The serial: Largie Castle, A Rifled Nest Day 38

In middle age, he was scaling hills, crossing fords, and galloping through the South African veldt as deftly as a man half his age

When EMSC’s contingent reached the Nile and pitched their tents near Metemmeh, they discovered that Khartoum had fallen, so there was nothing for it but to retrace their steps and return to Cairo. Although they failed in their objective, individual Guards officers were amply rewarded: EMSC was promoted to brevet major, mentioned in dispatches, awarded two medals, and was included in a group of officers presented to the Queen at Osborne.

In 1898, EMSC was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in time to lead his battalion into battle in South Africa. Wars have always drawn comment; the Boer War attracted a flurry of famous writers: Kipling was vigorous in his support for the British during the South African campaign, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about his impressions of the conflict in Memories and Adventures and ex-soldier, Winston Churchill turned up as a correspondent. Valuable A fair amount of information exists on the part EMSC played in the war: his name appears in general histories, regimental archives, and his own account (posthumously published) of the Grenadier Guards’ 3rd battalion. His portrait is reproduced on a Wills’ cigarette card as one of a series of well-known figures of the South African war.

Perhaps the most valuable material on Crabbe, where the reader may catch a glimpse of the real man, can be found in his correspondence to Daisy, my grandmother. These hastily penned letters, 19 from South Africa, lay unread by Daisy’s children and grandchildren (EMSC’s Victorian hand-writing was hard to ‘decode’) until my cousin, Charles Gordon Clark offered to transcribe them.

What emerges after Charles’ painstaking efforts, is a kaleidoscopic view of Crabbe from the time on board ship, he is the first to accept an innoculation against typhoid, to the occasion when he describes his wounds after the Guards’ first battle, as mere ‘scratches.’

On reading about his looting of enemy ponies, struggle to provide a Christmas feast for his men, and of the day when he was shot at by Boer commandoes I realise how graphic his stories are when compared to his father’s accounts of bean-growing in Montreal and of gallivanting in the ballrooms of Upper Canada.

At the time each man was writing letters home, both were in their late forties. It says much for EMSC‘s fitness and health that in middle age, he was scaling hills, crossing fords, and galloping through the South African veldt as deftly as a man half his age.

This narrative is not a panegyric of the man; he received plenty plaudits, the most distinguished being the Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, which is conferred to Britons in recognition of conspicuous service to the Crown.

It is a given that Crabbe, backed by his mother’s fortune, was groomed for a high social position. Professionally, he was tough, even ruthless. In his account of the “Soudan” campaign, a brother officer, Count Albert Gleichen, wrote that on seeing some Arabs going about their business in a village, Crabbe ordered 20 of his best marksmen to fire at them.

During the South African campaign he devised a ruse to trick the Boers into shooting each other. After their first battle, Crabbe sent Daisy a curious memento: a bundle of letters belonging to one of his men and shot through with an enemy bullet. After the battle of Belmont, EMSC relished showing the scene to officers who had not been present. Relished action However, the colonel was paternalistic towards his 850 officers and men and referred to them as ’his flock,’ ‘old boys,’ and ‘motley crew.’ He liked to treat his men at Christmas with a slap-up meal of roast beef, plum pudding and beer.

Like most late Victorian imperialists, whose country had seen no major conflict since the war against Russia in the Crimea, he relished action. “The situation in South Africa,” he wrote in his history of the battalion, “caused deep excitement to all corps who had any chance of seeing active service.” His views were clear: they had to go to war against the Boer, so that Britain could remain a first class power.

For us in post-colonial Britain, Crabbe’s unflinching certainty is hard to understand. Even more bemusing is Arthur Conan Doyle’s thumb-nail sketch of the commander: “Here is another man worth noting,” writes the creator of Sherlock Holmes. “You could not help noting him if you tried. A burly, broad-shouldered man with full, square, black beard over his chest, his arm in a sling, his bearing a medieval knight-errant. It is Crabbe, of the Grenadier Guards. He reins his horse for an instant while his Guardsmen stream past him. ‘I’ve had my share – four bullets already. Hope I won’t get another today,’ he says. ‘You should be in hospital.’ ‘Ah, there I venture to disagree with you.’ He rides on with his men.”

Some days before his meeting with the author, Crabbe had gone foraging with a commanding officer of the Coldstream Guards. Accompanying them were his adjutant, another officer (Captain Trotter) and a soldier.

When the party caught sight of four mounted Boers on a hill, EMSC suggested they ‘round them up,’ unaware that these men were members of the Johannesburg mounted police and ‘some of the best shots in the Boer army.’ Feigning a retreat, the Boers hid behind a rock and opened fire on Crabbe and his companions. Diverse EMSC’s horse was killed instantly, its rider wounded in the arm and thigh. A bullet lodged itself in the thigh of the Coldstream’s commanding officer, Captain Trotter was wounded badly in the arm, and Crabbe’s adjutant was shot through the heart. After the incident, as EMSC was recovering in hospital, Captain Trotter, who described the event in a letter home, saw his superior “weep like a child over his dead adjutant.”

In his role as father, EMSC reveals much in his letters. He managed to correspond, not only with Daisy but with Violet, Gladys, and his wife, Emily. He wrote from Gibraltar where the battalion berthed for over a month, on board ship, at Modder River, Magersfontein, and Klip Drift. He kept writing until the evening before he was wounded by the Johannesburg mounted police.

Crabbe’s range of subjects is diverse: he describes the taking of prisoners, the officers’ Mess hut, hurriedly built by members of the battalion and the acquisition of coconut matting, so his men could play football; he sends his daughters pressed wild flowers and bird skins and reports the sighting of a secretary bird and springbok deer.

More tomorrow