Going back to the very beginning into the mists of time, the Macdonalds were warriors

During the First World War, branches of the Officers Training Corps at UK universities trained some 30,000 officers. After the armistice the corps reverted to basic military training but by the 1930s, when Angus joined the OUOTC, recruitment increased, peaking in 1938 as a response to the Munich crisis.

Angus was attracted to the idea of joining. Instead of applying for the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he could become an undergraduate and, while studying for an honours degree in modern history, join the corps, which provided his kit, awarded a small salary and offered him the chance to be in an independent regiment with its own cap badge and insignia.

So long as Angus played his cards carefully, he’d be eligible for the special reserve of officers. The University Delegacy for Military Instruction (a body that superintended candidates for army commissions), demanded he take a course in military history. He did.

He also received instruction and practical experience in being part of a regular army unit, learning military drill, field-craft, map-reading, camouflage, first aid, weapons training, radio procedure, how to set up an overnight patrol base and fire and manoeuvre as part of a team. Promoted After this initial stage he acquired skills in leadership, although officer cadets within the unit were appointed to NCO roles after moving into the Senior Division. For example, Angus served as an officer cadet before being promoted to the post of company quarter master sergeant.

Cadets received instruction on how to manage a minor unit, planning and decision making, giving orders and ensuring they were carried out, debriefing after an exercise and assuring the welfare of those under their command. The knowledge and experience gained were valuable alternatives to Sandhurst.

On a more theoretical note, he learned about indirect firing, the use of directors, slide rules, range tables, distant aiming points, parallel lines, angles of sight, angles of deflection and predictions. It was all complicated maths and probably not a subject in which any Macdonald was especially gifted. However, my uncle passed with flying colours.

A few months before taking his final exams in 1934, Angus completed a nomination form for entry into the British Army. Extolling his performance, the adjutant of the OUOTC, wrote that Angus had reached “a very high standard of efficiency and was always willing to take charge and was a useful instructor”.

Neither was the colonel of the Military Delegacy disappointed and recommended that Angus be “third in order of merit for a scholarship on his first appointment”.

All he needed now was to be accepted by the first regiment of his choice: the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. Warriors Going back to the very beginning into the mists of time, the Macdonalds were warriors. Living in the Highlands, the clans fought each other regularly. They also struggled against foreign invaders: Vikings and later soldiers from the continent. They remembered how ships from Philip of Spain’s armada in the 16th Century, blown off course, ended up off the Kintyre coast.

Then there was the Lockhart branch, whose distant ancestor Sir Symon was the quintessential soldier, a crusading knight no less. More recently, after the failure of the Stewarts in the 1745 Jacobite rising, the Macdonalds played a lesser role in fighting but on Daisy’s side of the family soldiering was in the blood.

Although her forebears included businessmen, Dublin whiskey distillers, Edinburgh hoteliers, men of the cloth and (ignominiously) individuals who owned Jamaican sugar plantations worked by slaves, the Crabbes (her father, grandfather and greatgrandfather) were all army officers.

Angus’s great-great grandfather, Joseph Crabb (the family had not yet added an ‘e’ to their surname), born in 1742, was 19 when he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 84th Regiment of Foot and sailed to India, then called “the East Indies,” but the troops returned to England in 1765 and were disbanded.

Three years later, after languishing at home on half pay, young Joe seized his chance and joined the forces of the East India Company. The company by then was not only a commercial organisation but employed an army to govern large areas of India.

Undoubtedly, Joseph went for the money; any young man with ambition at that time headed east, as the subcontinent was seen as a honey-pot. Joseph became a major in 1773.

The following year, he served in the Rohilla War when Warren Hastings, governor-general of British India, joined forces with a tribe of Afghans who had entered India.

Together they fought the Marattas with the purpose of strengthening the state of Oudh. In 1781, during his final year with the company, Joseph received orders to take the fort of Lutterfpoor. Leading his troops “by secret and almost impracticable ways”, he arrived at the village of Lora where he routed the Rajah of Benares, who grabbed his diamonds and fled on a camel to the mountains.

The following day the intrepid Joe marched through the Pass of Sukroot and seized Lutterfpoor. Hastings was delighted. He thanked Major Crabb, promoted him to the rank of colonel and commissioned artist William Hodges, once employed by Captain Cook, who discovered New Zealand on his second voyage, to compose a picture of the fort.

Back in England, the public was not so happy. Many saw the “nabobs” (the top British officials in India) as no more respect-worthy than today’s bankers who claim large bonuses. Corruption Warren Hastings came under suspicion and in 1788 was put on trial for corruption. During his impeachment, the former governor-general was questioned about his treatment of the Raja of Benares and Lieutenant-Colonel Crabb was called to give an account of the incident.

It’s unsurprising that his report vindicated his former boss. “Reports were circulated one half-hour and contradicted the next and no one can trace the origin,” alleged Crabb.

At least four successive generations of Crabbe men died leaving very young sons and daughters. Joseph lost his father when he was only 10 and he himself died the same year in which his son, Eyre John, was born.

The latter, more than 60 when his only child, Eyre Macdonell Stewart entered this world, only lived until the boy was seven or eight.

In his turn, Eyre Macdonell, after a tough military life, died in 1905 a week before his 53rd birthday and left eight children, Tempest, the youngest being only eight years old at the time. More on Monday.

© 2017 Mary C Gladstone, all rights reserved, courtesy of the author and Firefallmedia; available in hardcover and paperback online and from all booksellers.