WARRIORS AT PEACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13235, 21 July 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

WARRIORS AT PEACE.

; CHATS WITH THE VETERANS, - BY QUI VTVE. Robert William Lacy is a typical sailor. He is an old man now, of eighty-two; but his eyes are blue and bright as were those of the twelve-year-old youngster who shipped aboard the brig Saracen in ; 1856.

Imagine the changes which this roving tar has seen! From a boat of nearly a century ago, a wooden sailing vessel, which suited him so ill that he ran away, to His Majesty's ironclad the Powerful, to which a few weeks since he was conveyed by means of a modern launch!

Broad-shouldered, sturdy in the legs, forcible of tongue, Lacy has all the characteristics of "Our Jack." ■

He reels off a story of ships and times that bristles with historic names. . From the s.s. Megara, as boy, to the Hastiags, he saw service on three*ships before he had finished his thirteenth year.

Ay -I was at Quebec ; we helped to put down the revolution there. And then I was on the Thunder in 1840. I was at St.. Johnny Acre with Admiral Sir George Seymour—a,. shipmate of my father's ■he was.-' -.":■," ' ,■■'.';.', ;•';,..'■.;,

Thus Lacy was at the famous siege of Acre, and at the bombardment of Beyrout;. but he is too diffident to say more than the bare fact about his engagements. He has medals for service in Syria, and a Turkish one. One of his Syrian medals wa.s lost in after years of peace; and with his quiet pride in that display of five medals and two clasps he must have worried many an hour over his loss. Judge then of his gratitude to Lord Ranfurly, who acted the Fairy Prince, and procured him one to replace it.

"But mine was a- bronze one; this is silver!" ,■••'•■'■■

As he turns it over there is a touch of regret in the veteran's voice; and ho goes on with his story, as if anxious to get through with the wearisome business of talking about himself.

" Well/then, I was paid off at Devonport Dock and became seaman-rigger." By this time Sailor Lacy owned three medals, and no doubt deserved to spend the rest of his years in peace. But the smell of the brine was again to be his, -and war was yet his portion. The Crimean war broke out. Sailors such as this blue-eyed salt were needed/and off he shipped on the Samson. Even a wreck does not daunt his kind; and after his boat came to grief off Sebaetopol, having followed the fortune of affairs- in the Crimea., he was yet again on the decks in. the Baltic, and took part in the bombardments of Svebourg and of Odessa.

_Then comes . the adventure. Stirring times those, and to a young man with sailor blood—! How gleefully he must have sung those old "■" cliantys" when the ship ploughed away from Gibraltar, and for all her life fell to chasing slavers off Lagos! If he could only tell his thoughts of those days of his twenties and thirties.' Wild, reckless, daring days. And this white-haired octogenarian, with' his ■ pink cheeks and bright eyes— is just the man to have lived every inch of them! There, was an engagement off the African coast-,- and they caught two slavers. Lacy looks disgusted still when I ask him " How many slaves?" - ■.' <«'

. , "Pooh! only about; twenty." Her© lie departs from the conventions of sailor yarns' as we shore people know them. One of us, would have made two hundred out of I that.capture, '.-. Not so .La.cv! • A modest twenty, and no story of rushing aboard with cutlass brandished and blood-curdlincr ! cries of "Surrender!" He is modest;' but then he is an English sailor with a, reputation ' and five medals. Only those brag who have seen little. Men like Robert Lacy tell what they with their eves have seen. At Algiers' word was received for the vessel to bring from the Crimea the remnant of the British forces; and, this done, Lacy's sailor life was over. But be sure that he was as smart a coastguard as he was a sailor; and that he was a clever sailor had been proved by his serving seven years of the twenty as chief petty officer. His wife's anxiety for her roving lord was a thing of the past, for after some time as commissioned boatman Lacy became a foreman at the gun factory of Woolwich Arsenal. He evidently found it hard to settle; and, with his family, made his wav to < New Zealand, where he started off as— i one would cuess —cook. J

Say the.British tar is not adaptable!'. He had his romance; it spread through nearly sixty-one years of happy married life. ■;'

"Then my wife died, and nothing has been the same since!" These men of the blue eves and brave deeds, how they love! They sail the oceans and fight for their country; but they hold in their hearts, locked against: all but memory, the story of love, of ardent wooing and of sad regrets. Thus at eighty-two, plucky still, in spite of domestic trouble—for of "his eight children only two are left—Veteran Hubert Lacy wears his medals and his clasps (tokens of campaigns in Syria, Turkey, Crimea, and the Baltic), smokes hie pipe, and smiles at life.

Of a different type is John Fox. He stands,, this burly gunner, six-feet-one, and tells a story crammed with historical incident. He was with Roberts at Kandahar, and served through the trying campaign till 1881. ''..'-.. 1.. °

His is a soft Irish voice ; and diffidently ho speaks of an order by his officer to "shoot that fellow." He did, too: and the madman's career of fanatical bloodspilling was done, for Fox is. not the man to miss his aim. Very quietly he tells of the fierce work in the East, when he. helped to blow into eternity mutinous natives, tied in grouns of six to the guns. He is very matter-of-fact about his work in India and Afghanistan—it was all so much obedience to orders I believe that, in his heart, he is proud of being associated with/' Roberts and his other leaders. Men like Fox say no word of those medals won for meritorious sendee. He pretends that it took him most of his time to look after his gun, to sponge her out, and just do as he was told, with others of the " A" Battery. , "■He ploughed the way of the British guns through the sands of Egypt and fought out Tel-el-Kebir. \ There he*saw fanaticism at its worst, and learnt still again to despise the dark skin. \.

Fox is not the man to "lose his head."' I can see him at his giin, calm, resolute, prompt; reliable at every turn of the engagement—a man for whom his officers, must have been grateful in emergency. That march from Cairo, with heavy artillery dragging painfully through burning sands, would test the stability of any gunner : and the keynote of Fox's character is steadiness. '

Returning to India he was stationed at Jalhunghur, and alter twenty-two years took his discharge and sailed" for Australia, ' . - ....■.■•

He spent nearly three years in Tasmania; and. coming to New' Zealand, joined the Permanent Artillery, serving for eighteen years as artificer, " In addition to his medals for Afghanistan, India, and Egypt, and the Imperial medal for long service and good conduct, as well as the Khedive's star, he now gained the New Zealand medal for good conduct and meritorious service ; and with that thought it time to retire.

So from gunner to carpenter, from artificer to a. quiet life at Cromwell, where for many, years he kept a hotel, from Otago to Auckland, and the Veterans' Home!

Fox is an imposing figure among the veterans. He looks what he is, a splendid type of artilleryman. He squeezed a lot of hard work and laborious service into his Indian and Afghanistan campaigns; . and now, in his sixty-fifth year, is able to view life with fair health and activity, and to follow with interest the doings of his old lieutenant, now Lord General Roberts.