Blood and Thunder (3 page)

George Fletcher should have been in the Navy. That was his parents' plan when they decked their middle son out in a little sailor suit as a child. He duly made such an awful mess of it that his father Charles saw it as a bad omen and began having second thoughts. When his brother piped up and said that actually he wouldn't mind going to sea instead, the plan changed. George had always had an interest in soldiering, having been at Oxford a member of the cavalry section of the University OTC and an extremely keen territorial; or ‘Terrier'.

The middle child in a family of three sons, George's father was a noted historian and all three boys, Alexander ‘Leslie', George and the youngest, Reginald William, or ‘Regie', were born and raised in Oxford and sent to the Dragon School as day boys. Nicknamed ‘Dormouse' within the family, George had been educated at Eton as a King's Scholar like his father before him; rowed with the VIII and had gone up to Balliol College, Oxford in 1906 on the fringes of a set of great minds that included the likes of Raymond Asquith and Monsignor Ronald Knox.

Now 26, George was stocky, ‘slightly ungainly' but memorable for his ‘gorgeous laugh'. Bubbly, witty, always with a good story to tell, he was passionate about climbing, travelling and Italy in particular. George had spent two recent years teaching English in Schleswig and in addition to German he also spoke French and Italian. In 1911 he returned home and took up a post at Shrewsbury School. Unable to continue rowing due to a weak heart, he endeared himself to the boys by coaching them on the river and threw himself fully into school life.

He found a happy home at Shrewsbury. Another OE, Evelyn Southwell, remembered one particular night at the end of a winter term. They had sat up most of the night drinking tea and marking exam papers. George left them at 3 a.m. and started off across the river on his way home shouting
Die Meistersinger
. They all lived together in his last term at New House, a rowdy establishment full of unmarried masters where every month the lift sank to the basement and shattered the unwashed crockery. The garden was a jungle that belonged to their pet cat and dinner was so loud and argumentative that one of them was forced to make himself heard by chalking on the wall ‘you owe me £2 2
s
6
d
' to another. His demand remained there until they all moved out. George had left Shrewsbury in 1913 when the headmaster of Eton, Edward Lyttelton, came calling. George couldn't resist returning to his old school and he had just concluded his first summer back on the river and was thoroughly enjoying life at his old school when war came.

Although George was not versed in nearly as many foreign tongues as Aubrey Herbert, he was hopeful that the Army might make use of him too. While he was making his intentions to go to war known a summons arrived at Eton via telegram asking for he and two other young masters with linguistic skills and he didn't hesitate. After a late-night meeting at the War Office he returned to Eton to say a hasty goodbye to his father, who came over from Oxford with supplies, and began getting ready to leave.

Once in London George and his colleagues were sent to Kensington Gardens, one of several sites where commandeered commercial vehicles were being deposited. Here they were issued with a motorbike each, or a ‘smell' as George would always call it. Quite devastated that he would not be riding off to war on horseback, he found himself instead riding – ‘smelling' – through Piccadilly Circus, along Oxford Street and up to Holborn where the manufacturers attempted to give them a crash course in maintenance. A mere four days after war had been declared, these three young masters congregated outside the War Office shortly after dawn. They jumped on their smells and rode off on an elbow-jarring adventure; a miniature convoy of post-Edwardian hell's angels in khaki awkwardly rattling their way to Southampton. They arrived ahead of most of the regular soldiers, drenched with rain and with raging headaches after being shaken all the way from London to the coast. They were now part of the ‘Intelligence Corps', which they would soon find was as vague in composition and organisation as it was in name.

George's whirlwind dispatch to the south coast was the exception, rather than the rule. His ad-hoc recruitment and vague job description was nothing like the regimented, precise and well-rehearsed mobilisation that got hundreds of other OEs to the front. Excitement was building. A great number of Etonians populated the Guards regiments. The 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards was at Wellington Barracks on the doorstep of Buckingham Palace when war was declared. Having been mobilised they were out on a route march in London the day before their departure when they passed the gates of the palace on their way home. Quite by chance, the king and queen wandered down to watch them pass by. Leading his platoon was ‘Jack' Pickersgill-Cunliffe. The only son of a gentleman from Huntingdonshire he was less than a year out of Sandhurst and only two out of Eton. Not yet 20, bright and with a permanent smile on his face, he saluted proudly and was captured by a photographer as the battalion marched past His Majesty in fours and found their salutes returned by their king and Commander-in-Chief.

Many of the Etonians who had left the school for a career in the army before the war had joined the cavalry. There were fifteen mounted regiments mobilised at the outbreak of war, almost ten thousand men on horseback. The 9th Lancers were at Tidworth near Salisbury and before they left for war a photograph of its officers was taken that literally overflowed with Etonians, including three sets of brothers. Eleven pictured would die, a great many of them before 1914 drew to a close, and of those nine had been educated at Eton College.

Francis and Riversdale, or ‘Rivy', Grenfell were identical twins in their mid 30s. They came from an enormous family that had seen six of their brothers go up to Eton before them and the family knew what impact war could have on a household. Three boys had already fallen violently in the service of their country, including one murdered during the Matabele rising and another participating in the charge of the 12th Lancers at Omdurman. The twins were devoted to each other. Both were ‘simple' in their countenance, not stupid, but measured and quite calm; there was little fussiness about them. Neither liked to blow his own trumpet and both thought a great deal more of others than they did of their own glory. Being awarded a gallantry medal was all but mortifying for Francis, whilst Rivy, despite the fact that the twins were suffering a great deal of financial misfortune themselves, spent his spare time on a charity he had set up for impoverished children. Their closeness as brothers had not restricted them to the same career. Rivy was in business whilst Francis had begun army life in the infantry. He never had any disdain for it but his heart was with the cavalry and it was only financial constraints that prevented him from pursuing his dream. Happily, circumstances changed and he joined the 9th Lancers in 1905. Mounted warfare became his passion and he filled endless notebooks with tactics and observations gleaned from studying at home and abroad, and observing French and German manoeuvres.

Although a civilian, Rivy shot out to Wiltshire at the mention of war. Officially a member of the Buckinghamshire Yeomanry, he was a mounted territorial and not committed to Foreign Service. He talked his way into the 9th Lancers as a reserve officer at lightning speed; determined to go to war with his twin who was to command one of the regiment's three squadrons.

Douglas Harvey was required to do less fast talking than Rivy, for although he was still at Cambridge he was already a reserve officer in the 9th Lancers and he too would be going to war with his brother. Douglas and Francis; or ‘Lennie' as he was known, were considerably younger than the Grenfells. Both in their early twenties, the Harveys had grown up in an architecturally eccentric manor house in deepest Sussex, gone through Mr Byrne's house at Eton together, and then Trinity College like their father before. Lennie, the elder of the two, was apparently one of the nicest boys his house master had ever had, with a gentle voice and a firm countenance.

Lennie had joined the Lancers straight after Cambridge and although it is unclear what Douglas' aspirations were had the war not come, he was now donning a uniform and pledging his allegiance to the Ninth once it had been declared. It is fair to say that neither of the Harveys were shrinking violets. Both were Captain of their House at Eton and commanded authority. In debates Lennie could argue the most ridiculous of points quite proudly whilst Douglas would beat the table with his pencil to illustrate what he was driving at, whether his schoolmates wished to hear it or not. Both were members of the ‘Pop', both were accomplishedftballers and Lennie was a decent cricketer and runner too. Neither fell short academically either. Douglas especially was quite the intellectual, with a gift for sarcasm and a cracking sense of humour.

Although they came from a thoroughly unmilitary background, the Harveys now found themselves together in ‘A' Squadron under the command of yet another Old Etonian, Douglas Lucas-Tooth. ‘Lucas' had been in Walter Durnford's house with the Grenfell twins in the late 1890s. His temperament made him incredibly popular and reassuring as an officer. A veteran of the relief of Kimberley, he was Australian born and, receiving a Colonial Cadetship, had served in the New South Wales Mounted Infantry in South Africa before being commissioned into the Ninth at 20. A captain eight years later in 1908, he brought an air of serenity into battle with him. Francis Grenfell thought he resembled Stonewall Jackson. ‘He said very little, but in any emergency he was the one man to do a great deal. He … had some magnetic influence which filled others with confidence and admiration.'

There was to be no haphazard road trip like George Fletcher's for these cavalrymen. Two days before they entrained their colonel had them parade dismounted to listen to a speech that would have rivalled a modern-day Hollywood scriptwriter. He impressed on them the importance of their role in the coming war and reminded them of all the regiment had achieved in the past. He told them stories of twelve Victoria Crosses during the Indian Mutiny; of marching into Kabul with the praise of Lord Roberts during the Second Afghan War. This was what they had to live up to. ‘You are going forth to war with the greatest traditions to uphold,' he declared, and the regiment was duly inspired.

Whilst Colonel Campbell was reciting his litany of regimental glory, George Fletcher was watching events unfold from the window of his room at the Crown Hotel. Southampton was overrun with soldiers of every kind. As many as 80 trains a day heaved into the sidings laden with troops whilst more sweltered in their carriages outside the town until there was room to bring them in. George missed nothing:

The docks are well guarded and so nobody knows how many transports are being sent off; but fishermen report that enormous ships are leaving nightly. There is a continuous rattle of great motor lorries, ammunition wagons, field guns, etc.; and infantry regiments … but much more cavalry … an immense lot of cavalry.

The scale of it astonished him. ‘This is going to be by no means a small business. There are about eight million Germans and Austrians to walk over before we march under the Brandenburg [Gate] …'

As transports filled with men began backing out of berths at Southampton even the ship's masters were ignorant as to their destinations. Secret orders, only to be opened on leaving the coast, revealed ports further south than the enemy expected: Havre, Boulogne and Rouen. The British Expeditionary Force would then make a move towards Maubeuge on the Franco–Belgian border ready for a clash with the Kaiser's army. George and the rest of the Intelligence Corps Motor-Cycle Section were among the first to board ships. On an ocean liner packed to the seams with over a thousand soldiers, he described a perfect summer's evening as they passed down Southampton water with ‘cheer after cheer from our men and every boat moored in the water'. Once in the channel, surprisingly, the Royal Navy was enigmatic; hovering protectively but further afield, ready to dispel any German attempts at interference. As night fell George watched a distant searchlight play out across the water: ‘We knew we were in safe hands of the Navy after the lights of England had disappeared.' One of those pairs of hands belonged to his elder brother, Leslie, who had carried through the dream of a career in the Royal Navy born through the destruction of George's childhood sailor suit.

George had a more fortunate experience than the 9th Lancers, who had to factor in over a thousand horses on their journey. It took hours to put the cavalry regiment aboard their ships. Both Lucas' squadron, featuring the Harvey brothers and the one led by Francis Grenfell, boarded HMT
Welshman
slowly, walking and slinging the horses aboard. The whole experience was an uncomfortable strain on the animals. The
Welshman
was ‘merely a converted cattle-boat' and the officers spent much of their time below with their mounts attempting to care for them. Glad of the fine weather, they then curled up in the open and attempted to sleep on deck. At Boulogne, disembarking was again a particularly trying time. Horses ran off and men gave chase while others lounged on the quay waiting for orders. Finally they faced a 3-mile march to a rest camp littered with bell tents.

The following day a weird and numerous collection of French interpreters turned up. All of the cavalry regiments were receiving such men, who were in the main well-to-do French reservists who would live with the NCOs. Provided by the French authorities, their allocation varied. The 3rd Hussars got a dozen, whilst the Household Cavalry Composite regiment got two, quickly dubbed ‘Tired Tim' and ‘Weary Willie'. The Ninths appeared with a large supply of maps ‘on which it would have been possible to follow every stage of the expected advance of the BEF across France and the Rhine to Berlin, had the fortunes of war not led it in exactly the opposite direction, of which there were few, if any maps available.'