Blood and Thunder by Alexandra J Churchill Page A

piece of shrapnel had torn a lump out of his thigh. He had a bullet hole in his boot from the morning, another through his sleeve, he had been knocked over by a shell and his horse had been shot; ‘so no-one can say I had an idle day’, he said drily. A French staff officer took pity on him and drove him to Bavay, where, as luck would have it, his good friend the Duke of Westminster was there to mollycoddle him. Rivy, having been ordered to rally what troops he could on the way south, soon arrived too. Dejectedly wondering what he could do to find news of his twin, he found that he was already in the town. Francis thought much more of his brother’s exploits on that first day of the retreat than he did of his own. He told their friend John Buchan, author of The 39 Steps , that his twin’s ‘solitary act of reconnaissance, all alone, was braver than anything he did; a raw civilian riding for hours under heavy fire on a tired horse on missions of vital importance’.
    The nation disagreed. In August 1914, specialist publications about the war sprang up. One in particular took its coverage of the supposed exploits carried out by mounted troops to obsessive proportions. The charge led by the 9th Lancers, with all its romanticism and connotations of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, was irresistible. With truth not getting in the way of a good story, artist’s impressions of Francis, leading his men with resolve on his face, in point-blank range of a gun emblazoned the pictorial press. The Germans cower in the foreground, a trooper who had lost his horse charges the enemy on foot, sword in hand. As far as the British public were told, the enemy had captured the British guns and were hell bent on turning them on their owner’s troops. Francis and his men stormed to the rescue. Starved of information about the chaotic retreat, John Buchan remembered (and not without irony) how in the confusion of those first weeks of war ‘the exploits of the Ninth emerged as a clear achievement on which the mind of the nation could seize and so comfort itself’.
    For Francis, convalescing at his uncle’s house in the knowledge that not only had none of those guns fallen into German hands but that he himself had not been within a few hundred yards of any concentration of enemy troops, it was embarrassing. Despite his arguable display of bravery, his only concern was his squadron and how they were faring in France. ‘I have never felt such a fool in my life,’ he declared, by now aware that he had been nominated for a Victoria Cross, which baffled him. ‘After all, I only did what every other man and officer did who was with me.’ Thanks to a ‘lot of rot’ penned by ‘infernal correspondents’ he was receiving fan mail and all kinds of exalted visitors. The king himself had stopped by, as had Mrs Asquith, who was thoughtful enough to ask after Rivy. There were fellow OEs: Prince Arthur of Connaught who sat with him for an hour and the legendary Field Marshal Lord Roberts, who had begun his own cavalry career lifetimes ago, a full decade before the Indian Mutiny. He badgered him for every last detail: who did they charge, how and with what aim? In his weakened state, all Francis could do was watch the clock, entertain well-wishers and take every ‘wild story’ as it came. In France though, just as he feared, the war continued without him and the Ninth would suffer many more hardships before he managed to find his way back.
    On 24 August, as darkness descended and rain began to fall, Lucas took charge of the tattered remains of the regiment. He fell back, taking a third of the Ninth’s strength, including the Harvey brothers and Bunny Taylor-Whitehead, over the border into France and on to the town of Ruesnes. Other straggling collections of men were arriving in other little towns along the frontier, like Wargnies-le-Petit, where Colonel Campbell had