by Richard Mead
Dick decided to take part of his annual leave in Ireland that May, timing it to coincide with the Irish National Hunt meeting at Punchestown. Just as he was due to travel, the General Strike was called by the Trades Union Congress and the regiment was put on full standby to take whatever action might be necessary to keep essential services going and prevent civil disturbance. All leave was stopped and the men were confined to barracks, with one troop placed on half an hour’s notice. To Dick’s relief he was then given permission to take his leave, enjoying enormously his first trip back to Ireland since the regiment had left the country four years earlier, even though he was only there as a spectator. Shortly after his return the strike was called off. The regiment had not been involved, much to Houston’s disappointment, his restlessness whilst it was taking place infuriating Dick’s successor as adjutant, Alex McBean.
The latitude shown to him by Houston over his leave may have had an impact on how he behaved to others. In general he was developing a reputation as a keen disciplinarian who did not tolerate disobedience, but he could also be very human. One day a very junior subaltern in his squadron, Kenneth ‘Kate’ Savill, who would later admit that Dick made him quake much of the time, requested permission to go to London for lunch and was told emphatically no. As Savill had already asked a girl to join him at the Cavalry Club and could not afford to let her down, he took a chance on not being found out. Unfortunately the lift at the club was broken, so Savill was compelled to use the stairs on his way out and, to his horror, whom should he see at the bottom but his squadron commander! Dick smiled and never said a word, then or later.
At the end of the summer, the War Office once again changed its mind and ordered the regiment to prepare for Egypt in December. Dick was not to accompany them, at least initially, as he had been selected as a candidate for the Staff College and needed to attend a course of preparatory lectures in London and at much the same time to take his promotion exams, which were held at Woolwich. The latter were passed with a good overall score of 70 per cent and a top score of 80 per cent in military law. The Staff College exams, not held until the end of February 1927, promised to be much more challenging, but in the event Dick found them easier than he had expected. Unfortunately so did all the other candidates, which concerned him greatly. ‘I can only hope and pray for the best’, he wrote in his diary, ‘but shall be v. disappointed if I haven’t qualified.’
In the meantime he had to rejoin the regiment and on 7 March his mother saw him off at Croydon by aeroplane. After a very bumpy crossing to Le Bourget, on which he came close to being sick, he caught the overnight train to Marseilles, where he boarded the new Messageries Maritimes ship, the Champollion, bound for Alexandria. On his arrival there the local Thomas Cook office supervised his transfer on to a train for Cairo, where he was met by a welcoming party of Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs Houston, accompanied by Eldred and the mess car.
Egypt had been occupied by the British since 1882 and had become a protectorate in 1914, providing a secure base for operations against the Turks in Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Syria during the Great War. In 1922 the country became notionally independent, but defence and the protection of foreign interests remained the responsibility of the British Government, which still kept a large body of troops in the country. The majority of these were to be found in three formations, the Canal Brigade, responsible for and mostly located along the Suez Canal, the Cairo Brigade, based in the capital but with one battalion in Alexandria, and the Cavalry Brigade, also in and around Cairo. The other components of the Cavalry Brigade were the 3rd and the 15th/19th Hussars.
The barracks into which the regiment moved at Helmieh were even worse than Hounslow, with poor huts, potholed roads and no facilities for sport. Houston responded immediately to the challenge and set his men to transforming the place, refurbishing the huts, mending the roads and building tennis courts, a football pitch and a hockey ground. When Dick arrived he was immediately placed in charge of creating the gardens. Polo, played during the winter months, was still taking place, but the regiment’s ponies had not arrived in good condition after their sea voyage and it was to be some time before the 12th Lancers were able to compete on even terms with the best.
Dick’s main concern was to bring HQ Squadron back to the high level of efficiency in which he had left it, as he felt that his second-in-command had let standards slip, in spite of the fact that one of his machine-gun troops and the signals troop were lying in first and second place in the Bongo Beaker. He instituted parades for the machine gunners and signallers from 0630 to 0815 hrs every morning, which he thought would give the officers and men a good appetite for breakfast, and stepped up the training schemes. Having worked hard to recover lost ground, he was sorry to have to hand over the squadron to Lumsden, taking command of B Squadron instead.
Entry to the Staff College occupied a great deal of Dick’s thoughts during his first four months in Egypt. For an officer with any ambition to higher command, attending and passing the two-year course was a vital step in his career, whilst failing to enter would probably condemn him to a ceiling of lieutenant colonel at best. In June he learnt that a lieutenant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers in the Cairo Brigade, Gerald Templer, had heard unofficially that he had passed into the college, causing Dick to worry even more. He was delighted to receive a telegram a few days later from his mother to say that he had qualified, as had Lumsden and Russell, but his 5,766 marks1 were not enough for automatic entry and he still needed the all important nomination. With places limited for the cavalry, news that Claude Nicholson of the 16th/5th Lancers had secured one of them seemed to him to have lessened his chances. It was therefore with huge relief, nearly a month later, that he received another telegram from Minnie to tell him that he had got into the next course, due to begin in January 1928.2 It had been announced by this time that Houston would be returning to Tidworth to take command of 2 Cavalry Brigade, so it was Charrington, his successor, who told Dick that he could depart from Egypt by the beginning of November, in order to take leave before the course began. To make his happiness complete, Dick was promoted to major on 6 September.
Dick’s youngest brother Jack, who had recently left Oxford, arrived that September to stay with him for the remaining weeks of his posting and to travel round Egypt seeing the sights. Unfortunately his visit coincided with a virus which swept though the regiment, a high fever that brought down both brothers, almost all the officers, and many of the men. Dick was out of hospital in a few days, but Jack was incapacitated for nearly two weeks, ruining his plans. The two of them instead took a fortnight in Alexandria to recuperate, the sea air and plenty of sailing restoring them to health. At the end of October Dick handed over B Squadron and gave a dinner for all the officers in the mess. ‘I shall miss everyone enormously’, he wrote in his diary, ‘and I do hope they write to me sometimes.’ He had served continuously in the regiment for nearly twelve years and it had become his home, but he was now to take a significant step forward which would lead him in new directions.
Dick and Jack sailed from Alexandria in the venerable old P&O liner Kaiser-i-Hind, disembarking in Marseilles and travelling back to England on the P&O special train and then by ferry from Boulogne, the first time that Dick had been there since 1919. With more than two months ahead before he was required to start at the Staff College, Dick had two priorities for his leave. The immediate one was to buy a car and his choice was a model from the Star Motor Company,3 for which he paid the princely sum of £325. The second was to get in as much hunting as possible before the course began in late January.
Three days after arriving back in the country, Dick spent a day with the Blackmore Vale, during which he encountered Lettice St Maur. This was not their first meeting, indeed they had spent some time together at the end of the previous season shortly before Dick went to Egypt. They had a common interest in riding and in particular in hunting and Dick had ridden Lettice’s horse, Bron, in the Blackmore Vale point-to-point only two days
before he left to rejoin the regiment. When he heard subsequently that she had won the Ladies’ Race on Bron in the South-West Wiltshire point-to-point, he had cabled his congratulations and followed up with a letter, a brief correspondence ensuing between the two of them, entirely devoted to equestrian matters.
Lettice was born in 1902 to Lord Percy St Maur,4 a younger son of the 14th Duke of Somerset, and his wife, Violet White, the daughter of the 2nd Lord Annaly, and she grew up at Maiden Bradley, the seat of the Somersets. Both her parents had died, her father when she was very young, her mother only while Dick was away in Egypt. She had two sisters, Helen, born in 1900, and Lucia, born in 1906, and the three of them had at one time gained something of a reputation for high spiritedness, being known in society collectively as ‘Hell Let Loose’. Helen had been married since 1924 to Major George Gosling, ‘Squeaker’ to friends and family, who had served in the Army during the Great War and won the Military Cross. They already had three children and lived in a large house near Bicester, Stratton Audley Park. Lucia was still single and very close to Lettice. Their mother had rented Horsington Manor, near Stowell Hill, since 1925 and the two girls were still there, enjoying the season’s hunting with the Blackmore Vale. Lettice in particular was a most accomplished horsewoman.
Before Dick’s departure for Egypt and during his stay there, he and Lettice had been no more than friends with a common interest in riding, but very quickly something more significant began to blossom. This was not, however, the first time that Dick had been attracted to a member of the opposite sex. Shortly before the regiment left Ireland in 1922 he had been briefly infatuated with a young woman called Betty Malcolm. Although she came over to England from time to time, he was initially away at the Small Arms School and then the Cavalry School and was able to see her only infrequently. That November she became engaged to Henry Somerset, a cousin of the Duke of Beaufort, and they were married in the following month. She and Dick remained good friends, however.
Then at the Blackmore Vale Ball in January 1926 Dick had met Veronica Morley, who was only 17 at the time, and was much taken with her. They spent some time together and he met her parents, who lived at Biddestone Manor in Wiltshire, and subsequently escorted her to a number of social occasions. She was not a good correspondent and it was well over a month after he had arrived in Egypt that he first received a letter from her, a possible indication that the relationship was not as close as he thought. It may therefore have been no great surprise that during the summer, as he was waiting for news of his entry to the Staff College, he heard she had become engaged to a subaltern in the 11th Hussars. He was thus to some extent on the rebound when he arrived back in England.
Throughout November and December Dick and Lettice were in each other’s company almost daily, sometimes alone and sometimes with either or both of Jack and Lucia. Dick also introduced her to his mother and grandmother. Lettice was a woman of very determined character, as was Minnie, and they did not always see eye to eye. On 8 December, having just driven over to Camberley to have a look at the Staff College, Dick wrote in his diary: ‘A terrible row over Lettice whom I simply adore.’ The circumstances can only be guessed at, but two days later he wrote again: ‘Mother and I have made it up, but I am very sore over it & worried & told Lettice out hunting today, she was terribly nice about it, & I hope that I may have a chance.’ By the following week Lettice was dining at Stowell Hill and all seemed to be well again. She went off with Lucia to spend Christmas with the Goslings at Stratton Audley, but was back in time for the New Year festivities.
On 5 January 1928, following a successful day’s hunting, Dick proposed to Lettice. ‘When nearly home,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘I asked Lettice to marry me, she said why didn’t you say something weeks ago! I am terribly happy.’ Not wasting any time, the following day they went up to London and selected an emerald engagement ring at Cartier, following which Dick was progressively introduced to her family, notably her much loved Aunt Dora (Lady Ernest St Maur) and the Duke of Somerset and his immediate family at their house at Maiden Bradley. The engagement was formally announced on 9 January.
During his life Dick had two great and abiding loves. The first was the 12th Lancers, an affair which began in 1915 and lasted until the day he died. The second, and in every way the more important one, was Lettice. They complemented each other remarkably well. Although Dick possessed strong characteristics – integrity, courage, loyalty, honesty, kindness, modesty were all frequently referred to by his friends – and had proved himself an outstanding leader of men, he was in reality quite shy and could appear awkward or diffident in company, unless it was composed of close friends or comrades. He was hesitant in speech, usually talking very quietly, and his frequent use of ‘er’ or ‘ah’ at the end of a phrase led to his subordinates nicknaming him ‘Dick-er’. Indeed he was much imitated by the junior officers in his regiment and was a never a good public speaker, especially before a large audience. He did not make friends easily, though when he did they were there for life.
Lettice was quite different. The high spiritedness attributed to her and her sisters had certainly not been diluted by the time she and Dick first met and it never entirely left her even when she grew older. She always appeared supremely self-assured and was a very good conversationalist, totally comfortable in society. As she had no mean intellect and took a great interest in public affairs, she could also hold her own in more serious company. In the very structured class system of the day she came from the upper echelon, which probably bolstered her natural confidence. Her bubbly and gregarious personality was an excellent foil to his measured, indeed cautious approach to human relationships, while between the two of them there was never any question of her subservience. Most important of all, from the time of his return from Egypt to the end of his life it is clear they adored one another and neither would look elsewhere again.
Chapter 8
Staff Officer
It has sometimes been said that the two-year Staff College course was designed to turn the students not into Grade 2 or 3 staff officers, the levels of appointment they might hope to achieve in the immediate years after graduation, but into the generals of the future. Certainly the reduction of the course from two years to five months during the Second World War proved beyond any doubt that producing competent staff officers in a much shorter period was entirely feasible. On the other side of the coin, and particularly towards the end of the inter-war period, it became clear that few officers would progress to general officer rank if they lacked the initials psc after their name in the Army List. For the ambitious, therefore, this was an essential step in their military careers.
The corollary of this was that those nominated for the Staff College were considered by the Army to be the best of their generation. In addition to Claude Nicholson and Gerald Templer, whom he already knew would be attending, Dick’s fellow students in his division included Gerry Bucknall, ‘Sandy’ Galloway, Philip Gregson-Ellis, John Harding, Charles Miller and one of the few survivors from his term at Sandhurst, ‘Babe’ MacMillan. The senior division in his first year was just as distinguished, with among its numbers ‘Bubbles’ Barker, Robert Bridgeman, Philip Christison, ‘Chink’ Dorman-Smith, ‘Ginger’ Hawkesworth, Oliver Leese, Ronald Penney, and Jock Whiteley, whilst in Dick’s second year the junior division included Neil Ritchie and Bobby Erskine, as well as Herbert Lumsden and Hugh Russell from his own regiment. All these men would achieve high command or very senior staff appointments in the coming war. Two were destined to become Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff.
Perhaps even more important in terms of both receiving the best possible instruction and making invaluable contacts were the members of the directing staff, who were officers of the next most senior army generation, for the most part some five to ten years older than their students. Some of them were still majors but held the rank of local lieutenant colonel at the College, while others were already brevet or substantive lieutenant colonels. During Dick’s
two years they included Harold Franklyn, George Giffard, ‘Tommy’ Lindsell, Edwin Morris, Richard O’Connor, Bernard Paget, Henry Pownall and one officer who left a strong impression on all the students with his lectures on tactics, Bernard Montgomery.
With such a galaxy of talent both alongside and above, the course was certain to be highly stimulating and, notwithstanding a major distraction in the form of Lettice, Dick could hardly wait to start. He arrived at the beginning of term on 22 January 1928 to find that he had been allocated an enormous room. This was only temporary, as the wedding was less than three months away, after which he and Lettice would move into rented accommodation. She and Dick’s mother came down a week after the beginning of term to look at houses. Minnie approved most of one called Brownhill and Dick liked it too, partly because it had a full-sized tennis court. Lettice was initially unhappy about its decorative state, but nothing better emerged and they decided to take it as their first married home.
Lectures at the college commenced immediately on the practical duties of a staff officer, and majored initially on the organization of the British Army, moving on to a wide variety of topics from the enlistment and service of soldiers to the application of military law. The first year focused on staff duties at brigade and divisional level, the second at corps and army level. There was a series of lectures on tactical command, subjects including the use of armoured cars, night operations, movement by motor transport, cooperation with the RAF and defence against enemy air forces. For future generals, however, it was necessary to consider the much bigger picture and here the lectures covered the Committee of Imperial Defence, the Washington Conference, The Hague Rules, strategic analyses of the European Powers and even the North-West Frontier, which for many years would still be considered an area of great military importance