A few days later a telegram came from the Provost Marshal ordering me to send the condemned man under strong escort, with two senior non-commissioned officers, to the prisoners' compound some distance away. I feared that the unfortunate lad would be shot at dawn, and as I knew he had been working exceedingly hard, day and night, for 48 hours before he was found asleep at his post, and was of good character and very young, I determined to try to save him. I therefore sent a private wire to General Allenby asking him on these grounds to reprieve him.
My friend the Brigadier saw the wire before it was despatched and stopped it. However, one of my men in the Signal Office told me of this, so I immediately wrote a confidential letter to General Allenby, gave it to a motor-cyclist, and sent him off post haste to G.H.Q., some thirty miles away, telling him to ride for all he was worth, as a man's life hung on his speed.
I am glad to say that not only did General Allenby reprieve the man and reduce the sentence to a certain number of years' imprisonment, but he suspended even that punishment, provided the man proved himself worthy of forgiveness by doing his duty faithfully in the battalion.
The young soldier returned to us overjoyed and full of gratitude for his release. He proved himself worthy in every respect, and was never afterwards called upon to do a day's imprisonment.
Not satisfied with having held up the wire, the Brigadier motored some miles away to report the matter to the Divisional General, Sir John Shea.
I was duly haled before the General, not knowing for what reason, until he said, "You know you will get yourself into trouble if you go sending telegrams direct to the Commander-in-Chief." It then dawned on me for the first time why I had been sent for.
I explained all the circumstances to the General, and said that, in such an emergency, I felt justified in what I had done. Besides, I said, I had not addressed the Commander-in-Chief as such, but as General Allenby, an officer whom I had known for many years. I also confessed that, when I found that the wire had been blocked, I had immediately written a letter of appeal to General Allenby, and had sent it off by a special cyclist despatch rider.
The General pretended to be so horrified at this that he needed a cocktail to revive him—in which I may add he asked me to join him. I do not know what he thought of the Brigadier's action, but I can leave the reader to imagine what I thought of it!
A few days later, when I was breakfasting with General Shea, I was much amused when he told me that when he was at home his children insisted on his reading a lion story to them every evening out of "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo"!