Light Cavalry Action

by Max Hennessy

  There were a few puzzled glances round the court as he paused, looking at his brief for a moment. Kirkham alongside, his gown overflowing round his big body as he crouched over a pile of documents, seemed uninterested in what was going on and did not appear even to be listening. Prideaux was sitting with his chin in his hand, his eyes on Moyalan, his expression one of intense absorption.

  ‘I don’t want to impose on the jury more evidence than is absolutely necessary,’ Moyalan continued quietly, ‘and I hope they will bear with me if on occasion it seems devious. The jury will, of course, be directed by Your Lordship about the law but they cannot decide whether the words are libellous without first deciding if the words are true, and to decide whether they are true they must hear all that happened. Now, it is easy for us, sitting in comfortable England – even in these uncertain days – to be critical of what took place in Russia in 1919, but in Russia in 1919, unlike England today, no one knew his friends and, like everyone else in this court today, I am indebted to counsel for the plaintiff for his workmanlike summary of how it all came about.’

  He paused and shuffled his papers. In the public gallery there was a considerable amount of fidgeting. They were reaching the disputed point of the story, they knew.

  ‘Books have been quoted in this court,’ Moyalan went on, ‘about what happened at Dankoi, but perhaps we should regard them all with some reserve, because it requires little more than a glance at them to see that their authors have relied heavily for their facts on the account of Mr. Murray-Hughes who, as far as we can tell, was the only man there – apart from the officer who wrote the official report – to set down an account of what happened.’

  Moyalan gestured with his papers. ‘It might be said,’ he went on, ‘“Who cares what happened in the Russian Revolution? It was a long time ago.” It may well, in fact, seem a century since, but let us remember that a great many people cared at the time, and perhaps a great many more would care now if we recalled that it was that same fear of Communism that prompted the sending of a British Mission to Russia, which has caused in Germany the growth of the filthy creed that troubles the world so much today.’

  Godliman shifted his seat and made a note on his pad as Moyalan glanced at his papers.

  ‘Now, my lord and members of the jury,’ Moyalan continued, ‘this action springs to a certain extent from a controversy which was troubling the army in those days and is still troubling it today: Cavalry. Before the war started in 1914, nobody considered that a cavalryman should ride into battle in any other way than on the back of a horse. Since then, however, there have been advocates of armoured vehicles, and this is the atmosphere surrounding the charge at Dankoi. General Prideaux – or Colonel Prideaux as we must call him in evidence – was caught up in this.

  ‘We have been accused, my lord, of issuing a libel. It is, as I have said, our defence that firstly the words complained of do not mean what my learned friend claims they mean and, secondly, that they were uttered with justification. Our witnesses will cover the whole story from beginning to end, and to our mind, the story begins with the arrival in Russia not of the plaintiff, but of the defendant, Major Higgins; continues through the arrival and departure of the plaintiff, and ends only with the departure of the defendant some months later. The words complained of, my lord, if I may remind the court, state: “The truth is that before – and after – the action, when it came to leading and giving orders, General Prideaux (or Colonel Prideaux as he was then) was noticeably not among those present when he was wanted.” I am, therefore, starting with the “before” and intend to continue through to the “after.”’

  * * *

  Moyalan’s first witness was a sturdy man wearing a check suit and with black curling hair, whose upright bearing and full moustache indicated a military background. He took the oath briskly, almost as if he were on a parade ground.

  ‘You are William Arthur Busby, of Dale End Garage, Stoneridge, Derbyshire, I believe?’ Moyalan said.

  ‘That’s it, sir.’

  ‘You are now a motor engineer and you were in the army, Mr. Busby, in the last war?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Regular. Middle East, then France, then sergeant in charge of armoured cars in Damascus.’

  ‘But you were in Russia with a cavalry regiment in 1919?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Squadron Sergeant-Major. Originally I was with the 11th Hussars, sir – the Cherrypickers – but because I was good with machines, I transferred to armoured cars. Later I was transferred back. The troops that went to Russia was a bit of a mix-up. All ranks. All units.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Busby. That’s very helpful. You went out there, I believe, with a group of men to form part of an Anglo-Russian regiment that was known as the Kouragine Hussars.’

  ‘Yes, sir. One squadron British, two Russian.’

  ‘How many of you were there, Mr. Busby? British soldiers, I mean.’

  ‘About two hundred and fifty, sir. We started off three hundred, but a few had gone sick – the men were graded B1 and weren’t the fittest – or the keenest. In addition, about fifty were detached for duties on the railways. The Russian railways were always a bit of a mess and were even worse after the Revolution. Nothing worked and anyone with a bit of experience was detached to help sort ’em out.’

  ‘So that in Nikolovssk there were about two hundred and fifty British soldiers making up one squadron of the Kouragine Regiment, under the command of Major George Phelps Higgins?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Now, this Anglo-Russian cavalry regiment to which you were attached: Tell us a little more about it.’

  ‘Well, it was a bit of a mess-up all round, sir. We had strict instructions that we weren’t there to fight but to act as instructors and advisers, but somebody had thought up this idea of making up an Anglo-Russian regiment and no one rightly knew what we were supposed to do.’

  * * *

  To William Busby, used to the efficiency of the British Army, his arrival in Nikolovssk produced much the same sort of effect on him as an immersion in cold water would have done. The Kouragine Hussars were nothing but a raggle-taggle of Russian peasant soldiers, stupid, willing and hopeless – most of them in cracked boots and a mixture of civilian clothes and uniforms – and a great mass of what were obviously transport animals, which were supposed to be used as remounts. To William Busby it was heart-breaking.

  As a matter of fact, things had grown steadily worse all the way out from England. First there had been the never-ending trip through the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, an endless wait to change vessels at Varna, and another long wait at Odessa and Sebastopol, until instructions were received about their next move.

  They had then moved on to Novorossiisk, with Busby shepherding men who had been in the army barely long enough to learn to sit a horse, and there had followed a long and weary journey to Nikolovssk in cattle trucks of ancient vintage and seething with insect life, with many moments of despair for Busby, and more than a few of sheer fury when the odd troublemakers that never failed to find their way into any unit in the army got drunk or fought, or when the barrack-room lawyers among them tried to practise popular bolshevism in the form of defying him.

  The spring thaw was taking place when they arrived, and the town, drab beneath the onion-domes of the Church of St. Nikolas, seemed to consist of two cobbled avenues, lined with stone buildings, which ran at right angles to each other along the side of the low hills. Beyond them, the streets were innocent of metal and filled with deep ruts, where droshkies sank to the axles and drove their suffering fares to the rotten wooden sidewalks for safety. A warm moist wind blew, melting the winter snow and sending it floating away in torrents of water, while the air had a clean, washed, spring feel about it.

  Trade, with the Bolshevik army not far away, and the French already talking of withdrawing from their base at Odessa, was at a standstill. The streets were full of penniless refugees, and the town was a hotbed of crime and licence and – with the White Army�
��s paper money practically worthless – feverish speculation in foreign exchanges. There was a motley of races, creeds and tongues: Allied soldiers with money to spend – all of them in search of a girl or a fight; Russian soldiers in British khaki, and ex-Tsarist officers in grey greatcoats lined with scarlet silk and with epaulettes like great boards on their shoulders; sober foreign businessmen trying to make some sense out of the situation; fat Levantine merchants; Don Cossacks in fur caps and festooned with bandoliers of cartridges; ladies with scarlet lips and high French heels and expensive furs; Jews in gabardines and soiled frock coats; hook-nosed Armenians; indescribable beggars; lean-faced Turks; speculators and militiamen; German and Austrian prisoners awaiting repatriation – a never-ending stream of polyglot humanity.

  The Slavska Barracks where the Kouragine Hussars were housed were on the outside of the town to the west, just where the streets finished and the country road started among the scattered villas. The British officers, most of whom had gone ahead of the main party, were a pretty mixed bag, most of them without any knowledge of Russian; and to Sergeant-Major Busby’s experienced eyes only a few of them stood out as efficient – the Major, Higgins, for instance; Potter, whose M.C., and bar seemed to bely the boneless manner which could vanish at a flash when it had to; MacAdoo, the Canadian from the Winnipeg Regiment; and Colmore, from the New Zealand Horse, who was little more than a boy but had fought all through Gallipoli and the Middle East and shared the same interest in horses that they all did. The rest of them were men who’d been unable to settle down after the fighting in Europe, together with one or two ex-prisoners of war who were thirsting for the glory their friends had gathered in France and which had been denied to them.

  On the whole, at second glance and in decent uniforms, the Russian volunteers – awkward youths from the steppe villages who had a tendency to tie flowers to the barrels of their rifles on the march and gape at churches and brick buildings and had been known to weep with fear at the sight of a train – turned out to be better than expected; but their officers were mostly beneath contempt. For the most part dressed in a mixture of uniforms that included button boots and grey flannels or elaborate breeches of extraordinary cut and badges of rank marked with blue pencil, they were kind-hearted and generous to absurdity, but useless in every other way, except to swear dreadful oaths of revenge on the Bolsheviks and form societies with terrifying names that had no meaning whatsoever. They could not get things done and would willingly ride while wounded men walked. They were lazy, pessimistic, boastful, ignorant, untidy, untruthful and dishonest – and cowardly because they knew their troopers had no heart for fighting their own countrymen and because they had already once seen them desert and mutiny, and were firmly – and rightly – under the impression that it could happen again.

  Generally speaking, although the single British squadron worked with the Russian squadrons, they kept apart, with the exception of a few difficult cases like the troublemakers, the somewhat dim-witted Freeman; Chapman and Jones who had made Busby’s journey out so difficult; and young Hardacre, the miner from near Sheffield, who was training himself already to be a political commissar for when the Revolution came to England.

  * * *

  ‘He was very awkward, sir,’ Busby said, in answer to Moyalan’s question. ‘There’s no other word for it, except that. He was a barrack-room lawyer and he was always talking to the Russians.’

  There was a titter round the public gallery but it was silenced as Godliman looked up.

  ‘How did he talk to the Russians, Mr. Busby?’ he asked. ‘Could he speak their language?’

  ‘He was a believer in the Revolution, sir,’ Busby said, ‘and he’d learned a little of the lingo and was still learning. He was actually very useful as an interpreter, because he was pally with the railwaymen, but he was still an awkward customer,’

  Godliman nodded and Moyalan took up the story again. ‘What was Major Higgins’ view of all this?’

  Busby considered. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I know Major Higgins had a certain respect for the Reds…’

  There was a gasp and Moyalan frowned and hastened to set the picture straight.

  ‘What sort of respect?’ he asked quickly. ‘Surely not because he was a Communist?’

  Busby had realised his mistake. ‘Oh, no, sir! Because of their – their…’

  ‘Single-mindedness?’

  ‘That’s right, sir! He felt they had an advantage over us because they didn’t have to worry about rebellion in their rear and because they had better discipline. They knew what they were fighting for and our lot didn’t, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘He had his eye firmly on the enemy then?’

  ‘Oh, certainly he had, sir! Always. And he didn’t like the way they battened on to hot-headed kids like Hardacre.’

  ‘Please go on.’

  Busby frowned. He could recall the conversation he’d held with Higgins almost word for word as it had taken place.

  * * *

  ‘I don’t like it, sir,’ he had said. ‘Given a chance, Hardacre’d be all right. I might even make a good corporal out of him if he’d let me. But he’s from the coalfields and they’ve spent all their lives fighting against authority. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for ’em, mind, but I don’t like ’em when they appear in the army, like Hardacre.’

  Higgins seemed unperturbed. ‘For the time being,’ he suggested mildly, ‘I’d prefer that we forget Hardacre and concentrated on finding somewhere the chaps could have a drink in peace. There’s already been too much trouble in the town and, while they haven’t a canteen of their own, they’ll always be mixing with the doubtful elements. Somewhere cheap we want, and preferably run by local women.’

  ‘Just as you say, sir.’

  ‘Given somewhere nearby, we can keep an eye on ’em, and they won’t get up to mischief in the town then. It might even answer your problems with Hardacre.’ Higgins smiled. ‘Who knows, we might get him to run it. He’s bright enough and that’d keep him too busy to be a thorn in your side.’

  * * *

  Busby returned to his work gloomily. In spite of his old regiment’s traditions, he couldn’t ever see himself making much of a bunch of B1 conscripts who had seen the end of the war in Europe and now wanted only to go home.

  That evening, he went into town with a fellow N.C.O., Sergeant Sidebottom – an ancient oddity who had served in the Egyptian Army. Busby didn’t go into town often because of the feeling of suspense about the place. With families torn apart by civil war and the new and sweeping ideologies gripping everyone’s mind, nobody trusted his neighbour and half the population were starving. And, although on the surface the town appeared to be going about its business as usual, below the thin veneer of normality, violence had replaced law, and all the peace and order of a civilised community had given way to chaos. Most of the population had sunk back to the primitive and survival of the fittest was a stern reality.

  The town was crowded, full of country carts laden with produce and driven by flat-faced peasant women, their heads in bright kerchiefs, whose husbands stared straight ahead looking for the vodka shops. Occasionally a cloud of Kuban Cossacks, clattered past, heading northwards in a cloud of yellow dust, tall, well-built men in long grey coats, with whips and high sheepskin caps and filled cartridge belts draped across their chests.

  In spite of the undercurrent of crime, and the feeling of uneasiness that sprang from lawlessness, hope was in the air that evening among the more decent and responsible people because the military situation had improved a little. Kolchak had fought his way out of the Siberian plain and was beyond the Urals, and gunboats commanded by British officers were steaming down the Volga: while to the north of Nikolovssk, Denikin’s army seemed to be almost within striking distance of Moscow. People in threadbare coats were shuffling eagerly from lamp post to lamp post to read the official notices, and looking at the flags on the war maps in the shop windows between the photographs of the dead Tsar and his family; and opti
mists were already prophesying the downfall of the anti-Christ, Lenin.

  Busby had been with the British Army into enough foreign towns, however, to know that most of the optimism was restricted only to certain elements in the outer suburbs, and in the gardens in the town, where a Roumanian orchestra played among the tables, there were still a few ugly glances in his direction.

  Perhaps they’d picked the wrong restaurant, he thought as they sat down to enjoy the frothy liquid that was called beer but was currently supposed to be made from yeast and stale crusts. Among the men around him there seemed to be a great deal of muttering and a considerable exchanging of pamphlets which, to his experienced mind, could only be Communist.

  They finished their drinks and moved away quickly, but they had no sooner moved into the shadows away from the lights that hung between the trees than they realised they were being followed. Robbery was by no means unusual.

  Sidebottom paused for a moment, listening. ‘I think the bastards are after us,’ he said.

  Busby had halted alongside him and he noted as he stopped that the pursuing footsteps they’d heard had also stopped.

  ‘I know damn’ well they are,’ he said. ‘They probably think we’ve got money on us. Come on, let’s get back to barracks.’

  They began to hurry, alert for the sound of their pursuers drawing closer, one eye constantly peering over their shoulders into the darkness.