Читать книгу Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors - Richard Holmes - Страница 11

THE NOTION OF a universal hierarchy in the army was slow to evolve. For instance, until 1788 troopers in the Life Guards were ‘private gentlemen’, initially recruited from that flotsam of gentry left unemployed after the Civil War, and expected to buy their own costly uniforms. In 1678 the separate troops of Life Guards had been reinforced by the newly raised Horse Grenadier Guards who used explosives in battle. Diarist John Evelyn described them at camp on Hounslow Heath as ‘dextrous in flinging hand Granados, every one having a pouch full; they had furred hats with coped crowns like Janissaries, which made them look very fierce …’¹ In contrast to the gentlemen of the Life Guards, however, privates in the Horse Grenadiers were just like private soldiers in the rest of the army. As time went on, service in the ranks, even the ranks of the Life Guards, became less attractive to a gentleman, all the more so because his 1660 pay of £73 a year (then equivalent to the income of ‘Eminent Clergymen’) was eroded by inflation and by the 1780s an artisan might expect to earn at least as much.² By then the Life Guards had become recruited with ‘native Londoners with alternative sources of income, whose part-time jobs as private gentlemen simply furthered family business interests’.³

The 1788 reform replaced the existing troops of Life Guards and the Horse Grenadiers, with two new regiments: the 1st Life Guards and the 2nd Life Guards. These would now be recruited like the rest of the army, although the grenade badge on officers’ cloaks remained as a last echo of the Horse Grenadiers. This induced the Duke of York to write ‘I was a little sorry for the Horse Grenadiers because they were to a degree soldiers, but the Life Guards were nothing but a collection of London Tradespeople.’ Their regimental custom of addressing their men as ‘gentlemen’ harks back to an older world, and so too does the Household Cavalry practice of addressing lieutenant colonels and above by their rank rather than as ‘sir’. The reform also did away with the old Life Guards rank terminology, where commissioned ranks below captain (just two for the army as a whole) had been cornet, guidon, exempt, brigadier, and sub-brigadier. It left the Household Cavalry with an NCO terminology that still endures. Lance corporals are lance corporals, just as they would be in the rest of the army. But corporals are styled ‘lance corporal of horse’, sergeants are ‘corporal of horse’, staff sergeants are ‘staff corporals’, squadron sergeant majors are ‘squadron corporal majors’, and the regiment’s senior non-commissioned member is the ‘regimental corporal major’.

The reforms did nothing about the advantageous double-ranking system enjoyed by Guards officers. Central to its operation was the concept that rank in the army and rank in a given regiment were distinct. In 1687 captains in the Guards were given the army rank of lieutenant colonel. Four years later, the privilege was extended to lieutenants, who ranked as majors in the army. Finally in 1815 – as a reward for the conduct of the Foot Guards at Waterloo – ensigns were granted lieutenancies in the army. When a Guards officer reached the rank of major in his regiment he was at once made a colonel in the army. Formally a Guards captain would style himself ‘captain and lieutenant colonel’, but the custom of referring to officers by their higher army rank, clear enough at the time, easily causes confusion now.

At Waterloo there was a glut of colonels in and around the farm complex of Hougoumont. The light companies of the 1st, Coldstream, and 3rd Guards played a distinguished part in the defence of the Hougoumont, standing like a breakwater in front of Wellington’s right centre. All the company commanders, captains by regimental rank, enjoyed lieutenant-colonelcies in the army. James Macdonnell of the Coldstream was in overall command; Charles Dashwood of 3rd Guards in the garden and farm surrounds; Henry Windham of the Coldstream in the château and farm; with Lord Saltoun of 1st Guards in the orchard. Eventually Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Woodford (and a ‘proper’ lieutenant colonel in this context), commanding 2nd Coldstream Guards, was sent down with most of his battalion from Major General Sir John Byng’s brigade up on the ridge. Although he was now the senior officer in the area, Woodford generously let James Macdonnell remain in command. The burly Macdonnell had already distinguished himself by leading the handful of guardsmen who had closed the farm’s north gate after the French burst in. Private Matthew Clay of 3rd Guards ‘saw Lieutenant Colonel Macdonnell carrying a large piece of wood or trunk of a tree in his arms (one of his cheeks marked with blood, his charger bleeding within a short distance) with which he was hastening to secure the gates against the renewed attacks of the enemy.’⁴ Some called him ‘the bravest man in England’ for his part in animating the defence, although he always maintained that it was a team effort. He was knighted and ended his days as a general.⁵

Guards officers eventually lost their double rank in 1871, with the reforms accompanying the abolition of the purchase of commissions. It had always been more than just a genteel way of ensuring that the ‘Gentlemen’s sons’ – as Guards officers were known in the Wellingtonian army – enjoyed added status. This had practical advantages: a force made up of several units or detachments was commanded by the senior officer, by army rank, present. As a general’s rank came by seniority from the date of promotion to lieutenant colonel, a Guards captain found himself on the roll from the date of his appointment. This increased his prospects of becoming a general early, and a handful of officers did indeed find themselves major generals in the army while still doing duty as captains in their own regiments.

Andrew Wheeler of the 1st Guards was commissioned in 1678, promoted to captain and lieutenant colonel in 1692, became a major general in 1727, and died a regimental captain three years later. More typical was Richard, sixth Earl of Cavan, commissioned in 1744, made captain and lieutenant colonel in 1756 and major general in 1772. He departed to command the 55th Foot as a regimental lieutenant colonel in 1774, and died, by now a lieutenant general, in 1778.⁶ Major Charles Jones, author of the The Regimental Companion (1811), argued that dual rank ‘has often been detrimental on real service, is always a cause of distracting jealousy to the line, and has never … offered one solid advantage’. Ending purchase did not end the concept of dual rank. This situation initiated a long-running joke: a foreign officer in British pay, marching through Portugal in 1810, saw a senior Guards officer astride a donkey:

‘What a beautiful mule that is!’

‘It is not a mule, my good fellow, it is a jack-ass.’

‘Pardon me, it would indeed be a jack-ass in the line, but because it belongs to the Guards it must be a mule by brevet.’⁷

From its earliest days the army had granted promotion as a reward for gallant or distinguished service, and this was known as brevet promotion. It was especially relevant in an age where medals and decorations were not generally available, and could be awarded individually or to a whole group. By the nineteenth century brevet was available, as an individual reward, only to officers who were already captains, and it could not take a man beyond colonel. Captain Garnet Wolseley, commissioned into the 12th Foot in 1852, was repeatedly put up for the brevet promotion for which his harum-scarum courage qualified him. But the military secretary regretted that he had not yet acquired the six years service that brevet rank demanded:

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 services described by Sir Harry Jones, he would have been happy to have recommended him.⁸

Another hero of the Indian Mutiny, Lieutenant Henry Norman, had so many recommendations that all he needed was his captaincy for the honours to kick in. ‘On the day of his captaincy,’ wrote a delighted brother officer, ‘he will be Major, Lieut-Colonel, CB [Companion of the Order of the Bath], perhaps full colonel. He deserves it all and more.’⁹ Fred Roberts (who was to die as a field marshal in France in 1914) received his brevet majority on the day that his captaincy was gazetted in 1860, and a brevet lieutenant colonelcy followed almost immediately. Brevets were granted generously and gave commanders a quick and easy way of showing their approval.

The sniper’s fire of individual brevets, aimed at individuals, was interlocked with the wholesale bombardment of general brevet promotions that caught up whole batches of officers of similar seniority. In 1810 Henry Torrens assured a colonel that ‘It keeps up the spirit of an army to give frequent promotion to a Class of Men who have nothing to look to but the honourable attainment of rank in their profession.’ He enclosed an Army List showing the impact of a proposed general brevet. It would make ‘the Cols of 1803 and 1804 to be Major Generals, the Lieut Cols of 1800 to be Colonels, the remainder of the Majors of 1802 and the whole of 1803 to be Lieut Colonels.’ He added a postscript saying that he had just calculated the speed of promotion across the army, and reckoned that a man would be ‘tolerably fortunate’ to make lieutenant colonel with fifteen years’ service, and it would take him ten more years to make colonel and another seven as colonel before he became a major general. This meant that ‘the more fortunate’ of those who had entered the army at 16, could make major general at 51. The last general brevet, he added, had indeed promoted its youngest major general at 51 but its youngest lieutenant general at 75. Torrens understandably added an exclamation mark.¹⁰

General brevet promotions could mark an event like a Royal Jubilee, or the end of a war. A large promotion followed peace in 1815 ‘to reward those by whose brilliant service the peace had been achieved’.¹¹ When the army was being shrunk in the 1820s, brevet rank was used as an inducement to get officers to leave. They could retire with ‘Superior Brevet Rank in the Army’ and receive the half-pay of that new rank. They could then, if they wished, sell this ‘Unattached Half-Pay Commission’, an enticing departure from the general principle that one could only sell a commission that had been bought. There were an enormous amount of general brevets awarded in 1846, 1851, and 1854, but the process created a huge amount of elderly generals: the average age of major generals in the 1854 brevet was over 65. Over a twenty-year period half the major generals had not served for ten years, many had not served for twenty, and one had had no service for thirty-five. General brevets were abolished in 1854 and a fixed establishment for general officers was introduced, with rules for promotion and retirement.

A brevet officer usually did duty in his regimental rank, though serving outside his regiment – for instance, as aide-de-camp to a general – would allow him to be employed in his army rank, and to draw the full pay for it. There were certain other advantages. In 1869 it was laid down that captains holding a major’s brevet would be allocated cabins in troopships ahead of mere regimental captains; and in 1898 all brevet officers were ordered to wear the badges and appurtenances of their army rank. An order of 1912, however, ungenerously warned that brevet rank did not exempt an officer from passing the appropriate promotion examinations.

The over-generous use of brevets, together with the granting of temporary rank to help officer an army swollen by war, could create anomalies, with a favoured few enjoying temporary and brevet rank well in excess of their regimental rank. The Duke of Marlborough tried to explain that just because an officer had a temporary commission as brigadier, and brevets taking him through major to colonel, he was still not the senior captain in his own regiment, and when all the froth and bubble had gone, he was likely to finish up commanding a company again. ‘Besides Colonel Hollins having a commission as brigadier,’ wrote the duke, ‘does nowise exempt him from his duty as major, and there are older captains in the first regiment to whom it would be a prejudice when they come to roll together.’¹² In 1767, a dispute over command of the Cork garrison between Lieutenant Colonel Tulikens of the 45th Foot and Lieutenant Colonel Cunningham (regimentally a captain in the 45th, but holding his senior rank by brevet) established that ‘When corps join either in camp, garrison or quarters, the oldest officer (whether by Brevet or any other commission) is to command the whole.’¹³

Brevet promotion lasted for much of the twentieth century, although it was increasingly discredited. On 26 August 1914, 1st Battalion the Gordon Highlanders formed part of the 3rd Division, holding the line in front of Audencourt at the battle of Le Cateau. Troops in that sector did not receive the order for a general withdrawal, and so, true to the standards of that tough old army, they fought on. At about 7.45 p.m. that evening Colonel William Gordon VC, second in command of the Gordons as a regimental major, noted that his battalion now had a company of Royal Scots and two of Royal Irish fighting alongside it. He immediately took command of the combined force by virtue of his army rank, which made him senior to Lieutenant Colonel Neish, his own commanding officer. The little party began to fall back just after midnight. It eventually collided with a field gun blocking the route, and although the Gordons rushed the piece before it could be fired, nearby Germans immediately stood to their arms and after an hour’s battle the British were overwhelmed. The Gordons lost about five hundred men, although a few survivors made their way through the German lines to Antwerp and on to England.

‘The fortune of war was hard upon the 1/Gordons’, lamented the official historian. ‘For the time, they practically ceased to exist as a battalion.’¹⁴ Survivors found the circumstances of the capture extremely galling, and after the war there was a civil action when Gordon sued a Dundee newspaper for repeating a story that he had ordered the men to lay down their arms: he demanded £5,000 and received £500, which was nevertheless a substantial sum. Whatever the truth of the decision to surrender, command arrangements had certainly not made for a quick decision at a moment when time was of the essence. Nor did brevet rank make Major General Hubert Hamilton’s task any easier at Le Cateau. His 3rd Division was bearing the brunt of the battle, but when Brigadier General McCracken of 7th Infantry Brigade was wounded, Hamilton had to send for the Army List to determine that, although both Lieutenant Colonel Bird of the Royal Irish and Lascelles of the Worcesters were substantive lieutenant colonels, and the latter had gained substantive rank first, Bird had an earlier lieutenant colonel’s brevet that gave him command of the brigade.

Brevet rank lapsed in 1952 but reappeared (though only for major to lieutenant colonel) two years later, to increase the field of selection for promotion to colonel, and ‘earmark outstanding officers and give them incentive’.¹⁵ It was finally abolished in 1967, although it lingered on into the twenty-first century in the Territorial Army, for specific use in the case of a territorial second-in-command of a unit normally commanded by a regular officer.

Even if no brevet rank was involved, an officer could be granted temporary or local rank, both of limited duration and the latter more fragile than the first. Local rank began by having a specific geographical limitation, like the ‘for America only’ caveat that made James Wolfe a major general in 1759. When Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief, formed his command into three brigades, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Pigot (in Boston in 1775) was promoted locally to brigadier general. He was to command his own 38th Foot, together with the 5th and 52nd. It was Pigot’s brigade that led the decisive break into the Patriots’ redoubt on Breed’s Hill (the key point in the battle known as Bunker Hill), and Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the American Department, announced in the Gazette that ‘the Success of the Day must in great Measure be attributed to his firmness and Gallantry.’ It brought him not only one of the first available regimental colonelcies, but promotion to local major general. He succeeded to his brother’s baronetcy in 1777, and shortly afterwards seniority brought him the substantive step of major general. Sir Robert was promoted lieutenant general in 1782, three years after his return to England. He did not serve again, but devoted himself to the improvement of his estate at Patshull, work begun by his elder brother, who had consulted Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.¹⁶

Temporary rank was linked to a specific appointment, but, unlike local rank which was generally unpaid, brought its holder the appropriate pay. The London Gazette solemnly deprived Winston Churchill of the temporary lieutenant colonelcy he had been granted in early 1916 to command 6/Royal Scots Fusiliers, and when he returned to politics that summer he reverted to major in the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars. The rules could be very hard. Colonel Charles MacGregor was promoted to temporary major-general to serve as quartermaster-general in India in 1881, bypassing the appointment of brigadier. Although he held the post for four years, and was knighted in the process, he gave it up before seniority had yet made him a major general and so crashed back to colonel, and although he made a dignified protest, the system would not budge. Already mortally ill, he set off home. A Gazette of 18 February 1887 duly promoted him to major general, with seniority backdated to 22 January, but he had died at Cairo on 5 February and never knew of it.

The two world wars saw a huge expansion of local and temporary rank with the Second World War seeing the creation of a ‘war substantive’ rank which was precisely what its name suggests. The youngest British brigadier general in the First World War was Roland Boys Bradford, killed outside Bourlon Wood in 1917 at the age of 24, still only a substantive captain. The youngest major general of the war was the notoriously testy Keppel Bethell, described by one of his staff officers as ‘the most insubordinate man I have ever met’. He gained the temporary rank in March 1918 but never rose above substantive captain during the whole war, becoming temporary major in 1915, brevet major in 1916, and brevet lieutenant colonel in 1917. At that time promotion to full colonel came after four years as a lieutenant colonel and Bethell duly became a colonel in 1921, though it took him till 1930, six years before he retired, to get his second star back.

In 1944 Michael Carver took over 4th Armoured Brigade in Normandy, becoming, at the age of thirty, the youngest British brigade commander of the war. He had been commissioned into the Royal Tank Corps in 1935 and took command of 1st Royal Tank Regiment in 1942: his driver remembered him as a ‘young, serious and very professional soldier, devoid of messes and batmen’.¹⁷ Carver later made no secret of the fact that ‘my attitude to politics and inherited privilege was … left of centre.’¹⁸ One of his first acts was ‘to rid myself of the encumbrance of my second-in-command, who served no useful purpose’.¹⁹ He then decided that the commanding officer of his brigade’s motor battalion, 2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps had ‘lost his grip’, and decided to replace him.²⁰ Rightly sensing trouble, he asked another senior officer from the same regiment to visit the battalion to double-check, and then duly sacked the commanding officer. When Carver proposed to lead an attack with the Royal Scots Greys, his divisional commander objected ‘Couldn’t you send a less well-known regiment?’ Undaunted, he moved on to unseat another commanding officer, Sandy Cameron of 3rd County of London Yeomanry, an experienced warrior with bars to both his DSO and MC. ‘He greatly resented the decision,’ admitted Carver, ‘but 20 years later wrote me a charming letter admitting that I had been right.’

Carver was fortunate in gaining a temporary lieutenant-colonelcy after the war, to work for ‘a dull, characterless gunner … a dead loss’.²¹ He did not get command of a brigade again until 1960, sixteen years after commanding one in battle. But he was more fortunate than Peter Young, just four days younger, who led a Commando brigade in Burma in early 1945. Young did not become a lieutenant colonel again till 1953, when he went off to command a regiment in the Arab Legion. He left the army in 1959, still a lieutenant colonel, granted the honorary rank of brigadier on his retirement to run the military history department at Sandhurst, where he became this author’s first boss.

The army still grants temporary and local rank. The former is often awarded to an officer beginning an appointment in the course of which he will get promoted in the normal way of things, but there are times when temporary rank may reflect a wholly exceptional circumstance. In December 2007 Colonel Richard Iron was made a temporary brigadier to serve alongside the Iraqi army, helping develop its counter-insurgency plan for Basra. The British army’s run-down in Basra was primarily dictated by the political requirement to minimise casualties. Iron became a unrepentantly controversial figure. He was close to senior Iraqi officers who felt that they had received insufficient help, and he later suggested that the British had deviated from the principles of counter-insurgency that they, of all people, should have understood. He reverted to colonel on his return in 2008, and the following spring was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, on the recommendation of the Foreign Office, which has a proprietary interest in this award. Local rank usually reflects a short term expedient. For instance, when 4th Armoured Brigade was preparing to deploy for the first Gulf War, its established ‘Transition To War’ posts were immediately filled by the grant of local rank.²²