GENERAL IRONSIDE – A MAN OF ACTION

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 2, 3 January 1940, Page 3

GENERAL IRONSIDE - A MAN OF ACTION

Chief of Imperial Staff; a Master of Languages; Doings in Africa

with a resourceful, powerful, wcllIronside is well fitted for the task of new armies. At the age of 20 he was War. Since then he has led British angel, in the irgjd of Flanders, in the ier, and in the dusty heat of the ruction of new fortifications on Malta strategic key points impregnable. He Great War he said; “The more I see we are losing it through lack cf of imagination in this war. tivities later on, when I had work to do in South-West Africa and on the Union border. It was from information supplied by him that the British military maps were drawn up for South-West Africa, Namaqualand, and the Richtersveld and Kalahari Deserts. For a long time he trekked about the borders of SouthWest Africa on an ox wagon, driving the span himsdlf and with only a native as a leader. Unreliable Guides. When the Bondelswart rebellion broke out. I was sent to Steinkop with a column of mounted police to prevent the Union Hottentots joining their brothers across the Orange River. The Bastard leader in the Richtersveld Desert, “Ryk” Jasper Cloete, was giving trouble. A message was sent to him that the police column was going to trek through the Richtersveld, but that he would not be interfered with if his tribesmen did not show opposition. He sent back the reply; “Only a baboon or a Hottentot can live in Richtersveld; your horses and men will all die.” I had Ironside’s map with me, and also two Bastard guides, whom I did

Tall and massive in physique, w trained brain, General Sir Edmund I directing the operations of Britain’s m serving as a subaltern in the Boer 1 soldiers in the Arctic climate of Archar rocky fastnesses of the Indian frontie Middle East. He directed the constri and Gibraltar, and made these two st speaks six languages. During the C of this war the more I am convinced w imagination.” There will be no lack c QEEING the name of General Sir Edmund Ironside prominently displayed in the press has brought back to memory incidents connected with him, which may prove of general interest, writes Lieutenant-Colonel H. F. Trew in the Johannesburg Star. When I knew him he was a staff captain for intelligence, stationed at Roberts Heights, Pretoria. When I say stationed, I mean that his headquarters were there; for he was always making mysterious disappearances, and returning very sunburnt, but with nothing to say about his travels. Even in those days he was distinguished for his knowledge of languages, of which he knew six and was busy learning a seventh. He told me that when at school he had shown no particular aptitude for acquiring a knowledge of foreign languages. He considered the English method of teaching languages all wrong; slogging away at grammar and syntax made the young scholar lose all interest in his subject. His method was first to learn as large a vocabulary as possible, and then live with a family who spoke no English, but only the language he wished to learn. The grammar came to him later with very little difficulty.

“Big Afrikaner Officer.” As soon as he arrived in South, Africa he adopted this method to learn j Afrikaans, and' how well he succeeded . the following story will prove. I was; asked by the British Commander-in- » chief to assist his compensation officer | on field manoeuvres in the Bronkhorst ! Spruit district. We had to visit farms in the area) and decide on the amount of compen- j sation to be paid out for damage done t by the troops. We put up for the night. in the bushveld, at a farm owned by { a man I knew. The farmer asked me j who the very big Afrikaner officer . was wfro had visited the farm with : Lord Methuen. I replied that the latter had no South African officer on j his staff. I must be mistaken, the farmer said, j and proceeded to give an accurate de- j scription of Ironside. When I told | him that the officer was an English- i man, he would not believe it; for, he | said, “He speaks Afrikaans just like a f Boer.” ; Ironside was that rare mixture of ! man of action and keen student. Whenever one went into his quarters, he was either learning a language or studying the campaigns of the great masters of war.. At the same time he was a great sportsman, and a genial companion at a social gathering—a big, powerful man, about 6ft. 4in. in height, with a fine open face and cheery manner. Hit a Long Ball. Ironside was by far the best golfer at Roberts Heights. He was on the scratch mark and off the tee one of the longest hitters I have ever seen., With all this, he never let games or social engagements interfere with his work or studies. In a day when a number of British officers were out to have a good time, he took his profession very seriously. He has acquired his present high position purely by hard work and merit. He was very reserved about his secret service work irT South-West Africa. I learned more about his ac-

j not trust very far, as they were both also named Cloete. It proved fortunate that we had a map and a prismatic compass, for on two occasions these auides tried to mislead us. Frecious Information. The information contained in the map proved to be absolutely accurate, the water holes exactly as Ironside had placed them, and the marginal notes laying down how many animals could be watered at each worked out to within a few gallons. The Bastards remembered Ironside well, although 14 years had elapsed since his trek. They called him the “Boer Smous,” as he had posed as a trader up there. General Botha made use of Ironside’s maps in the SouthWest campaign, and it was a continual wonder to us how Ironside had obtained such full information while working as a special service officer. The stories of his adventures in South-west during the Herero campaign are well worth telling. Some he told me himself, some I learned from other sources.

It appears that the British Government were very concerned at the reports which reached them of the number of troops and the amount of war material that the Germans were pouring into South-West Africa. The frontier was closed and guarded, and very little information allowed to leak out. Ironside volunteered to get into South-West Africa and obtain the necessary facts. He received the usual warning that, if discovered, his fate would be in his own hands. He grew a beard, dressed in farm clothes, purchased a span of oxen and a wagon, and trekked to the German border. There he posed as a Transvaal Boer, who knew no English and wished to ride transport for the German troops. He was duly hired and attached to a column operating in the disturbed area. But even a clever man may make mistakes in this kind of work. After a fortnight with the Germans he made a startling discovery. He had brought with him from Pretoria a mongrel dog to which he was very attached, and sitting at the camp fire one evening he found to his horror that he had forgotten to remove its collar, which bore a small brass plate engraved, “Captain Ironside, Royal Horse Artillery.” Fortunately, it was a rdugh-haired dog and nobody appeared to have noticed the inscription. He carried on his work for some months, but then he began to realise that the Germans were getting suspicious of him. One night a German sergeant woke him suddenly and fired at him a question in English. Fortunately he kept his nerve and replied in Afrikaans, and then in broken German, that he could not understand. Placed Under Arrest. Later on an officer tried the same trick, and again Ironside came through the test satisfactorily. He could not understand who or what had given him away, but he saw that it was time to think of escaping. He was too late. The very next day an officer placed him under arrest on a charge of being a spy. That night he was tied to a wagon wheel and a sentry placed over him. But during the night the sentry slept, and a Hottentot whom Ironside had befriended crept under the wagon and cut loose his bonds.

He procured a haversack cf food and a water bottle, and set a course for Rietfontein, a police post on the Union border. Ironside would never say much about this trek, except that “it was rather rough.” If he found it tough, to the average man it would have meant death. The next news of him was a helio message flashed down the line of police posts from Rietfontein: “European arrived here in exhausted state, alleges name is Ironside, Imperial officer employed on special service, please verify and instruct.” At last the Herero campaign came to an end. A party of German officers, on their way back to Germany, arrived at Capetown. At the same time Ironside arrived here on some duty connected with the Castle. He was invited to dine at Government House, and when he took his place at the table he found sitting opposite to him ’ the German officer who had placed him under arrest. Mucli-puzzled German. After dinner, the German officer came up to him and said, “I think, captain, that we have met somewhere before?” Ironside replied: “I am sorry, I do not recollect th e pleasure of having met you before.” “Oh. perhaps you were at -one time an attache at the Embassy in Berlin?” “No,” teplied Ironside, “I was never an attache in Berlin, so it could not have been there.” He could see that the German was not satisfied, and for the rest of the evening kept looking at him, evidently most puzzled. At the beginning of the Great War, Ironside, on' account of his knowledge of languages, was appointed to General French’s staff. He himself became a general, and was appointed to command the army in North Russia, fighting the Bolsheviks. He had a strange mixture of troops under his command, including a number of White Russians. Some of his troops mutinied, killed their officers, and joined the Reds. Later, a number of them were captured by Ironside’s army. He tried them by court-martial, and shot the lot. Taking Risks. He is an iron disciplinarian, but soon gains the confidence of the troops under his command. Later on he commanded the troops in Persia and Irak, where he horrified his staff by the risks he took in going among the rebellious tribesmen without an escort. Later again, when the risk of war breaking out in the Mediterranean became acute, he was sent out as Governor and commander-in-chief at Gibraltar. It is an open secret now that the defences of the Rock had been neglected and that Ironside forced the Government to repair this neglect at once. He handed over the defences in perfect order when he left Gibraltar a short while ago to take over the duties of inspector-general of British Oversea Forces. It was a happy choice the British Government made when they sent him to Poland for staff talks with Polish headquarters. Polish is one of the many languages he speaks well, and he was thus able to address the Polish troops in their own language. On the outbreak of the war General Sir Edmund Ironside . was appointed chief of the Imperial General Staff.