War Scouting

In the words of Baden-Powell, from "Lessons on the 'Varsity of Life."

     For my part, although my life has been to a large extent a series of enjoyments, when I ask myself which bit of it I most enjoyed, memory, without any hesitation, flies back to blazing sunshine on a hot, parched, thorn-scrub plain in Rhodesia, where the only shade from the scorching heat was got by hanging your coat over a little bush, where one’s clothes were in rags, one’s food a small portion of horse and a double handful of flour (which for want of time we usually mixed with water and drank down), and where we were tired and worn out with constant night marching against a crafty savage foe.
     Veldt sores, roughly dressed with a fingerful of grease out of a wagon wheel, adorned our faces and hands.  Our horses were drooping bags of bones, and they were tired, very tired.
     And yet — we were fit and hard, there was new adventure, new excitement or anxiety every day, and we were good tried comrades all.  It was all a glorious care-free adventure.
     And then the nights; those clear frosty nights under the dark overhead vault, with its stars big and brilliant, twinkling humourously and watching you as you creep along in your crafty, silent stalk (with all the possibility of being yourself at the same time stalked).
     You feel your way in the bitter darkness, suspicious of every rock or bush, with all your senses on the strain, eyes, ears and nose, to catch sight, sound or scent of an enemy.
     On you creep, lying low; pausing; creeping again with deadly patience, in a blindfold game of hide and seek. You are alone, dependent wholly on your own Scoutcraft for guidance, for safety, for your life, but above all for not coming back empty-handed.
     Risks? Of course, there are risks. They are the salt that gives the savour to it all. Didn’t my heart go pit-a-pat the first time that the Matabele saw me on foot among hillside boulders.
     But when I found that I could, with my rubber-soled shoes, skip away faster than they could follow, it became a cheerier adventure, which eventually came to be indulged in on nine different occasions.
     But it gave one “an emotion,” as the French would say, when they came after one full-cry, exactly like a pack of hounds running to view.

     The ominous call of their Chiefs to the runners — “Don’t shoot him — catch him with your hands” — was a spur if spur were needed. Just one false step or a twisted ankle would have brought me the same result — a long drawn-out torture before the finishing blow brought merciful ending.
     But for such thoughts as these there was no room in the crowded excitement of the moment. All I know is that memory takes me back there still with the elated feeling that the Scout’s life is a life worth living.
     It is a MAN’S job and I loved it.

Scouting - The Connecting Link

In the words of Baden-Powell, from "Lessons on the 'Varsity of Life."

Through the whole of my career in the Army there ran a vein — a fad or whatever you like to call it — that obsessed me and which, while adding zest to my work, came to be of use for the service. Later on it proved the connecting link between my two otherwise dissimilar lives. This was Scouting.      

Scouting includes a rather wide range of work. Briefly, it is the art or science of gaining information. Before or during war information about the enemy’s preparations, his strength, his intentions, his country, his circumstances, his moves, etc., is vitally essential to a commander if he is to win success. The enemy, therefore, on his part, naturally keeps such details as secret as he can.

Thus the job which falls to the fellow who has got to find these out is a difficult one and risky. If he does it in disguise he is called a spy, and is liable to be shot, while in uniform he is more conspicuous as a Scout and equally liable to meet his end.

To do effective work demands a good knowledge of military tactics and organisations. It demands  also, to a very high degree, the qualities of personal initiative and imagination, as well as of the four Cs, which I have elsewhere said go to make a soldier, namely, Courage, Commonsense, Cunning,  and Cheerful Co-operation.

     Consideration for self, for one’s ease or one’s safety doesn’t come in.
     Scouting is certainly a fascinating game for the performer and worth all the risk, because of its immense value to his side.

My Double Life

In the words of Baden-Powell, from "Lessons on the 'Varsity of Life."

I have had the rather unique experience of having in my time lived a double life.

I don’t mean exactly what you would infer from this!

Life Number One. No, I mean that I first started out in life, after leaving school, as a young officer in the Army, and, by extraordinary luck coupled with an unaccountable love for my work, I gained rapid promotion through all the successive ranks.

There was in this life the romance of seeing strange lands at my country’s expense, through serving successively in India, Afghanistan, South Africa, West Africa and Egypt. There was the campaigning, the sport, and the comradeship; there were hardships and sickness and partings, the shadows which enabled one the better to appreciate the sunshine.

Big jobs as well as little fell to my lot. As Adjutant, as Squadron Commander, and finally as Colonel commanding my Regiment, I had in turn what I thought the most enjoyable bits of responsibility that could fall to any man, and in which I was in close touch with my men.

But bigger jobs came to me, of which I will tell in a later chapter, such as, for instance, raising a contingent of native scouts for the Ashanti expedition, acting as Chief Staff Officer in the campaign in Matabeleland, commanding that grand lot of men and women who held Mafeking in the Boer War, and, biggest of all, organizing the South African Constabulary for the settlement of that country after the campaign.

Eventually I reached the top of the tree in my branch of the Service as Inspector-General of Cavalry, with its inspiring opportunities of preparing our horsemen for the Great War when it came. Thus, at the comparatively early age of forty-two I found myself a Major-General, and at fifty-three, after a marvelous run of luck, I had completed my career as a soldier and retired on a pension.

Life Number Two. Then I started on life Number Two, beginning an altogether new life, one on an entirely different plane, but, like Number One, it includes Scouting.

I married her who was to be my right hand in bringing up, not only our own children, but the vast family of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides which then came into being.

We have enjoyed the extraordinary experience of seeing this Movement grow from the tiny acorn of twenty-five boys encamped on Brownsea Island into a Brotherhood and Sisterhood which embraces almost every civilized country in the world, with a census, this year (1933), of two million, nine hundred thousand.

Well, that is the brief outline of my life.