The General: The Classic WWI Tale of Leadership. Max Hastings
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Curzon found the Colonel alone – he had passed the adjutant emerging as he entered – and the Colonel was standing erect with an opened letter in his hand. His face was the same colour as the paper he held.
‘You’re in command of the regiment, Curzon,’ said the Colonel.
‘I – I beg your pardon, sir?’ said Curzon.
‘You heard what I said,’ snapped the Colonel, and then recovered himself with an effort and went on with pathetic calm. ‘These are War Office orders. You are to take command of the regiment with the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. I suppose it’ll be in the Gazette to-morrow.’
‘And what about you, sir?’ asked Curzon.
‘I? Oh, I’m being given command of a brigade of yeomanry. Up in the Northern Command somewhere.’
‘Good God!’ said Curzon, genuinely moved.
‘Yes, yeomanry, man,’ blazed the Colonel. ‘Yokels on plough horses. It’ll take a year to do anything with them at all, and the war’ll be over in three months. And you are to take the regiment overseas.’
‘I’m damned sorry, sir,’ said Curzon, trying his best to soften the blow, ‘but it’s promotion for you, after all.’
‘Promotion? Who cares a damn about promotion? I wanted to go with the regiment. You’ll look after them, won’t you, Curzon?’
‘Of course I will, sir.’
‘You’ll be in France in a fortnight.’
‘France, sir?’ said Curzon, mildly surprised. The destination of the Expeditionary Force had been an object of some speculation. It might possibly have been Belgium or Schleswig.
‘Yes,’ said the Colonel. ‘Of course, you don’t know about that. It’s in the secret mobilization orders for commanding officers. You had better start reading them now, hadn’t you? The British Army comes up on the left of the French. Maubeuge, and thereabouts. Here you are.’
That moment when he was given the printed sheets, marked ‘Most Secret. For Commanding Officers of Cavalry Units Only’, was to Curzon the most important and vital of his career. It marked the finite change from a junior officer’s position to a senior officer’s. It was the opening of the door to real promotion. It made it possible that the end of the war would find him a General. Naturally it was not given to Curzon to foresee that before the war should end he would be in command of more men than Wellington or Marlborough ever commanded in the field. And he never knew to what fortunate combination of circumstances he owed this most fortunate bit of promotion, for the secrets of War Office patronage are impenetrable. Of course, the memory of the Battle of Volkslaagte had something to do with it. But presumably someone in the War Office had marked the fact that the Colonel of the Twenty-second Lancers was verging on the age of retirement and had debated whether it would not be better for the regiment to be commanded by a forceful younger man, and at the same time the question of the yeomanry brigade command had arisen, so that Curzon’s promotion had solved a double difficulty. It maintained a reputable trainer of peace-time cavalry in a situation where his talents could be usefully employed, and it gave a man of proved ability in war a command in which he would find full scope.
If Curzon had had time to think about it at all, and if his self-conscious modesty had permitted it, he would undoubtedly have attributed these motives to the War Office; and as it was, his subconscious approval of them sent up his opinion of the Higher Command a good many degrees. Moreover, this approval of his was heightened by the marvellous way in which mobilization was carried through. Reservists and remounts poured in with perfect smoothness. His indents for equipment were met instantly by the Command headquarters. In six brief days the Twenty-second Lancers had expanded into a regiment of three full squadrons, complete in men and horses and transport, ammunition and supplies, ready to move on the first word from London – nor was the word long in coming.
Curzon, of course, had worked like a slave. He had interviewed every returning reservist; he had inspected every horse; he had studied his orders until he knew them by heart. Nor was this from personal motives, either. His anxiety about the efficiency of the regiment sprang not at all from the consideration that his professional future depended upon it. The job was there to be done, and done well, and it was his business to do it. Somewhere within his inarticulate depths was the feeling that England’s future turned to some small extent upon his efforts, but he could not put that feeling into words even to himself. He could faintly voice his feelings regarding the credit of the Army, and of the cavalry arm in particular. He could speak and think freely about the honour of the regiment, because that was a subject people did speak about. But he could not speak of England; not even of the King – in just the same way the inarticulate regiment which followed its inarticulate colonel sang popular ballads instead of hymns to the Motherland.
Someone in London had done his work extraordinarily well. There never had been a mobilization like this in all British history. In contrast with the methods of the past, which had scraped units together from all parts and flung them pell-mell on to the Continental shore, without guns or transport or cavalry like Wellington in Portugal, or to die of disease and privation like the Army in the Crimea, the present system had built up a real Army ready for anything, and had means and arrangements perfected to put that Army ashore, lacking absolutely nothing which might contribute to its efficiency and its mobility.
One morning at dawn Curzon’s servant called him exceptionally early; that same evening Curzon was on the quay at Le Havre supervising the disembarkation of the horses. That day had for Curzon a sort of dream-like quality; certain details stood out with extraordinary clarity although the general effect was blurred and unreal. All his life Curzon could remember the faces of the officers whom he had ordered to remain with the depot squadron, looking on unhappily at the dawn parade, while the band played ‘God Save the King’, and the men cheered themselves hoarse. He remembered the fussy self-importance of Carruthers, the brigade-major, who came galloping up to the railway sidings at which the regiment was entraining, to be greeted with cool self-confidence by Valentine, the adjutant, who had every detail of the business at his fingers’ ends. There was the lunch on board the transport, interrupted by the flight overhead of a non-rigid airship which formed part of the escort. And then, finally, the landing at Le Havre, and the business of getting men and horses into their billets, and someone here had done his work again so efficiently that there was no need for Curzon to recall to himself the cavalry colonel’s active service maxim: ‘Feed the horses before the men, and the men before the officers, and the officers before yourself.’
The feeling of unreality persisted during the long train journey which followed. The conveyance of the three thousand horses which belonged to the brigade was a business ineffably tedious. Feeding and watering the horses took up much time, and the men needed to have a sharp eye kept on them, because everyone in France seemed to have entered into a conspiracy to make the men drunk – there was free wine for them wherever they came in contact with civilians, and the young soldiers drank in ignorance of its potency and the old soldiers drank with delighted appreciation.
Curzon could not understand the French which the civilians talked with such disconcerting readiness. He had early formed a theory that French could only be spoken by people with a malformed larynx, and in his few visits to Paris he had always managed very well without knowing French; in fact he had been known to declare that ‘everyone in France knows English.’ That this was not the case was speedily shown in frequent contacts with village maires and with French railway officers, but Curzon did not allow the fact to distress him. Valentine spoke good French, and so did half a dozen of the other officers. It was sufficient for Curzon to give orders about what was to be said – in fact an inattentive observer of Curzon’s impassive countenance would never have guessed at his ignorance of the language.
Then at last, on a day of sweltering sunshine, the regiment detrained in some gloomy sidings in the heart of a manufacturing and mining district. The brigade formed a column of sections two miles long on a dreary-paved road and began to move along it, with halts and delays as orders came in afresh. The officers were bubbling with excitement, looking keenly at