Sir,—
With reference to your letter concerning an appliance for adapting rifles to high angle fire I am directed by the Secretary of State for War to inform you that he will not trouble you in the matter.
I am, Sir, Your Obedient Servant,
(Signature illegible),
Director General of Ordnance.
Thus, whether my invention was nonsense or whether it was, as I believe, radical and epoch-making, I was given no chance to explain or to illustrate it. As I remarked in “The Times:” “No wonder that we find the latest inventions in the hands of our enemies rather than ourselves if those who try to improve our weapons meet with such encouragement as I have done.” Our traditions were carried on in the Great War, for Pomeroy, the inventor of the inflammable bullet which brought down the Zeppelins, was about to return to New Zealand in despair, and it was, as I am assured, private and not official bullets which first showed how valuable was his discovery and forced a belated acceptance by the War Office.
At last our time drew near. My wife had gone to Naples, where it was hoped that the warmer climate would complete her cure. My affairs were all settled up. I was to go as an unpaid man, and I contributed my butler Cleeve, a good intelligent man for the general use, paying him myself. In this way I retained my independence and could return when I felt that the time had come—which, as events turned out, proved to be very valuable to me.
We were reviewed by the old Duke of Cambridge in some drill-hall in London. There befell me on this occasion one of those quaint happenings which seem to me to have been more common in my life than in that of most other men. We were drawn up in our new khaki uniforms, and wearing our tropical helmets, for the Royal Duke’s inspection. If we had been asked to form fours we should have broken down completely, but luckily we were placed in double line and so we remained. I was standing in front on the right flank. With my eyes fixed rigidly before me I was still able out of the corner of them to be aware that the old Duke, with his suite, was coming across to begin at my end. Presently he halted in front of me, and stood motionless. I remained quite rigid, looking past him. He continued to stand, so near me that I could hear and almost feel his puffy breath. “What on earth!” I wondered, but I gave no sign. At last he spoke. “What is this?” he asked. Then louder, “What is this?” and finally, in a sort of ecstasy, “What is it?” I never moved an eyelash, but one of a group of journalists upon my right went into hysterical but subdued laughter. There was whispering among the suite, something was explained, and the funny old man passed on. But did ever Lever in his maddest moment represent that his hero on the first day of wearing uniform should have such an experience with the ex-Commander-in-Chief of the British army and the uncle of the Queen?
It seems that what was worrying the dear old gentleman—he was about eighty at the time—was that my tunic buttons had no mark upon them, a thing which he had never seen in Her Majesty’s Army. Even a crown or a star would do, but no mark at all completely upset him, for he was a great stickler for correct military clothing. So, of course, was King Edward. A friend of mine at a ball in India (royalty being present) was swooped down upon by a very agitated aide-de-camp who began: “His Royal Highness desires me to say ...” and went on to point out some defect in his dress kit. My friend answered: “I will mention the matter to my tailor,” which was, I think, an admirable way of quietly putting the matter into its true perspective.
On this occasion we officers all filed up to be presented and the old Duke made amends by blurting out some very kindly things, for it seems that he greatly approved of my wooden soldier attitude, in spite of my reprehensible buttons. He had a day of agitations, for on the top of the buttons one of the curtains of the hotel took fire during our luncheon at Claridge’s, and there was great excitement for a few moments. He made, I remember, an extremely indiscreet speech in which he said: “They turned me off because they said I was too old, but old as I am I wouldn’t have been such a fool as to——” and then he strung off a number of things which Lord Wolseley, his successor, was supposed to have done. The press was merciful and did not report.
We sailed on February 28, 1900, from Tilbury, in the chartered transport Oriental, carrying with us a mixed lot of drafts, and picking up the Royal Scots Militia at Queenstown, where a noisy Irishwoman threw a white towel on board, crying, “You may be afther finding it useful.” The Scots were a rather rough crowd with a number of territorial magnates, Lord Henry Scott, Lord Tewkesbury, Lord Newport, Lord Brackley and others among their officers. Colonel Garstin of the Middlesex was in general command of the whole of us. The monotony of the three weeks’ voyage was broken only by a cricket match at the Cape de Verdes, by a lecture on the war which I delivered on deck under a tropical moon to all hands, and to an enteric inoculation, which was voluntary but should have been compulsory, for even as it was it saved many lives, and I am not sure that my own was not among them. The Great War has shown for ever how effective this treatment is. We lost more from enteric than from the bullet in South Africa, and it is sad to think that nearly all could have been saved had Almroth Wright’s discovery been properly appreciated. His brother was on board, I remember—an officer of Sappers—and took the virus particularly badly, though all of us were quite bad enough, for the right dose had not yet been accurately determined.
On the evening of March 21 we reached Capetown and found the bay full of shipping. There were fifty large steamers at anchor—mostly empty. Some of us had a run ashore, but we had some trouble getting on board again, for there was a big swell and the little tug dare not come quite alongside. We had to jump therefore from the paddle-box as the roll favoured us, landing on a hanging ladder, where a quartermaster seized us. To some people such a feat is easy, while others evidently regarded it with horror, and I wondered that we escaped from having some tragedy. The only real mishap was a strange one. A row of soldier faces was looking down on us over the bulwarks, when I saw the grin upon one of them change to a look of horrible agony and he gave a wild scream. He still remained standing, but several men ran towards him, and then he disappeared. Only afterwards did I learn that a huge iron bar had in some way fallen upon his foot, pinning him to the place. He fainted as they disengaged him, and was carried below with his bones crushed.