and the service dress of 1914.

Through long years of preparation, of training and super-training of men and -officers, of staffs and generals, the Duke has taken an active and interested part. Recently his spare military figure, the figure of a young man, has been scon reviewing the Yeomen of the Guard at St. James’s—a pageant, as it were, of Old England that is always Young England.