Blood and Thunder (47 page)

After the initial enthusiasm at the outbreak of war, recruiting figures slumped drastically in 1915. The need for more men, though, was relentless. Debates began to rage about the idea of a compulsion to serve. On 28 December 1915 the Cabinet accepted the notion of conscripting young men into the armed forces. The bill received royal assent on 27 January 1916 and the Military Service Act was introduced. From now on all men aged 18–41 who were single or widowed without children or dependents and not engaged upon war work, who were not physically unfit or approved conscientious objectors, were required to serve their country in uniform. This put young Etonians leaving school at the very forefront of those being summoned to join the war effort.

Outside his immediate surroundings at brigade headquarters there was an Etonian arrival in the Coldstream Guards that Henry Dundas had been looking forward to. It was to turn out to be the most important one to him by the time his war was over. From his arrival in France, Ralph Dominic Gamble had no enthusiasm for the war. He was adamant that nothing, nothing, was worth the misery that the war had thus far inflicted.

The Gamble family was no stranger to war and disorder. Elements of Ralph's family had fled revolution in France and settled in Ireland. In turn his grandfather was a rather severe-looking officer who braved the Crimean War with the 4th Regiment of Foot before acting as chief of staff to General Duncan in New Zealand against the Maoris. Steering away from the military life he was born into, Ralph's father was forging a successful career in the financial department of the Indian Civil Service when he married a widow, with a young daughter. Their own little girl, Kathleen, was born in 1893 in Calcutta before, in 1897 (by which time Reginald had risen to the role of an accountant-general), Ralph – probably pronounced ‘Rafe' – was born at the hill station of Simla.

Ralph Gamble's upbringing was typical of an Anglo–Indian child at the turn of the twentieth century. After spending his early years in the Punjab he was sent to Summer Fields in 1906. From here on out he would be lucky if he saw his parents once a year. When school was dispersed the little boy would be despatched to his grandmother until her death, then an aunt, or other relatives in Tonbridge or Hove to await the resumption of his studies.

Football was taken very seriously at Summer Fields and Ralph was very good at it. On a ‘perfect day, sunny and windless' in November 1909 he and his team mates made the short journey over to Horris Hill. Summer Fields won 4–2, with Yvo Charteris scoring one of the goals. It was perhaps cruelly stated that the Horris Hill team was a tad ‘over-weighted', but in defence that day, Ralph found running up against him a dark-haired little boy with a wide face who was an exception to that criticism. A tenacious little Scotsman, fond of talking too much, at the end of the game Ralph shook hands with Henry Dundas and the two little strangers went their separate ways. They were, however, on a collision course. In 1912 Ralph joined yet another triumphant flock of boys from Summer Fields on the list of King's Scholars at Eton. Ralph and Henry would pass through the school parallel to each other, well acquainted but not particular friends.

Ralph Gamble, sometimes known as ‘Freddy', gave off an aura of one so laid-back that it was an accomplishment that he managed to stay on his feet. This belied his obvious intellect and his steady progress up the school as well as his full involvement in the school's social and sporting life. No boy made it into the revered sixth form by being lazy, nor did he survive in the competitive environment amongst the Collegers by doing nothing, but Ralph continued to maintain his charade. He also continued to play football and at a shade over 6ft was ‘an absolute “Dreadnought” of British bulldog courage and endurance'. He was also a talented batsman and had inherited, to a degree, his father's notable talent for tennis.

Everyone who wrote about Ralph prefaced their remarks with ‘handsome' or ‘very good looking' and one schoolmate even likened him to something from a Grecian vase. A fellow Guards officer who would serve in the Coldstream with him said that he was ‘an exceptional youth … of some brilliance with considerable good looks' and Oliver Lyttelton thought that he was both the most charming and the most handsome individual he ever met. ‘You could not imagine that he would ever say or do a mean thing.' All of these enviable qualities might have been tiresome, but for the fact that he was ‘nobody's angel' and went through life with a casual air of disinterest and a good amount of cheek that appealed to his friends.

His favourite sparring partner was a Mr Luxmoore. A retired housemaster, Luxmoore was something of an institution, still living on the premises after some seventy years at Eton man and boy. The elderly man frequently entertained boys with teas and debate and it was seen as something of a pastime amongst them to ‘quarrel' with him. Ralph took it to entirely new levels for two-and-a-half years and amused himself immensely, although it must be said that Luxmoore appeared to revel in these mock rows with the boys, seeing it as a way of challenging them. When his schoolmates were solemnly writing out their achievements at school in their house books, Ralph was mocking the tradition. Rather than sports colours, clubs and academic achievements he listed himself as Eton's chief Zeppelin agent, claimed that he had only made it to breakfast twice, that he had got away with attending just one Pop debate and seldom retired to bed before 2 a.m. He styled himself as a ‘Gentleman of Leisure 1913–1916'.

Ralph could not take himself seriously even in the presence of the headmaster, who acted as division master to the sixth form. The ‘Brown Man', as the boys referred to Edward Lyttelton on account of his outdoors complexion, fared no better at reining in Ralph than he had with his nephew Oliver.

One sweaty summer morning Ralph turned up for lessons clad in a greatcoat and a thick, purple cricket scarf. Lyttelton was known to have a preoccupation with the boys' hygiene and he was immediately ruffled. ‘Take that coat off!' he barked.

Ralph stood his ground. ‘I'm feeling rather chilly this morning, I'd rather …'

Lyttelton was having none of it. ‘OANH!' he exclaimed. (This was a grunt that he had a habit of prefacing remarks with). ‘TAKE IT OFF!'

Ralph complied. He was naked from the waist up, having neglected to find a clean shirt.

‘Oanh. Put it back on.'

Evidently the headmaster forgave Ralph, because in the summer of 1915 Lyttelton took him to picturesque La Panne, just along the coast from Dunkirk, where the Belgian Royal Family had relocated. Prince Leopold, the heir to the throne, was to go to Eton, where thirty or so Belgian boys from well-to-do families had been given refuge in various houses since 1914. He would be put in Lubbock's house with Prince Henry, and Ralph was to act as a private tutor for the summer in preparation.

By Easter 1916, Ralph was about to turn 19, the time had come for him to play his own part in the war. He began his journey to the front with a short trip to Windsor and promptly received a commission in the Coldstream Guards. He was just about ready for the front in October and travelled out to join the 1st battalion. Henry Dundas claimed the Coldstream had been harder hit that any of the other Guards battalions on the Somme and the 1st Coldstream was a shadow of itself when Ralph arrived to help replenish their losses of September 1916.

Ralph had been at the front some six months when, in spring 1917, another officer of special importance to him arrived at the front. When he had just begun at Eton, Ralph had been allocated one of the school's sporting greats as a fagmaster in the shape of Logie Colin Leggatt. Logie was yet another member of the 1912 cricketing XI that had played at Lord's with the likes of George Llewelyn Davies. The eldest surviving son of William Leggatt, another member of the Indian Civil Service, Logie had been born in Bangalore in 1894. At the end of 1912, Ralph's first winter at Eton, Logie also led a famed College Wall team that put paid to Oppidan hopes on St Andrew's Day.
2
As if that were not enough, he played again at Lord's in 1913, was Keeper of the Wall,
3
editor of the
Eton College Chronicle
, helped to run the Shakespeare Society and made the Newcastle Select.

Reginald Gamble, as was part of his irregular routine, returned to England on leave as many summers as possible so to play at the Lawn Tennis Championships at Wimbledon. On this particular occasion, his parents had then sailed east again and young Ralph had been left feeling rather glum. Logie noticed that the younger boy was homesick and it saddened him. As one who knew only too well the pain of having parents far away in India, he was resolved to try to help. As school dispersed for leave Logie penned him a heartfelt note:

I expect you must have been very upset by your people's departure to India. I wonder if I could do anything to help you? You have plenty of backbone, and what is better plenty of religion, and you will nearly always be able to fight your own battles, but you may be rather hard hit this time and perhaps you would like to apply to someone older than yourself. If so Ralph, I just want to tell you … that there is one friend of yours who would be overjoyed if he could help you.

He didn't want to be forceful about it (‘correspondence at once becomes impossible if one party moves unwillingly to the ink pot') but Ralph was left in no doubt that if he wished to discuss his sadness with someone confidentially, then this hallowed figure of the school was ready to listen. They became firm friends. Ralph's response, if he ever wrote one, does not survive but when Logie left for war ‘next to the family' he rated Ralph as dearest to him and the latter was duly supplying him with letters from Eton and keeping him informed about everything that was going on in his absence.

In 1913 Logie had left school, the scene of so much happiness for him. He went up to Cambridge where he remained but a short time before the Kaiser and his army intervened. He volunteered swiftly for the Rifle Brigade at the outbreak of war and before he knew it was put in the 13th Battalion and sent off for training as part of Kitchener's new army.

When Logie departed for war in July 1915 with another Colleger named Charles Rowlatt, he was more concerned for his family than he was for himself. ‘I have never disguised to yourself the fact that in these next months you who stay at home have got to suffer very much more than we who go abroad.' It was, he believed, a good experience for him. He argued that he had many failings, and whether he believed it deeply or not, that some of them may be atoned for by ‘a little hardship and self-sacrifice'. After all he was young, and as such would it not be an adventure from which he could learn valuable lessons?

Logie related everything back to his life's passion, cricket. He wanted to play the best of all his matches ‘and if I do get bowled out – well what a life I've had: the most wonderful family, home life, College at Eton and always a sufficiency of very dear friends. Here I stand,' he told his father, ‘what you and [mother] and Eton have made me and God bless you both for all you have done for me.'

School was constantly on his mind at the front. Logie had photos of his three fags in his dugout, including Ralph and the sparkling Reggie Colquhoun, later a house master, who wrote him eight-page letters full of the minutiae of school life. Ralph kept up correspondence firstly from Eton and then from La Panne, which he seemed to be enjoying immensely. Logie and Charles wrote back to school appealing for footballs, boots and equipment for their men and were bombarded with gifts. Then leave came and Logie rejoiced in spending as much of it as Eton as he could. ‘Jack' Rowlatt, Charles' younger brother, even organised a scratch game of football in his honour and Logie spent his brief spell at home with his family, Ralph and the others.

Whilst he was gaining plenty of experience in the rigours of trench warfare, battles were a thing left to the imagination. At the advent of 1916 Logie and Charles had decided that they would rather like to try and get into the Guards, but they agreed that it would be bad form to abandon their battalion of the Rifle Brigade until it had at least seen a fight. ‘After that all of us who survive are certain to apply for transfers!'

Suddenly in April 1916 all leave was stopped and Logie was thrust into successive bombing, gas and bayonetting courses as the British Army prepared for the Battle of the Somme. But then disaster befell him, a disaster that would have struck his worried parents as an enormous piece of luck. Logie was a big, solid young man but on 30 June 1916 he was playing rugby when a tiny little fellow landed on his ankle and snapped it. It rendered him ‘a less heroic casualty than one might have wished' and saw him removed from the battalion. His only consolation was that it appeared that the 13th Rifle Brigade was not earmarked for a substantial role in the upcoming show. He was still disappointed and ended up in an Oxford hospital, resigned to his fate. ‘London is apparently full up and as I only just escaped Manchester or Leeds by the skin of my teeth I suppose I ought to be grateful.'

It took months for Logie's ankle to heal, but by the spring of 1917 he had managed to affect his regimental move and now proudly wore the badge of the Coldstream Guards. He was in his element in barracks at Windsor, inviting half of College to tea and revelling in the shared Etonian heritage of his fellow officers. By 1 March Logie had arrived in France with a small draft of Guardsmen and was waiting to be sent up to a battalion. His first mission at the front was to catch up with Ralph. It appeared that the Guards Division, with its huge population of OEs and familiar faces, was going to fully live up to his expectations. Whilst languishing at the depot he happened to run into another OE, Colonel ‘Gilly' Follett, in command of the 2nd Coldstream Guards. Follett had heard that Logie was in the regiment and had intended to try to get him so Logie laid it on as thick as he could. ‘I told him I wanted very much to get to one of the fighting battalions and I hope I may be able to get to him.' It worked. Logie arrived at the 2nd Coldstream Guards a week later.