The Thirteenth Hussars in the Great War

by H. Mortimer Durand

In the beginning of 1910 the Thirteenth Hussars had been more than five years in India, and again in the south, where their first Indian service had passed. The military station of Secunderabad, in the dominions of His Highness the Nizam, the greatest of the Mahomedan Chiefs of India, had long been one of the strategical points at which a considerable force of all arms was kept, and a British Cavalry regiment almost always formed part of the garrison. It is, or was then, as Indian stations go, one of the pleasantest and most sociable, with some sport to be got in the neighbourhood; and, owing to the size of the garrison, there was plenty of amusement, as well as work, in the Cantonment itself. The Nizam and those about him were always friendly and hospitable.

The Thirteenth were not to be in Secunderabad much longer, but in May, while they were still there, occurred the lamented death of King Edward VII., and the accession of King George. On the 9th May the officers of the Regiment, with a party of non-commissioned officers and men, attended at the British Residency at Hyderabad, the capital of the Nizam’s dominions, and there heard read the proclamation announcing the beginning of a new reign. It was to prove one of the most memorable in the history of India.

THE DRUM HORSE—AT THE DURBAR

During the remainder of the hot season, which in the East is necessarily the slack season so far as military training is concerned, the regimental records contain notice of little beyond routine occurrences and sport of various kinds, the football and polo and tent-pegging with which men and officers while away the heat and tedium of an Indian summer. Then, as the heat slackened and another working season began, the Regiment received orders to move from the south of India to the north, to a station nearly a thousand miles away, among a totally different population and surroundings. The Thirteenth left Secunderabad in the middle of October, carrying with them the hearty good wishes of the garrison, and of the General Commanding the Cavalry Brigade, who warmly praised their work and discipline, and expressed his confidence that they would maintain in the north of India the good name they had borne in the south.

Arriving in the northern plains by train, they marched to their new station, meeting on the line of march the Seventeenth Lancers, with whom they had charged at Balaclava more than fifty years earlier. The two Regiments had not met since. The Thirteenth entertained the Lancers to a camp-fire concert, and then they went their ways again.

Meerut, where the Thirteenth were now to be quartered, was a well-known and favourite station. It was memorable as the place at which occurred the first serious outbreak of the Mutiny of 1857, since which time it had, from its central position and nearness to the ancient capital of Delhi, continued to be a large military station. In 1910 the memories of the Mutiny had grown dim, but Meerut was still an important place from a military point of view. It lay in the centre of “Hindustan,” the great northern block of territory which has been the seat of countless Empires, Hindu and Mahomedan—the real India upon which the vast Indian Peninsula has in a measure depended for thousands of years. In its broad plains and teeming cities was always concentrated the military power of succeeding conquerors, and the British, when they took the place of the Moghuls, had, like their predecessors, massed their strength on these northern plains.

Meerut, it may be noticed, was also a centre of sport, the site of an annual polo tournament, and within reach of good shooting and “pig-sticking.” The Thirteenth arrived just in time to join in the polo tournament, and to be soundly beaten by their Balaclava comrades of the Seventeenth Lancers. They were also beaten soon afterwards at another tournament at Lucknow, this time by the Rifle Brigade; but every one cannot win, and the Thirteenth were at all events to the fore in every kind of sport.

Meanwhile the usual work of military training began again—drill and swimming camps, and marches, and musketry, and inspections, and much more—the steady hard work of which civilians as a rule have no knowledge, but very real and useful work for all that, as the old Army was to show in the dark days which were coming.

Then followed the summer of 1911, and in the autumn the 13th received news of the death of their Colonel-in-Chief, General Sir Baker Russell. He was succeeded by General Sir Robert Baden-Powell.