HERO OF OLD TIME.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11949, 7 March 1917, Page 4

HERO OF OLD TIME.

OBIT. \TEBRTJARY 28, 1917.

("Now Zealand Times.")

There were great men before Agamemnon, as the contemporaries of Agamemnon were fond of pointing out. Bo it is to-day. ■ And quite right it is that it should be. so, for the memory of the brave should never fade, nor should posterity permit it to bo obscured ;by its owtn merit, however striking. Hie merit of to-day is as striking a thing as anything in the history of Britain, or, indeed, of tho world. We remember Henry and men who fought at Agincourt against odds in that very mud of Artois which makes the advance against the armies of the imitator of A'ttila so difficult, but favoured our side so greatly on Sti Crispin's Day. Do you remember how tho English archery caught tho horsemen floundering in tho mud of the pastures softened by long rainP We others have never forgotten Henry and -the men " whose limbs were made in England." Neither have wo forgotten Ciiii'oi<l and Lord Lisle, who, in the next reign, perished in the bulldog resistance of their kind to the overwhelming onslaught's of France. To-day we celebrate and venerate, and cannot overrate the prowess of tho British men who held off tho hordes of Attila. at MoTis; joined their bravo Allies in beating them to the ground at tho Marae; stormed their way over the Aisne against 'Hie shot* of men of perjury and bad faith stretched to tho diabolical utmost; and with absurdly inforior numbers and poverty of equipment beyond the reach of statistical contrast, gave thoso Hunnish hosts such forbiddance at Ypres that they have never had tho heart to renew the disastrous experiment. This for tho Expeditionary Force, the finest army ever sent out of England. We are admiring their successors of the Kitchener armies, who are giving the Huns tho time of their heathen lives in the valleys of the Somme and the Ancre, driving the Blonde Beast out of strongholds which he had planned to hold till the crack of doom. ECHO OF THE MUTINY.

But we should not forget the men but for whom these heroisms of to-day would havo been impossible. Such a one was General Mowbray Thomson, of tire old Bengal Army—the army thl't futhiying gave British valour some <>f iis tmest' traditions- His death, announced the o r ter day, conveyed nothing to the mind of a thoughtless general ion. wnicL may be excised' for being engrossed in the greatest cf all recorded conflicts, which, by the way, is named by many the "Anonymous War.'' But the old* Bengal soldier was a hero of Cawnpore—one of the two heroes who came alive out of that storv of woe nnd treachery, which remained unparalleled in the history of the world tmti: the barbarous troops of tho Unsftcakahle Kaiser dishonestly crossing the Belgian frontier, justified the theory of their master's -piritual kinship with the callous savages ~vho have ex terminated' the Armenians of Asia Minor. '•Tiff' STORY OF CAWNPORE." General Mowbray Thomson, as one of the two survivors of Cav.npore. felt impelled bo write the story. He had escaped (fought his way out) with nothing but his memory, but the eternal critic who throughout the British Empire relic.? on his imagination for his lacts, and like all noxious political insects, is hatched out in numbers by the i.< at of national misfortune was befouling tho memor.' of the General, who was in command when Cawnpore fell. Mowbrav Ibomsm, lmviurr biavcd the enemy, felt it his sacred duty to brave 'those" ghouls and save his old chief'--honour' Therefore he wrote ms book, "The Story of Cawnpore,"'which li»H I efore us as Ave write. Whit a great human document it i>! All unconscious this soldier takes Jus pen and folbvs the rouV oi the Empire builders. Docs h> leap into the flames of Cawtipowcr at the outset:' N T ot. ne- CaiV'.ipore! Of cnurs» lie was there, awl that sort of thing. But there are things even more interesting. For example there was a .great hrdit with a neai on tie Neilgherry Hills, in which this Empire builder had a narrow shave and was helped by a comrade r.ncl some native shikaris, to whom, of course, he gave all the credit, nnd after the fashion ">i" Ivupire buiidei", .-ome caustic criticism.

We srr.ne, but tie senile ends with the lcuection that these men never do consider their great. Imperial oxplo-Ni north anything, and' always delay by fust noticing very much less important matters.

Well—having killed his boar and duly given the credit to somebody else -—this Empire builder marches with "my regiment" IGOO miles across country—no railways in those days, nothing but the hard, ,'.""and trunk red---at fifteen miles a day, moving from tho Ncilgherrio'; on Oawnporo, mid throe months' marching. We have, a little history, just what wo want, and no more, for the builder getting down to business is pruning his exuberance. He just narrates that extraordinary cryptic signalling that preceded tho Mutiny. It was the yea'* 18o(J—the year preceding the year in the May of which tho great revolt broko out at Meerut—and the officers noted the quiet of the country they marched through, and wero puzzled by tho distribution of " ehupattior;'' to civilians and of lotus leaves (tho emblem of war) to the soldiery. They were not frightened—your true Empire builder does not know what fear is—they just dismissed the subejet with the explantion that it was just another of tho queer superstitions of tho Indian people. THE 53rd NATIVE INFANTRY.

The story, as the regiment—s3rd Nativo Infantry of the old Bengal Army—nears Cawnpore, gives a soldierly sketch of the regiment. In scarlet, with yellow facings, of nn average height of five-foot eight, smart soldiers and active, swinging along; with never af "drunk" from year's end to year's end, keeping up its'reputation as a high-class section of the Brahmin aristocracy, with great pfidp, smartness and self-respect, on seven rupees a month, out <>f which three were sufficient to pay for food and an extra summer suit, it is just a passing glimpse of a soldier's eye. It realises the sort of men thoy were who belonged to the army that mutinied. It makes ono think of that old story of the cartridges for the new rifle. The story does not forget the cartridges, tells us the cartridges were too stinking for words, and the words, being penned in 1859, go no further. Since The soldier describes Cawnpore, gives itg history as an outpost held in the old Kingdom of Oude—a touch.of the prudence with which the Empire builders' went about their work, and with a few touches gives lis the) strength of the outpost—6ooo men of the Bengal Army—the comfort of the place, with its officers' bungalows in. the midst of beautiful gardens, its amusements, and so forth, showing how the builders adapted thornsolves to their sMrroundiugs, and also

GEMERSL MOWBRAY THOMSON OF CHWNPSRE,

the simple, manly trust they put in all who had business with themThe consequence of the last- was that the signs of coming revolt were not read aright. The news of the outbreak at Delhi and Meerut came like a death-knell. There was a_ scrapingop of provisions, as the native troops foil away; there was hasty digging of a wretched earthwork, and the Europeans in the place were beleaguered by a great native army, under the command of the notorious Nana Sahib, of Bilthoor. How the desperate defence, dominated by overwhelming artillery at close range, held for weeks, throwing back assaults, sallying into the enemy's lines, enduring wounds, fever, privations, this book tells with simple eloquence. It is a plain tale of valiant heroism of man and wonderful endurance of woman, unparalleled in the records of the human race. When evervthincr possible had been done, and the hist biscuit had disappeared, the capitulation canio, with safe conduct down tho Ganges for Allahabad, and the enemy complimented all hands on their wonderful resistance. THE FINAL SCENE.

Then came the final scene, for which we use the narrator's facts. After the guarantee had been given by Nana Sahib, that tho remains of forces in the entrenchment at Cawnpore, and the women and children with them, should be conveyed by boat to Allahabad, under his safe conduct, the entire members were packed into four flat-bottomed river boats, which were deserted by tho boatmen who bad previously fired tho thatched root's, and immediately the Sepoys opened lire from tho banks. Tho boats were stranded, and tho soldiers tried to push them off, but most, of them perished at that time. Only one boat floated, the river being very low. Mowbray Thomson, Delafos.se and Privates Sullivan and Murphy swam after this boat and were taken on board, and other stragglers were picked up till the boat was overcowded. About noon they got out of range of the.big guns, but at sunset a boat with fifty natives fully armed pursued them, from Cawnpore, but it also grounded on u sandbank, and instead of waiting for their attaek the English charged, killed most, and got their .unmunuoFt. But there was no food. A storm of rain camo during the night and set the boat afloat again, but it drifted into a backwater, and as it was soon attacked by yelling natives, thirteen men were lancl«id to attaek them, while the boat was pushed off again. The attacking party cut their way through the Sepoys and lost sight of the boat. They fled down the baulks, but meeting more natives, they took refuge in a tiny temple, making a chevai-de-frise in the en nance with their bayonets. The mob caine on so'eagerly that some of them were impaled on the bayonets, and behind this screen tho defenders fought. Many of the attacking party were killed, and then they tried to smoke them out, but the wind drove most of the smoke away from tho doorway. Then gunpowder was brought to throw on the lire, and seeing their hopeless position, tho four survilirs charged over the burning Ambers of the fire and took to the Ganges onco more. Tho weight of the ammunition in their ponchos kept them low in the water till they were nearly out of rangeThey swam for three hours, the current helping their progress. At last the natives gave up tho chase, and they sat in the water up to their necks to rest. It turned, out that they had reached friendly territory, and Dingbijah Singh of Mooras slhow resisted all the demands that were biter r i de to him to give them up- For three days they had fought and fled without food and without rest, and the misery of their condition without arms or clothes, with shoulders flayed by the sun, awl feet burned by the embers of the lire, made their" endurance, a wonderful thing. And as there scorned little hope of any reward., the virtue of their host was also a fine thing to remember and to praise to-day. XANA'S MASSACRE". It js pleasant to recall that this faithful native whs duly rewarded. Ho saved lour survivors of that lighting party, and two of these presently died. The fate <;f tho survivors of the niain body is told from the evidence of witnesses. The men were all shot, and the women and children, after being kept in hideous surroundings, were massacred a- soon as Haveloek's relieving column came within twenty mile:-,, by the Nairn's oi'der. It is good to realise on this authority that these poor women .suffered nothing worse than death, and it is a source of unavailing regret, that tho Nana and his missionaries wore never captured. Tho story ended Jong ago- It, has passed into the nebulous past with a name that never fails to awaken horror, or to give inspiration with record of courage and devotion. It is recalled by the death of one of the two survivors, General .Mowbray Thomson, whose title shows that his brave service brought him deserved advancement. The book shows us what -laniier of men were defending tho Empire sixty years ago, and we realise that the same sort of men i.ye doing the same sort of work to-day in the great war against the Huns for the same sort of purpose.