The Last Great Cavalryman

by Richard Mead

  Attendance in the lecture rooms was accompanied by the preparation of papers by the students on a wide variety of subjects – Dick was particularly upset by a poor one he submitted on the artillery. Small syndicates worked on problems set by the directing staff and there were demonstrations of tactics and participation in wider training schemes. The pressure was immense, with students aware that they were under continuous appraisal: the ability to prioritize and to organize was vital to success. With his inherent shyness and his quiet, hesitant voice, Dick was surprised and delighted when a talk he gave on the use of mounted troops in an advanced guard, on which he was clearly an authority, resulted in congratulations from O’Connor, who found it clear and to the point.

  The traditional employment of the cavalry was still part of War Office policy and Dick and the other cavalry students had been given the new cavalry training manual the day after their arrival at the College and asked to suggest amendments to it. Just a month later Dick heard from Charrington that the 12th Lancers, along with the 11th Hussars, had been ordered to mechanize, giving up their horses and replacing them with armoured cars – the selection of the two units determined by their being the most junior cavalry regiments to avoid the last round of amalgamation in 1922. It was to take over a decade before the process was complete, but this was the beginning of the end for the horse on active service in the British Army. Dick found the decision initially very sad, but unlike some of his fellow cavalrymen he accepted the inevitable and did his utmost to embrace mechanization.

  In the meantime horses remained an important part of his life. Shortly after the term began, there was an election for the officers of the Staff College drag hunt for the following season. Both Dick and Claude Nicholson, the two of them among the leading army horsemen of the day, put themselves forward as Master, but Nicholson was elected, Dick taking the role of whipper-in alongside John Harding; Templer became the assistant secretary. Being one of the whips required Dick to exercise the hounds at 6.30 every morning, a pursuit which he much enjoyed even though the dogs were on occasion far from well behaved; the drag hunt gave him great pleasure during his time at Camberley.

  Dick owned what he considered to be an outstanding steeplechaser called Tyrolean, which he entered for the Grand Military Gold Cup on 23 March, but the horse had a serious accident at Hurst Park a week before the race and had to be put down. Twenty-four hours before the Gold Cup Dick accepted an invitation to ride another horse called Dash o’ White, owned by Lieutenant P. S. Ackroyd of the Welsh Guards. There were twelve runners, including Foxtrot (not Dick’s charger of similar name) ridden by Herbert Lumsden, who was home on leave from Egypt. Dick’s mount started favourite at 3 to 1, but it was Lumsden who made all the early running in the three-mile race. By the time the field came past the stands for the first time, Foxtrot had faded and Dash o’ White had moved up into second place, jumping very well and eventually coming in the winner by 10 lengths. Dick was back at the Staff College that evening, where the news of his victory had not preceded him and he was too modest to mention it. On being asked by a fellow student if he knew who had won, he replied ‘I did, actually’ and carried on with what he was doing.

  The first term of 1928 ended on 14 April, with Dick upbeat after three very successful exercises in a row by his syndicate. His priority now was to get married and the event itself was preceded, as tradition demanded, by the stag party two nights earlier. This was organized by a wartime comrade, Edward Barron, described by another of the guests, Bruce Ogilvy, as ‘a charming old rip… an Irishman who had joined the regiment with a splendid collection of Warwickshire sportsmen.’1, 2 There were sixteen in the party, Selby and Jack amongst them, with a number of serving and former officers of the 12th Lancers, including Victor Cartwright and Alex McBean, and Nicholson and MacMillan from the Staff College. The evening started with drinks and an early dinner at the Berkeley, followed by the C. B. Cochran/Noel Coward revue This Year of Grace at the London Pavilion. Barron had then laid on a late supper at the Savoy, to spice up which he had recruited a number of young ladies from the revue. Ogilvy maintained subsequently that Dick had not enjoyed the last episode of the evening one bit, but Dick himself said in his diary that it went very well and that he retired to bed at 3.00 in the morning. He was still hung over on the morning of the wedding more than a day later!

  Dick and Lettice were married at 2.15 in the afternoon of 18 April at St Mark’s, North Audley Street. Dick had recovered from his headache and Lettice looked, according to him, like ‘a lovely dream’. She was given away by her brother-in-law, George Gosling, Selby was the best man and the reception was held at 180 Queen’s Gate, the home of close family friends of the St Maurs, the Makins, where there was barely room for all the guests. The newlyweds got away shortly afterwards to catch the boat train to Folkestone on the first stage of their honeymoon, their destination being Lake Como, where Dick’s Uncle Richard and Aunt May had made the Castello di Urio available to them.

  The ten days on Lake Como were spent quietly, walking and visiting the local sights, after which they moved on to Venice, staying at the Danieli, which Dick thought both noisy and rather expensive. After a few days of culture, including the opera, and gondola trips, they returned by the Orient Express, arriving back on 6 May. A week later they moved into Brownhill, two days before the Staff College reassembled. The subsequent combination of hard work and long hours, not helped by hound exercise (which Lettice much resented), made Dick very tired, especially as he was now playing polo again and spending such time as he could improving the garden.

  Two days before the end of the summer term in late July, Lettice announced that she was expecting a child. Michael was born early on the morning of 5 February 1929. Dick’s mother and grandmother and Lettice’s sister Lucia motored up immediately to see the baby and Minnie managed to upset Lettice by her comments on the choice of name, but in all other respects the family were very happy. However, as a new member of the family arrived, another was shortly to depart. Dick’s beloved grandmother, Frances McAdam, fell ill about a month after Michael’s birth with a kidney infection. Her condition deteriorated and she died on 12 May at the age of 82. Although Dick was deeply saddened, Minnie was the most affected, as she had lived with her mother since her separation from Walter in 1909. The two women had been very close, running the hospital at Greenhill House together during the Great War and then creating an entirely new home at Stowell Hill, where Minnie continued to live until her own death sixteen years later.

  Dick’s second year at Staff College was in many ways a repetition of the first, though unlike his contemporary John Harding he never suggested that it was a waste of time. The students went further afield than before, Dick going with a small party to visit the battlefields of Flanders and Picardy, taking part in a North-West Frontier exercise in Snowdonia and spending a few days in and around Portsmouth aimed at familiarizing the Staff College students with the Royal Navy. He rode Dash o’ White again in the Grand Military Gold Cup, although the handicapping weight proved too much for the horse, which came in a distant ninth out of seventeen starters. Dick had much more success on Wavering Down, a horse belonging to Herbert Lumsden, which he rode to victory in the Staff College Lightweight Race, the Army Point-to-Point and the Aldershot Open Cup. Annie Darling by this time had been put out to stud, beginning a new equine career in which she foaled a number of outstanding horses.

  Dick’s final term at Camberley was substantially concerned with combined operations, with him leading a large syndicate which from time to time included visiting officers from the Royal Navy and the RAF. He was mortified when Henry Curtis, the member of the directing staff concerned, said that his plan was a poor one, feeling his syndicate had received misleading guidance, but at the end of the course the Commandant, Major General C. W. Gwynn, told the division that they had all done exceptionally well.

  Dick had enjoyed the Staff College and what he learnt there certainly informed his military thinking. There are som
e hints of this in his notes on military history. He admired Robert E. Lee’s use of cavalry for information and communication during the American Civil War and felt that in future the cavalry arm should be primarily trained for close reconnaissance, a role which was easily transferable to the armoured car. He thought Lee and Stonewall Jackson were the two greatest Civil War commanders, ‘Both always thinking war, studying, reading history.’3 Of Napoleon’s marshals he rated Davout the best: ‘Ney brilliant with definite orders and under Nap himself, but timid and useless when holding an independent command. Davout never beaten, brilliant at Jena, the chief share of the military victory due to him, a good disciplinarian and the only well-bred one of the lot!’4

  The contacts Dick made at Camberley were to prove invaluable to his career, especially during the Second World War. He made some very good friends, notably Harding and Templer, the three of them unquestionably numbering among the finest soldiers of their generation. His quality was already apparent to his contemporaries, although there was one discordant note. ‘Chink’ Dorman-Smith, one of the cleverest officers of the year above, but in many ways something of a maverick, formed a low opinion of him, dubbing him ‘Dreary McCreery’. Many years later, their respective roles would bring them into conflict and it was Dick who would come out on top.

  Dick had known for many months before he left the Staff College to what job he would be going and it was one of the best available. The fear of many graduates was that they would be in a junior position pushing pens at the War Office or at one of the Home Commands, but Dick had been personally selected by Houston to become brigade major of 2 Cavalry Brigade at Tidworth, the chief staff officer of a formation, even if it was a small one.5 Having served as adjutant of one of its then constituent units some years earlier, this was something he could take to like a duck to water. Moreover, he had already familiarized himself with the brigade, spending a week of his summer leave there. It was even more attractive in that it was an independent formation rather than part of a larger division, under the direct control of Southern Command. After a break over Christmas and the New Year, spent largely with Lettice’s sister Helen at Stratton Audley and hunting with the Bicester, Dick arrived in Tidworth on 11 January 1930. Lettice, Michael and the nurse followed to take up residence at their new home, Muir House.

  Dick was at 2 Cavalry Brigade for nearly four years, initially under Houston and, from October 1931, under Brigadier F. B. ‘John’ Hurndall, who also became a good friend. The constituent units of the brigade were the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards, the Queen’s Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards) and the Royal Scots Greys (2nd Dragoons), all regiments with which Dick would be associated in his future career. This was a frustrating time for the British Army, with stringent budgets resulting in a lack of investment in new equipment, mechanization taking place at a snail’s pace (the KDG were not to lose their horses until 1935, the Bays in 1937 and the Greys in 1941, the last regular cavalry regiment to use them in action), a progressive reduction in headcount and even limitations on training. In the autumn of 1931 for instance, it was announced that for the following year there would be none of the traditional yeomanry training camps with which the regular cavalry were always involved as trainers and mentors, and nothing higher than brigade exercises for the regulars themselves. Against this background the years took on a familiar pattern, with troop and regimental training in the spring and summer, followed by brigade training each September. Dick had also to accompany the brigade commander on ‘staff rides’ and war games, specific training exercises for commanders and their staff officers.

  There was an important addition to the staff of 2 Cavalry Brigade in March 1931 with the arrival as staff captain of His Royal Highness Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, third son of the king. The staff captain was the right-hand man of the brigade major, responsible for the administrative side of the staff work. The duke was to work closely with Dick and they became good friends, although on the first occasion he came to drinks with the McCreerys he somewhat outstayed his welcome, remaining unexpectedly for dinner. Prince Henry had served as a regular soldier for a number of years in the 10th Hussars.

  Dick’s duties meant that there was less time for racing and polo, although neither went completely by the board. He was appointed to the Grand Military Race Committee, which was charged with organizing the annual meeting at Sandown Park and was a member on and off for most of the rest of his life. He rode at the meeting himself every year except 1932, when he was ill, coming in fourth on Hikari in the Grand Military Handicap in 1930 and riding Canute in the Gold Cup in both 1931 and 1933, finishing runner-up on the latter occasion. There was one new racing-related project which he pursued with great enthusiasm, the construction of a new race track at Windmill Hill, just outside Tidworth.6 He and Willoughby Norrie, now commanding the 11th Hussars which was attached to 2 Cavalry Brigade as an extra regiment, worked on the course themselves with a number of volunteers. The first meeting was held on 4 March 1931 when Dick was beaten by Norrie by a short head in the heavyweight race, possibly the occasion on which Norrie remembered Dick’s ripe language! They had by this time attracted 420 members and the course took a sizeable sum for entrance.

  On the family side Lettice gave birth to their second son, Robert James, always known as Bob, on 10 November 1930. Otherwise the years fell into a pattern, with Christmas and the New Year spent at a combination of Stowell with Minnie and Stratton Audley with the Goslings, whilst Lettice used to go to Littlehampton for a beach holiday in the summer, a part of the world which she knew well as her mother had lived there before moving to Horsington. It was also conveniently close to old friends of her family, Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, and his sister Rachel at Arundel Castle.

  Just as Frances McAdam’s death had followed Michael’s birth, so now there was another death in the family, this time from a completely unexpected quarter. On 19 February 1931, Dick received the awful news that Jack had gone under a train at Euston station, dying later in hospital. Jack had been quite unlike his three brothers, with no ambition to pursue a military career and only a modest interest in hunting. His childhood had perhaps been more difficult than theirs as he had been still at home during the period of Minnie and Walter’s separation and likely to have been more affected: he had even been made a Ward of Court at one point. He did not have the same relationship with his father that his three older brothers had enjoyed and, possibly because she was more remote from the battle between his parents, had become more closely attached to his grandmother than his mother, indeed a photo of the former was the only one he displayed when at Eton. He had doubtless been greatly affected by her death, but he had not supported Minnie at all during her last weeks, much to Dick’s disappointment.

  After leaving Oxford, Jack had become a playwright. As gainful employment at the same time he became private secretary to a man called Victor Hawker, with whom he had formed an emotional attachment which went a long way beyond the normal relationship with an employer, although Hawker was married with three children. Jack’s first play, The Force of Circumstance, was put on at the Grafton Theatre early in 1931. A post-Chekhovian study of family life in Victorian England, it received good, if not ecstatic notices from the critics.

  Then on 15 February 1931 Hawker died following a terrible motor accident, with Jack at his bedside. Jack went down to Tidworth immediately afterwards to stay with Dick and Lettice for a night, ‘v.tired & broken’ according to Dick’s diary, but he returned to London on the following day, accompanied by Da to keep an eye on him, especially as he had taken to drinking too much. Dick and Lettice went to see the play on the day after that and enjoyed it, whilst Jack seemed more cheerful. Other friends rallied round, but it was not enough to save him. Dick, deeply upset, gave evidence at the inquest, the coroner returning a verdict of ‘suicide while temporarily of unsound mind’. Minnie was in California visiting Selby and was unable to attend the funeral.

  In 1929 Selby had decided to resign his commission a
nd emigrate to California, where he worked for the McCreery Estate Company. At the end of 1932 Dick and Lettice, together with Rachel Fitzalan-Howard, set off to visit him. They left Southampton on a German ship, the TS Bremen, on 9 December and arrived in New York via Cherbourg five days later. After 24 hours in the city, having visited the top of the Empire State Building and the Cotton Club in Harlem, they took the train to Washington, to attend a diplomatic reception in the White House. They then travelled on to Chicago, where there was eight inches of snow, and on to the warmer climate of New Mexico to visit the Grand Canyon. On the evening of 23 December they arrived at Oakland, where Selby met them and took them across the bay on the ferry.

  Most of the rest of their visit was spent in California, being regally entertained by Selby and by Uncle Richard and Aunt May at their estate at Hillsborough. Selby took Dick round San Francisco, showing him many of the buildings on which the McCreery Estate Company had mortgages, although with the Great Depression having entered its fourth year many of them were worth less than the loans for which they were the security. After a few days skiing in Yosemite, they left for Southern California, where they saw all the sights, including the Chinese Theatre and the RKO studios in Hollywood. The intention was to visit the McCreery Ranch on the way back north, but floods had made it inaccessible, much to their disappointment. On 30 September Selby saw them off by train to Omaha, Chicago and New York, whence they sailed in the SS Aquitania, arriving back in Southampton on 10 February 1933. Just over three months after their return, Selby himself was married in California to Josephine Grant, a member of a prominent and wealthy old San Francisco family. He and Jo paid a return trip to Europe as part of their honeymoon, entertained in London and at Stowell by Dick and Lettice.