The History of Lumsden's Horse. Various
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he came on, fully prepared to meet disappointment at the end of his journey. When he got within sight of land, however, all India knew of his splendid offer and its acceptance by the Home Government. The whole story had been published in every newspaper two days before Colonel Lumsden steamed up the Hooghly to find himself a hero. Crowds of his friends and admirers were there to welcome him as chief of a corps that had neither a local habitation nor a name, nor even a substantial existence at the moment. With characteristic abnegation of self, he had offered his services in any capacity, but nobody doubted from the hour of his arrival in Calcutta that whatever force India might send to the front would have Lumsden for its leader. The newspapers even began to give his name to the contingent before it had assumed bodily shape or anybody knew exactly how it was to be raised. Some days later the popular choice was confirmed by publication of a War Office order couched in the following words:
‘Her Majesty’s‘Her Majesty’s Government having accepted the offer of the Government of India to provide a force of Mounted Volunteers for service in South Africa, two companies of Mounted Infantry, to be called the Indian Mounted Infantry Corps (Lumsden’s Horse), will be raised immediately at Calcutta under the command of Lieut.-Colonel D. McT. Lumsden, of the Volunteer Force of India, Supernumerary List, Assam Valley Light Horse.’
With this order, giving unqualified approval of the project, came a mobilisation scheme in which the Government undertook to provide the necessary sea-kit for use on board ship only, the transport, the daily rations as for other soldiers, the weapons, the munitions of war, and pay at the rate of 1s. 2d. a day, but nothing else. The rest was left to private enterprise working on popular enthusiasm and the loyal sentiments of a great community. Towards the sum requisite for the complete equipment and maintenance of a mounted force in the field, even half a lakh of rupees would not go very far. The spirit that had prompted one man to offer that sum and his own services to boot proved contagious, however, and Colonel Lumsden had so little doubt what the result would be that he immediately announced his readiness to receive applications from men who might be willing to serve in South Africa for a year, or ‘for not less than the period of the war.’ That call was published by Indian newspapers on January 10, 1900, and in response Volunteers sent their names from every district far and near, until Colonel Lumsden might have enrolled a thousand as easily as the two or three hundred sanctioned by Government. His one difficulty, indeed, was that of selection, and there the experience he had gained from studying character closely under many different conditions came in. He was assisted by suggestions from officers commanding the Calcutta Light Horse, the Assam Valley Light Horse, the Surma Valley Light Horse, the Behar Light Horse, the Punjab, the Mysore, and the Rangoon Volunteer Corps. Authorities at home had by that time learned a very important lesson, the outcome of which was expressed in a phrase very different from the unlucky telegram that gave so much offence to Australians a few weeks earlier. Colonel Lumsden was told ‘preference will be given to Volunteers from mounted Volunteer Corps, but Volunteers belonging to Infantry corps who may possess the requisite qualifications will also be eligible.’ One of the qualifications laid down was that they should be ‘good riders’ before joining Lumsden’s Horse. Here the value of previous training in military duties and of something more than haphazard horsemanship was recognised; and happily Colonel Lumsden knew exactly the sort of men who would meet both requirements, especially as the limits of age (between twenty and forty) brought the best of those who had the riding and shooting experiences incidental to a planter’s life into the category. It is not surprising if he showed a partiality for them when rival claims had to be decided upon. The fact that many of them offered to bring their own horses weighed nothing with him, though he knew that the companies would have to be mounted somehow and that the Government had explicitly declined to provide horses for that purpose. Either by private contributions in kind or by public subscription toward the necessary funds for purchasing, a horse for each trooper had to be furnished; but this consideration did not weigh for a moment against the chances of a man who could only give himself to the Empire’s service, so long as he had in essential points better qualifications than other candidates could boast. The wife of a prominent and popular soldier—now a general—asked, as a great favour, that her brother might be allowed to serve as a trooper in the corps. To such a pleader Sir Patrick could not say ‘no,’ so he arranged a little dinner at which the fascinating lady was to sit beside Colonel Lumsden. Whether her gentle persuasions prevailed or the brother’s merits were too obvious to be disregarded, it is certain that he joined the ranks of Lumsden’s Horse, and so completely justified the choice that he is now an officer of the Regular army and a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. Naturally, the selection of two hundred and fifty men to represent all India from among a thousand who were anxious for the opportunity of seeing active service gave rise to much jealousy and heart-burning on the part of the rejected. Reading some of their vituperations, one might imagine that they had been aspirants to posts of high distinction, or at least to lucrative sinecures, rather than candidates for the khaki jackets of privates in a regiment about to share the hardships of a perilous campaign. One disappointed applicant, whose martial ardour was not to be quenched by rejection, wrote angrily to the ‘Englishman,’ suggesting that there was gross favouritism in the preference shown for planters over townsmen. His letter is worth quoting at length as typical of the fighting spirit that had been aroused everywhere by Colonel Lumsden’s patriotic manifesto. Thus he wrote:
To the Editor of the ‘Englishman.’
Sir—I hope I am in time to draw the attention of the Government to the Bahadur[1] style in which the selection to the ‘Indian Yeomanry Corps’ of Volunteers is being conducted. Because a man is the son of his father, and owns a few ponies and a few hundred rupees, is he to be given the preference as a fighting unit?
There are to-day in India, even in the city of Calcutta, men of unquestionable merit, men who are sons and the recipients of a heritage of blood shed in England’s and her Most Gracious Majesty’s cause from fathers who had bled and died for England and England’s prestige, and I beg to ask you, Sir, are these men to be shelved to suit the convenience of a few planters? I am not a planter, and, as an outsider, I put my claims forward as a test of merit. I am willing to shoot a match up the range with the best man selected from Behar, run him a given distance, ride him on strange nags (catch weights), and in the end with my weight and other recommendations beat him.
Photo: Bourne & Shepherd BEHAR CONTINGENT OF LUMSDEN’S HORSE
There is quite a ring of mediaeval chivalry about that challenge to ‘shoot up the range.’ One cannot mistake its blood-thirsty significance, and perhaps it is lucky for the Champion of Behar that he did not take up the gauntlet thus ruthlessly thrown down. It will be noticed that this duel, after the manner suggested by one of Bret Harte’s heroes, was to precede all other events in the prolonged ordeal; and imagination shudders at the picture of awful slaughter that would have been wrought, as the picked marksmen of Behar and Hyderabad and Oudh and Assam went down one by one, if they had dared to face the deadly rifle of that truculent citizen of Calcutta, without getting a chance to prove whether he could run or ride. Happily, the selected two hundred and fifty kept their heads, so that the trial by single combat never came off; but one must hope that a place was found in Lumsden’s Horse for the self-confident challenger, and that he proved as formidable on the field as in a printed column. Readers may scan the names of troopers, whose occupations before enlistment are all given in the Appendix, and yet be left speculating whether or not the writer of that letter was among the chosen after all. He will not be found in the first or second section of Company A, composed almost to a man of indigo-planters, or in the third section, whose tea-planters, mainly from Assam, have not a townsman among them; and the planters who make up an overwhelming majority of three sections in Company B would equally disclaim all knowledge of the fire-eating citizen. Can it be that he figures in the more casual fourth section of either company, under the vague designation of a ‘gentleman’ or a ‘journalist’? A little levity may be pardoned now in reference to a matter which, at the time, aroused some acrimony. All that, however, was swept away by the wave of enthusiasm, leaving no bitterness behind it, even in the minds of those who at first thought themselves humiliated by rejection. If Lumsden’s Horse were almost entirely a corps of