Sahib

by Richard Holmes

  Often this paternalism was coupled with largesse: Captain Billy Olpherts, that doyen of horse gunners, would always summon his servant to reward a successful detachment, saying ‘Give that gun a drink,’ and Major Henry Tombs, another member of the Bengal Horse Artillery, forgave a defaulter who later absconded from hospital to serve his gun.

  Yet courage was all, and a single lapse, whatever its logic, could damn a man for ever. John Shipp recounts how, at the siege of Huttras in 1817:

  While we sat chatting, one of us noticed that a young officer had taken off his epaulettes, and the plate and feather from his cap, and looked for all the world like a discharged pensioner. Whatever his motives may have been it was very unwise, for it would be certain to be commented on by both the men and the officers. The officers to be sure joked about it, and drew their own conclusions. One of them asked the young man why he had done so and was told that it was in order to look as much like a private soldier as possible, and to avoid being singled out by the enemy. How far such a thing is open to censure I do not know, but I warn young officers never to do it, for it is bound to lay them open to ridicule and criticism. This young man’s intentions were no doubt right enough, but he never recovered his character in the regiment and left some time afterwards.72

  Charles MacGregor even disapproved of the practice, which became common amongst officers of irregular horse during the Mutiny (and lives on in the shoulder-chains of British cavalry No 1 Dress), of sewing steel strips, often the curb-chains from horses’ bits, onto shoulders and down the outer side of breeches to protect against sword-cuts. It was ‘anything but right’ for officers to do this unless the men could do it too.73

  But it was just possible to be too brave, to show suicidal extremes of courage. At Meani in February 1843, HM’s 22nd Foot halted on the edge of a dry nullah filled with a seething press of hostile infantry, but would not plunge into the mass. Lieutenant MacMurdo jumped into the river bed and killed four Beluchis with his sword, but his men knew it was certain death if they followed. ‘Mr MacMurdo,’ they called ‘if you don’t leave off, we’ll shoot you.’74

  For evidence of the shared risk that united all who wore a red jacket there is no better account than Captain John Cumming’s of that long, terrible night at Ferozeshah:

  Many a gallant fellow was lying in the silent square, though severely wounded, many of them bleeding to death without a murmur. In the 80th square a grapeshot struck a man in the shoulder, producing rather severe flesh wound. The foolish fellow wanted to get out of the square; where he intended going I do not know, as if his wound was of more importance than that of anyone else. Being refused by a sergeant of his company, he went to the Colour-Sergeant saying: ‘Sergeant, I am badly wounded, let me get out of the square to go to the surgeon.’

  The Colour-Sergeant replied, ‘Lie down where you are, man, look at me’ – lifting up a leg without a foot. But he was determined to gain his point, and came next to Lieutenant Bythesea, who commanded his company, and was lying next to me. ‘Oh Sir, I wish you would give orders to let me out of the square: I am wounded.’ ‘So am I,’ coolly answered Mr Bythesea, putting round his right arm, and lifting up his left hand which hung shattered from the wrist. Though he was near me I did not know till then that he had been hurt. But the man persevered and came now to Colonel Bunbury, who commanded the regiment, and who was still on horseback. He was about two yards from where I lay. ‘Sir,’ cried the man, ‘I am wounded, please give orders for me to go and have it dressed.’ ‘So you’re wounded, my good man,’ said the Colonel. ‘Yes Sir.’ ‘So am I’ – I then perceived that the colonel was wounded just below the knee, and the blood had filled his boot, and was trickling down his heel to the ground. The assistant-sergeant-major had been watching this man, and, becoming angry at the annoyance he was causing, determined to stop it. He ran up and seized him, saying ‘Damn—,’ but before any more was out of his mouth, a cannon ball carried away his head, and part of the unfortunate private’s, killing both at once.75

  There were times when even the bravest leadership did not work. At Parwandara in Afghanistan on 2 November 1842, two squadrons of the 2nd Bombay Light Cavalry found themselves faced by an Afghan force commanded by Dost Mohammed himself. Dost Mohammed should have been captured: ‘The commanding officer gave the word to charge, and he and all the [four] Europeans with him galloped headlong into the Afghan horse. But their men hesitated, fell back, and finally took to disgraceful flight.’76 Two of the five British were killed and two very badly wounded. One of the dead was Dr Lord, a medical officer acting as political agent, and the unwounded survivor was the regiment’s riding master: both saw it their clear duty to charge. As Neville Chamberlain observed, there was nothing wrong with the example that was set.

  [Captain] Fraser got a desperate cut over the right wrist which will render the hand useless for life, and a fearful gash down the back. He was not aware of the wound in the wrist until he tried to draw a pistol and found his hand useless. Captain Ponsonby was surrounded by a dozen fellows cutting and hacking at him. He got a tremendous slash over the face, cutting through his nose into the bone of the face from ear to ear, the top of his thumb taken off, and his arms smashed by a ball, and his horse’s ears cut off, a ball through its neck, and his bridle-reins severed. In this situation the horse kicked himself clear of the mêlée, and dashing off into a water-course threw poor Ponsonby onto his head.

  Ponsonby was rescued by Mr Bolton, the riding master.77 The squadron’s native officers were dismissed and the regiment itself was later disbanded with ignominy. Yet the episode remains puzzling: 2nd Light Cavalry had previously enjoyed an excellent reputation, and some of its former soldiers later joined the Corps of Guides and won distinction in that hard-fighting force. Some of the cavalrymen maintained that they had no confidence in their newly issued swords, and it may be that it was this nagging suspicion that eroded that sense of confidence which is fundamental to the success of a cavalry charge.

  Generals could also set a brave example. Wellesley led the decisive cavalry charge against Dhoondiah Waugh in person. At Assaye his first charger was killed at the start of the battle, and his favourite Arab horse, Diomed, was piked through the chest by a Maratha gunner. At the battle of Laswari, the commander in chief’s horse:

  was shot under him, and his son Major Lake [of HM’s 94th, serving on his father’s staff] was wounded at his side in the act of holding his own horse for his father to mount on. This very soon became known to the men, and did not lessen their eagerness to get to close quarters with the enemy.78

  Lake was so often at the front at the siege of Bhurtpore that it was ‘reckoned a service of danger’ to approach him. Charles Napier displayed the most spectacular bravery at Meani, and whatever Gough’s deficiencies, lack of courage was not amongst them. Major General Sir Robert Sale, hero of Jelalabad, and Gough’s quartermaster general, died at Mudki, and one of the four divisional commanders, Major General McCaskill, another veteran of Afghanistan, was killed. Another divisional commander, Major General Sir Robert Dick, died at Sobraon, shot through the head by a musket ball in the forefront of the battle. At Lucknow in November 1857 Colin Campbell was hit by a bullet which had already passed through the body of a British gunner, killing him, and still had enough energy left to cause the commander in chief a painful bruise on the thigh.

  Both Crown and Company rewarded courage. As we have seen prize money and loot played their part in motivation. So too did the prospect of rapid promotion. During the Sikh War, Gough gave immediate ensigns’ commissions to some British NCOs in the field and, although there was a predictable frostiness in London over the matter, because he had exceeded his constitutional authority, the promotions stuck. Sepoys had long been promoted, and sometimes awarded specially struck medals, for bravery. In Albert Hervey’s Madras regiment, Sepoy Mir Emaum Ali was immediately promoted to havildar and given ‘a beautiful gold medal, on one side of which was inscribed in English, and on the other side in Hindustanee,
the cause of it having been conferred upon him’ for saving an officer’s life in battle.79

  Brevet promotion was available only to officers. In the Crown’s service it could take an officer to major, lieutenant colonel and colonel. In the Company’s, where promotion was slower and there were constant pressures for rank inflation, it could once make a man a captain too, but this concession was abandoned in the 1820s. A brevet promotion gave an officer rank in the service but not in his regiment. When serving with his regiment he carried out the duties of his substantive rank, but while away from it he was eligible for the appointments in his higher rank. An officer who reached brevet lieutenant colonel, even if he was only a substantive captain – as could easily be the case – was on the roll for promotion by seniority to colonel and so on to major general and beyond. Brevets were widely used to reward gallant or distinguished conduct. John Pennycuick became a brevet lieutenant colonel with effect from 23 July 1839, the date of the storming of Ghuzni, and Henry Havelock gained a brevet lieutenant-colonelcy for his bravery at Maharajpore in 1843, although regimentally he was ‘now in his 48th year and the 28th of his service … he was still among the captains of his corps’.80

  The real importance of promotion to captain – which, in the Company’s forces, could generally be accomplished only by seniority – was that it made an officer eligible for brevets. An enterprising subaltern might have so many recommendations behind him that on the day his captaincy materialised the promised brevet would at once kick in. Henry Daly wrote of the brave and popular Lieutenant Henry Norman that: ‘On the day of his captaincy he will be Major, Lieut-Colonel, CB, perhaps full Colonel. He deserves it all and more.’81 Fred Roberts at last gained his captaincy in 1860, when the Company’s army was absorbed by the British, and his long-promised brevet majority was gazetted that very day, with a lieutenant-colonelcy not far behind it. Charles MacGregor was also ‘promised my majority on getting my company [i.e. being made a captain] … directly I am a captain I shall be a major also, and cannot possibly get anything lower than a “second in command” [of an irregular regiment] on 700 rupees [a month]’.82

  As a very young captain Garnet Wolseley kept being recommended for brevet promotion, but the military secretary regretted that he did not yet have the minimum of six years’ service that the rank required:

  as Captain Wolseley has only been about three years and six months in the service, he is ineligible under the regulations to be promoted to the rank of Major, for which otherwise, in consideration of the service described by Sir Harry Jones, he would have been happy to have recommended him.83

  A captaincy, brevet or substantive, also made an officer eligible to become a Companion of the Order of the Bath if properly recommended. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that a wide range of honours and awards became available for British and Indian troops. For most of the period the Bath, reorganised into three grades, Companions (CB), Knights Commander (KCB) and Knights Grand Cross (GCB), was the only honour generally available to British officers, although there were occasional baronetcies (like Harry Smith’s for Aliwal) and peerages (like Hugh Gough’s for the First Sikh War) for the very senior.

  Henry Havelock, for so long languishing in under-promoted piety, strode out to glory at the very end of his life. He was knighted on 16 September 1857, still in his substantive rank of colonel, and wrote to his wife in uneasy anticipation that: ‘I do not … see my elevation in the Gazette, but Sir Colin addresses me as Sir Henry Havelock.’ He was promoted major general by seniority three days later, and on 26 November it was announced that he would be made a baronet. News of his death reached London before the letters patent for his baronetcy had been made out, but the government at once granted Lady Havelock the rank of a baronet’s widow, and quickly conferred a baronetcy on his eldest son. Moreover, ‘it was resolved to erect a statue of Havelock, on the site most cheerfully granted by the Government in Trafalgar Square, side by side with that of our greatest naval hero’.84

  There was a far less close association between rank and reward during the period than would be the case by the mid-twentieth century. On the one hand General James Stewart Fraser of Ardachy, a Madras cadet of 1799, major general in 1838 and a full general in 1862, had a long and distinguished career, largely on the political side (he was Resident at Hyderabad from 1839–52). But he retired with only one campaign medal and no decoration: the CB which might eventually have materialised for Hyderabad evaporated after a row with Dalhousie. On the other, though, Louis Cavagnari was knighted as a major, and Robert Sale made a GCB as a colonel.

  Most spectacularly of all, as a reward for rescuing prisoners from deepest Khiva in 1842, Lieutenant R. C. Shakespear became a knight bachelor (a knight, but of no specific order, and thus with no breast star to wear) and thus Sir Richmond Shakespear, a name so sonorous that his parents must have shown rare perception. He then rescued yet more prisoners in Afghanistan, but a grateful government did not quite keep up with his achievements, and General Pollock told him that:

  It may be that the value of your services on the last mentioned occasion has not been understood, otherwise it is possible that you would have received some honorary distinction at the close of the campaign, but I still hope that on promotion to a company you will receive a Brevet-Majority & the decoration of the Bath.85

  In fact his brevet majority did not appear until 1848 as a reward for his services in the Second Sikh War, and the CB clattered in many years later.

  Regiments might strike unofficial medals for brave soldiers, British or Indian. In 1837 two orders – the Order of British India and the Indian Order of Merit – were created for Indian troops only: the former awarded to officers, and the latter a bravery decoration available to all ranks. Both brought pay increments, underlying the way in which honour and material reward were so closely linked. There was no all-ranks award for the British until the institution of the Victoria Cross in 1856; and in 1912 this was made accessible to Indian troops as well. It, too, brought an annual gratuity of the (then worthwhile) sum of £10. The Distinguished Conduct Medal, a bravery award for non-commissioned British personnel, and also conferring a gratuity and pension increment, appeared in 1854, and the Distinguished Service Order for officers, with no money but the most handsome gilt and enamel cross, arrived in 1886.

  In the years that the VC was the only all-ranks gallantry award it was given more liberally than would later be the case. In 1867 Assistant Surgeon Campbell Douglas and four men of HM’s 24th Foot were awarded the VC for making three perilous trips through the surf of the Andaman Islands in a successful effort to rescue a party of soldiers landed in search of some sailors who had presumably been killed by hostile natives. They were not ‘in the presence of the enemy’ and men have recently been denied the VC for that very reason. However, in 1860, Hospital Apprentice Thomas Fitzgibbon gained his cross in a way that would become familiar a generation later. When HM’s 67th assaulted one of the Taku forts at the mouth of the Pei-Ho River in China, he dashed out to tend a wounded Indian stretcher bearer, and then crossed the fire-swept glacis to help another man although he himself was hit. He was just fifteen years and three months old.

  Campaign medals or, in the case of lesser operations, bars worn on the ribbon of India General Service medals, were awarded to all ranks who qualified for them. Bancroft proudly logged his haul: four medals and eight bars: two medals for the Sikh Wars, one for the Mutiny, and an India General Service Medal. John Pearman was pleased to find that the medal for the First Sikh War was suspended from a ribbon with the colours of the Waterloo medal reversed, and came, in his case, ‘with twelve months’ batta and prize money, £112 shillings and sixpence’.86 It was a telling quirk that while British and Indian troops generally received campaign medals in silver, camp followers had them in bronze.

  The rules about appropriate qualifying service were rigorously, and sometimes insensitively, applied, and could often cause unhappiness. Private Henry Metcalfe’s 32nd Foot
had been part of the original garrison of Lucknow, and thus the coveted ‘Defence of Lucknow’ clasp was secure. But then his comrades:

  had the mortification to hear that we were not to participate in the final capture of Lucknow, us that defended British honour there and when we nearly lost the best part of our regiment. Yes, it was hard. It deprived us of six month’s batta or field pay and another slide on our medal. If we had been a Highland regiment we would be allowed to remain and partake in the attack. Yes, little band, it was hard that you should be deprived of this honour … For the defence of Lucknow my regiment was made Light Infantry and a small brass ornament to wear in our caps. We go one years service without pay and the Black Sepoys who remained faithful to us all got promotion and three years service with the order of merit and pay. Mark the distinction.87

  There was also great resentment that it often took unreasonably long to award campaign medals. Captain Charles Griffiths and the survivors of HM’s 64th Foot received their Mutiny medals at Plymouth citadel in 1861, exactly four years after the storm of Delhi. ‘There was no fuss or ceremony,’ he recalled, ‘but I recollect that those present could not help contrasting the scene with the grand parade and the presence of the Queen when some Crimean officers and men received the numerous distinctions so lavishly bestowed for that campaign.’88

  Decorations and medals did more than reward an achievement or mark participation in a dangerous venture. Throughout the period the full-size awards, or more rarely their miniatures or ribbons, were worn for everyday duties, and were part of a man’s tribal markings. There was also a clear understanding that gallantry awards did not simply reward past deeds: they helped ensure a brighter future. Fred Roberts’s gallant attack on the sepoy colour-party conferred no tactical advantage, but the VC it earned him did him no harm at all.