[294] Now Major-General Sir Charles Parsons, K.C.B.
[295] Extract from a private letter to Sir Evelyn Wood from Brigadier-General Rimington, one of the most successful Light Cavalry Leaders, who commanded a mounted column in the Boer War, dated Heilbron, O.R.C., 5.8.01: “Nearly all our work is done at night, and we have not yet made a night march without a fairly good result.”
[296] This has since been changed.
[297] He died when commanding a Division in India.
[298] The contractor became a Bankrupt.
[299] Lieutenant-General Sir James Yorke Scarlett told me in 1868, that to a committee in the early 60’s on which he served, it was clearly shown that on one Station all non-commissioned officers and men on duty received various sums from the forage contractors, down to the orderly officer’s batman, who received 1s. 6d. per diem.
[300] Now Lieutenant-General C. J. Burnett, C.B.
[301] The War Office system of centralisation was shown markedly by a Paymaster’s conduct in this case. I received several telegrams suggesting I should give way to the contractors’ demands, rather than risk a failure of supply; and when I declined, I was asked if I was prepared to accept the full responsibility of feeding the Troops. I answered in the affirmative. On the 30th May, sending for a Paymaster, I ordered him to give me a cheque for £1700. He absolutely refused to do so, without War Office authority. However, when I told him to go away under arrest for disobedience, and to send me the next senior Paymaster, he wrote the cheque.
[302] Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Hildyard, K.C.B., Commander-in-Chief in South Africa.
[303] Now Major-General Sir Edward Hutton, K.C.B.