FROM PRIVATE TO GENERAL

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 8, 29 January 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

FROM PRIVATE TO GENERAL

Commissions Won with Sword and Bayonet. "I conquered Europe," Napoleon once said, in his days of exile at St. Helena, "with an army led by men the great majority of whom were cradled in cottages and carried the knapsacks of private soldiers. Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, who was to wield the baton of a Field-Mar-shall as a preliminary to mounting the throne of Sweden and Norway, entered the French Army as a common soldier less than a score of years before he was Napoleon's Minister of War and the greatest of his generals. Massena, "the favourite child of Victory," was the son of a poor vine-presser at Nice when he enlisted in the army of Sardinia; Jourdain began his climb up the ladder of promotion to the pinnacle of Field-Marshal as a private under Lafayette in America; and Lannes, French Marshal and Duke of Montebello, was taken by his father, a liv-ery-stable keeper, to join the ranks at Lectoure only four years before he was wearing the uniform of a Brigadier-General. Joachim Murat, who was crowned King of the two Sicilys in 1808, and who called his Emperor brother-in-law, was the son of a small innkeeper who rose from private _to colonel in three years; Jean Baptiste Kleber, son of a mason at Strasburg, entered as a volunteer in 1792, and within twelve months was a fullblown General; and the great Marshal Ney, cooper's son, rose from the ranks to be Adjutant-General before his 25th birthday. Our own history furnishes some remarkable illustrations of the change a few terrible hours may make in the fortunes of individual and lucky soldiers. When, for example, the gallant 92nd Regiment made their historic charge at Albuera, the most sanguinary of all the Peninsular battles, no fewer than thirteen of their officers fell; and junior lieutenants found themselves filling the role of majors as the result of a few hours' fighting. In the same battle, the 57th lost 415 men out of a total of 579 engaged; and Lieutenant Mann, who had gone on the field the fourteenth in the roster of officers, found himself at the end of the action in command of his regiment—a Colonel by the magical transformation of war! When the 79 th Cameron Highlanders, who acquitted themselves so magnificently at Waterloo, were mustered, a pitiful remnant, after the tattle, it was found that Lieutenant Alexander Cameron was the senior officer left, and on him devolved the command of the regiment. And after Almanza, so terrible was the havoc among the officers, two British battalions, the 6th and 33rd, had ror commanders an ensign and a lieutenant respectively. In the terrible fighting that marked the passage of the Pyrenees, in tha Peninsular War, the Gordon Highlanders were so severely punished that when at last they emerged on to the plain, there was no single company which had for commander an officer of higher rank than an en-

6ign or sub-lieutenant. At Salamanca, the Devonshire Regiment (then the 11th Foot) lost all its officers but four—a captain and three lieutenants; and in a few hours' fighting at Buenos Ayres, one battalion of the Connaught Rangers was so denuded of its officers that the command fell to the senior coloureergeant. whose cool, clever generalship alone saved it from annihilation.

Although such opportunities as these for swift promotion are happily not very frequent, our military history records many a case in which a British soldier has won a commission literally at the point of his sword or bayonet. It was Sergeant Luke O'Connor's heroism in the Battle of Alma that won for him both the Cross for Valour and the ensigncy, which was his first step to General's rank. He was among the leaders in an assault on a Russian redoubt, when Ensign Anstruther, who was carrying the colours a few yards In advance of him, was shot dead at the very moment that he was about to plant them on the parapet. "At that moment," General O'Connor says, "I was knocked over by a bullet, which struck me in the breast, breaking two of my ribs. I was helped to my legs, and I then snatched up the flag, rushed to the earth-work and planted it on the parapet. The silk standard was rid-

died with shot, but the redoubt itself shattered my body. I did this to rally and encourage the men, the line being broken and the regiments mixed up in confusion for the loss of life was very great." In his modesty General O'Connor omits to add that during the long hours of fighting that followed, he carried his banner tenaciously, although staggering from faintness caused by loss of blood; and that, when at last the battle ceased, it was found to be riddled with more than seventy bullet-holes.

In the story of Lucknow there was

no more gallant man than William Mcßean, son of an Inverness plough-

man, who entered the 93rd High-

landers as a private and rose through all the ranks until lie commanded the regiment. In the mad rush, on the Begum's palace, guarded by five thousand Sepoys—-"the breach," we

are told, "was little more than a scratch in the wall of a gateway, which it needed the activity of a goat to climb, and which only Brit-

ish soldiers, daringly led, would have undertaken to assault in the teeth of a murderous enemy"—Mcßean cut down with his sword no fewer than eleven Sepoys in forcing bis way through the breach; and by this prodigious feat won, not only the Victoria Cross, but a captaincy. Like his friend O'Connor, Major John Berryman, V,C, won both his Cross for Valour and a commission by an act of great gallantry in the Crimea. As a troop-sergeant-major he rode with the Light Brigade down the fatal valley at. Balaclava through a tornado of shot and shell, but had not advanced far before his horse was shot dead and he himself was wounded in the leg. Nothing daunted, he captured a riderless charger, and was racing after his comrades when again his horse was shot under him. At this moment he saw Captain Webb, one of his officers, reeling in his saddle from a serious wound,

and ran to his assistance. Helping the stricken man to dismount, he remained by his side while he sent another soldier to bring a stretcher, the Russian bullets falling like hail around hhn arid the sheik shrieking over his head. In vain the Captain urged his rescuer to save himself. "No, sir," was Berryman's emphatic answer, "I will not leave you. We will go together, whatever happens." When the stretcher-bearer failed to make his appearance, Berryman

summoned a sergeant who was struggling back from the "gates of death"; and, linking hands with him, the two brave fellows, both wounded men, carried the Captain safely back to the British lines, half-a-mile distant, every yard of the way through a blizzard of lead. Such are the stories of three of the long roll of heroes who have won commissions on the field of battle — a roll which contains such splendid names as Sergeant-Major Henry, who defended the guns at Inkerman until he sank unconscious, pierced by a dozen wounds; Sergeant Scott, of the Cape Mounted Rifles, the "terror of the Basutos"; and Hector Macdonald, who took the first step on the road to his generalship when he followed Lord Roberts to Kandahar, and accepted a commission instead of the Victoria Cross, which he had won by conspicuous bravery.