Gatacre's efforts at hospitality once gave rise to much amusement on the one part and dismay on the other. He usually kept but a small staff of servants, and dined at the club of Western India; but when there was some special gaiety going on, he would fill his house with guests from the outlying stations, and instruct his bearer to engage a good cook and other servants for the necessary period. At the Poona Race Week one year Gatacre's friends were complimenting him on the excellence of his arrangements, and stories were related as to the enormities of which native cooks are sometimes guilty in the preparation of the Sahib's food, and of their troublesome ways in general. One lady was particularly eloquent on the annoyance of having had to part with her khansama only a few days before in order that he might go and nurse his wife, who was dying. Some one suggested a tour of inspection round Gatacre's house, which he had held up as a model establishment. When the party reached the cook-house, I leave you to imagine the lady's surprise and amusement at finding her own truant cook installed for the nonce in her host's kitchen!
His easy camaraderie of manner was so remarkable that a friend once asked Gatacre whether he had ever found that people took advantage of it, and treated him with undue familiarity, to which he replied that he had never known them try. He defended himself with a dry and subtle humour. Assuming an impenetrable blandness of manner, he would on occasion utter sarcasms so veiled that some men could scarcely tell whether he was in earnest or not. He was never angry, but he had a command of quiet language that made his remarks as stinging as they were humorous. The man on the pillory would feel the sting, and the onlooker would see the humour.
When another friend asked him why he was taking so much trouble over a matter that appeared outside the sphere of his interests, and scarcely worthy of the attention that he was lavishing on it, his reply seemed weighted with reproof as he said: "I don't think I ever knew what the meaning of the word trouble was."
Goes on tour
In the province of Bombay the inspections take place in the cold weather between November and March; a spell of hot weather then precedes the break of the monsoon early in June. The rains last till September, and are followed by another spell of hot weather, till the air cools down again to quite a pleasant temperature in November. The first inspection tour arranged for the end of 1891 included a visit to the regiments quartered at Kamptee in the Central Provinces. Kamptee was the Headquarters of the Nagpur District, to the command of which Brigadier-General John Gatacre, C.B., had been recently gazetted. To those who have heard of "inspection fever" (and even the best officers are not always immune), it will be obvious that the station must have been in rather a commotion at the idea of a visit from the Commander-in-chief only four days after the arrival of a new General Officer Commanding. But the new General was well known and trusted in Kamptee, for he had already been in the station for three years while in command of his regiment.
A railway accident
Between 6 and 7 a.m. on November 5 the General was on the platform of Nagpur Station awaiting the arrival of the train, when a telegraphic message came in, saying that there had been a serious railway accident to the Chief's train about nine miles away. A message was sent back for medical assistance, and as soon as possible a break-down gang was got together, but it was nearly 11 o'clock before the relief train reached the spot. General John tells us that the sight that greeted him was more shocking than any battlefield. Eight men of the North Lancashire Regiment were killed outright, twenty-four were severely injured; a European guard, both drivers and both firemen were killed; five native passengers were also killed and eight wounded. Beyond this total of eighteen deaths, four soldiers died within the next few days in hospital. The framework of the carriages, the iron rails, and the men's rifles—everything was amazingly crumpled up and distorted.
The permanent way at this spot runs along a thirty-foot embankment. The whole train was derailed, both engines with their tenders, a horse-box, and five or six coaches had rolled to the bottom of the slope; the next carriage, in which Sir George Greaves had been travelling, was suspended half-way down the bank at an angle of 45°, the body having been completely wrenched away from the platform; and the last coach, which had been occupied by the staff officers—Gatacre, Hogg, and Leach—was hanging in the most precarious position over the edge.
It turned out that the train was unusually long and heavy that day, as it was bringing some fifty men of the North Lancashire Regiment back from Chi-Kulda, a civil hill-station in the Berars, where a few sickly men had been sent as an experiment. When the railway officials at Budnari Junction found that the three coaches set aside for the use of the Headquarter Staff had also to be attached, they feared that the engine would not be powerful enough to pull the train up a certain incline, and gave directions that a spare engine (which was meant only for local shunting work) should be put on in front. This supplementary engine was the cause of the misfortune, for the tyres of its wheels, having been mended, gave way under the unusual strain of a long journey. The front engine left the metals, and, rolling over, pulled the whole train along with it.
The great majority of the fatal cases were of course in the first two coaches, in which the soldiers were unfortunately travelling. Some (of the poor fellows suffered fearfully from scalding, over and above terrible fractures and injuries; some were so inextricably wedged in amongst the wreckage that it was not till the relief train came up with jacks and crowbars that anything could be done to relieve their excruciating sufferings. None of the staff officers were hurt, but Colonel Hogg had a narrow escape, for the end compartment, in which he had been shaving a few minutes earlier, was completely staved in by impact with the Chief's coach in front.