Chapter XVI · CONCLUSION

Except in certain remote places and in India, war ended on the 11th November, 1918, and, though the said remote spots still found work for a small number of our English warriors, the demobilization of the great majority was immediately put in hand. Of course, the old standing battalions of the Buffs were to remain in being, but most of the individuals forming them were entitled to discharge, while in the cases of the 6th, 7th and 10th Battalions, those units which had sprung into being at the call of duty and patriotism, had done their work and were now to disappear altogether from the Army List, as the 8th had already done.

Those men most required in England to carry on her civil business and trade went back to their accustomed life almost at once, and resumed old occupations much as if nothing had happened; but the men have been through experiences undreamt of by even the old regular soldier and which can never be effaced from memory. The men not belonging to what were called key industries had to remain with their war battalions for some months, for the returning to civil life of a vast army is by no means a light or easy matter to arrange. In the case of the 6th Battalion demobilization may be said to have commenced more or less seriously in January, 1919. On the 4th February the King’s Colour was presented to the battalion, the ceremony being performed by no less a personage than H.R.H. The Prince of Wales. In March a move was made from Auberchicourt to Bruille, owing to the return of the civil population to the former place. The sending home of batches of men continued pretty steadily all the time and, at the beginning of May, the battalion consisted of Captain Page, M.C., in command; Captain Turk, M.C., adjutant; Captain Linwood, quartermaster; Lieut. Hickmott in charge of the Colours, and thirty-two rank and file. This party returned in June to Sandling Camp, handed their Colours to the Dean of Canterbury at a parade which will be referred to later, and was finally disbanded at the Crystal Palace. The 6th had always been a fighting unit, and its total casualties numbered 4,864, of which 56 officers and 702 men had actually been killed in action.

The first stages of demobilization in the case of the 7th Buffs were carried out at Montigny. Somewhat slow at the start, the work took a turn for the better in January, 1919, and large bodies began to leave for their dispersal stations. The cadre strength, as laid down in Army Orders, was reached in April, and all similar parties of the 18th Division were billeted in Ligny en Cambresis. In early July orders were received for the sending home and dispersal of the slender relics of the 7th Queen’s, 7th Buffs and 8th East Surrey; but there was a good deal of delay at the railhead at Caudry, at Dunkerque, where equipment was handed in to the Ordnance, and at Boulogne; but, on the last day of July, Folkestone was reached and the Colour party went on to Canterbury, where it was billeted till arrangements were made with the Dean and Chapter to deposit its charge in the great cathedral.

The following extract from the Kentish Express of the 9th August, 1919, describes the last act of the famous fighting 7th Battalion, which throughout its career had added so much to the reputation of the Buffs: “The King’s Colour of the 7th Battalion the Buffs was deposited at Canterbury Cathedral on Thursday morning for safe custody by two officers and three other ranks, representing the cadre of the battalion. Major Peake was in command and Lieut. C. H. Rowe bore the Colours, while a detachment from the Buffs’ depot, under Major J. Crookenden, D.S.O. (commanding the depot), formed a guard of honour. The band of the 1st Battalion, under Mr. Elvin, took up its position on the nave steps, as did the Cathedral choir, while Dean Wace was accompanied by Dr. Bickersteth and Canon Gardiner.

“Major Peake asked the Dean to receive the Colours into safe custody. Dean Wace, in accepting them, said he did so with pleasure on behalf of the Dean and Chapter, and they would be placed in the Warriors’ Chapel, the chapel of the regiment.”

Lt.-Colonel Charles Ponsonby in his book, West Kent (Q.O.) Yeomanry and 10th (Yeomanry) Battalion the Buffs, describes the last days of his unit, and with his permission the following few extracts from his work are reproduced in this place:—

“On the 15th December we marched to Fresnes, and from there, after a night at Deux Acren, arrived at Thollembeek and Vollezeel, two villages about thirty-five miles from Brussels.

“Though many of the railways and roads in the neighbourhood had been destroyed before the enemy retired, this part of the country had not been in the fighting area at any time during the war. But the population had suffered much from four years of occupation. They had had little food; they had received no money for troops billeted on them; they had had their men taken from them to work behind the line or in Germany.... The release from such an existence, combined with a very real desire to express their thanks to the English nation, not only for its great share in winning the war and rescuing their country from oppression, but also for having provided a haven of rest for so many of their fellow-countrymen in England, incited the inhabitants of Thollembeek and Vollezeel to stretch their hospitality to its utmost limits. They made every effort to make us comfortable in our billets during the long and rather tedious period of waiting for demobilization.... Towards the end of January the battalion was selected to represent the division, and incidentally the British Army, in a royal review at Brussels by the King of the Belgians. After a week of preparation we went by motor bus to Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels, where we were billeted for the night. The following day the review took place, and after two days’ holiday we returned to our Belgian villages.... On the 27th February the battalion moved to Grammont, a town of about thirteen thousand inhabitants, and a few days later all the remaining men (about one hundred and twenty) who joined the Army after the 1st January, 1916, went off to the 1st Battalion The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment). The battalion was now reduced practically to cadre strength of four officers and forty-six men. During the month of March a cordial and appreciative Order was issued by Major-General E. S. Girdwood on relinquishing the command of the 74th Division.... On the termination of hostilities Captain G. H. Peckham received the M.C., and C.S.M.’s P. Faulkner and L. Salt and Sgts. H. J. Smith and S. F. Sparrow received the M.S.M.... The act of placing their colours in Canterbury Cathedral marked the end of the 10th (Yeomanry) Battalion the Buffs. In the short period of its existence it had fully played its part in the war. Formed on the 1st February, 1917, it ceased to exist on the 21st June, 1919. It fought in Palestine and France. Its casualties numbered 8 officers and 134 men killed, and 24 officers and 486 men wounded.”

The 4th and 5th Battalions had, of course, quite a different status to those alluded to above. They had been for some time and still are[34] permanent portions of the regiment, and so when war was over they could not be disbanded, but merely disembodied in the same way that they were each year after the annual training. As has already been noticed, circumstances postponed this desirable rest from soldiering for a very long time. The unrest and continued wars in India and her frontiers kept the 4th abroad, and the necessity of maintaining white troops in Mesopotamia had similar results in the case of the 5th. The former did not embark for home till November, 1919, a full year after the armistice, and the battalion was disembodied the same month. The cadre of the 5th Battalion, still under Lt.-Colonel Body, D.S.O., O.B.E., a very tiny remnant of those who embarked in 1914, reached home in January, 1920, and were also, of course, disembodied. The story of the 3rd or Special Reserve Battalion after the 11th November, 1918, is as follows: the unit was still quartered in the Citadel at Dover and was about 1,400 strong, many of the men awaiting demobilization, and of the officers orders to proceed to India, for which duty they had volunteered. Towards the end of the month several companies had to proceed to Folkestone for police duty owing to trouble with certain leave-expired soldiers, who could not see the necessity of returning to their units in France. In February, 1919, came orders to move to the south of Ireland in relief of the 3rd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who had been in that country a considerable time. After a short period in Kinsale, the 3rd Buffs were quartered in Victoria Barracks, Cork, and there remained during the summer of 1919, except that, owing to certain troubles, a tour of duty at Limerick for a fortnight or so had to be undertaken.

On the 7th September the whole of the men were handed over to Lt.-Colonel R. McDouall, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., who had just been appointed to command the 1st Battalion of the Buffs; and as there now hardly existed such a unit, as far as the necessary soldiers went, the members of the 3rd were simply handed altogether over to the 1st.

This 1st Battalion had been, in January, 1919, at Vettweiss, in Germany, about fifteen miles from Cologne, and demobilization was in progress till the 15th March, on which date eighteen officers and three hundred men, under Major Lord Teynham, the second in command, were transferred in one body to the 6th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment. This left but a strength of forty-six men, but the regular officers, of course, still remained, as these had cast in their lot with the Buffs for the greater part of their professional lives, and not for emergency times only, so every two private soldiers had an officer to look after them. The ranks, however, were somewhat swollen by the arrival of the band from England. The cadre was now quartered at Sinzenich and remained there till the middle of May, occupied in amusements and recreation and generally having a happy time of relaxation after all that had been gone through.

On the 22nd May the 1st Battalion landed at Tilbury, having travelled by Antwerp, and, on the 26th of the month, it was received, welcomed and entertained by the mayor and officials of the good old city of Canterbury. It was at last in very truth home again, but the cadre now consisted of only about twenty men.

With these twenty Lt.-Colonel McDouall, accompanied by his own adjutant and quartermaster, proceeded in September to Cork and, as we have seen, took over there the 3rd Battalion in a body. In fact, only the Permanent Staff of the latter remained to return to Kent. Soon afterwards the 1st Battalion was again quartered at Fermoy, the garrison it had left for war five years before. Of the nine hundred soldiers or thereabouts who marched out of the little Irish town under Colonel Hill in 1914, five officers and thirty-five other ranks returned; but these, of course, had not been with their unit during the whole of the interval.

The names of these forty soldiers are appended:—

Lt.-Colonel R. McDouall, C.B., C.M.G., C.B.E., D.S.O.

Major R. G. D. Groves-Raines, D.S.O.

Major and Brevet Lt.-Colonel L. W. Lucas, D.S.O., M.C.

Captain H. C. C. Morley.

Captain and Quarter-Master T. Cook.

R.Q.M.S. W. K. Martin.

C.S.M. G. Barrell, D.C.M.

„ J. R. MacWalter, D.C.M., M.M.

„ F. G. Verlander.

C.Q.M.S. G. Bridgland.

„ S. Croucher.

Clr.-Sgt. (O.R.S.) E. J. Evans.

Sgt. A. Burville.

„ J. Cross, M.M.

„ G. Dennis, D.C.M.

„ W. Denny, M.M.

„ E. B. Hills.

„ W. Holmes.

„ J. Mullen.

„ J. Morgan, M.M.

„ J. Stuart, M.M.

L.-Sgt. A. Larkin.

„ G. Russell.

„ C. Truby.

Corpl. W. Adams.

„ A. R. Amos.

„ C. Collier.

„ E. Hall, D.C.M.

„ F. Harvey.

L.-Corpl. S. Clover.

„ A. Forster.

„ W. Phelan.

Pte. H. Barker.

„ W. Bone.

„ E. Downes.

„ H. Staples.

„ F. Stroud.

„ F. Wanstall.

„ E. Wood.

Bdsm. W. Gammon.

The 2nd Battalion came home to England from the Bosphorus in April, 1919, and was quartered in Connaught Barracks, Dover, where it remained till November of the same year, when, under the command of Lt.-Colonel Trevor, D.S.O., it embarked at Southampton for India, where it had been when the war commenced. Multan, in the Punjaub, was the new station into which the 2nd Battalion of the Buffs settled down to take up the threads again of routine garrison life in the East. The following are the names of officers and other ranks who left India in 1914 and returned there in 1919:—

Officers.

Captain Peareth.

Captain Howe.

Other Ranks.

R.S.M. Andrews.

Band-Master Hewett.

R.Q.M.S. Edwards.

O.R. Sgt. Ings.

C.S.M. Cook.

C.Q.M.S. Austen.

„ Blackman.

„ Slender.

Sgt. Ambrose.

„ Coaster.

„ Deeks.

„ Freeman.

„ Hamblin.

„ Manering.

„ McMahon.

„ Potts.

„ Webb.

„ Wilkins.

Corpl. Cornwall.

„ Farr.

„ Robinson.

L.-Corpl. Stubbins.

Dr. Murdock.

„ Stevens.

Pte. Goldsmith.

„ Howland.

„ Levenson.

„ McGann.

„ Spooner.

„ Woodhams.

On the 21st June Canterbury Cathedral was once again, as it had been many times before, the scene of an impressive military ceremony in connection with the Buffs. It was a great memorial service at which every battalion was represented, the grand old church being crowded with soldiers and their relatives. On this occasion the 2nd Battalion received back its Colours which had during the long war been in the safe keeping of the Dean and Chapter. The Colours of the 6th and 10th were solemnly placed in the custody of the same Church dignitaries, to be hung upon the walls together with those under which our sires and grandsires fought. Captain J. C. Page, M.C., who had served so long as its adjutant, was in charge of the party of the 6th, and Lt.-Colonel Ponsonby of the brave Yeomen. It was an occasion that those present will never forget.

The real conclusion of the Buffs’ great war history, however, was another and still more solemn ceremony and service in the same church: this was the unveiling of the memorial to our glorious dead, whose names will be found not only in the Warriors’ Chapel, but in an Appendix to this book, numbering nearly six thousand. Space will not permit of a description of this touching service. The unveiling was performed by Lord Horne, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Eastern Command, and a full description is to be found in the regimental paper, The Dragon, for September, 1921.

We have merely to note that the celebrated general who unveiled the memorial, after giving a short account of the doings of the regiment in the war, made use of the words:—

“There is a record! one and all, Regulars, Territorials, and those who fought with the Service battalions, all serving, all nobly maintaining the discipline and traditions of their regiment, all inspired by the spirit of the Buffs.”

Veteri frondescit honore.