THE OFFICER CLASS
Across both volumes of the history, Kipling makes much of the close relationship between men and officers.
There are numerous individual stories of the fate of men from the officer class.
2ND LIEUTENANT HINE
2nd Lieutenant Hine, ‘showed himself by getting up on to the parapet, and was shot through the head at once, probably by a sniper’; the 25-year-old ‘was utterly convinced that he would not be killed in the war.’
Vol 2. 6th October 1915
CAPTAIN BASIL HALLAM RADFORD
'On a windy Sunday evening at Couin, in the valley north of Bus-les-Artois, they saw an observation balloon, tethered near their bivouacs, break loose while being hauled down. It drifted towards the enemy line. First they watched maps and books being heaved overboard, then a man in a parachutte , jumping for his life, who landed safely. "Soon after, something black, which had been hanging below the basket, detached itself and fell some 3000 feet. We heard later it was Captain Radford (Basil Hallam). His parachutte apparently caught in the rigging and in some way he slipped out of the belt which atatched him to it. He fell near Brigade HQ." Of those who watched, there was not one that had not seen him at the 'Halls' in the immensely remote days of 'Gilbert the Filbert, the Colonel of the Nuts.'
Vol 2. 20th August 1916.
Captain BASIL HALLAM RADFORD Regiment & Unit/Ship Royal Flying Corps No.1 Army Kite Ballon Sec. Date of Death Died 20 August 1916 Age 28 years old Buried or commemorated at COUIN BRITISH CEMETERY II. C. 15. France
Son of Walter T. H. and A. L. M. Radford, of 206, Cromwell Rd., South Kensington, London. Actor, known to theatre goers as 'Basil Hallam' or 'Gilbert the Filbert.'
THE LORD GAVE THE LORD HATH TAKEN AWAY BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD
COMPANY SERGEANT MAJOR WILSON
Non-commissioned officer
'Another escaped prisoner, CSM JB Wilson of the 13th East Yorks, managed to get into our lines that night. He had been captured at Serre on the 13th November, and had got away from a prisoners' camp at Honnecourt only the night before. He covered 16 KM in the darkness, steered towards the permanent glare over the front, reached the German line at dawn, lay up in a shell-hole all through the day and, finally, wormed across to us by marking down an NCO of ours who was firing some lights, and crawling straight on to him. Seeing his condition when he arrived, the achievement bears out the Diary's tantalizingly inadequate comment: "In private life he was a Bank accountant, and seemed to be very intelligent as well as a man of the greatest determination. We fed him and warmed him before sending him on to Haie Wood whence an ambulance took him to Brigade HQ."
Vol 2. 13th November 1916.
MAJOR LORD DESMOND FITZGERALD
On March 3, during practice with live bombs, one exploded prematurely, as several others of that type had done in other battalions, and Major Lord Desmond FitzGerald was so severely wounded that he died within an hour at the Millicent Sutherland (No. 9. Red Cross Hospital.
Lieutenant T. E. G. Nugent was dangerously wounded at the same time through the liver, though he did not realise this at the time, and stayed coolly in charge of a party till help came.
Lieutenant Hanbury, who was conducting the practice, was wounded in the hand and leg, and Father Lane-Fox lost an eye and some fingers.
Lord Desmond FitzGerald was buried in the public cemetery at Calais on the 5th. As he himself had expressly desired, there was no formal parade, but the whole Battalion, of which he was next for the command, lined the road to his grave. His passion and his loyalty had been given to the Battalion without thought of self, and among many sad things few are sadder than to see the record of his unceasing activities and care since he had been second in command cut across by the curt announcement of his death. It was a little thing that his name had been at the time submitted for a well-deserved D.S.O. In a hard-pressed body of men, death and sickness carry a special sting, because the victim knows—and in the very articles of death feels it—what confusion and extra work, rearrangement and adjustments of responsibilities his enforced defection must lay upon his comrades.
The winter had brought a certain amount of sickness and minor accidents among the officers, small in themselves, but cumulatively a burden. Irreplaceable N.C.O.’s had gone, or were going, to take commissions in the Line; others of unproven capacities had to be fetched forward in their place. Warley, of course, was not anxious to send its best N.C.O.’s away from a depot choked with recruits.
The detail of life was hard and cumbersome. It was a lengthy business even to draw a typewriting machine for use in the trenches. Companies two thirds full of fresh drafts had to be entrusted to officers who might or might not have the divine gift of leadership, and, when all was set, to-morrow’s chance-spun shell might break and bury the most carefully thought-out combinations. “Things change so quickly nowadays,” Desmond FitzGerald wrote not long before his death; “it is impossible to see ahead.” And Death took him on Calais beach in the full stride of his power.
Vol 2. March 1916.
See https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/march-1916-royalty-and-world-war-i/ for more information.