THE DUKE’S 60 YEARS OF CHANGE

Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1928, Page 1

THE DUKE’S 60 YEARS OF CHANGE

(Il.v LT.-GEN. SIR GEORGE MACMUNN, formerly Commander-in-C'iiief in Mesopotamia and Quarter-master-Genera] in India.) Sixty years ago ihe Duke of Connaught received his commission in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwieli. Sixty years is a long span, nearly the life of a man, and, since field-marshals are always on the active list, the Duke lias spent those sixty years in that little Army which has lately written its fame all over the old world. From the Royal F.ngineers to the Royal Artillery', from the Gunners to the 7th Hussars, and four years later to the command of a battalion of the Brigade, tlie Duke of Connaught had a very thorough experience of the regimental side of soldiering when, with 19

years’ service, lie was promoted majorgeneral. As the Duke of Cambridge commanded the Guards Brigade in the Crimea, so the Duke of Connaught commanded i'he Guards Brigade at TcT-el-Kebir, that first battle with breechloaders on both sides, and which in its eventual results was one of the decisive battles of the world. It was the first under the Wolscley regime and the Wolselov doctrine. It is perhaps of interest to remember that it was necessarv to get a sailor to- lead the force by compass, which any cadet of to-day could do. r

From active dress in Egypt the Duke soon went to: India, commanding a first-class district which included a war. division : and before tong to the huge satisfaction of India, ho became Com-mander-i 11-Chief of the Bombay Army, where his presence very materially added to the people’s affection for the Crown. The command at Aldershot practically ended his active career. It- is interesting to realise that that career was intimately connected with the whole gamut of changes and de-

velopment which brought the long-ser-vice Army of the Crimean days to that remarkable product the Expeditionary Force, which enabled the nation to train on its model close on eighty divisions.

From tlie Crimea, to Tel-el-Kehir was a long way; from Enfields and smoothbore cannon to the Martini and the Armstrong gun, from Tel-el-Kebir and Kabul to the Marne via Burma and South Africa, the Frontiers and the Sudan, was a long way more. War in full dress, the coatees and epaulettes of Egypt and Majuba or Ulundi, the ltoi Batje of 18SI, followed by the khaki of the South African War, and the service dress of 1914.

Through long years of preparation, of training and super-training of men and officers, of staffs and generals, the Duke has taken an active and interested part. During the last few days wo have seen this spare militai-y figure, the figure of a young mall, reviewing the Yeomen of the Guard at St. James’s—a pageant, as it were, of OJd England that is always Young England.