Commando General

by Richard B Mead

  Bob’s name does not appear on the list of successful candidates for the Army Entrance Examination in June 1925, and it seems that he was actually the beneficiary of a procedure whereby the headmasters of certain public schools could nominate exceptional candidates for Sandhurst and Woolwich, who were then approved or otherwise by the Army Council. In any event, after attending the Eton OTC camp in August, Bob was admitted to the Junior Division of the Royal Military College on 4 September 1925 as a Gentleman Cadet in No 1 Company.

  Chapter 3

  Blues

  The Commandant and the Adjutant at Sandhurst when Bob arrived were, respectively, Major General Charles Corkran and Captain Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, the former late of and the latter seconded from the Grenadier Guards, and they demanded from the gentlemen cadets the high standards expected by that regiment. Browning in particular was a stickler for discipline and came down very hard on any cadet whom he felt showed less than full devotion to his work, although on one occasion when a battalion parade for the whole RMC went badly wrong, Bob expressed surprise in his diary at the Adjutant’s lack of concern. This was, however, the exception rather than the rule. The Commissioning Parade on 14 July 1926, at the end of Bob’s Intermediate Term, was notable for being the occasion on which Browning initiated the tradition of the Adjutant riding up the steps and into the Old College behind the Senior Term of cadets.

  The course was a tough one, with a great deal of emphasis on drill under the instruction of NCOs from the Foot Guards, who would pick up on the slightest lack of attention to dress or inability to perform increasingly complex manoeuvres on the parade ground, with the offending cadets being punished accordingly. Physical Training also played a prominent role, particularly in the early months. There was a great deal of classroom work on all manner of subjects, as well as more practical training in marksmanship, map reading and signalling, accompanied by route marches in full battle order, staff rides and platoon and company exercises, some of which were at night, including one which required Bob’s company to construct rafts to cross the Basingstoke Canal.

  The commander of No. 1 Company was Major Richard O’Connor of the Cameronians, a highly respected officer who would go on to have an outstanding career. The same could also be said of another of the company officers, Captain Miles Dempsey of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, whom Bob would get to know a great deal better during the war. A third, Captain Alec Gatehouse of the Royal Tank Regiment, would also become a divisional commander. With this galaxy of talent one might have expected No. 1 Company to do very well, whereas in fact its performance was only average compared to No. 4 Company, which took all the honours during Bob’s three terms at the RMC. He himself must have impressed his superiors, however, as he was promoted to corporal for the Intermediate Term. Given that he had got into serious trouble in the Junior Term after drinking too much champagne one night, this showed both tolerance and remarkable insight on the part of his company commander. O’Connor’s judgement was vindicated when Bob’s leadership qualities resulted in his further promotion to senior under-officer, the top cadet in the company, for the Senior Term.

  At Sandhurst there was a wider social mixture than Bob had previously encountered, partly because of a scheme in operation whereby promising noncommissioned officers could be nominated by their regiments to attend the RMC. There were eighteen of them in Bob’s term, and the order of merit on passing out some fifteen months later showed all but two of these cadets in the top half of the list, among them the first three. It seems likely that they felt that they had more to prove than the direct entry cadets and worked harder as a result. There was also a great disparity in disposable income between them and their better-heeled contemporaries, which meant that they were less able to indulge in expensive pursuits in their spare time.

  These constraints did not apply to Bob and his immediate friends, who led very full sporting and social lives in addition to their work. Bob kept a car at the RMC, but London was easily accessible by train and he took every opportunity to go there. The Laycock house at 47 Charles Street, in the heart of Mayfair, was constantly manned by servants and acted as a hotel for the whole family, at least one of whom seemed to be there whenever Bob visited. There was a strong pull back to Eton, even closer at hand to Sandhurst, as many of Bob’s close friends were still at the college, whilst his brother Peter was now also there. Bob was even persuaded to represent the RMC against the college in the Field Game, a peculiarly Etonian sport which he had not played to any great extent whilst a pupil. The result was an inevitable defeat. He was more at home with polo, stabling his own ponies nearby.

  In the summer vacation of 1926, Bob was invited by his friend John Crichton, Earl of Erne,1 a fellow cadet and Old Etonian, to stay at his home in Northern Ireland, Crom Castle. After five days of sailing, shooting and riding, Bob left to catch the ferry from Larne to Stranraer and then travelled up to the far North-West of Scotland, where Joe and other members of the family were guests of the Duke of Westminster at Rosehall, his estate in Sutherland, staying aboard his newly acquired steam yacht Cutty Sark. Nothing to do with the sailing clipper of the same name, the vessel was even so of substantial size, 263ft in length and lavishly fitted out. Leaving the Duke behind, two days later the Laycocks sailed in the Cutty Sark down to London.

  Having spent the rest of the holiday at Wiseton, Bob returned to Sandhurst for the Senior Term in early September and on 18 December he led No. 1 Company in the Commissioning Parade. The results for his term were announced just over a month later, showing that Bob had passed out 15th of the 108 cadets in his term. On 29 January 1927 he was commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards as a cornet,2 joining the regiment on the following day.

  The Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) was second only to the Life Guards3 as the most senior regiment of the British Army. Raised originally in the Parliamentary cause by Sir Arthur Haselrig in 1650, it was called the Blues from the beginning after the colour of the coats worn by the men. Having served in Scotland initially, it played a significant role in the elevation of Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector. The command then passed to Colonel Unton Croke and, as Unton Croke’s Regiment of Horse, it was one of the three regiments which accompanied General George Monck, later Duke of Albemarle, on his march from Scotland in 1660 in support of the Restoration. After temporary disbandment it was re-raised by Charles II in 1661 as the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards. Its battle honours in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries included Dettingen and Waterloo, and one squadron formed part of a composite regiment of Household Cavalry in the Cavalry Division under John French in South Africa, when Joe had met many of its officers. During the Great War it suffered from the difficulties experienced by the cavalry as a whole in finding a role for itself in trench warfare. After providing one squadron at a time as infantry, in 1918 the then two regiments of Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards were converted to machine gun battalions, in which role they accompanied the final advance of the Allied armies. Having suffered considerable losses during the war, in 1919 the Household Cavalry reverted to its peacetime role, which was very largely ceremonial.

  The Blues had been proposed by Joe’s mother as a suitable regiment for him to join when he left school, only for Joe to reject the suggestion of a regular commission. It is not known what prompted her choice, but she presumably had contacts in the regiment. Joe himself knew it well from South Africa, and his friend, the Duke of Westminster, had served there with the regiment, before resigning his regular commission and joining the Cheshire Yeomanry. Moreover, when the time came to choose a regiment for Bob, the Colonel of the Blues, Field Marshal Earl Haig, happened to be another good friend of Joe’s. During his Intermediate Term at Sandhurst Bob was vetted by the Commanding Officer, Lord Alastair Innes-Ker, who evidently approved of him.

  There was a decidedly patrician feel to the Blues. During the late 1920s and early 1930s its officers would include the Dukes of Norfolk and Roxburghe, the Marquess of Waterford, the Earls of Erne (Bo
b’s friend, John Crichton), Normanton and Sefton, Viscount Molyneux and Lords Forester, Stavordale and Sudeley, together with a smattering of baronets. The majority of the officers, however, came from the untitled landed gentry, who possessed the two main requirements for membership: they had to be at least competent horsemen and they needed independent means to keep them in the manner expected of them, which could not remotely have been achieved on their army pay. Bob met the specification and soon found that he fitted into this milieu very comfortably, helped initially by having another close and enduring friend, Richard Cotterell, a contemporary at Eton and Sandhurst, join the regiment on the same day.

  The duties of an officer of the Blues were not particularly onerous. The subalterns were on a rota to be the Orderly Officer, although this duty was often swapped with a colleague to allow attendance at some social or sporting function. Acting as Orderly Officer was regarded as very tedious, the typical tasks involving attending the riding school, inspecting stables and barracks, sitting in on Educational Certificate exams, attending church parades, inspecting the Barracks Guard and turning it out after dinner.

  The ceremonial duties of the two Household Cavalry regiments involved mounting the King’s Life Guard at Horse Guards and providing escorts to the Sovereign for specific events, such as the State Opening of Parliament and Trooping the Colour, as well as escorting visiting royalty and occasionally more junior members of the Royal Family, for instance on the occasion of their wedding. The King’s Life Guard came in two forms.4 When the King was out of London, a Short Guard was mounted of a junior NCO and ten troopers commanded by a Corporal of Horse. When the King was in residence, the regiment on duty provided a Long Guard, commanded by an officer with the addition of a Corporal Major and a trumpeter. The guard was changed daily at 11.00 a.m. and the relief had to ride from the London barracks. The officer was thus required to stay overnight, but was allowed to entertain friends to lunch, tea and dinner in his rooms, so this was not necessarily an irksome duty. Moreover, on occasion he received an invitation himself to dine with the equivalent Foot Guards officer responsible for the Guard at St James’s Palace.

  Most of the ceremonial duties, and invariably the King’s Life Guard, were carried out by the regiment which was based in London. When Bob joined the regiment, the London base was Regent’s Park Barracks, but this was judged to be too small and in 1932 it was switched to Knightsbridge Barracks. The other regiment was at Combermere Barracks in Windsor, where it supposedly did field training, which Bob later said ‘consisted of riding our horses about in the morning in Windsor and either attacking or defending the hill on which stood an equestrian statue of King George known as the Copper Horse.’5 The two regiments exchanged places once a year. They also decamped at different times to Pirbright for part of the summer, where they took part in training and exercises, the latter often in conjunction with a battalion from the Foot Guards.

  None of these moves interfered to a great extent with the officers’ social activities, which were extensive, helped by the fact that most regimental duty was carried out in the mornings, leaving the afternoons and evenings free. It was, in fact, uncommon for a large number of officers to dine in the mess, other than on guest nights, and on a number of occasions, usually when acting as Orderly Officer, Bob found himself dining there completely alone. In such circumstances it was the tradition that the lone officer should be entitled to a bottle of champagne! More often Bob dined out in London, and very often lunched there as well, whether based at the time in London, Windsor or Pirbright. If he needed to be back in either of the last two in time for some form of duty or other activity on the following morning, he would catch the last train or, on the many occasions on which he missed it, summon a car from Daimler Hire. If he was not specifically required, he would usually stay at the family London home at 47 Charles Street, or at one of the number of London clubs at which he was a member, including the Turf, the Guards, Buck’s, White’s and Pratt’s.

  Much of Bob’s social and sporting life involved other officers of the regiment. The Blues observed a very relaxed attitude to seniority, and Bob was often to be found in a social context in the company of officers of many years standing. When they were in the mess or off duty, all officers up to and including the rank of major addressed each other by their first names or nicknames, of which there were many – Peekaboo, Little Man, Fish, the Boob, the Hen and Whisky being some examples – whilst the commanding officer was called simply ‘Colonel’. Formal mess etiquette was otherwise traditionally almost non-existent in the Household Cavalry and the Foot Guards, unlike in many more junior regiments.

  Whilst the NCOs and other ranks enjoyed football, the sporting interests of most of the officers centred on horses. The Blues held its own annual Mounted Sports Day, and London District, the military area in which both the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry served, ran a Bronze Medal Tournament in which Bob acquitted himself well in the Officers’ Sword, Lance and Revolver Competition. He came second in the same discipline in the Royal Tournament of 1927. Both the Household Brigade and the Blues alone held their own race meetings or point-to-points, in which Bob occasionally distinguished himself, although the best rider over fences in the regiment at this time was Peter Grant-Lawson, who in 1932 won the Grand Military Gold Cup at Sandown Park, the premier race for amateur military jockeys, and came a very creditable fifth in the Grand National a week later.

  Bob was also a very capable polo player and began playing very early in his career, representing the regiment or its B Team on frequent occasions. This was not a period of notable success for the Blues in the sport, early elimination from the two main competitions, the Subalterns Cup and the Inter Regimental Cup, being commonplace, but there were still a number of satisfying wins. Bob also played for a number of other teams at Hurlingham, Roehampton and Ranelagh. In 1929, in the knowledge that he was to be away from London for much of the summer, he sold all his ponies and did not play at all, but he returned to the sport the following year.

  The late autumn and winter were devoted to hunting. All the cavalry regiments encouraged their officers to hunt as frequently as possible at weekends and granted special ‘hunting leave’, lasting weeks in some cases, on the grounds that this was a more useful way of occupying them than having them either hanging around the barracks or spending too much time on their social lives. Bob’s favourite hunts were the Quorn and the Belvoir. Although his father no longer owned Newport Lodge in Melton Mowbray, the meets were easily accessible by car from Wiseton and the horses were stabled locally with friends. Very often other members of the family would participate. However, Bob also stayed at a succession of country houses owned by his various friends for both hunting and shooting, as well as for out-of-town social events such as hunt balls.

  If purely military activity did not appear to take up a great deal of a subaltern’s life, it was not entirely forgotten. The annual visits to Pirbright were complemented by the bi-annual camp for manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, in which selected squadrons of the Life Guards and the Blues were merged into the Household Cavalry Composite Regiment – something which, it was understood, would happen in the event of a war. Although the accommodation was in tents, the usual standards were upheld and, as London was too far away, the evenings were largely devoted to drinking large quantities of champagne and playing chemin-de-fer.

  In May 1928 Bob and some of his fellow officers went down to Larkhill for machine gun training, together with officers from the Life Guards, King’s Dragoon Guards and 17th/21st Lancers. He must have shown some aptitude, as three months later he was sent on an eight-week course in machine gunnery at the Small Arms School at Netheravon. Regular trips to London were made difficult by the fact that the work was time-consuming and difficult; indeed, Bob thought that much of it was above his head and those of the other attendees. Weekends were free, but staying at Wiseton necessitated a very long journey, although he managed to go twice by dint of the fact that there was no work on Friday aft
ernoons. However, Bob’s half-sister, Kathleen, and her husband, Bill Rollo, had a house at Oare, near Marlborough, where he was made welcome, whilst another friend had taken a cottage near Lymington, so he was able to get away whenever his duties permitted.

  The course, which he passed successfully, did at least provide him with one practical modern military skill, in which he was otherwise seriously lacking. His reward was to take command of the regiment’s machine gunners. In the following summer of 1929 he was appointed as instructor in machine gunnery at the annual camp of the Cheshire Yeomanry, staying at Eaton Hall, the seat of the Duke of Westminster, which was rather more comfortable than a tent. He much enjoyed the company and at the end of the camp a large ball was given by the Duke, so from Bob’s point of view it was a thoroughly satisfactory experience. Not long afterwards he was appointed to command the Household Cavalry Machine Gun Troop and in the following year he returned again to instruct the Cheshire Yeomanry, their annual camp on this occasion being near Scarborough.

  His military education continued with a battlefield tour of Northern France. He later wrote in his diary: ‘As an amusing trip the thing was a great success but as an instruction tour it was a complete failure.’ On the first day, the senior officer, Major A. C. ‘Fish’ Turnor, who was leading the tour, never knew where he was; on the second, they failed to find General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien,6 who had been brought in specially to conduct the party over the battlefield of Le Cateau, where he had commanded; and on the third, the guide was a French officer who neither spoke nor understood English. In the end Turnor was persuaded to call off the rest of the tour, and Bob and a number of others spent the remaining day at Le Touquet, where they lost a lot of money at the casino.