The Thirteenth Hussars in the Great War

From a photograph by The Mendoza Galleries.

Lt. Col. J. J. Richardson. D.S.O.
Commanding 13^th Hussars from August 1915
to the present time.

The
Thirteenth Hussars in the
Great War
BY
THE RIGHT HON.
Sir H. MORTIMER DURAND
G.C.M.G., K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1921
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DEDICATION

To the Unfading Memory of the
OFFICERS, NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, AND MEN
OF THE REGIMENT WHO LAID DOWN THEIR
LIVES DURING THE GREAT WAR
1914-1918.

“I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.”

—(Ode to Duty, by the late Sir Cecil Spring Rice,
G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O.)

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Thanks are tendered to Messrs. Elliott & Fry, to Messrs. Gale & Polden, and others, for permission to copy some of the portraits reproduced in this work.

The Thirteenth Hussars in the Great War.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.

The main object of this book is to give an account of the services rendered by the Thirteenth Hussars during the last ten years, especially in the war which has just come to an end.

The earlier history of the Regiment has already been written, and very fully written. On this subject the standard authority must always be Barrett’s valuable work, which takes up the story from the beginning and carries it on to 1910, a period of nearly two hundred years. In order that readers of the present narrative may start with a general knowledge of the Regiment and its past, a chapter relating to this period has been introduced. As will be seen, it touches upon most of the wars waged by Great Britain since the days of Marlborough. But it is a mere summary, chiefly drawn from Barrett, and contains little new matter.

In ordinary circumstances this summary would open the book, but any account of the part played by a British Cavalry regiment in the late war must of necessity have some bearing upon the larger question of the part likely to be played by the mounted arm in any wars of the future; and just now this question is of special interest, for it has been freely asserted that recent changes in military conditions, notably the vast increase in the size of armies and the development of the aeroplane, have made Cavalry an obsolete and useless arm; and it is important for us to know whether they have done so, or are likely to do so. Therefore it has been thought desirable to give at the beginning a brief review of the history of Cavalry before this war, and at the close a few remarks upon the lessons of the war with regard to the value of the arm under present conditions.

Perhaps the services of the Thirteenth Hussars will not lose in interest if considered to some exten/spat from this point of view.

CHAPTER II.
CAVALRY BEFORE THE GREAT WAR.

For thousands of years the horse has been the companion of man in war.

It is significant that when Job gives us his wonderful description of the strong things of earth and sea and air, he speaks of the horse in this connection, as rejoicing in the sound of the trumpet, and smelling the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. “He goeth out to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not dismayed; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the flashing spear and the javelin. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage.” And in many passages of the Bible, in poetry and in narrative, we have mention of the chariot and the horseman.

Representations of them are to be found in the carvings and tablets of long-vanished dynasties and nations. To take a single instance, they are shown in Assyrian carvings dating nearly a thousand years before Christ, which can be seen now in the British Museum.

Apparently the chariot came into the field earlier than the horseman usually so called, and the first use of the horse in war was to take up to the front in chariots warriors who got down to fight on foot, as the Greek chiefs did in the siege of Troy. But ere long Scythians or other nomads learned to mount the horse himself, and then began that close conjunction and sympathy between man and horse which made the two almost one creature, the Centaur of the fable.

The subject has been touched by many writers. There is perhaps no need to consider here the uses and gradual disappearance of the war-chariot. For present purposes it is sufficient to note that long before the historical age the armed hosts of the great Eastern Empires were composed in part of mounted men, who marched, and often fought, on horseback. The chariots and the people attached to them may have been the first “Cavalry”; but the word as used in this book refers to mounted men only—riders,—and riders who did some part at least of their fighting from the backs of horses.

If the use of mounted men in war began in the East, to which Western nations owe so much, including even their religion, it soon extended to Europe. In the first conflict between East and West on a large scale of which we have any real knowledge, nearly five hundred years before Christ, the Persian invaders of Greece found that the Greeks had little Cavalry to oppose to the thousands of horsemen whom they brought with them. The men of Athens and Sparta fought on foot at Marathon and Thermopylæ. Even at Mount Cithæron, where Masistius in his golden cuirass charged and died, the Greek army was an army of footmen. Nevertheless there were some horsemen in Greece even then, especially on the plains of Thessaly; and the frieze of the Parthenon, of not much later date, shows helmeted Greek soldiers riding spirited horses. The horses are small, apparently not more than thirteen or at most fourteen hands, and are ridden barebacked, but they are evidently war horses. Then we have Xenophon’s well-known treatise on Cavalry, a thoroughly practical work, which must have been written in the first half of the next century; and after that the organisation of the Greek Cavalry is fairly well known.

It was Alexander the Great who first showed what horsemen could do in war if properly trained and led. Until his time Cavalry seem to have fought mostly in loose swarms, rather as skirmishers and bowmen than as solid squadrons using the weight of the horse itself to overthrow and destroy bodies of footmen. He saw the value of “shock tactics,” and taught his Cavalry to use them, so that when he invaded Persia in 334 B.C. the famous horsemen of Persia went down again and again before his fiery onsets. They had themselves, according to Herodotus, some notion of charging in squadron on the battlefield, but they had never seen Cavalry used in mass, and neither they nor the Persian foot could stand against it.

In the impetuous rapidity of all his movements, especially perhaps in the closeness and vigour of his pursuits, Alexander was in fact a model leader of horse, and his conquests were largely due to his Cavalry, which he not only wielded with dash and power against the Cavalry of the enemy, but kept thoroughly in hand even after a successful charge, and threw into the scale wherever they might be most required to help his foot soldiers.

Ever since those days, for more than twenty centuries, the history of war on land has been the history of a struggle for pre-eminence between horsemen and footmen. The rivalry has been complicated by the invention of Artillery, and of late years by the development of fighting in the air; but it has gone on unceasingly, and can hardly be said to have come to an end even now. In the course of it there has often been a tendency to lose sight of the fact that combined effort for one purpose by all arms, and not rivalry between them, is the secret of success in war. But the long dispute and its vicissitudes form an interesting study.

By the Romans the effective use of Cavalry was for a long time not well understood. Though they had their “Equites” from early days, they got to rely more and more for serious fighting upon their wonderful legions, and it was not until the Punic Wars that they learned their lesson. Hannibal, like Alexander, was a born leader of horse, and when a hundred years after Alexander’s death he invaded Italy by way of the Alps, he at once taught Western Europe what Alexander had taught the Greeks and Persians, that in the existing condition of military armament, Cavalry well trained and boldly used in masses could do great things on the battlefield. The successive victories which he gained in Italy, with very inferior numbers, over the proud and confident troops of Rome, were due in large measure to his skilful use of his horsemen. At Cannæ, for example, his wild Numidian light horse, riding without saddle or reins, and his heavier squadrons from Spain and the North, began by driving off the weak Roman Cavalry opposed to them, and then, wheeling inwards upon the rear of the advancing legions, enclosed them in a circle of steel from which there was no escape. Fifty thousand of them are said to have fallen, and for a time Rome seemed to be, perhaps really was, at his mercy. Every one knows the story of his long struggle against hopeless odds, and of his final defeat. When at last he was conquered the superiority in horsemen had passed to the Romans, and he was overwhelmed and crushed by his own methods. He had taught his enemies to fight.[1]

As time went on they forgot in a measure the lesson they had learnt from him, and they suffered some heavy reverses in consequence—for example, in their wars with the Parthians which stopped their expansion eastward; but happily such enemies were rare, and gradually the legions won for Rome the empire of the Western world. It lasted as long as the spirit and discipline of their incomparable Infantry remained unimpaired.

In the closing centuries of Imperial Rome the bulk of her enemies marched against her on horseback, and her own armies came to be composed more and more of Cavalry. Her last great battle was against Attila the Hun, whose people lived on their horses. It was a victory; but it was a Cavalry victory, and won by the help of the Goths. Her Infantry had long since failed her, and the Imperial City had been herself in the hands of the Barbarians. Her fall had been due to the woeful corruption and degeneration of the legions, not to any inherent superiority of the horseman over the footman; but the fact remains that at this time Cavalry was everywhere regarded as the more important arm of the two.

There followed a long period during which the predominance of the horseman grew more and more undisputed. With the collapse of Rome scientific warfare on a large scale became a lost art, and in the disorderly welter of the Dark Ages the fighting power of the footman, which depends so much upon organisation and discipline, sank lower and lower. To deal it a final blow came, a thousand years or so after Christ, the institution of Chivalry, which to a considerable extent undermined national feeling and exalted in its place the individual prowess of the Knight. Having its origin in a praiseworthy attempt to set up a higher standard of right and wrong, to resist cruelty and injustice, to honour woman as she should be honoured, and to make courage and courtesy the aim of men, it did much good, and has left to succeeding ages some noble aspirations and examples. Even now there is surely no better thing one can say of a man than that he is chivalrous—chevaleresque—like a knight of old. The horseman had given his name to a new social order and a splendid ideal. In practice Chivalry was not always what it should have been, but the glamour of it lies upon all our poetry and literature. Even the free-lance or the moss-trooper, unprincipled ruffian as he often was, remains to our eyes a picturesque figure. There is still a gleam on his helmet and spear that time cannot take away. The war-horse and his rider had reached in those days the climax of their power and reputation.

Then, very gradually, came a change in the opposite direction. The knights and their retainers had been practically the only fighting men who counted, and were accustomed to ride down with ease and contempt any footmen who ventured to stand against them. Bows and arrows and axes and knives seemed of little avail against the spearman with his almost impenetrable armour and his thundering steed. As Colonel Maude puts it, “the knight in full armour had borne about the same relation to the infantry as an ironclad nowadays bears to a fleet of Chinese junks.” But little by little it began to be recognised, first it is said in the Crusades, when the knights had to take or defend fortresses and otherwise fight on foot, that there were operations in war for which the heavily armoured horseman was not well fitted. Bodies of footmen began to be raised again for such purposes, and even to be brought into the open field as archers or cross-bowmen for use in broken ground. They often suffered horribly, but now and then they gained some successes, and as time went on they developed greater skill and confidence. Eventually, at Crécy and Poictiers and Agincourt, the English archers, with their cloth-yard shafts and their bristling defence of pointed stakes, won astonishing victories over the Chivalry of France, and proved to Europe that the horseman was no longer invincible on the battlefield. The lesson had very nearly been taught by the English three hundred years earlier, on the field of Hastings; but the time had not then come. Lured from their stockades, the footmen had been cut to pieces, and the French Cavalry had conquered England. At Crécy the English footmen turned the tables. And elsewhere, about the same period, the Swiss Infantry won almost equal honour.

The Cavalry of Europe nevertheless fought hard for their old pre-eminence, and it was long before they could be brought to see that they would never again be the undisputed masters in battle. But it was a lesson they had to learn. As time went on they found their charges repelled by serried squares of pikemen, from which came showers of arrows and cross-bolts; and later the invention of firearms weighted the scale still further against them. The only offensive weapons of the horsemen were the weight of their horses and the lance or sword; and if the horses failed to break the rows of eighteen-foot pikes, the arme blanche could do nothing. At last, after many attempts by the Cavalry to meet these new conditions, by using firearms themselves and other devices, it came to be generally recognised that against confident and steady infantry armed with the pike, deliberate frontal assault by horsemen was practically hopeless, and that for the future Cavalry must depend to some extent upon surprise and stratagem to give them victory. The defence had in some measure triumphed over the attack, and the essentially offensive arm had lost its pride of place.

This is not to say that for the future Cavalry was to be useless on the battlefield—far from it. The range of the unwieldy arquebus, or of the smooth-bore musket which followed it, was not so great as to keep Cavalry out of striking distance; and their speed, if they were led with decision and dash, would yet give them many opportunities of riding down the footmen. They could no longer do so whenever they pleased, but they were still a formidable part of the fighting line.

This was shown very clearly in our own Civil War. The armies of both King and Parliament were largely composed of horsemen, and in fight after fight it was they who were most conspicuous. Finally, the emergence of a great leader of Cavalry turned the scale in favour of the Roundheads. Cromwell’s Ironsides, thoroughly trained, and used as in old days the Cavalry of Alexander and Hannibal had been used, not only with dash but with coolness and self-control, proved too strong for the Royalists, cavaliers though they were. Unlike Prince Rupert, Cromwell kept his horsemen firmly in hand, throwing them into the fight wherever they were most required, and the result was to make him master of England.

On the Continent too Cavalry was still largely used in battle. The Turkish horsemen were numerous and formidable. Before our civil conflicts, in the Thirty Years’ War, Gustavus Adolphus had wielded Cavalry with much effect, and while Cromwell was fighting in England the great Condé had sprung into fame by the achievement of his horsemen at Rocroy. Under him and other commanders the French Cavalry gained an enduring reputation, and the same may be said for the Germans under Pappenheim and Montecuculi. The Infantry was now perhaps the leading arm in battle, and it was growing stronger as its firearm improved, while the rise of a more or less effective Artillery was adding to the difficulties of the Cavalry attack; but at the close of the seventeenth century the horseman was still a power in the field.

Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century this state of things continued. In Marlborough’s wars Cavalry was used in large numbers, and with great effect. At Blenheim, and other notable fights, his horsemen practically decided the issue between him and the French Marshals. How important the arm was considered may be judged from the fact that at Ramilies the forces on both sides were little stronger in foot than in horse. Between them the opposing armies numbered only 75,000 Infantry to 64,000 Cavalry.

About the same time Charles XII. of Sweden was also using Cavalry in large numbers; and when, under Peter the Great, Russia began to make her mark among the military powers of the world, not the least formidable part of her army was the Cavalry, which, including the afterwards famous Cossacks, amounted at one time to more than 80,000 men.

Then came the crowning period for Cavalry in modern war. In spite of their recognised place on the battlefield, and their many successes, the horsemen of the European armies had not until the middle of the eighteenth century attained to a full comprehension of their possible influence. Awed to some extent by the reputation which the Infantry had gained at their expense in the course of the last three centuries, the Cavalry had become a less swift and dashing arm. They had learnt to rely in large measure upon their fire, and even to fight dismounted as dragoons. “In fact,” according to their historian Denison, “the cavalry of all European States had degenerated into unwieldy masses of horsemen, who, unable to move at speed, charged at a slow trot and fought only with pistol and carbine.” Even so they were more mobile than Infantry, and had great achievements to their credit; but they had failed to see that a recent change in armaments had thrown the game into their hands. The Infantry, growing over-confident, had discarded the long pike for the bayonet—a very poor substitute—and the Cavalry had once more a chance of riding down their enemy in fair fight by the speed and weight of their horses. Their power was now to be taught them by a keen-sighted soldier, Frederick the Great of Prussia.

When he came to the throne in 1740, and began the career of unscrupulous aggression which was to make Prussia one of the leading nations of Europe, he soon saw that his Cavalry was not all it should have been. “They were,” says Denison, “large men mounted upon powerful horses, and carefully trained to fire in line both on foot and on horseback,” but they were quite incapable of rapid movement, and never attacked Infantry by the ancient method. “His first change was to prohibit absolutely the use of firearms mounted, and to rely upon the charge at full speed, sword in hand.” Marlborough had shown the advantage of using great bodies of Cavalry in mass, and Marshal Saxe had advocated their being taught to move at speed for a mile or more in good order. Frederick now took over both ideas, and by careful and incessant training evolved a Cavalry which was capable of manœuvring in thousands together at full pace, even over rough ground, without disorder or loss of control. Such a force, led by men like Seidlitz and Ziethen, proved to be almost irresistible. Against Austrians and Russians and Frenchmen alike, it had astonishing success. “Out of twenty-two great battles fought by Frederick, his Cavalry won at least fifteen of them. Cavalry at this time reached its zenith.”

Frederick’s system was copied by all the great military nations of Europe, and at the close of the eighteenth century the influence of horsemen in the field was greater than it had ever been since the battle of Crécy.

Then came Napoleon, and though the Cavalry had not such a pre-eminent place in his armies as in those of Frederick the Great, for it was not as efficient, yet it was used in vast numbers and at times with tremendous effect. Murat was perhaps the most conspicuous figure among all Napoleon’s Marshals, and other Cavalry leaders made great names for themselves. At Marengo, at Austerlitz, and in many more of Napoleon’s famous battles, the French horsemen won undying renown; and if at last his Cuirassiers had to recoil before the fire of the British squares at Waterloo, every one knows with what magnificent courage and devotion they strove again and again to cut their way to victory.

Among Napoleon’s enemies too, Prussian and Austrian, Russian and British, the Cavalry did much fine work throughout; and it is not perhaps too much to say that the Russian horsemen, especially the Cossacks, by destroying his famous squadrons in the great retreat, were among the most notable causes of his downfall. This much is certain, that when he fell the Cavalry of Europe held a high place in the battlefield. Infantry had become the backbone of most armies, and the power of Artillery had vastly increased, but Cavalry was still a powerful and necessary arm.

Then came another marked change in the conditions of war. A generation after the Conqueror’s death the rifle took the place of the smooth-bore musket in the hands of the Infantry, and the same principle was applied to cannon. The result was that the power of firearms was greatly increased in range and accuracy, and that the value of Cavalry in battle was proportionately lowered. Soon afterwards the introduction of breech-loading gave the rifled weapons a vastly greater rapidity of fire, which also told heavily against the mounted arm. It was one thing for Cavalry to remain out of range, a few hundred yards away, and then to charge against the slow and inaccurate fire of a smooth-bore musket. It was a very different thing for them to advance from a much greater distance, against a rifle which not only carried three times as far as the musket, but shot straight, and could be loaded in a quarter of the time. From the middle of the nineteenth century it began to be held, at all events in France and England, that the chance of a successful attack by Cavalry armed only with the sword or lance upon Infantry in the battlefield, except under very unusual circumstances, was practically at an end. It seemed a fatal blow to the system of Frederick, and to the hope of the horseman in his long rivalry with the foot soldier.

That conclusion was not shaken by the wars waged by European nations during the remainder of the century. Some successes were gained by Cavalry in various parts of the world outside Europe. For example, the British Cavalry did fine work against the Sikhs in 1846 and 1849; a Persian square was broken and destroyed by a charge of British Indian Cavalry in 1856; and British Cavalry were very useful in the Mutiny soon afterwards, and against the Chinese; but neither in the Crimea, nor in the war between France and Austria in 1859, nor in the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866, nor in the Franco-German War of 1870, nor in the Russian War against Turkey a few years later, could the Cavalry claim to have struck such blows in battle as they had been used to strike in the days of Napoleon. Colonel Henderson in that fascinating book, ‘The Science of War,’ writing of the “shock tactics” lately prevailing, reviews the achievements of Cavalry under that system. “Such is the record,” he says: “one great tactical success gained at Custozza; a retreating army saved from annihilation at Königgratz; and five minor successes, which may or may not have influenced the ultimate issue—not one single instance of an effective and sustained pursuit; not one single instance, except Custozza, and there the Infantry was armed with muzzle-loaders, of a charge decisive of the battle; not one single instance of Infantry being scattered and cut down in panic-flight; not one single instance of a force larger than a brigade intervening at a critical moment. And how many failures! How often were the Cavalry dashed vainly in reckless gallantry against the hail of a thin line of rifles! How often were great masses held back inactive, without drawing a sabre or firing a shot, while the battle was decided by the infantry and the guns!”

Truly, the day of Cavalry seemed to be over, and this was the opinion frequently expressed at the end of the century. Their day was not over.

It will probably have been noticed that so far we have been dealing only or mainly with the question of Cavalry on the battlefield. But their work lies not only on the battlefield—indeed, it may be doubted whether their work there, however great, has not always been of less value than the services they have been able to render in other ways.

The operations of war are generally treated by military writers as consisting of two distinct branches—those leading up to battle, and those of battle itself. The former are of great variety and scope, involving all the preparations and manœuvres which will result in bringing upon the battlefield an army with “every possible advantage of numbers, ground, supplies, and moral” over the army of the enemy. These operations are the province of “strategy.” The operations of the battle itself, when the opposed armies have actually come into touch, are the province of “tactics.” The latter are the more picturesque, and naturally appeal to the fighting spirit of the soldier; but the former are often, if not usually, of the greater importance to the issue of a war. “Strategy,” says Henderson, “is at least one half, and the more important half, of the art of war”; and he says elsewhere: “An army may even be almost uniformly victorious in battle, and yet ultimately be compelled to yield.”

Now it may safely be asserted that with regard to strategical operations there has never been any serious question as to the great value of Cavalry in any war confined to the land. To quote Colonel Denison, in “their fitness for scouting, reconnoitring, raiding, &c., Cavalry have always been the foremost arm and without rival. In covering an advance, in pursuing a retreating foe, their capacity has always been unequalled.” Henderson, himself an Infantry officer, states that “the Cavalry is par excellence the strategical arm,” that “it depends on the Cavalry, and on the Cavalry alone, whether the Commander of an army marches blindfold through the ‘fog of war,’ or whether it is the opposing General who is reduced to that disastrous plight.” And Von Bernhardi, discussing the future of Cavalry, says, “It is in the strategical handling of the Cavalry that by far the greatest possibilities lie.” He admits that on the battlefield and in retreat their rôle can only be a subordinate one. “But for reconnaissance and screening, for operations against the enemy’s communications, for the pursuit of a beaten enemy, and all similar operations of warfare, the Cavalry is, and remains, the principal arm.” These passages were written before the aeroplane was used in war, but they show clearly that until then—that is, throughout the nineteenth century—Cavalry was still as necessary as ever for the proper working of a campaign.

And further, it may be pointed out that even with regard to the battlefield, horsemen armed and trained in a different way might conceivably be of greater use than horsemen depending solely or mainly upon shock and the arme blanche.

This was proved, though the majority of Continental soldiers would never open their eyes to the fact, by the fighting in the American Civil War. Henderson, with clearer vision, writes of this great conflict: “So brilliant were the achievements of the Cavalry, Federal and Confederate, that in the minds of military students they have tended in a certain measure to obscure the work of the other arms.” No doubt many of these achievements were rather of a strategical than a tactical nature, but many were not. The American Cavalry was from first to last constantly used for actual fighting, and in numberless instances its value as a battle arm was amply demonstrated. It would be impossible to enumerate them here, but Henderson expressly declares, for example, that “there is no finer instance ... of effective intervention (by Cavalry) on the field of battle than Sheridan’s handling of his divisions, an incident most unaccountably overlooked by European tacticians, when Early’s army was broken into fragments, principally by the vigour of the Cavalry, in the valley of the Shenandoah.” The fact was that, adapting themselves to the new conditions brought about by rifled firearms, the Americans had created a mounted service which could fight both on foot and on horseback, with the rifle or the sword or the pistol; “they used fire and l’arme blanche in the closest and most effective combination, against both Cavalry and Infantry.” Assuredly Cavalry was not yet a negligible arm in battle.

The closing years of the century saw the beginning of another war in which the horse and his rider were again very prominent. The Boers, who made so gallant and protracted a fight against the vast resources of England, were all mounted men, and it was not until the British forces opposed to them also consisted in a large measure of mounted men that their resistance was broken down. They differed in many respects from the American Cavalry. The latter were trained to fight on foot if necessary, but preferred fighting on horseback whenever they could, though they fought with the pistol rather than the sword. The Boers fought mainly, almost entirely, on foot. Their arms and training were inconsistent with fighting from the saddle. They were in fact rather mobile riflemen than anything else. Nevertheless the fact remains that they were mounted men, and that a large part of their value lay in their being so. For many of the essential duties of Cavalry, for scouting and collecting information, for raids on their enemy’s communications, for the capture of his trains and guns, for covering a retirement, they were exceptionally well fitted. Henderson, writing of the duties of Cavalry, says: “But most important perhaps of all its functions are the manœuvres which so threaten the enemy’s line of retreat that he is compelled to evacuate his position, and those which cut off his last avenue of escape. A Cavalry skilfully handled, as at Appomattox or Paardeberg, may bring about the crowning triumph of grand tactics—viz., the hemming in of a force so closely that it has either to attack at a disadvantage or surrender.” The example of Paardeberg is one in which the triumph was due to the British Cavalry, but the Boers had some triumphs of the same kind, for instance at Nicholson’s Nek, and they were very near to gaining one which might have shaken the Empire. If Ladysmith had fallen, with its garrison of 12,000 men, as at one time seemed probable, the disaster would undoubtedly have been due in the main to the mobility of the Boers, whose rapid movements on horseback enabled them not only to drive in and besiege White’s troops, but afterwards to hold up for months, with inferior numbers, Buller’s relieving force, while still maintaining their grip on the starving garrison. In fact it may be said that even on the actual field of battle they fought partly as Cavalry—Von Bernhardi goes so far as to say “exclusively as Cavalry,”—for though they almost invariably dismounted to use their rifles, yet it was by the speed of their horses that they were able to extend their flanks, and, galloping out to any threatened point, form a fresh front against any turning movement. Our slow-moving Infantry had no chance of getting round and enveloping them, but was forced time after time to undertake desperate frontal attacks upon the lines, often more or less entrenched, which their rapidity of manœuvre had made it possible for them to take up. Altogether, the fighting value of the 50,000 Burghers with whom Paul Kruger set out to defy Great Britain, was doubled or trebled by the fact that they were mounted men. It made them in their own country, and perhaps would have made them anywhere, a formidable fighting force.

This was not clearly understood on the Continent of Europe, but it was understood in England. It had a great effect upon the views of our leading soldiers with regard to the future of Cavalry, and the subsequent Russo-Japanese War did not in any way contradict the lessons drawn from the campaigns in America and South Africa.

To sum up this chapter, it may be said with confidence that when the Great War broke out the value of Cavalry, both as a strategical arm and on the field of battle, had been demonstrated by the experience of three thousand years. During that time it had fluctuated, especially with regard to the battlefield, but it had always been great. For some centuries, especially since the development of efficient firearms, the tendency had been for the Infantry to oust the horsemen from their pride of place in the actual shock of armies, and by the end of the nineteenth century the supremacy of the Infantry in this respect had been generally acknowledged. But even so it had not been shown that Cavalry, properly armed and trained, were incapable of joining with effect in the decision of battles, and the American and South African Wars had given reason to believe that it certainly could do so. Its great strategical value was not disputed. Clearly, therefore, Cavalry was still a necessary and important part of any efficient army—one of the most important. Whether for strategical duties or for full victory in battle, the other arms could not do without the horsemen.

No doubt the value of Cavalry might be altered in the future, as it had been in the past, by new developments in the art of war, but such was the position at that time.

We may now turn to the Thirteenth Hussars.

CHAPTER III.
EARLIER HISTORY OF THE REGIMENT.

Before the war of 1914 the Regiment now known as the Thirteenth Hussars had, like most Regiments of the British Army, served in various parts of the world. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it had borne a part in nine wars of one kind or another, and had made acquaintance not only with the Continent of Europe, but with Asia, America, and Africa.

The Regiment was raised in the year 1715. The Duke of Marlborough was then still living, but his long series of victories had been brought to a close by the Treaty of Utrecht two years before, and thirty thousand of the veterans who had won them for him had been ruthlessly disbanded.

After the accession of George I., in 1714, it was seen that this step had been a hasty and dangerous one, for the Jacobite party was strong, and the reduction of the small British Army had given them fresh hopes. It soon became evident that the exiled Stuarts meant to take advantage of their opportunity, and the British Government was obliged to raise fresh troops in place of those so recently thrown away. Among the new Regiments were to be several of Dragoons, and in July 1715 the raising of one of these was entrusted to Brigadier Richard Munden, an officer on half-pay who had served with some distinction under Marlborough.

It appears that Munden had no difficulty in finding recruits, for within three months the Regiment had been raised, and was assembled at Northampton. There it received orders to march to Leeds, and soon afterwards Brigadier Munden was informed that his Regiment, with others, was to be under the orders of Major-General Wills, whom His Majesty had appointed “to command several of his forces on an expedition.”

At this time a Dragoon Regiment in the British Army consisted of 6 troops, and its strength was between 200 and 300, including 19 “Commission” officers. It was not a Regiment of “Horse,” though it was mounted, and regarded as Cavalry. The men were armed with the same firearm as the Infantry, or practically the same, and were expected to fight on foot as well as on horseback. This, it will be remembered, was the period when European Cavalry depended largely on their fire, and had not been trained to the system of Frederick the Great, the charge at speed with the arme blanche. The officers of Munden’s Dragoons, including Munden himself, had almost all served in Regiments of Foot.

The Regiment was “officially declared to be a disciplined force belonging to the regular army on 31st October 1715.” It had not to wait long before seeing service, for early in November General Wills learned that the Jacobite “rebels” were over the Scottish border, and marching on Lancaster. He at once drew together his forces at Manchester, and marched thence to Wigan. On the 12th November Munden’s Dragoons were in presence of their first enemy, who had advanced as far as Preston, and was in occupation of the town.

It is significant that when General Wills left Wigan with his force to attack the rebels, the order of march was as follows: The advance-guard consisted of fifty musketeers and fifty dismounted dragoons. After the advance-guard came a Regiment of Foot, then three Brigades of Cavalry consisting of one Regiment of “Horse” and five of Dragoons. Evidently Cavalry was not regarded as the eyes of an army.

The action which followed was at first indecisive. The enemy, superior in numbers, and aided by some guns and barricades, repulsed one or two attacks made by Infantry and dismounted Dragoons. But on the following day General Carpenter having come up with three more Regiments of Dragoons, the rebels gave in and surrendered. Their assailants had lost in all one hundred and thirty killed and wounded, so the fighting had not been very severe. Nevertheless Preston was an affair of some importance, for with the indecisive battle of Sheriffmuir, fought the same day by other troops, it sufficed to put an end to the First Jacobite Rebellion and to establish the House of Hanover on the British throne. Munden’s Dragoons had only four wounded during the fight, but they seem to have behaved well. Munden himself is said to have led a storming party, and to have been thanked for his gallant conduct. After the fight, the Regiment seems to have been employed in escorting to jail the unfortunate prisoners, whose fate was a sad one.

It may be noted that among the troops who served at Preston was Dormer’s Regiment of Dragoons, afterwards the Fourteenth Hussars. Thus began a comradeship between the two Regiments which was afterwards very close.

Then followed for Munden’s Dragoons, who about this time became known as the Thirteenth Dragoons, a long period of peace service. In 1718 there was again a reduction of the Army, and some Regiments having been disbanded in Ireland, the Thirteenth were sent over to take the place of one of them. The Irish military establishment was then separate from the British. The pay of the troops was somewhat less, and their circumstances in other respects were very unsatisfactory. It was forbidden to enlist any native of the country, so that men were hard to get, and the barrack accommodation was so scanty that the troops were scattered about in small detachments, to the woeful detriment of their discipline and efficiency. It apparently became the custom for officers to overstay their leave, or absent themselves without leave, and everything got slack in proportion. It was possibly not the fault of the Regiments that their arms were in most cases insufficient and bad; but in every way their condition was deplorable. The Thirteenth Dragoons seem to have suffered like the rest, and probably when their Colonel, Munden, was transferred to another Regiment in 1722, they were not in a very efficient condition.

Munden was one of the officers who followed the body of the great Duke of Marlborough when he was borne to his grave in Westminster Abbey. He died himself, a Major-General, three years later, and Colonel William Stanhope became Colonel of the Thirteenth. This officer, afterwards the Earl of Harrington, was appointed a Secretary of State in 1730.

The stay of the Regiment in Ireland came to an end in 1742, when it was transferred to Great Britain, and in the following year the command of it was bestowed upon Lieut.-Colonel James Gardiner of the Inniskilling Dragoons, then serving in Germany. Thus when the Second Jacobite Rebellion took place, in 1745, the Thirteenth, under this well-known officer, was among the Regiments at the immediate disposal of the Government, and was fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to find itself engaged once more on active service.

When Bonnie Prince Charlie unfurled his standard at Glenfinnan, Sir John Cope, the British General commanding in Scotland, was very weak in the number and quality of his troops. He had no gunners to man his few guns, and the force at his disposal to meet the advancing rebel army, after providing some small garrisons, amounted to about twenty-five companies of foot and two Regiments of Dragoons. One of these two was the Thirteenth. Provisions and transport were very scarce.

It is a curious coincidence that the Regiment came to blows with its second enemy at another Preston, this time in Scotland. Close to it was the house of their Colonel, Gardiner. The Thirteenth had had some trying work during the preceding weeks, when Cope withdrew his small force from Inverness to Dunbar, abandoning Edinburgh to the rebels; and the Regiment was not in good condition, many men and horses being physically unfit for duty.

The result of the battle is well known. The enemy, chiefly Highlanders, attacked on the early morning of 18th September. Cope having no gunners, a Lieut.-Colonel Whiteford and an old Master Gunner of the name of Griffiths fired a few rounds from the guns and cohorns, “none of whose shells would burst,” and then the guns were rushed by the Highlanders. It was a fine chance for the Cavalry, as the rebels were in confusion, but the chance was not taken. To tell the simple truth, neither of the two Dragoon Regiments, Hamilton’s or Gardiner’s, which seem to have numbered six hundred men between them, could be induced to charge, and their only inclination was to gallop off the field. By the exertions of their officers and other gentlemen, about three-quarters of them were stopped, and brought into Berwick next day; but it must be admitted that their behaviour was anything but creditable, and the battle ended in the total defeat of the King’s force. This much is to be said in favour of the Regiments, that their officers fought gallantly. The ill-fated Gardiner, who was seriously ill, was wounded at the beginning of the engagement; and later, when his men refused to charge, he received several other wounds, from which he died. His Lieutenant-Colonel, Whitney, was also wounded in trying to rally the men. But the fight of “Prestonpans” was certainly what Brigadier Fowke called it, “an unhappy affair.”

After Gardiner’s death the command of the Thirteenth was given to Colonel Ligonier, a brave officer who had served under Marlborough, and in the following January it took part in another battle and another defeat at Falkirk Muir. The same two Regiments of Dragoons which had been engaged at Prestonpans, and another, Cobham’s, formed at Falkirk a Brigade of Cavalry under Ligonier’s orders. This affair was not so discreditable as the former. The Cavalry, very gallantly led by Ligonier, did charge the enemy, and it is said penetrated their first line. But they failed to break the second line, and the charge ended in a confused retreat. Lieut.-Colonel Whitney, wounded at Prestonpans, was killed, and the gallant Ligonier also paid for his courage with his life. Suffering from an attack of pleurisy, he insisted on getting out of bed to command his Brigade in the battle, which was fought in a storm of wind and rain. His exertions in rallying the Dragoons and covering the retreat during the following night were too much for him, and a week later he died.

The Thirteenth saw no further fighting. When the Duke of Cumberland broke the Highland clans at Culloden and put an end to the rebellion, the Regiment was not present. It had been left in Edinburgh to patrol the roads, and intercept any communications between the English and Scottish Jacobites. Its share in the campaign, therefore, had not been a very satisfactory one. Perhaps it was not to be blamed for the second defeat at Falkirk, but certainly it had not won much distinction on the battlefield.

All that can be said is that no troops are likely to do well in the great ordeal of war unless their discipline and general condition have been steadily maintained in peace. History abounds in such lessons. The Regiment was to do great things later under more favourable conditions, and win a fine name for itself as a fighting corps. Its time was not yet come.

In 1748 the Thirteenth was once more transferred to Ireland, and there it remained for a second score of years. A Dragoon Regiment at this time seems to have been very weak in numbers, considerably under two hundred all told, officers and men, with one hundred and fifty horses. The prohibition against Irishmen had apparently been withdrawn, and by 1767 the men were almost all Irish. But none were Roman Catholics, the enlistment of these being still absolutely forbidden. The men were fine, most of them from five foot nine to five foot eleven, and “tolerably well appointed.” The officers too were mostly Irish. The barrack accommodation was still very poor, and the Regiment was scattered in detachments as before. The arms were very bad at times.

About 1777 the Thirteenth were converted into Light Dragoons, and much smaller men were enlisted. The example of Frederick the Great was now being followed on the Continent, and Cavalry was being trained for greater speed and hand-to-hand fighting. The Infantry firearm of the Thirteenth gave place to a short carbine, and some changes were made in the uniform, the old three-cornered hat making way for a Cavalry helmet. Bayonets were still carried, but evidently there was some idea of making the Dragoon more of a horseman and less of a foot soldier.

Nevertheless the state of the British Cavalry at that time as to equipment and drill was very antiquated. “The military value of their training,” says Barrett, “was practically nil.” And, to add to their disadvantages, they were now cursed with the system of “proprietary Colonels.” How this system came about is not clear, but towards the end of the eighteenth century it was in full force. In Munden’s day the Colonel had been “the active officer in command, and always present, unless on leave, whether at home or in the field.” Sixty years later, when the old traditions of Marlborough’s time had been lost, the Regiment was really commanded by the Lieutenant-Colonel, while the Colonel had become an absentee, seeing the Regiment perhaps once or twice a year. Yet it was in a sense looked upon as his private property. “The system,” says Barrett, “was a bad one. To bad Colonels were due the crying abuses of the pay system as well as those of the clothing system—the systematic robbery of the soldier, the mean frauds by which an income was literally swindled out of Government or sweated off the backs of the men; and the abuse of the power of the lash was owing to the same cause.” In 1787 the Colonel of the Thirteenth, a member of Parliament, “lived mainly in London while the Regiment was in Ireland.” Arms were bad, desertions frequent, and the duties of the Regiment consisted chiefly of hunting down members of the various lawless societies in Ireland, Whiteboys and Peep-o’-Day Boys, and the like. In spite of all these heartbreaking drawbacks the regimental officers seem to have done something to make the men efficient, for at times the reports of inspecting Generals are good enough, though evidently the standard was not high; and in 1794, no doubt because of the French Revolution and the outbreak of war on the Continent, the strength had been increased to 446 men and 393 horses.

The Thirteenth, however, was not yet to be employed in the Continental war. It was now, after its two campaigns against the Jacobites, followed by fifty years of peace duty, to have its first taste of service abroad, but this was not to be in warfare against a civilised enemy.

In the island of Jamaica the “Maroons,” originally runaway negro slaves, had long been giving trouble, and it had now become urgently necessary to suppress them. They held a difficult mountain country, full of densely wooded glens, from which they had been wont for many years to raid the lowlands and plantations, plundering and murdering. After some partial settlements they had again risen, and had openly defied the white men to war. Their numbers were not large, perhaps 1200 all told, but as Great Britain was already fighting the French in the West Indies the complication was serious, and Lord Balcarres, the Governor, was assembling a considerable force to blockade the revolted highlands.

It is remarkable to find, considering the nature of the ground, that in addition to three Regiments of Infantry and some local militia, this force was to consist of five Dragoon Regiments, of which two were the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Light Dragoons.

The Thirteenth was brought over from Ireland to England in 1795, and a couple of troops sailed for Jamaica in advance, the remainder of the Regiment remaining in England until the following February, when, on the 9th of the month, the Headquarters sailed in the Concord, which formed part of a fleet numbering more than five hundred sail. In spite of all the circumstances of its peace service, the Regiment seems then to have been in a condition of discipline and efficiency very creditable to officers and men. Fortunate that this was so, for both were soon to be severely tested. A violent storm scattered the fleet three days after sailing, and in the Bay of Biscay the Concord took fire, some pitch used for fumigation having been upset by the rolling of the vessel, and blazed up. As the fire was immediately over nineteen casks of powder, the danger was great. It is pleasant to read how the ship’s company behaved in this sudden contingency. The Captain, who was writing in his cabin, ran on deck “with his pen across his mouth.” An officer was sent down to the hold to cover the powder barrels with wet blankets and mattresses. “Scores of men, with their mattresses held in front of them,” threw themselves on the flames and smothered them, while the officer below spread a sailcloth over the barrels and kept it wet under a shower of sparks from the deck above. Eventually, after really heroic exertions, the fire was brought under, and the ship escaped destruction. Soon afterwards she sprang a leak, and had to put back to Cove, but all damage was set to rights in a few days, and on the 26th February the fleet put to sea again. This time all went well, and on the 1st April the fleet was assembled in Barbadoes.

After a short stay there, the Thirteenth was sent on to San Domingo, in which island it remained for some months, helping to put down a rising of brigands. While doing this work the Regiment, which till then had been very healthy, was attacked by the scourge of the West Indies—yellow fever. Much has been written about the awful ravages of the disease in those days. It is only necessary to say here that the Thirteenth suffered as others did. Men died daily, and at last the Regiment was so reduced that it had to apply to the Fifty-sixth Foot for help to bury its dead. How many were left alive does not appear, but by the end of the year the remains of the Regiment had arrived in Jamaica.

It is not easy to follow in detail the course of the campaign against the Maroons; but it seems that though only two troops of the Thirteenth were employed in it, the command of the whole expedition was eventually given to Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. George Walpole of this Regiment, and that after some hard jungle fighting and mutual ambuscades the Maroons surrendered to him, on a promise that they should not be deported. The Jamaica Government broke this engagement, and voted Walpole a sword of honour, which in the circumstances was naturally declined.

The Regiment remained in the West Indies until August 1798, when, after transferring some 95 men to the Jamaica Dragoons, all that were left, 52 in number, chiefly non-commissioned officers, sailed under the command of a Lieutenant for England. Of these 52, many were found on arrival to be totally unfit for service, and were invalided. Most of those not immediately invalided were “completely exhausted and worn out,” and were gradually discharged. The Regiment had in fact ceased to exist. During the two years and six months of its absence, though it had lost only one man killed in action, it had left behind it, dead of disease, 19 officers, 7 quartermasters, 2 volunteers, and 287 non-commissioned officers and men. Such were the conditions of service at that time in the West Indies.

But the war with France was now in full course, and Cavalry was necessary, so the Commander-in-Chief gave orders that the Thirteenth be augmented to a strength of 641 men with the same number of horses. As practically nothing remained of the old Regiment but a few officers, this meant raising a new one. Nevertheless, by August 1799, the task had been accomplished, and two years later the strength had reached 902. The short-lived Peace of Amiens in 1802 caused it to be reduced again, after the custom of the times, by about one-half, but the reduction was as short-lived as the peace, and in 1805, when Napoleon had assembled his great army at Boulogne for the invasion of England, the Regiment stood at the highest strength it ever reached, 1064 men, and the same number of horses. From this time on until 1810 the Thirteenth was kept at home. It was then no longer an Irish Regiment, but a trace of its old connection remained in the fact that it now had as one of its squadron commanders Colonel Patrick Doherty, who had sailed with it for the West Indies in 1796, and that two of his sons were serving in his squadron.

So far the war record of the Thirteenth can hardly be said to have been fortunate. In the ninety-five years of their existence they had served with no special distinction in the two Jacobite rebellions, and in one campaign abroad, where their chief enemies had been climate and disease. But this long period of inglorious and yet trying service was now over. In the next five years, before their first century came to an end, they were to cross swords again and again with the finest soldiers in the world, to learn the lessons of war under the greatest of English commanders, and to win for themselves imperishable renown.

In February 1810 the Regiment was ordered to prepare 8 troops for immediate service abroad, and before the end of the month they were on board ship. They left behind 2 troops in depot at Chichester, and parted with their Commanding Officer, Colonel Bolton, who had done much to raise and shape the new Regiment after the West Indian campaign. He had just been promoted, and was succeeded by Colonel Head from the Twelfth Dragoons. The 8 troops for active service each numbered 85 men and 85 horses, or 680 men with officers. Before the end of March they had disembarked at Lisbon.

The Thirteenth were about to take part in the famous Peninsular War. Wellington had already given the French some rude shocks in this quarter, and was soon to establish his reputation as one of the first soldiers in Europe. He had clearly recognised the power of offence given to Great Britain by her Navy, which was now supreme, and he believed that by clinging on to a foothold in Portugal, he would in time be able to deal a heavy blow to the military strength of Napoleon, which must be strained by a protracted struggle at this distant point of the Empire. It was a fine conception, and the event proved that he had judged correctly. But at the moment his prospects seemed to be very doubtful, if not hopeless. Napoleon had large armies in Spain, fully 300,000 men, commanded by some of his most famous Marshals, while the British force in Portugal was not a tenth of that number, and badly organised. The Spaniards were evidently incapable of defending their country, or of giving any effective help in defending it; and Portugal was not strong enough, or united enough, to do much against such an enemy. Wellington himself was as yet a man of no great weight in Europe, a mere sepoy General, to use Napoleon’s words, who was regarded as fit only to fight Asiatics. He was thwarted and decried in England, where such successes as he had gained were minimised by party rancour. Some of his countrymen even wished to omit his name from the vote of thanks accorded to the troops under his command, and the force itself was full of complaints and discontent, chiefly on the part of the officers. It belonged to an Army which had been discredited by almost constant failure since the War of American Independence. Even in its own country it was not highly regarded. And if the British Infantry was now beginning, under Wellington’s command, to win some measure of the reputation it was soon to gain as the best in Europe, the British Cavalry was, both in numbers and training, greatly inferior to the magnificent squadrons of France. When the Thirteenth landed in Lisbon there seemed little likelihood of a brilliant future for them. Happily the British soldier is not greatly disturbed by the prestige of his enemies, and individually both men and horses were better than the French. Above all, our troops had now a leader whose indomitable spirit was proof against all discouragements.

The Thirteenth were soon in the thick of the fighting, but at first they seem to have been rather helpless. It is recorded that in July of that year, 1810, the Regiment for the first time found itself in bivouac, “and both the officers and men were perfectly ignorant what to do.... Nobody knew what was to be done for food, forage, &c. Provisions were served out to the men by the Commissary, but how to cook them was another matter.” They were soon taught how to find shelter and feed themselves, but this was the doubtful beginning of a campaign in which they were to oppose the war-seasoned troops of Napoleon. Nevertheless, within a few weeks of that date some of them had twice successfully encountered the enemy’s horsemen, a troop of the Thirteenth on the second occasion charging through and capturing more than fifty French Dragoons.

After this, during the summer, the Regiment suffered severely from sickness, which, however, did not prevent them from being present at the battle of Busaco on the 26th September 1810, when Masséna was met and severely checked in his famous invasion of Portugal. They were not actually engaged, but were observing the plain in the left rear of the force while the battle was fought. As every one knows, Masséna was eventually stopped by the lines of Torres Vedras, and had to retreat. During the autumn and winter the Thirteenth remained in the country not far from Lisbon, watching the French and learning their work in many a rough march.

For some time it is said French and English Dragoons lay on opposite sides of the Tagus, and the retreat being for the time at an end, the Thirteenth used to have frequent field-days on a plain by the river. The vedettes by mutual arrangement refrained from firing on each other, and the French officers used to come and look on, sometimes when the river was low exchanging conversation with their friendly enemies. It was in some ways a chivalrous warfare, in which, however, the unfortunate Portuguese suffered terribly from the wasting of the country and exhaustion of supplies.

Then, in the spring of 1811, the enemy retired to the northward and westward; and a force under Marshal Beresford was sent to intercept communications from the south. The Thirteenth formed part of this force, and while under Beresford’s orders it had the luck to be engaged in a brilliant affair which has since formed the subject of much controversy. The town of Campo Mayor had been taken by the French under Latour Maubourg, and was occupied by a force of 1200 Infantry and over 800 Cavalry, with some Horse Artillery and a battery train of sixteen heavy guns. On Beresford’s approach this force evacuated Campo Mayor and retreated on Badajos, ten miles away. The British Cavalry was sent in pursuit and overtook the enemy. The action that ensued is not altogether easy to understand; but the Thirteenth charged, and after some very gallant hand-to-hand fighting, broke the opposing French Cavalry, pursuing them up to the gates of Badajos, capturing the whole siege train, with great quantities of waggons and stores, and leaving the rest of the garrison to be followed up and secured by Beresford’s heavy Cavalry and guns. The Thirteenth were naturally pleased and proud at their success against a very superior enemy; but, by a mistake which was not fully explained at the time, the advance was stopped, and the Thirteenth given up for lost. They rejoined the force in safety; but Beresford, misled by false information, believed they had shown want of discipline after the charge, and reported in that sense. Wellington, at a distance, and as Fortescue says, “always justly sensitive over the ungovernable ardour of his Cavalry,” accepted Beresford’s view, and referred to the Thirteenth in stinging words. “Their conduct,” he wrote, “was that of a rabble, galloping as fast as their horses could carry them over a plain after an enemy to which they could do no mischief after they were broken.... If the Thirteenth Dragoons are again guilty of this conduct, I shall take their horses from them, and send the officers and men to do duty at Lisbon.” This threat was not communicated to the Regiment, Beresford having meanwhile learnt something of the truth; but the Thirteenth were nevertheless severely censured for impetuosity and want of discipline. This censure, as may be supposed, they deeply resented. Napier, in his ‘History of the Peninsular War,’ says that “the unsparing admiration of the whole army consoled them.” No doubt to some extent it did, but not entirely.

Fortescue, after a detailed examination of the incident, sums it up as follows: “Of the performance of the Thirteenth, who did not exceed 200 men, in defeating twice or thrice their numbers single-handed, it is difficult to speak too highly. Indeed, I know of nothing finer in the history of the British Cavalry.”... “But more important than all was the admission of the French that they could not stand before the British Cavalry.” Yet, owing to the mistakes of their superiors, the Thirteenth never received for their feat the honour they deserved, or indeed, officially, anything but blame. It was a signal instance of the ill-fortune which sometimes attends upon the noblest conduct.

Whatever may be said of this, the Thirteenth had, at all events, the satisfaction of knowing that they had been thoroughly successful. They were not always to be so, for on the 5th April, less than a fortnight later, a troop of the regiment was surprised by French Cavalry during the night. They were not on outpost duty, having been regularly relieved, and they supposed that their front had been secured by the relieving squadron, a body of Portuguese Cavalry under British officers. The men of the Thirteenth had eaten nothing for two days, and were faint for want of food. After getting a meal, they lay down by their horses, and were sleeping peacefully when the French, who were retiring and came upon them by chance, dashed suddenly among them with the sabre. Two officers and twenty men escaped in the darkness, but the other two officers with practically all the rest of the men were taken prisoners. It is characteristic of warfare in those days that among them was the wife of one of the troopers.

Then there was another turn of the wheel. Ten days after the surprise it was reported that a body of French Cavalry was at Los Santos, levying contributions. The British Cavalry advanced to attack them, and Marshal Beresford himself rode with the Thirteenth, whom he had so severely censured less than a month before. A sharp fight ensued, ending in the rout of the enemy, who were pursued for about nine miles and lost some hundreds of prisoners. The loss of the Thirteenth was very small.

The next month saw the bloody battle of Albuera, which forms the subject of one of Napier’s most famous chapters. During the day the Thirteenth were employed in holding off the enemy’s Cavalry. They were exposed to severe fire from Infantry and guns, but were successful in carrying out their duty without heavy loss.

There was much hard work for the Thirteenth during the remainder of this year, 1811, and one incident is noteworthy. On the 21st November, Lieutenant King, a fine young officer, was shot by Spanish guerillas when carrying a flag of truce to the fortress of Badajos. His body was recovered by the French and buried with all military honours on the ramparts, General Philippon assembling the whole garrison under arms for the purpose.

During 1812 the Thirteenth again saw some rough service. They shared in the advance to Madrid and Alva de Tormes, and then in the retreat back to Portugal, during which their horses suffered terribly from hardship and starvation.

In April 1813 the British army advanced again, and again reached Alva de Tormes. In June the French took up their position at Vittoria, and the famous battle ensued. The share of the Thirteenth in this combat was interesting. After some sharp fighting they captured King Joseph’s carriages and equipment, and then pressed on in pursuit of the beaten enemy, whose losses were great, including over a hundred and fifty guns. Vittoria was in fact the break-up of Napoleon’s power in Spain, for many of his commanders and troops had been withdrawn the year before to strengthen his army for the Russian campaign, and he was never able to replace them.

Then followed the march to the French frontier and the battles of the Pyrenees. In November the Thirteenth crossed the border.

The winter was a hard one for the Cavalry. Hilly country intersected by deep ravines, exhausted of supplies, and obstinately defended by Soult and his veterans, was a rough scene for outpost duty. There were many small affairs, especially between foraging parties. The weather was very bad, and the troops had constantly to bivouac in the mud, under torrents of rain, sometimes in snow. There was often no corn or straw for the horses, nothing procurable but gorse, which, pounded and made into a sort of paste, Irish fashion, just kept the poor beasts alive.

One incident which occurred near Orthes, on the 27th February 1814, is striking. The Thirteenth there came in contact with Soult’s Cavalry, and charged. At their head rode their Lieutenant-Colonel, Patrick Doherty, with his sons, Captain and Lieutenant Doherty, three abreast. The charge was completely successful, and many prisoners were taken, among them two officers.

Napier has told us how, through the spring of 1814, that fierce fighting went on, in snow and rain and misery—the French, now overmatched, losing battle after battle and many thousands of men, but still, under their indomitable leader Soult, turning to bay again and again. Then at last came the battle of Toulouse, and the white cockade began to show itself, and on the 13th April it was known that peace had been declared. Napoleon had fallen. Soult fought on for five days more, but then it was announced in general orders that hostilities had ceased, and the British Cavalry in pursuit beyond Toulouse desisted from further action.

The Thirteenth had fought almost without interruption for four years, in the long struggle that began at Lisbon and ended at Toulouse. They now had a few weeks’ rest, and it was badly needed. Numbers of horses, worn out by want and hard work, had to be destroyed, and the men were in rags. No clothing had been issued during the winter. “Overalls patched with cloth of all sorts of colours, and most frequently of red oilskin—fragments of baggage-wrappers by the way—were universal or almost so.” They were indeed “The Ragged Brigade,” as they and their old comrades of the Fourteenth had been named. But, starting in May, they marched up through France, and arriving at Boulogne on the 5th July, embarked for England. By the 8th July the Regiment had all been landed in Ramsgate. During an absence of four years and five months the Thirteenth had marched 6000 miles, and had been engaged in twelve battles and thirty-two “affairs,” many sharply contested. They had lost by death six officers and 270 men. But the Regiment had now made its mark, and was thenceforward one of the foremost fighting corps of the British Cavalry.

After their return from France the Thirteenth spent some months in England and Ireland, but their enjoyment of peace was short. In February 1815 Napoleon escaped from Elba, and war again broke out. On the 20th April, having meanwhile received royal authority to bear on its guidons and appointments the word “Peninsula,” the Regiment was ordered to prepare six troops for immediate service, and soon afterwards the number was increased to ten. In May the Thirteenth were in Ostend (with twenty-eight women and nine children), and by the end of the month they formed part of a force of 6000 Cavalry, under Lord Uxbridge, which was inspected by Wellington and Blücher.

Then followed Quatre Bras and Waterloo. The movements of the Thirteenth up to the morning of the decisive battle are of no special interest, but it seems that having been ordered to join a Brigade consisting of the Seventh and Fifteenth Hussars under Major-General Grant, the Regiment arrived at Quatre Bras on the night of the 16th June, and shared in the retreat of the 17th June to Waterloo. It was a dreary day, for the rain was heavy and they got no food—a bad preparation for the coming battle. Then followed “a dreadful rainy night, every man in the Cavalry wet to the skin,” and at four o’clock in the morning of the 18th, the Thirteenth “turned out and formed on the field of battle in wet corn and a cold morning without anything to eat.” Their commanding officer, the gallant old veteran Colonel Doherty, had broken down and was lying ill in Brussels, so the Regiment was commanded on the 18th by Lieut.-Colonel Boyse. The Brigade to which it belonged was posted on the right centre of the army, in rear of Byng’s Brigade of Guards, who held the house and garden of Hougomont. From this position the Thirteenth witnessed the furious fighting which ensued between the Guards and their French assailants, and they came themselves under heavy Artillery fire, which caused them some loss. Colonel Boyse had his horse killed under him by a cannon-shot, and was severely hurt, the command devolving on Major Lawrence. Two other officers were wounded. There was also severe and repeated Cavalry fighting, in which the Thirteenth did their share, charging more than once the enemy’s horsemen, and on one occasion dispersing a square of French Infantry. In this fighting they lost three officers killed or mortally wounded,[2] and two more wounded by sabre cuts. Towards evening the French made another desperate attack with both Cavalry and Infantry, and the Thirteenth charged again, losing three more officers wounded, among whom were both the Doherty brothers. Before the enemy finally gave way almost every officer of the Regiment had lost one horse at least, and Major Lawrence had lost three. When at last the French broke, the Brigade was sent in pursuit, and pressed the routed enemy until nine o’clock. Then it was halted, and the pursuit was handed over to the Prussians. “The last charge,” wrote an officer of the Thirteenth, “was literally riding over men and horses, who lay in heaps.” And the account goes on to say that “when the Regiment mustered after the action at 10 P.M. that night, we had only 65 men left out of 260 who went into the field in the morning.”

Many rejoined later, and these figures do not represent the actual losses as afterwards ascertained, but so far as can be judged the total of killed and wounded was close upon a hundred, of whom eleven were officers.

After Waterloo, the Thirteenth marched to Paris, where they remained some weeks, and then they were sent northward again. At or near Hazebrouck, a name now so familiar, they remained some months. In May 1816 the Regiment returned to England, arriving at Dover on the night of the 13th. During the past year it had lost in killed, died, and discharged, 3 officers and 65 men.

With Waterloo ended the first century of the Regiment’s service. If ninety-five years of it had been rather colourless, the last five had certainly been as full of fighting as any one could have desired.

INDIA

For about three years after its return the Thirteenth remained in England. The times which followed the war were bad, and the Regiment was often employed maintaining order among the civil population, always a detestable duty for soldiers, but nothing of note occurred. On the 9th February 1819 the Regiment sailed for India, and for the next twenty years it rested peacefully in Eastern cantonments.

OFFICER OF THE 13TH LIGHT HUSSARS
1830-1836

In India, as well as in Europe, the beginning of the century had been a time of hard fighting in various fields, and when the Thirteenth went out, the supremacy of the British among the Indian country powers had hardly been established. It was only sixteen years since Sir Arthur Wellesley had routed the Maratha armies at Assaye, and gained his first great victory. After that time other powers had challenged the British, and been with difficulty overthrown. Even in 1819 there remained serious elements of disorder, and it was not until seven years later that a period of complete peace began. Nevertheless, it may be said that the period of general war closed in Asia as in Europe soon after the fall of Napoleon.

The Thirteenth at all events had no fighting to do. They were sent to the extreme south of India, where the name of their old chief was very familiar, and the provinces about Bangalore, where they were quartered, had many fighting traditions; but nothing occurred to test the spirit of the Regiment. In that very pleasant place, and other stations not far distant, the Thirteenth remained year after year, with little to disturb them except inspections and reviews, enjoying plenty of sport, after the manner of British Cavalry Regiments in the East, and maintaining their efficiency in so far as it could be maintained without service in the field. In 1832 a formidable plot was discovered for a native rising in Bangalore. The Thirteenth with a British Infantry Regiment, the Sixty-Second, and a detachment of European Artillery, were to be suddenly attacked at night and massacred, after which the conspirators hoped that a general mutiny of the Native Army would follow. But the plot was revealed by a faithful native officer, and was crushed without any fighting.

Nevertheless it had shown that there was disaffection among the Indian population, and a few years later this came to a head. In 1839 it was found that a certain Mahomedan chief, the Nawab of Karnul, had collected in secret a large quantity of military stores, including some “hundreds” of guns, and that he had in his employ a considerable number of sturdy fighting men, Arabs, Rohillas, and Pathans from the North-West of India—the turbulent mercenaries who had for generations made India a vast battlefield. The matter was considered so serious that a force of 6000 men, of which two squadrons of the Thirteenth formed part, was sent to Karnul. Action had been taken in time, and the fighting on the part of the enemy at Karnul and the neighbouring village of Zorapur, though brave enough, was soon over. A few British officers and men were killed and wounded. The Thirteenth lost more than thirty men, chiefly from cholera, on this expedition, but none by the sword. It was one of the countless forgotten skirmishes upon which the Indian Empire has been built up.[3]

Early in 1840, after twenty-one years spent in the country, the Thirteenth sailed for home. They had seen little fighting, but those were days when India claimed a terrible toll from British troops, and during the short march from Bangalore to the coast at Madras the Regiment lost from cholera forty more men, as well as many women and children. Cholera is no longer the scourge that it was to our countrymen, but the thousands of graves that one finds scattered over the face of the land, often in the loneliest places, are a sad reminder of the price Great Britain has paid for her Eastern dominion.

On return to England the Regiment was very weak, for in addition to its losses from disease, it had left behind many men who had volunteered for other Regiments in India; but it was soon in good order again. It was to be replaced in India by the Fourteenth, and in 1841 the two Regiments, “The Ragged Brigade” of the Peninsular War, met again in Canterbury. There can have been few officers in either who had served together in that war, but the old traditions were still alive, and in remembrance of them the Fourteenth presented to the sister Regiment their mess-table, which had been originally captured by the Thirteenth at Vittoria with King Joseph’s household.

During the next ten years and more the Thirteenth served in the United Kingdom, and there is little to record of their doings. In 1852 they formed part of the troops who followed the funeral of their old chief, the Duke of Wellington, and in the next year they attended the first camp of exercise held in England. The Duke had originated the idea. The camp was a success, and proved to be the precursor of many more such gatherings. But something more than camps of exercise was now before the Regiment. In 1854 came war with Russia, and the Thirteenth were warned for service in the field. By the middle of May they had sailed for the East. It is memorable that they were now once more commanded by a Lieut.-Colonel Doherty.

OFFICER OF THE 13TH LIGHT HUSSARS
(undress)
1830-1836

The Regiment had some rough work in European Turkey before going on to the Crimea; but in September 1854 it landed at Eupatoria with the Allied forces, and on the 19th of that month it marched towards Sebastopol as part of the Light Brigade under Lord Cardigan. The opening day of the march brought the Thirteenth under fire, and they had a few casualties, which were, it is said, the first in the British army. The enemy withdrew with some loss, and on the following day the whole of the Allied armies, British, French, and Turkish, advanced to the banks of the Alma.

Every one knows the story of the battle which ensued—how the Allies attacked the Russian troops holding the heights across the stream, the British redcoats on the left, the dark masses of the French and Turks on the right; and how, after some stubborn fighting, the Russians were driven off the heights upon the plain beyond. The Light Brigade had little to do during the attack. Their position was on the left front of the British army, where they remained all the afternoon, watching the development of the struggle, and facing large bodies of Russian Cavalry and guns which threatened the flank of our advance. They never did more than threaten, and the Light Brigade had no fighting, though there was some slight loss from Artillery fire. When finally the Russians were driven off the heights, the British Cavalry was sent in pursuit, and crossing the stream at a gallop, pressed up and over the hills, to see below them the beaten enemy in full retreat. Some prisoners were made, and the Russian rearguard was watched as long as daylight lasted, but nothing of much importance occurred. The battle had been won, and the Russians had suffered heavily, but the bulk of their troops maintained some order, and there was no general rout. The Thirteenth spent the night in bivouac, on ground which had to be cleared of many dead.

There followed a month of comparative freedom from fighting, while the Allied armies closed on Sebastopol and took up their position for a siege. The work of the Cavalry was constant, in exploring the country and watching the enemy, but until the 25th October no serious encounter took place. Then occurred the famous battle of Balaclava.

It was a day on which, to an exceptional extent, Cavalry shared in the actual shock of battle, and not only as horsemen against horsemen, but in conflict with other arms. The Russian Cavalry, far more numerous than the British, were the assailants, but it may safely be said that at the end of the day, heavy as our losses had been, and unnecessarily heavy, the British horsemen had established for themselves a personal superiority which was never again challenged.

The action began about daybreak, the Russians advancing in great force to attack certain outlying redoubts held by Turks, which were incapable of much resistance. The Light Brigade and a troop of British Horse Artillery moved out to support the defence, but the redoubts fell quickly and were soon in Russian hands. Then the Russian Cavalry, some three thousand or more in number, with over thirty guns, advanced to complete the Russian success, and to threaten Balaclava itself, which, although of vital importance to our army, was for want of numbers very weakly held. First a body of the enemy’s horsemen came on boldly against the 93rd Highlanders, who, with some men of the Guards, received them steadily and drove them off by a couple of volleys at close quarters. Then the main body of the enemy’s horse came up unseen by our own Cavalry, and suddenly appeared on the heights within a few hundred yards of Scarlett’s Heavy Brigade, which was advancing in imperfect formation through the tents and picket ropes of the camp to support the 93rd. Fortunately the Russians, instead of launching their Cavalry mass upon our greatly outnumbered squadrons, came slowly down the slope, and halted—and then the Heavy Brigade dashed into their ranks. Within ten minutes the great mass, nearly three thousand strong, had been riven by successive charges and scattered over the plain with a loss of 400 men, and Scarlett’s troopers, a fifth of their number, rode back in triumph.

This feat was performed under the eyes of the Light Brigade, who sat on their horses, impatiently expecting the order to advance and join in the fight, or at all events in the pursuit of the broken enemy. According to Colonel Tremayne, then a Captain in the Thirteenth, some squadrons instinctively fronted that way; and it seems likely enough that if the Light Brigade had charged the enemy in flank while they were engaged with Scarlett’s men, great execution might have been done; but Lord Cardigan considered that his orders forbade him to move, and the opportunity was not taken.

BEFORE THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE AT BALACLAVA
25TH OCTOBER 1854

Then followed the separate attack about which so much has been written. It appeared to the British Commander-in-Chief that the Russians were about to carry off the guns captured in the lost redoubts, and he directed the Cavalry to advance rapidly and try to prevent them. What exactly the Light Brigade was ordered or meant to do has been a matter of endless controversy; but this much is certain, that 673 officers and men, of five Regiments, charged a Russian battery in position at the end of a valley a mile or more in length, other Russian batteries and bodies of Infantry being on the sides of the valley, and some Russian Lancers and Hussars in rear of the battery attacked. The Thirteenth, now reduced to a strength of 8 officers and a little more than a hundred men, were with the Seventeenth Lancers in the front line. Behind them came the Eleventh, Fourth, and Eighth Hussars. In front of all, straight into the enemy’s guns, rode the Commander of the Brigade, Lord Cardigan. He had been much criticised for habitually sleeping on board his yacht, which lay in the harbour below, and other allegations were made against him, but there was at all events no question as to his courage. The charge was a mad one, due to some misconception. The Brigade reached its objective, but was practically destroyed in the course of the charge and return. When the remnants of the Light Brigade re-formed in rear of the Heavy Brigade, which had not been sent in, it was seen that the losses had been ruinous. The Thirteenth was represented by 1 wounded officer and 14 men. Others rejoined later, but the Regiment lost that day 3 officers and 11 others killed, 12 men taken prisoners, and 30 wounded. The officer in command, Captain Oldham, was among the killed. It was a fatal ride, and the Brigade was sacrificed to little purpose; but officers and men had obeyed their orders with splendid devotion, and it is no wonder that among the Regiments which formed the Brigade the memory of “Balaclava Day” is held in everlasting honour.

The Thirteenth was present a few days later at the bloody battle of Inkerman, where it had no chance of doing anything, and then went through the miseries of the Crimean winter, when men and horses suffered terribly from want of food and clothing. In February the effective strength of the Regiment, exclusive of officers, was 5 mounted men—namely, 1 sergeant, 1 trumpeter, and 3 privates. Lieut.-Colonel Doherty, who had been absent, ill, on the day of the famous charge, was now fit for service again, but that was the strength of his command. During the ensuing spring and summer, successive drafts brought up the number, and when the battle of the Tchernaya was fought in August 1855, the Thirteenth turned out 200 strong. They came, it is said, very near disaster again that day in consequence of an order by the Sardinian General della Marmora, to whom their services had been lent, and were only saved by the interposition of Marshal Pelissier from another hopeless charge at a Russian battery. After the fall of Sebastopol the Regiment had some more hard work in small expeditions, but no more severe fighting. On the 27th May 1856, they were back at Portsmouth.

After their return from the Crimea, the Thirteenth had ten years of peace service in the United Kingdom. There is nothing memorable about this period except that in 1861 or 1862 they became Hussars instead of Light Dragoons.

In 1866 the Regiment was suddenly ordered to Canada, where the Fenian conspiracy had given rise to some excitement; but the invasion proved a fiasco, and the Thirteenth saw no active service. They returned to England in 1869.

In 1870 the Thirteenth were once more ordered out to India, and there they remained for fourteen years. This time they were not sent to the south of the great peninsula, but to the north, to Hindustan proper, where there was more chance of stirring times. India, as one of the best of its Viceroys used to say, is a country where “the bottom is always dropping out of the bucket,” and the task of putting matters to rights generally falls to the troops in the north, where the bulk of the British garrison is always kept.

There was in fact some active work for the northern army while the Thirteenth formed a part of it, for in 1878 occurred the Second Afghan War, in the course of which there was much fighting in Kabul and Kandahar. But the Thirteenth had not the good fortune to see it. They were, it is true, sent to Kandahar in 1880, remaining across the border about a year, but in that part of the country the fighting was over, and they returned to India.

13TH LIGHT DRAGOONS 1854

In 1884 the Thirteenth left India for home again, but they were sent by way of South Africa, where, in Natal, they spent a year. From Natal they returned to England. In the United Kingdom they spent the next fourteen years.

Thus it appears that from 1856 to 1899, forty-three years, the Regiment never had the good fortune to see a shot fired in anger. But a considerable part of that time was spent in various parts of the world, in Canada, Asia, and Africa, and the experience gained in such service is not without value. If at times prolonged absence from home may entail a certain loss of smartness, it has its compensations.

In the autumn of 1899 the Boer republics issued their ultimatum to Great Britain, and crossed the border of Natal. The Thirteenth was among the Regiments immediately sent out to strengthen the British forces in South Africa; and as by the time it arrived Sir George White was besieged in Ladysmith, it was ordered to join General Buller’s relieving force in Natal. On the 12th December it was included in Lord Dundonald’s Cavalry Brigade. Three days later occurred Buller’s attempt to force the passage of the Tugela at Colenso, and the Thirteenth was in action throughout the day. The Adjutant, it may be observed, Captain Tremayne, was the son of one of the eight officers who charged at Balaclava. From this time until the 3rd March, the Thirteenth shared all the rough fighting that took place in trying to break through the strong semicircle of hills held by the Boers. Then the relieving force entered Ladysmith in triumph. After that the Thirteenth served throughout the war, and saw much hard work.

It was not until October 1902 that they returned to England, after an absence of nearly three years. In the course of the campaign they had lost eighty men killed in action or by disease, while four officers and forty-six men had been wounded, and a large number invalided home. The Regiment fully maintained its reputation, and received many honours.

Two uneventful years in England followed, and then for the third time the Thirteenth were sent out to India, where they were still serving in 1910. With the beginning of that year Barrett’s history of the Regiment ends. It had then been in existence nearly 200 years, and had served in nine wars, among which were the Peninsular War, the Waterloo Campaign, the Crimean War, and the South African War. In all of these it had done well and distinguished itself. Its reputation, whether in war or peace, stood high.

CHAPTER IV.
1910-1914—OUTBREAK OF THE GREAT WAR.

In the beginning of 1910 the Thirteenth Hussars had been more than five years in India, and again in the south, where their first Indian service had passed. The military station of Secunderabad, in the dominions of His Highness the Nizam, the greatest of the Mahomedan Chiefs of India, had long been one of the strategical points at which a considerable force of all arms was kept, and a British Cavalry regiment almost always formed part of the garrison. It is, or was then, as Indian stations go, one of the pleasantest and most sociable, with some sport to be got in the neighbourhood; and, owing to the size of the garrison, there was plenty of amusement, as well as work, in the Cantonment itself. The Nizam and those about him were always friendly and hospitable.

The Thirteenth were not to be in Secunderabad much longer, but in May, while they were still there, occurred the lamented death of King Edward VII., and the accession of King George. On the 9th May the officers of the Regiment, with a party of non-commissioned officers and men, attended at the British Residency at Hyderabad, the capital of the Nizam’s dominions, and there heard read the proclamation announcing the beginning of a new reign. It was to prove one of the most memorable in the history of India.

THE DRUM HORSE—AT THE DURBAR

During the remainder of the hot season, which in the East is necessarily the slack season so far as military training is concerned, the regimental records contain notice of little beyond routine occurrences and sport of various kinds, the football and polo and tent-pegging with which men and officers while away the heat and tedium of an Indian summer. Then, as the heat slackened and another working season began, the Regiment received orders to move from the south of India to the north, to a station nearly a thousand miles away, among a totally different population and surroundings. The Thirteenth left Secunderabad in the middle of October, carrying with them the hearty good wishes of the garrison, and of the General Commanding the Cavalry Brigade, who warmly praised their work and discipline, and expressed his confidence that they would maintain in the north of India the good name they had borne in the south.

Arriving in the northern plains by train, they marched to their new station, meeting on the line of march the Seventeenth Lancers, with whom they had charged at Balaclava more than fifty years earlier. The two Regiments had not met since. The Thirteenth entertained the Lancers to a camp-fire concert, and then they went their ways again.

Meerut, where the Thirteenth were now to be quartered, was a well-known and favourite station. It was memorable as the place at which occurred the first serious outbreak of the Mutiny of 1857, since which time it had, from its central position and nearness to the ancient capital of Delhi, continued to be a large military station. In 1910 the memories of the Mutiny had grown dim, but Meerut was still an important place from a military point of view. It lay in the centre of “Hindustan,” the great northern block of territory which has been the seat of countless Empires, Hindu and Mahomedan—the real India upon which the vast Indian Peninsula has in a measure depended for thousands of years. In its broad plains and teeming cities was always concentrated the military power of succeeding conquerors, and the British, when they took the place of the Moghuls, had, like their predecessors, massed their strength on these northern plains.

Meerut, it may be noticed, was also a centre of sport, the site of an annual polo tournament, and within reach of good shooting and “pig-sticking.” The Thirteenth arrived just in time to join in the polo tournament, and to be soundly beaten by their Balaclava comrades of the Seventeenth Lancers. They were also beaten soon afterwards at another tournament at Lucknow, this time by the Rifle Brigade; but every one cannot win, and the Thirteenth were at all events to the fore in every kind of sport.

Meanwhile the usual work of military training began again—drill and swimming camps, and marches, and musketry, and inspections, and much more—the steady hard work of which civilians as a rule have no knowledge, but very real and useful work for all that, as the old Army was to show in the dark days which were coming.

Then followed the summer of 1911, and in the autumn the 13th received news of the death of their Colonel-in-Chief, General Sir Baker Russell. He was succeeded by General Sir Robert Baden-Powell.

But this year, 1911, was not to close with another round of customary training. King George had shown from the first, as his father and Queen Victoria had shown before him, a keen interest in his Indian Empire. As Prince of Wales he had visited the country already; now he had decided to visit it again as King-Emperor, and to take his seat in person upon the Imperial throne. It was a momentous decision, and was to have a great effect upon the Chiefs and people of India—how great an effect those only can know who have studied and in some measure understood the traditions and feelings which thousands of years of kingly rule have implanted in the Indian mind. Happily King George understood, and had resolved to take the unprecedented step of leaving England for months to gratify the desire of his Indian subjects. In the whole history of India no such ceremonial had ever been held, for vast as the Empire of the Moghuls had been, it had never embraced the whole of the Eastern dominions now under the British Crown, nor had it formed part of a wider Empire extending to all the continents of the world.

D SQUADRON—AT THE DURBAR

Among the preparations being made to invest the ceremonial with due pomp and splendour, was the assembly at the Imperial Camp of a military force drawn from the Army of India. The occasion was not primarily a military one, and the numbers of the force were limited; but 50,000 troops, British and Indian, were being drawn together to represent the armed might of the greatest power in the East, and to show that if ever he chose, the British Emperor of India would be able to throw into the scale of any world-conflict an army in which the military efficiency of the West would be blended with the loyal devotion and numbers of the Indian fighting races. Among the Regiments which had the honour of being included in the representative force at Delhi was the Thirteenth Hussars.

The various pageants which took place have been described in detail by Fortescue, the historian of the British Army, who accompanied the King to India. The great Durbar at which the King took his seat upon the throne was a wonderful scene, all classes of the Indian population joining to do him honour, from the humblest to the great feudatory chiefs and their retainers, blazing with jewels and gorgeous clothing and antique armour. The Thirteenth did their part among the soldiers, of whom Fortescue says: “The troops formed the most essential part of the pageant.” Besides the Durbar, there were many other interesting ceremonies and amusements—the presentation of colours, receptions, polo and football matches, and so on. But the whole did not last many days. The vast encampment, covering twenty-five square miles, which had risen as if by magic, with its myriads of tents and its luxurious gardens, from the solitude of a barren plain, was gone before the end of the year. The Chiefs of India marched away with their brilliant retinues, the troops and the people were scattered in every direction, and the plains about Delhi relapsed into something like their old lonely peace. But before he went the King had announced with dramatic suddenness, to the astonishment of the great assembly, that Delhi was again to be the capital of India, and that the British Empire, which had risen from the sea, and had hitherto had a seaport for its capital, was for the future to be centred, as former Empires had been, on the plains of Hindustan, surrounded by the territories of the Indian chiefs and the lands of the great Indian fighting races. It was a landmark in the history of India.

To the officers and men of a British Cavalry Regiment the full significance of the ceremonial could hardly perhaps be apparent, and certainly they could not foresee the world-war which was soon to show how fortunate in its consequences had been the King’s act in coming to India at the beginning of his reign. Pageants are hardly to the mind of a soldier. Still, the Thirteenth had their part in it, and did well what they had to do. The Regiment was conspicuous among those reviewed by the King, and at the close of the ceremonial it was selected for the honour of furnishing a squadron to escort the Queen during her visit to another ancient capital, Agra. The squadron was under the command of Captain W. H. Eve. Fortescue writes of it: “We had remarked the Regiment at Delhi; but even so we were not quite prepared for what we saw on that Sunday. All the officers of the suite agreed that the escort was the most perfect they had ever seen, so admirably were the distance and the dressing preserved. This may seem to be a small matter, but such details count for much in the discipline of a regiment, for those that are careful in small matters are unlikely to be careless in great. Moreover, it is a real pleasure in this imperfect world to see anything faultlessly done.”

Fortescue’s words may perhaps seem exaggerated: smartness and discipline are not necessarily the same thing. But they are nearly allied, and there is perhaps no greater mistake made by civilians in judging soldiers than the contempt for drill and “the barrack-yard” which is so readily expressed. Henderson writes in ‘The Science of War’: “It is unfortunately to be apprehended that few, except professional soldiers, understand the nature or the value of discipline.” And he shows very clearly how necessary is the “habit of obedience” for efficient action in war. It was not for nothing that the great American soldier Stonewall Jackson began his career in the Civil War by drilling his undisciplined soldiery until he made himself detested by the officers and men who afterwards learnt to worship him. His brigade stood “like a stone wall” in their first battle when all was melting around them, and earned him the splendid nickname which has become immortal. History teems with instances of the supreme value of the trained soldier in war. Never was it shown more conspicuously than in that wonderful month of the retreat from Mons, when the little army of British regulars went back day after day before the overwhelming numbers of their enemy, only to turn on him at the end and prove to him that in spite of all their losses and sufferings their spirit and efficiency were still unbroken. “It is open to those in whose ears the very name of discipline smacks of slavery, to assert that a powerful instinct of obedience dwarfs the intellect, turns the man into a machine, and rusts his power of reasoning; and in this there is a shadow of truth, but it is only a shadow.” It is a question which has been often debated, and in which, primâ facie, the contemptuous critic seems to have much right on his side; but to few who have seen war will his view commend itself. The Regiment which shows up well in the manœuvres of the parade-ground will rarely fail to show itself efficient in the field. Like everything else, the principle is capable of abuse, and may be carried too far, but it is a sound principle in the main. Certainly the squadron which won Fortescue’s admiration went very straight when it was tried a few years later in something more than escort duty.

THE QUEEN AT AGRA

The Durbar and its attendant ceremonies at an end, the Thirteenth marched back to Meerut, and the old life of military training and sport began again. There were rifle meetings and inspections, drill and manœuvres, courses in musketry and signalling and machine-guns, polo and races; and then the hot weather of India came once more with its blinding sandstorms and weary nights of heat, when sleep was hard to get and life seemed hardly worth living. There was some sickness too, and the terrible spectre of plague cast its shadow over the Regiment. The men faced the shadow cheerily enough, playing football and hockey and having boxing competitions after the manner of the British soldier; but one or two died, and the Regiment had to be inoculated. The officers kept themselves fit with polo and the swimming-bath. July brought some welcome rain, two or three good showers a week, and the Review report of the General Commanding the Northern Army was received: “A fine regiment, fit for service.” But it was a trying time, as an Indian hot weather in the plains always is. India is a picturesque country, full of beauty and romance for those who have eyes to see, but it has its drawbacks. English women face them as well as men. The following extracts are from the letters of a lady who decided to brave the heat with the Regiment.

February 15, 1912.—“The weather has suddenly got very hot.... The Inter-Regimental week starts on the 4th of next month, and goes on for about a fortnight. To feel I’ve got to entertain people for a fortnight is a nightmare!—this place doesn’t suit me, and I never feel well. At the last moment —— may be sent up to the hills with the invalid party, but it doesn’t look like it, and he’s not down for a day’s leave of any description.”

February 21, 1912.—“We have heard nothing about the Regiment being moved this year, so I suppose we shall stay on here. I have decided to try and stick out the hot weather with ——. I should like to have come home, but if I do —— won’t go away at all by himself, and if I have to go away and go somewhere to a hill station he will come too if he can get any leave. Of course every one tells me that no woman can do a hot weather here, but I shall try....”

April 3.—“We have had a nice cool week, for which everybody is very thankful. There was a terrific thunderstorm at the end of last week, and the temperature dropped from 103 to 83, so you can imagine it was a change. We all shivered, but it was lovely. It is warming up again now, and the last two days have been 100 or over in the shade in the middle of the day.

“The early routine has started now and —— has to be up at 4.45, and gets done about 10.30, when he comes in and has breakfast. We generally lie down in the afternoon and try and sleep, getting up about 4 for tea, before going to polo or playing tennis. Nearly every one has gone away on leave, and the place is very empty and desolate.”

April 18.—“There is no news to tell you from here—the hot weather is always a dreary time of forced inaction and perpetual discomfort. We are sleeping out of doors every night now with no sheets or blankets to cover us, so you can imagine it is pretty warm. One generally falls into a dead sleep just before the dawn, which is the only cool time during the twenty-four hours. I change my clothes five times during the day—it is one form of exercise. We are both keeping fit, which is the great thing....

“We had a terrific sandstorm here on Tuesday. We could see it coming for miles as the sky was a bright yellow; unfortunately we were caught in it as we were out driving; it was filthy, and we got covered from head to foot with sand. The storm lasted two hours, but we didn’t get a drop of rain. If only we had had some rain it would have been cooler for a few days.”

So it went on for many months longer, through the blazing hot weather and the sultry depressing rains. Then began another cold season.

THE ESCORT AT AGRA. 1ST AND 3RD TROOPS OF SQUADRON D

On the 1st November the Thirteenth won the final in the Meerut Polo Tournament, after a desperate struggle with the King’s Dragoon Guards. An officer of the Regiment who had been studying the more scientific parts of his profession left for the Staff College at Camberley.[4] There was a Cavalry concentration camp, where a considerable mounted force was assembled for Divisional training, followed by manœuvres of several Divisions together. In the midst of all this soldier work the year was closed by an incident which startled and shocked India. It had been arranged that on the 23rd of December the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, was to make a State entry into the new capital, and some of the Thirteenth had been sent to join in the ceremonial. The Regimental Diary records very briefly that “a dastardly outrage occurred, a bomb being thrown at the Viceroy, which resulted in his serious injury.” It was a painful commentary upon the enthusiastic greeting which had been given to the King-Emperor on the same spot just a year before, and a reminder that in India there exists always a root of sedition and danger which must not be disregarded. Peace in India is armed vigilance. But happily disloyal sentiment is confined to a small minority, and the heart of the great Empire is sound. So Englishmen felt. They showed a fine example of coolness and moderation in face of the treacherous attempt at murder, and all went on again as before. If the traitors had expected to intimidate the white man they were wholly mistaken.

On the 1st of January 1913, ceremonial parades were as usual held throughout the country to celebrate the assumption by Queen Victoria, more than thirty years before, of the title of Empress of India, and over the momentarily troubled waters the ship of Empire sailed forward undisturbed upon its stately way.

During the rest of the year there was from the point of view of the Thirteenth nothing of much importance to record. The Regimental Diary mentions that the English system of messing was introduced for the first time in India; that “C” Squadron won a silver challenge cup for shooting open to all squadrons, batteries, and companies in the Division; and that there was a short spell of “experimental training” in camp, when the Regiment lived entirely on the resources of the neighbouring country. Beyond these incidents, the Diary touches upon little but the doings of the men at cricket and boxing, and “skill-at-arms” competitions, and hockey and football tournaments. Hot work they must have been, for there is this entry referring to the months of July and August: “During these two months the average temperature was about 98. The weather was very trying and injurious to health, mainly due to the rain, followed immediately by sunshine, which caused vapours to rise from the ground.” To every one who has served in India this quaintly worded sentence brings back a familiar picture. The British soldier who has “heard the réveillé from Birr to Bareilly” knows only too well the dreariness of the late summer, when the faces of the women and children grow white in the reek from the rain-sodden ground.

On the 25th of October, Balaclava Day, the first “Old Comrades Dinner” was held in London, and the Diary notes that among those present were two Balaclava veterans.

With this month of October 1913, began the last working season of the old order. Everything then seemed peaceful enough, and no one thought that before a year had passed England would be fighting desperately in the greatest war of all time. For the Thirteenth Hussars attention was focussed on the usual incidents of an Indian “cold weather.” The Diary records that the regimental machine-gun detachment distinguished itself at the Meerut Rifle Meeting by winning a match open to all India, and that there were some tactical field-days with V Battery of the Horse Artillery. The Regiment was to be associated with V Battery in much hard fighting before they had done with each other. Finally, at the close of the cold season, the Commander-in-Chief in India came down to Meerut, and there was a “Garrison Ceremonial Parade,” in which the Thirteenth took part. All went well with them, and the inspection was entirely satisfactory. It was the last they were to undergo before being tested by the ordeal of war.

In the summer of 1914 came the fateful news of the murders at Serajevo, and before long it began to be seen that events were tending towards a great European conflict into which England might possibly be drawn. Every one remembers the excitement of the month that followed. In India, as elsewhere all over the world, it was intense. After so many years of peace, or at all events so many years in which England had looked on at European wars without bearing any part in them, it was difficult for Englishmen to believe that the long-standing German menace had really come to a head, and that “The Day” was upon us. It seemed more probable that England would again stand aside, and that whatever the Continental nations might do, no British Army would be sent to shed its blood on European battlefields. Even when Germany turned upon France, and it became certain that we should see war close to our own shores—war by which our own deepest interests must be endangered—it seemed doubtful whether England would take upon herself the tremendous responsibility of throwing her sword into the scale. Until the 4th of August the issue remained in suspense. Then the doubt came to an end, and on the following day it was known all over the British Empire that the old country had chosen the path of honour.

In no part of the Empire had the suspense been more acute than in India, which was full of martial traditions, and, in spite of local treason here and there, full also of goodwill to the British Crown. The sudden knowledge that Great Britain was at war stilled at once the voice of sedition, and was the signal for an outburst of loyalty on the part of Chiefs and people which astonished our enemies, if not ourselves, though it was no new thing;[5] and it need hardly be said that in the military cantonments scattered over the face of the country, where the soldiers of the King’s Army, British and Indian, were gathered in constant readiness for war, the announcement was received with joy and eager hope. They might not be privileged to join in the central conflict on the battlefields of Europe, but surely they would have some share in the fighting, some chance of service and honour.

Meerut was no exception, and among all the King’s Regiments there was none which looked forward to the war more eagerly and hopefully than the Thirteenth, with its memories of the Peninsula and Waterloo and Balaclava. Some days before war was declared all officers on leave in the country had been urgently recalled, and when on the 5th of August the Regiment learnt from a telegram to the Meerut Club that the sword had been drawn, it was ready for immediate service. On the 9th of August the Meerut Division was ordered to mobilise. Then followed some weeks of anxiety, during which the Thirteenth were alternately elated and cast down by contradictory rumours. Early in September they received orders to prepare a large draft of men and horses for the Eighth Hussars, which threw them into the depths of depression; then they got, but could hardly rely upon, private reports that they were not to be left in India. It was a trying time.

Meanwhile it had been raining hard, and this added to the general depression. Polo became impossible, and neither officers nor men had anything to relieve the tedium of waiting. The following extracts from the letters of a junior officer may be worth quoting:—

Lieutenant G. R. Watson Smyth—August 9-12.—“I do not know whether this letter will ever reach you, or where I shall be if it does. At the present moment we are awaiting the order to mobilise: it is sure to arrive at any moment now if the Regiment is to go on service. We don’t know if it is decided to take the Meerut Cavalry Brigade, but ... it is possible that the infantry of the Division may be taken. Whether they will be taken to garrison Egypt or to fight at home is another matter. As I said, though, we are just waiting for the telegraphic order before we start shoeing our horses and sharpening our swords....

“It is now two and a half hours since we should have got our orders, and I am beginning to fear that we shall not get them....

“I have just gone to the Club, and a wire has come in saying that the Brigade is not for it. Rotten luck....

“The Native Regiments here are in a sort of fever of excitement, and are longing to have a go at somebody....

“Skinner’s Horse are in Meerut with us now. They are an extraordinarily good and very sporting lot.[6]

“There has only been one day’s polo for the last month, as all the grounds are under water, and the rain never stopped long enough to let them dry....”

DRAFT OF MEN AND HORSES DETAILED FOR THE 8TH HUSSARS
SEPTEMBER 1914

THE BAND AT THE LAST CHURCH PARADE BEFORE LEAVING INDIA
NOVEMBER 1914

August 30.—“We are carrying on in the same way as if there were no war in the world.... It really is a bit too thick that here are we, the most efficient Cavalry in the world, stuck in this horrid country.... Not a hope of our going to war. We have just heard that they are mobilising three other Brigades, and that the Viceroy is coming with the Court to live at Meerut this cold weather. His escort is one British Cavalry and one British Infantry Regiment with a battery of horse guns. This means that we shall stay here and do escort to him the whole time that the war is on....”

September 17.—“We are becoming deadened to joy or sorrow. It is a perfectly horrible existence, and unfortunately there is no hope of its changing for the better.

“We have had six inches of rain since midnight, and it is still raining—the country will probably be flooded....

“There is a small polo tournament coming off here next week; it ought to give us something to think about, but I am afraid that no one can raise any enthusiasm about anything, as we are all bored stiff.”

October 8.—“There is as usual nothing to say this mail except that our chances of getting out look blacker than ever....

“I think I told you that we have been having a little polo tournament on the American system. I am glad to say that we won it....

“We are going into camp with the squadron on Saturday for a fortnight. It will be bad, but a lot better than barracks.”

October 12.—“I am writing this in our squadron camp.... We have made friends with the local Nabob, and he has lent us an elephant to go out shooting on. It is rather fun shooting off his back, as one never knows what the next shot will be at: it may be a buck or quail or partridge or snipe, or anything. He is a jolly good retriever and will pick up anything that is dead, but he hates to if it is only wounded.... The old man who lent us the hathi (elephant), has just come in to complain that two of our men have shot two peacocks, which are sacred birds to Hindus. As there are very strict orders against shooting peacocks ... I hope that they get it in the neck. They are both in my troop.”

That is an old cause of trouble. The British soldier finds it hard to resist at times the temptation to shoot a wild peacock, and add a “turkey” to his rations; but the Government of India is rightly strict on the subject. It is an instance of the care one has to take to avoid hurting Indian feelings.

India, October 25, 1914.—“As perhaps you may guess from the above vague address, we are off to the war.... We got the order at 4 A.M. ... to pack up and come in to barracks at once as the Regiment was mobilising. We had everything packed up by 5 A.M., and the squadron left at 5.30. Considering that this was all done in the dark and that it was raining as well, I think that it is rather a good show.... They limit our kit to 35 lbs., which is only two blankets, a change of clothes, an extra pair of boots, and a valise to carry the lot—not very much to sleep in with a temperature of 20 or 30....

“It is rather a coincidence that we got the order to mobilise on Balaclava day, isn’t it?”

Balaclava day! Sixty years had passed, and the thought of it was still ready to the minds of those who were now taking the Regiment into another war. That is what a feat of arms in which his Regiment shared means to the soldier—an ever-living memory and example.

The suspense was over. “It is great news,” wrote the Captain commanding the squadron, “far better than we dared hope for, and you may imagine how we are all feeling.” He was the same officer who had commanded the Queen’s escort three years before—the model escort. Now he was going to show whether the men who had won so much admiration in a pageant of peace time would do equally well in the field.

Nothing remained but to complete the number of men and horses, both now below strength in consequence of the draft lately sent to the Eighth Hussars, and to make the final arrangements for a quick departure. Men and horses were found from other regiments, and during the first ten days of November the packing and preparations were completed. Officers disposed of their horses and furniture; many of the polo ponies were taken over by the Remount Department for service as Infantry officers’ chargers; the regimental mess was closed; the heavy baggage and valuable books were sent to England; and the Regiment’s period of peace service in India was at an end.

CHAPTER V.
THE INDIAN ARMY—BEGINNING OF WAR.

The Empire of India, with its population of more than three hundred millions, is held by an army which, compared with the hosts of European nations, is a small one. Great Britain has never had in India much more than seventy thousand British troops, not one man to four thousand of the population—a conclusive proof, if any were needed, of the fact that British rule in India is based rather on the goodwill of the Indians than on force. No doubt in the last resort the white soldier is the mainstay of the Government against sedition and revolt; but if sedition and revolt were ever more than partial they would need a much larger garrison to suppress them. Three hundred millions of people would not be indefinitely “kept down” by an army of seventy thousand foreigners, however brave and well disciplined. The truth is that the British supremacy in India, though it has at times involved hard fighting, was founded upon the consent and active co-operation of the Indian races, and is maintained by the same means.

Not only is the number of British troops in India comparatively small, but the British Government has not feared to raise and keep up alongside of them an army of Indian regular troops twice as strong, and to arm and make efficient for war other bodies of men drawn from the population, notably some fine contingents of soldiery in the Feudatory chiefships. Altogether it may perhaps be roughly computed that at the outbreak of the War in 1914 the Crown had at its disposal in India, counting local volunteers, perhaps a hundred thousand armed white men and two hundred thousand Indians. This force had to maintain internal order throughout a country as large as all Europe excluding Russia, and to defend the frontiers against any aggression from without. It was regarded, and organised, not as two armies sundered by the colour-line and mutually suspicious of one another, but as one army in which the white regiments and Indian regiments served side by side, as they had served for many generations in many wars, mutually trusting one another and fighting as comrades against any enemy who might threaten the interests of the Indian Empire.

Some of these enemies had been fought at a great distance from India—in China, in Persia, in Egypt, and in other countries across the sea; but until now Indian troops had not been employed in the battlefields of Europe. More than a hundred years before a great “sepoy General,” who had learnt his trade in India, had commanded British armies against the soldiers of Napoleon; and countless other British officers and men had served both in India and Europe. India had, in fact, to quote Henderson’s ‘Science of War,’ been “the great training-ground” of the British Army. And Indian troops had at times, in Asia and Africa, crossed swords with European enemies. Nevertheless, the Indian Army, as such, had not fought in Europe, and the British officers who commanded Indian soldiers had not often served, even individually, in European wars. No Indian soldiery fought in the Peninsular War, or at Waterloo, or in the Crimea, or even in the Boer War, though a contingent of white troops from India did go out to South Africa then, and saved Natal. England, in fact, had hitherto regarded the Indian Army, and the vast reserves of Indian races on which that Army could draw, as a source of strength only for her outlying wars, not as a portion of the Imperial power upon which she could rely if attacked in Europe. That may be said in spite of the fact that on one occasion the far-sighted Beaconsfield had as a demonstration brought a few Indian troops to the Mediterranean.

EMBARKING AT BOMBAY. NOVEMBER 1914

Unluckily, it may be observed here, this view, and other reasons, prevented the Indian Army in recent times from being brought up to the mark required for scientific warfare in Europe. While the Home Army was being modernised and improved in every way after the Sudan campaigns and the Boer War, the Indian Army was left without similar attention. It was quite fit for Asiatic warfare, but in training, arms, and equipment, its splendid officers and men found themselves at a great disadvantage when employed against European troops of the latest model.

This, however, was not understood by Great Britain.

Now that she found herself involved in a conflict with the greatest military power the world has ever seen, and woefully short of British troops in England to support the comparatively small force she could send to the help of France, her eyes turned to her great dependency; and fully assured of the loyalty of India, in spite of the seditious movements of the past few years, she decided to make use of the reserve of trained strength she had hitherto set aside, and to let the Army in India, British and Indian, have its share in fighting the common enemy on European soil. It was a bold decision, full of important consequences for India and for the Empire; but it was taken, and the call was sent out.

So, when the Thirteenth Hussars received their orders for the front, they were summoned not as an individual Regiment of British Cavalry, but as part of the Meerut Cavalry Brigade, made up of one British and two Indian Regiments, the 3rd and 18th. This Brigade in its turn formed part of an Indian Cavalry Division, the 2nd, and the 2nd Division formed part of an Indian Cavalry Corps.

On the 13th of November the Thirteenth left Meerut by train, in three detachments, and went down to Bombay, where they were to embark. What their destination was they did not know for certain, but it was believed to be somewhere west of Suez. As a fact, their destination was Marseilles, but during the two days they remained in Bombay waiting to embark, they received no definite news of this.

Bombay, the great western port of India, with its magnificent harbour and wooded hills and teeming city, was at this time a very busy scene. It had originally come to Charles II. as a portion of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, and had been transferred by him to the East India Company for an annual payment of £10, a striking exemplification of the almost magical development of the British Empire in India. Now it was of great value as a commercial port, and as the harbour from which the Indian Government was to carry on the activities entailed by the war. But a Regiment embarking for service had little time for thinking of such matters, for there was much to be done in the two days that elapsed before the troops went on board. On the 17th of November everything was ready, and the embarkation began. Many of the horses were piteously frightened at their novel experience, some of them “screaming like children” as they were slung up into the air and lowered into the hold; but they soon got over their terror, and the men worked splendidly in the Indian heat, the sweat streaming down their faces and through their coats. Before night men and horses were all safely on board, and there had been no mishaps.

The strength of the Regiment when it embarked, under the command of Lieut.-Colonel Symons, was 20 officers,[7] including the Medical Officer, 499 other ranks, including the Assistant-Surgeon, 560 horses, and 1 pony. Several officers were on leave in England, and some of them were expected to join later; but others had already gone to the Front, of whom 2 had been killed and 2 wounded.[8] The Regiment was distributed in two transports—Headquarters and three squadrons, “A,” “B,” and “D,” on board the Dunluce Castle, “C” Squadron and the machine-gun detachment on board the Risaldar. During the 18th of November the vessels remained at anchor, for they were to form part of a convoy, and some of the other ships were not quite ready to sail; but on the 19th all was in order, and then at 9 o’clock in the morning the whole convoy, to the number of 26, weighed anchor and steamed slowly out over the sunlit waters of the harbour. Outside, the convoy stopped to pick up a few more ships joining from another port, and then the whole formed up, six abreast, and, led by an escorting cruiser, sailed away to the westward. It was a fine sight, though a sad one for the women of the Regiment, who were left behind on shore. Many of them had looked their last upon their men. But that is war.

THE DEPARTURE FROM BOMBAY. 19TH NOVEMBER 1914

It was a striking incident that the convoy was escorted from Bombay by the Dupleix, a French man-of-war. In the old days, when the French and English were fighting out their long struggle for the mastery of India, the English had no more dangerous enemy than Dupleix, who tried to raise against them a confederacy of Indian powers, and as some believe taught them the use of Indian soldiery trained after the manner of Europe. Sea-power, which he did not understand, baffled all his efforts and decided the struggle in favour of England. Now, if the spirit of the great Frenchman had returned to the shores of India, he would have seen the same sea-power again triumphantly exerted, and would have watched his own countrymen, in a vessel which bore his name, joining with his old enemies to convey to the shores of France, for the help of France, thousands of Indian soldiery drilled and disciplined after his own fashion. If he could have gone with them he might have seen another and even more striking example of the irony of fate. He might have seen on the shores of the Channel the figure of another and greater Frenchman, looking down from his lofty column, not upon the ranks of his veterans gathered together for the invasion of England, but upon the tents of numberless British encampments full of Englishmen assembled on French soil to fight for France. A hundred years before, English sea-power had foiled his vast schemes of conquest. “Those far-distant, storm-beaten ships upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.” And they had prevailed. Now English sea-power was fighting on the side of the Army of France, and the old enemies combined were to bring down in ruin another scheme of universal empire.

CHAPTER VI.
VOYAGE TO FRANCE.

The voyage of the Thirteenth across the Indian Ocean was not disturbed by any hostile attack or demonstration, nor by bad weather, and the six-abreast formation was kept until the convoy was near Aden, when a new formation in two lines ahead, or two ships abreast, was taken up. Shortly after passing Aden the Dupleix parted company to coal at the French port of Jibuti, and her place was taken by the Northbrook, a vessel of the Royal Indian Marine. So far all had gone well.

The wife of an officer of the Thirteenth had left Bombay for England in a passenger steamer a day or two after the Regiment, and she writes in a letter of the time: “On Saturday, 28th of November, we caught sight of our Indian convoy at about nine in the morning. An Admiral asked the Captain to go quite close, as there were so many wives on board whose husbands were in the convoy. So he very kindly altered his course, and we went quite close so that we were able to pick out the different ships, and could actually through glasses see the ships with horses on board.” It was a courteous act, and no doubt gave pleasure, if a rather pathetic pleasure, to all concerned.

IN THE SUEZ CANAL. DECEMBER 1914

Though matters had gone well, the voyage had not been altogether without suffering for man and beast. Even at the best season of the year the heat in the Eastern seas can be very trying, and though British troops going on service were no longer exposed to the horrible discomforts of Crimean days, but conveyed in such splendid vessels as those of the Union-Castle Line, the Thirteenth had some unpleasant times. An officer wrote to his wife: “You know what the weather has been like, but you can have no conception of what it has been below in the horse decks: absolute hell. All across the Arabian Sea it was dead calm and a following wind, and the first day and a half in the Red Sea was even worse. We have worked like slaves with the horses, off and on all day: men stripped, officers in shirt sleeves, and all pouring with sweat; the horses panting for breath, and all we could do by continually moving them, sluicing with vinegar and water, and all sorts of things, to keep them alive. It was heart-breaking. I hope I’ll never go through such a time again.... All the days in the Arabian Sea seemed to get hotter and hotter, and the horses worse and worse; and the first day in the Red Sea, last Friday the 20th, was worse still, and one of my best horses, No. 133, 4th Troop, a nice bay from Saugar, with pink rings round his eyes, died from heat-stroke. Then one of ‘B’ Squadron died, and it was desperate. Two or three times they have had the ship round in a circle, to face the wind and try and get some air below for the horses, and it has been a great relief.... You wouldn’t believe how tame all the horses are now. You can do anything with them. Poor devils, they have had a frightful time. Saturday again was very hot, but the wind gradually came round ahead, and by evening there was a good breeze; and yesterday and to-day has been lovely: a stiff breeze ahead and quite cool. It is like heaven, and the horses are like different creatures and picking up fast. It is sure to last now, I think, right in to Suez, and I hope our troubles are over.... The men have worked like slaves, and so have we for that matter.”

Another officer, Lieutenant Watson Smyth, writes of the start at Bombay, after five or six hours spent in slinging horses into the hold: “At 8.30 I went down to the horse deck, and never have I met such heat. The horses were packed in pens of five, and were all, all over in a white lather; The temperature was taken by the Vet. and it was 133. This is 6 degrees more than the highest recorded in India, so you can see it was real hot....”

November 29, 1914.—“It has been very hot indeed the last few days, and the horses are feeling it very much. Only two have died so far.... I think I said that most of my squadron are in the fore-hold, and the other squadrons are on the decks above it round the hatchway, so that if anything has to be taken out of their decks by a crane it has to be hung over the hold while being hoisted. One of the horses I mentioned died in one of their decks, and when slung up to be dropped overboard, slipped out of the sling and fell forty feet into the hold. Luckily he only grazed one of our horses, another half-inch and it would have been killed. I have decided to take that horse for a charger, as if he can have an escape like that nothing else is likely to hurt him.”

It was a rough experience, and not a very good preparation for the cold of a winter in Northern France; but for the moment the discomfort was over, and throughout the voyage not many horses died. The Thirteenth lost four or five in all. Three-quarters of the troop horses were Indian country-breds, and the rest Australians, and therefore also accustomed to some heat. But the country-breds were rather light for British Cavalry, and hardly fitted at best to face snow and wet.

The Thirteenth found the banks of the Suez Canal lined with troops, largely Indian, who were expecting an attack from the Turkish army gathered in the desert to the north, but no attack came while the convoy was in the Canal.

Meanwhile, though still ignorant of their destination and very anxious to know it, they were cheered by a letter from an officer who had seen some fighting on the French Front. “He says the German Cavalry won’t face ours at all, and that their Infantry shoot rottenly. He says their Artillery, machine-guns, aeroplanes—anything mechanical, in fact—are perfect—and nearly all the casualties are from gun-fire. He says, man for man they are no match for us, and it is all simply a question of numbers. He says the patrol-work of the German Cavalry is too childish.” This confident letter was not altogether wrong in its views, as was afterwards shown by Lord French’s despatches and other evidence. Needless to say, the Thirteenth longed to be face to face with the famous Uhlans.[9]

IN THE SUEZ CANAL. DECEMBER 1914

Port Said was full of troops and of French cruisers and destroyers, a very bright and busy scene. There the Thirteenth at last learnt their destination. What they had longed for had come. They were to go on to Marseilles, and from there to the Western Front. It was to be real work, against a European enemy.

The passage across the Mediterranean, if rough, was uneventful, and by the middle of December the Regiment was landed on French soil. “We have arrived all fit and well and jolly,” Captain Eve wrote, “and have had a very busy day.... It is beautifully mild and fine. All the horses are well, and mine flourishing.”

The next day the Regiment went on by rail to Orleans. It was an interesting journey, and the French people all along the line gave the Regiment a hearty welcome. “French Red Cross people at all large stations, and lots of soldiers: also lots of enthusiasm, singing, giving the men country wine, and so on. They gave us cigarettes, coffee, tea, flowers, and so on, and were all very nice. Altogether it was very interesting and I enjoyed it. I had to give one badge away to a girl who asked for it, and to kiss another’s hand, which I hated. The men made a tremendous noise, but behaved very well indeed, except that two or three of mine got rather drunk on the last night. But it was very difficult for them. I find I can get on a little with my French if I am not hurried....”

That entry was very English, and very English too the thoughts of hunting stirred up by the French campagne: “We came a round-about way, not straight, and at one part came through some awfully nice country just like home, say the Duke’s country, enclosed property, and some stone-wall country too, and small coverts, and hilly. I got quite excited looking out at it.”

But the journey was soon over. A little after midnight, on the 17th of December, the Regiment arrived at a siding near their camp: “It was bitterly cold, with a white frost and icy wind, and we had to turn out, detrain, and load up all our kit, saddles, and arms on to motor lorries, and then march, leading our horses six miles out to our camp here in pitch darkness.... We left the station about 2.45 A.M., and reached camp about 5 A.M., and groped about till we somehow got our lines down.” It was not a pleasant beginning to their soldiering in France, a curious contrast to the heat of the Red Sea—“the worst and coldest camp, I think, I have ever seen, about six inches deep in liquid mud, on the top of an exposed hill, with a bitter wind blowing. We are in tents, V.[10] and I sharing an 80-lb. one. We are very warm and comfortable, lots of warm straw on the ground, and our valises on top of it, and the men are in tents too, but the poor unfortunate horses are having a terrible time.... They stand always in a bog. The watering-place, about three-quarters of a mile away, is literally up to your knees nearly in liquid mud.” Lance-Corporal Bowie’s diary says of the arrival at Orleans: “Here we detrained at once in the midst of a terrific hailstorm, afterwards saddling up and leading our horses through the city to the village of La-Source, a distance of nine miles. Our stay at this camp proved to be a very severe test for both men and horses, as we were still clothed in our Indian khaki; at the same time it rained heavily for hours, and was also bitterly cold. The place in which the rough water-troughs had been fitted up, being in a valley, became practically a sea of mud, in places reaching up to our horses’ bellies.”

At this camp the Regiment found some more of their officers awaiting them, which brought them up to full strength again.

After two or three days they moved to a slightly more sheltered place, and the weather began to change. By Christmas Day it was bitterly cold, but bright and still, with a warm sun, and all was going better. Plenty of warm clothing was being served out to the men, and it was possible to get exercise again; and the food was excellent, good meat and vegetables, and tobacco. The warm clothing indeed was more than the men and horses could carry, and the quantity of blankets and other things had to be reduced to a more reasonable and serviceable scale. To quote Lance-Corporal Bowie again: “On Christmas Day 1914, every one received a post-card photo of the King and Queen, and also a gift from Princess Mary, which consisted of a pipe and an embossed brass box containing tobacco and cigarettes. A majority of us also received a Christmas parcel, which we owed to the generosity of the ladies connected with the Regiment, at the same time being completely overloaded with warm underwear, woollen cardigans, waistcoats, mittens, &c. But the waste of our new kits which we were compelled to obtain before leaving India was disgraceful, almost everything being burnt with the exception of some which we had dumped at Marseilles, which, needless to say, we never saw again. On the morning of the 31st of December we were all very glad to march out of this muddy camp, an incident worthy of note being that the men were so overloaded with kit (many of them having on two of almost everything as regards underclothing, having nowhere else to carry it), that they found it an awful struggle to mount, feeling more like a well-dressed Christmas-tree than a cavalryman. However, having all got mounted, we marched direct to Orleans Station, where we at once entrained for Berguette (Pas-de-Calais), where we arrived at 3 A.M. on 1st January 1915. Detraining here, we marched up to a village called Enquin-les-Mines, a distance of some kilometres, where we were allotted billets which consisted of old barns, &c., for the men, whilst we made our horses comfortable under archways, &c.”

Certainly the British soldier in this war was equipped and fed as he had never been before, and the Thirteenth ended the year very happily on the whole. It was a contrast to their winter in the Crimea sixty years earlier.

Christmas good wishes and photographs from the King and Queen and Princess Mary came to assure them that they were not forgotten in England. And if the prayer of Their Majesties, “May God protect you and bring you home safe!” was not to be fulfilled for all of them, they faced what was to come with confidence and eagerness, longing only for more stirring work, and a chance of doing their share of honourable service.

It was a pause in the fighting then. The great retreat on Paris and the battle of the Marne were over, and the baffled enemy had made his first attempt to strike out to the westward for the Channel ports. He had been stopped after desperate fighting by the wasted regiments of our little army, and the troops on both sides were settling down into the long trench warfare of the next four years. The British part of the line was woefully short of men, and guns and munitions of all kinds; and to those who knew the real state of affairs the outlook was very dark, for in England there were no trained reserves to send to the Front—plenty of brave men, but no soldiers. Happily the country did not know in what peril its army was, and contingents were coming from India and Canada and Australia and New Zealand, and the confidence of the men at the Front was unfailing, and all hoped that the worst was over. It seems wonderful now that such confidence should have prevailed at the Front, and so little real anxiety in England; but the fighting men were full of the belief that they were man for man so superior to the enemy that he could never break through. Such gloomy faces as there were could be found only in England, not among the fighting men. In spite of snow and mud and suffering of all kinds, there was no gloom with them.

CHAPTER VII.
1915 IN FRANCE.

The Regiment was now at full strength, officers and men and horses, and keen for a share in the fighting. The horses had suffered to some extent from the change of climate in the past six weeks, but only required a little rest and feeding-up. The men seemed fit and ready for anything.

But though all hoped for Cavalry work in the near future, and a chance at the Uhlans, this was not to come yet. The enemy’s horsemen were no longer to be found in the extreme front, and the fighting was being done by our guns and Infantry, which were deficient in numbers and very hard pressed. The British Cavalry, therefore, though kept as far as possible efficient for their own work in case a chance should occur, had to be utilised to some extent to help the out-numbered foot-soldiers in the trenches; and during the first few days of the new year the officers and men of the Thirteenth, while undergoing Cavalry inspection and training, were hard at work perfecting themselves in their new duties. They had not long to wait.

Before the middle of January they had been taken up to the firing line to be “shot over.” “On the 12th,” writes Lance-Corporal Bowie, “we were informed that we were to take our places in the trenches as infantry, having been armed with the new H. V. rifle and bayonet, and having had plenty of practice in bayonet-fighting, which was quite a new thing for the Cavalry, we were pretty confident of being able to do anything that was required of us dismounted. So leaving only sufficient men behind to attend to the horses, we started off the next morning in the highest spirits for Béthune, our conveyances being the good old London motor-buses, complete with their own drivers and conductors. Arriving there at 5 P.M., we marched direct to the trenches, just in front of the village of Festubert, a distance of thirteen kilometres, relieving the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons. We remained in these trenches until 6 P.M. the following evening, when we were relieved by the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, many of our fellows having to be lifted out of the trenches owing to being cramped with standing in the mud and water for so long. On each man receiving a tot of rum, we at once marched back to Béthune.... On arriving at the market square in Béthune, many men fell from sheer exhaustion. Meeting the buses again, we had some hot coffee and returned directly back to our billets, which we were very thankful to reach about 2 A.M. on the 15th of January 1915. One of the most remarkable features of this, our first time in the trenches, was the fact that we did not sustain a single casualty, although we were subjected to a continual bombardment the whole time, the Huns’ shooting being fairly good(?), but their shells were very bad, many burying themselves in the mud and failing to explode at all.”

FESTUBERT
(From the picture presented to the Regiment by Brig.-Gen. A. Symons, C.M.G.)

Such was the first introduction of the Thirteenth to actual fighting in the Great War. It was very different from what they had hoped—a dreary struggle of endurance against mud and cold, on foot, instead of the stirring hand-to-hand work in the saddle for which a cavalryman naturally longs; but the account shows the cheery spirit in which the men took to their uncongenial duty. Needless to say, the officers set them a good example. One of them, Lieutenant Watson Smyth (14th January 1915), writes: “We got up at Enquingatte, where we were billeted, at 6 A.M. on Wednesday, and at 8 had a three-mile march to another village, Estrée Blanche, where the whole Brigade was concentrated. At about 10.30 along came a fleet of motor omnibuses (London General Company), and halted along the line of troops. We were then told off, and twenty-five men and one officer went in each bus. The buses have the glass out of the windows and the space is boarded up, otherwise they are the same, except that the outside advertisements are painted over, and the whole bus is dark grey (please excuse my writing, but we are under shell-fire—75 mm. shrapnel—and I am expecting one through the roof any minute). To go on, we left in our buses at 11 A.M. Soon after starting, one skidded into the ditch and had to be jacked and dug out, but this got to be quite a common occurrence later in the trip. At about 1 P.M. we arrived at Béthune, about seven miles from the trenches. We stayed there for an hour, and had our lunch while the men had their dinners. At about 2.30 we got going again, this time on our flat feet, and marched about four and a half miles to a village, Festubert, where we halted. Here we all got a drink of beer, followed by coffee and rum. At 4.45 P.M. we started again, and this time went right on up to just behind the trenches. Here I, with eight men who had volunteered for the job, went on to ----, about 400 yards in front of our machine-guns, which were on the left of our line.... When I got up to it we were challenged by the post of the Regiment that we were relieving, and then I went up to them. I asked if they were all right. In a very despondent voice he replied, ‘I’ve two men nearly dead with cold: they are both unconscious, and I don’t know how I’ll get them back.’ Just at that moment one more man went over flop. I thought this was a jolly start, as I was going to be there all night and these fellows had been there in the day. We had great trouble to get them out, as the trench was knee-deep in the most holding mud I had ever met. It beat Wadhurst clay by three stone and a distance. Another difficulty was the fact that the Germans, who were about 600 yards in front, or perhaps a bit more (people are talking all round me, and I keep writing what I hear), kept on sending up ‘Very’ lights and star-shells, which lit up the whole place far better than it was lit up in the daytime. Owing to the snipers, who were lying up all over the place, we had to drop flat as soon as we saw the light going up, and stay there for about a minute after it had gone. Then I got into the trench, which was bisected by a stream which was just over knee-deep. I put four men one side, and four with myself the near side. I had orders to keep on sniping all night so as to annoy the Germans, so I had one man of each four on sentry for an hour at a time, with orders to shoot about once every five minutes. Of course I could not sleep myself, but I lay down in the wet mud. The trench was over ankle-deep in mud and water, and only just long enough to hold us all. About midnight it got most damnably cold, and I issued the men milk chocolate, and gave them each a tot of rum from a flask I’d got. The snipers kept on shooting at us, but mostly went over, though a few bullets did hit the trench. One horrid fellow, whom we called Bert, was behind us somewhere, and made me very angry. At 3 A.M. we heard the devil of a battle going on a long way off, machine-firing guns going rapid, and a rattle of musketry. This went on for half an hour, and then one or more of our big guns somewhere behind us started firing occasional shots. It made a most colossal row, although it must have been at least half a mile away. At about 5 A.M. we saw the relief coming up, halted it and saw that it was all right, got out of the trench, ... then we went back to the road behind us and walked along it for about 500 yards till we came to the house that the squadron was billeted in. There we got some tea and more rum, and a bit of bully and biscuit, and the men thawed out. The squadron had been in the trenches all night, and had been relieved, as I was, just before dawn. I do not think I ever appreciated a house and a fire so much before as after that twelve hours of water and mud.... The dotted lines show where the snipers were firing. There was one called Fritz who used to fire across the road about every ten minutes. I am sending you one of his bullets. We sat in the house until 10 A.M., when the Germans began to shell the place. The first shell (shrapnel out of captured French guns) burst about 80 feet in front of a group of us, me included, and the bullets went all round us without touching anybody—it was really rather a lucky escape. After that we cleared off to the bomb-proof at the back of the house where I am now. Another shell burst as we were going into the shelter, and scattered all round, but again missed everybody....”

January 15, 1915.—“We are now back in billets, having done only twenty-four hours in the trenches. We stayed in our bombproof till about 3 P.M., although they had stopped shelling the village.... We found that two shells had gone through the room we had been sitting in and had burst in it. They had only knocked holes in the walls and scattered a lot of plaster and stuff about. We had our transport packed by 4.30 P.M. and fell in at 5 in the dark.... I had to wait so as to take the patrol of the relieving regiment down to where I had been.... On the way, up went a star-shell, and down I flopped in about six inches of water. As soon as the light had gone—phut!—and a bullet from Fritz hit the ground about 15 yards over. I lay a little flatter, with my back crawling with apprehension—phut!—and another went about 10 yards in front. I lay flatter still—phut!—and another hit the ground about 10 yards behind. I thought this was nice, as he must now be able to see me, and the next shot ought to get me, so I lay very flat and cursed all Germans. But he didn’t fire again, so after a bit I got up and splashed (I’ve never made such a noise before, at least so I thought) forward to the patrol. They also were so cold that they could hardly stand, so I had to stand on the bank and lug them out to the usual accompaniment of star-shell, Very lights, and snipers.... We got into our billets at 3 A.M., and I was in bed and asleep at 3.20. We were all in a most filthy mess outside, owing to the mud and water that we had been lying in, and inside our clothes owing to the cod-liver oil that we were anointed with from our feet up to our waists.... It is fine stuff to keep the cold out. I was wearing Cording boots with two pairs of socks, the inside pair vaselined, and the outside pair oiled, and puttees over the top of the boots. Although I had been several times in water over my knees, I never got my feet cold or wet.... The only casualty in the Brigade was one sowar of the ——, killed. He got scared at a Very light, and stood up in the open staring at it, so of course a sniper shot him and he died. I don’t expect we shall do any more trenches for a bit: this effort was only due to the Corps Commander, who wanted to have us shot over. I think it did every one a lot of good: it has certainly taught me that shrapnel is not half so awful as one thinks, and that one can lie out with only a coat on in a puddle all through a winter night, and be none the worse for it, and also that a whack of rum has an entirely beneficial effect.”

January 16.—“The patrol of the Regiment that relieved mine saw two dead Germans about 500 feet in front, and so of course all the men who were with me are claiming that they killed them, and the first blood of the Regiment is theirs.... The men I had with me were all hard nuts, and when not on sentry lay down in the water and went to sleep. They had their British warms (i.e., coats with a flannel lining that reaches to the knee) and mackintoshes, so that they were fairly warm and dry, except for their legs. Their feet got very cold, though the vaseline helped a lot.... It was quite an experience, and although I was most beastly uncomfortable all the time, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I must say that I never expected that the first time people fired shots in anger at me, and I was retaliating, that my only thought would be how to keep warm, and also not to go to sleep.... One rather amusing thing happened while we were in reserve in the village. Our Colonel got an idea that a sniper was concealed in one of the houses (there were no inhabitants left), and so ordered ‘X’ Squadron to make a house-to-house search. A party consisting of twenty men and one young officer started off with loaded rifles, fixed bayonets, fingers on the trigger—officers waving revolvers. Suddenly they saw a man on a haystack: immediately pandemonium ensued—rifles going rapid, men charging, revolvers going off, wild confusion. Suddenly the fire stopped, and a perfectly furious officer leaped off the haystack, rushed at the officer, and started, ‘You ... ’ for about five minutes. He then saw the squadron leader, rushed at him, and dragged him off to the Colonel. He then said he’d been on that haystack for five weeks, that all the Germans in Northern France had been shooting at him, as he was in an extraordinarily good place for observing fire, and then these ---- did their best—a d—d poor one at only 20 yards—to lay him out. As we had not been warned he was there, I think it was quite natural to plug him. He really was the angriest man I have ever seen.”

War has its humours, and it is well to be able to enjoy them.

For a month or so after that first experience there seem to have been no more nights in the front trenches for the Thirteenth, but some parties were told off for trench-digging, and there was much Cavalry-training of one kind or another, with occasional orders to “stand to” and be ready to move at very short notice. These orders of course gave rise at first to much excitement, and eager hopes of some real Cavalry-fighting, but they never came to anything. Perhaps the best way of showing what the Regiment was doing during the remainder of this year, 1915, is to quote some more extracts from letters and diaries.

BILLETS OF CAPTAINS EVE AND JACKSON AT ENQUINGATTE
CAPT. W. H. EVE	CAPT. T. K. JACKSON AND LT. J. V. DAWSON
TRENCHES AT ENQUINGATTE DUG BY D SQUADRON	SCHOOL AT ENQUINGATTE WHERE LT. J. V. DAWSON WAS BILLETED

Lieutenant Watson Smyth—February 6.—“When I got back I found my squadron ‘standing to,’ and ready to move at fifteen minutes’ notice. However, that has now been cancelled, and we are now living in the same old peaceable way. We had a sham fight this morning to practise dismounted action. I and my troop had to run along a dry stream-bed for about three-quarters of a mile. I was nearly dead at the end of it, but my troop were even more done, so on the whole I was rather pleased.... I do not think it is likely that we shall move for some time, as it is absolutely impossible for Cavalry to move once they get off the roads.... I have just finished my evening task of letter censoring. That is not a nice job as it takes a long time, and I don’t much care about reading other people’s letters, especially such extraordinarily dull ones as the average soldier writes.”

February 17.—“In the afternoon it began to snow, and it snowed as hard as it could all the evening and most of the night. We had been going to have a Divisional route-march the next day (Thursday), but that night the orders were cancelled. On Thursday we found it just possible to ride our horses, but only just as the roads were deep in snow, and it was balling badly.... We are rather badly off for water in these billets: I do not mean that there is not enough—the whole place is soaking—but none of it is very good. I rather think that that is one of the causes of our horses not looking as well as they might. Watering is almost as important as feeding, isn’t it?... Horses are my special care, but it’s rather disheartening having these beastly little country-breds to look after.”

It may be observed that the Indian country-bred is not accustomed to a Western winter and heavy snow. Nor were the men of the Indian Regiments in the Brigade, to whom such weather was as trying as the extreme heat of India is to English troops.

“I had one horse get his leg broken by a kick from his neighbour two nights ago. It was smashed clean in two about four inches above the knee. Must have been some kick, as the bone is pretty thick at that part. I had him shot where he stood, hitched on one of the draft horses, and pulled him about 200 feet into a field over the way, and the defaulters buried him in the afternoon. A six-foot grave for a horse takes a bit of digging, and fairly made ’em sweat. It nearly killed an old fat reservist, who was doing defaulter for getting drunk on the way up from the Base. However, if he has a few more to bury, he will be an easier man to mount.”

February 27.—“To-day we had the coldest day we have had in France. We paraded at 9 A.M. and did a Brigade scheme. I hated every minute of it, and so did our wretched horses. We were out from 9 till 1.45, and most of the time in a snowstorm on the side of a hill....

“My first servant, Farmer, is a tiger for work. I discovered the other day that he had been working at a big butcher’s in Jermyn Street before he joined the Army. As I also found some young pigs in one of the farms, I took him down to pick out a nice sucking-pig. He chose one, and I bought it for eight francs, and we are all going to eat it to-night: Farmer was great at cleaning, and scalding, and killing it. It was a most comic affair, as there were about thirteen little pigs, the lady of the farm, Farmer, and self in a covered sty about 12′ × 8′ × 6′ high. We were all talking at once, a child was howling, the pigs were screaming, and we were all trying to catch a different piglet. At length, however, we succeeded in collaring the right one, and I’ve never heard any animal make such a colossal noise as this little beast did when he was carried off. I nearly died with laughing, as just as we were coming off the road we met the General riding down. He was frightfully tickled....”

It appears from Major Cox’s diary that “during the month of February a semi-station routine of Brigade route-marches, Brigade field-days, lectures on various subjects, and squadron schemes, was carried out.

“Quite a lot of snow fell during the month, and cold frosty weather was the rule.”

March opened with a very sad accident to the battery of Horse Artillery, V Battery, which formed part of the Brigade.

FEBRUARY AND MARCH 1915
FARRIERS, D SQUADRON	OFFICERS OF D SQUADRON
MAJOR R. F. COX
OFFICERS OF D SQUADRON TAKEN AT WARNES, MARCH 1915

According to Major Cox’s diary, “A trench-mortar bomb exploded during instruction, mortally wounding Major Goldie commanding the battery, two subalterns, and twelve men. Forty-one N.C.O.’s and men were wounded. As bad luck would have it, the whole of the battery was assembled round the trench-mortar when the explosion took place.” All officers of the Thirteenth who could attend the funeral did so, and it was distressing to think of so many brave men killed and wounded, not by the enemy in fight, but by an accident of the kind.

This happened in Serny, a village adjoining Enquin.

Lieutenant Watson Smyth—March 7.—“To-day we had to find thirteen men a troop to go and dig trenches: they left at 6 A.M., and aren’t expected back till 8.30 P.M. This left us, allowing for servants, sick, &c., about six men a troop for duty. We spent our time tidying up and straightening out the billets, and have been at it all day.”

Lieutenant Chrystall—March 16.—“We have been on the move and bivouacking every night in a wood, so have had no time to write. We were in the advance to Neuve Chapelle, but were not used.... We always travel by night owing to hostile aircraft being about, and the consequence is sleep is impossible.”

Captain W. H. Eve—March 16.—“I got your letter in hospital at St Omer.... I was in a terrible funk they would send me off home, as I knew what that would mean—two or three weeks perhaps, and then to Aldershot to wait my turn to come out. So I got at the doctors at once, and they said I should be kept there and go straight back to duty as soon as possible. I was very relieved....

“Then rumours began to come through of this forward movement of ours between Armentières and La Bassée, and the hospital had to get ready for one thousand extra cases, though holding five hundred usually. So we knew something was on, and could also hear the big guns at times. At last on Thursday the 11th they told me I could leave hospital next day. Of course this is much too soon really, and would not be done in peace time. But now it is different.

“I went off to get my movement orders and asked ‘Any news?’ They said, ‘Haig has sent for his Cavalry.’ We are Haig’s Cavalry—1st Army—and you can imagine the state I was in. Next day I left by train—8.24—having slipped out of hospital without even having my things disinfected.... All the Indian Cavalry Corps was crowded up there [Berguette?], mostly in billets, but our Brigade in bivouac in a wood—all in reserve. We had done nothing so far, and I was relieved. I was fearfully anxious lest I should be too late.... Well, now you will have seen by the papers we have done pretty well, but I fancy somehow we haven’t done all we thought we might. I don’t understand it, and we don’t know the truth; but they said if we had got as far as we hoped, the British Cavalry Corps, which had been brought up too, was to have gone round the north of Lille, and we the Indian Cavalry Corps round the south, and had a cut at the Germans behind. But, anyhow, apparently the thing didn’t quite come off, for on Sunday the 14th we got orders to march back here to billets. We were very sick indeed; it looked as though we had missed our chance by so little. But, of course, we really know nothing. We marched back Sunday night and are now about a couple of miles from the station where we detrained when we came back from Orleans, about twenty miles still behind the line.... How long we shall be here I haven’t the least idea. We have to be ready to move at two hours’ notice, but that may not mean anything. It is a dull and trying business this, but we must be patient. We have quite nice billets here.”

Another account of the move is given by Lieutenant Watson Smyth: “At 12.30 A.M. on the morning of the 11th we were woke up and told that the squadron was parading at 3 A.M. We were, of course, sleeping in our clothes, as everything was packed, and we had had orders to be ready to move at one hour’s notice. On being woke up I went to sleep again till 2.15, when I got up, put my coat and boots on, and went out to hurry up my troop.... We started to trot about 4.30 A.M. and trotted steadily until 8.30, except for two very short halts of about three minutes each, when we had just time to look round our horses. On coming to we turned out of the town, and the head of the squadron turned out of the road into a large sand-pit: this was found to be just large enough for a squadron, so the rest of the regiment was bivouacked in the wood. (I forgot to say that the sand-pit was in a wood.) We had easily the best place, as it was quite out of the wind and, better still, entirely free from mud.... The horses were perfectly happy, and so were the men. The latter dug holes running into the side of the pit, put a hurdle over the entrance, and were quite warm inside. We had very nice weather, sunny and so warm, and had nothing to do except listen to the rumble of the guns at Neuve Chapelle.... We stayed in our sand-pit for three days, and then one day got orders to move at 2 P.M.; about 1 P.M., however, these orders were cancelled, so we thought we might get another night in peace. This was rather too much to expect, and we were not very surprised when we were told to parade at 7.45 P.M. We did so, and had a perfectly ghastly march back to where we are now. We walked for hours on our horses, and then dismounted, and led the brutes for three and a half miles. It’s no fun walking on one’s flat feet when in marching order—i.e., belt, revolver, spare ammunition, compass, haversack, field-glasses, knife, and water-bottle. We then lost ourselves for a bit, and every one lost their tempers, and cursed everybody junior to themselves, and their horses, and the roads, and the staff. Eventually we hit our village about 2 A.M....

IN THE SANDPIT. MARCH 1915

“We got orders to-day, and are off into the blue to-morrow.

“Our night march the other day was extraordinarily impressive, as we could see the flashes of the guns, and the searchlights swinging round, and the star-shell, and Very lights lighting up the whole horizon. The noise of the horses’ hoofs on the pavé was not enough to drown the thunder of the guns, and at one time we distinctly heard the crackle of rifle and machine-gun fire.”

March 18.—“We paraded at 8 this morning and started to march to ——, where we are going to be billeted. About 10 we halted and dismounted.... I tied up the horses, off-saddled, and let the men fall out to visit the town. At 12.30 I watered and fed the horses, and succeeded in stealing a bale of hay (100 lbs.) off a lorry that foolishly halted about ten yards from the horses. That pleased me and the horses a lot. I am now sitting on a tree-trunk near the horses writing this.”

March 27.—“I found a dead motor-cyclist to-day: he had tried to take a corner far too fast in our billets, and had hit a tree and knocked his head in. I am now hoping to be able to ‘make’ the bike, as except for its front forks and wheel it is in excellent condition and would be very useful.”

During this month there was much trench-digging, and Major Cox says, “Brigade field-days and regimental schemes were carried on similar to the routine in an Indian station.” It was doubtless necessary, but as instruction in Infantry work was going on at the same time the men were extremely hard worked.

The month closed with a visit from the Honorary Colonel, General Sir R. S. Baden-Powell, who happened to be in France on a short tour. An inspection of the Regiment was held, and a short address was made by Sir Robert, who also presented to the Regiment a large number of cigarette-cases.

Captain W. H. Eve—April 2.—“The Indian Cavalry Corps has been nicknamed ‘The Iron Rations,’ because they are only to be used in the last extremity. I believe this is all over the place, and am afraid it may be a little true, though let’s hope not. Anyhow, it’s very funny and very clever of whoever thought of it. You see the iron rations (tinned meat and biscuit) carried by each man is only supposed to be used in the last extremity.”

April 19.—“We are very busy all training more or less as in peace, and occasionally digging trenches; but one can find out no news or anything of what’s likely to happen, and can only be patient. We are all very fit and flourishing and doing ourselves grand.”