The decorations were most tasteful, especially down Dalhousie Square South and Old Court House Street, where the larger shops were brilliantly lighted behind the groups of well-dressed people who thronged the verandahs and balconies. Partly because the Oriental is by nature averse to violent demonstration, and partly because there does not exist in India that class which ‘mafficks’ in London streets, there was never any real roar of sustained cheering, but there could be no mistaking the reality and fervour of the emotion that shook the crowd as the returning warriors marched along. Besides, no man of Lumsden’s Horse could have regretted the absence of that which made more touching felicitations possible. The repression of the masculine desire to express feelings by making a noise afforded the feminine element an opportunity of extending a pretty and graceful welcome by waving handkerchiefs and little flags, and uttering with each flutter some tiny cry of admiration and delight, which reached distinctly the ears of those for whom it was meant. The second part of the route was lined by the troops in garrison, including the battery from Barrackpur. Along the Maidan roads down to the camp the crowds were the least dense, but represented the most wealthy sections of the community. In dealing with them there was not the same necessity for police supervision, and if people broke through the line of soldiers, rushing forward to welcome their friends in the ranks, and escorted them to the camp, why, no harm was done. Indeed, unrehearsed incidents of this kind added the final touch to the heartiness and friendliness of India’s greeting to those who had fought for our Empire in a far country. When the long procession drew near Government House in the gathering darkness, H.E. the Viceroy and Lady Curzon, with their children and a large number of the Viceregal Staff, walked to the south-east gate, and, standing on the roadway, waved a welcome to the corps as it marched past. The roads on each side, and hence through the Maidan skirting Eden Gardens, were lined by companies of the Royal Irish Rifles. Of course, the appearance and bearing of the Volunteers whom all had assembled to honour were keenly watched. The men had grown leaner and browner than when they sailed away, and their marching was in strong contrast to the stiff upright gait of the Port Defence Volunteers behind them. It happens that in the stern, actual business of war men learn to grasp only essentials. These returning soldiers had plumbed the realities of life. Hunger they had known, and thirst, and heat, and cold, and wounds, and the ever-present risk of death. In such conditions the formalities that surround the British Army in peace time drop away. Soldiers learn—and their officers too—that, for instance, it matters not how one marches so long as one does march. Thus it is that Lumsden’s Horse came through the streets of Calcutta with bodies swinging carelessly forward, with eyes eager and roving instead of being fixed at ‘attention,’ with ranks loosened instead of being set in compact stiffness. It has sometimes been said that war spoils men for drill. But it is something that the Volunteer ranks in India have been leavened by men who know what campaigning is really like. The feeling of those Calcutta Volunteers who assisted in the procession was thus partly one of pride, for were not Lumsden’s Horse also of themselves, and partly of prospective gratitude, for had not the successes of their comrades in the great war opened the way for their own employment also? No longer can it be said that unless Volunteers attain an irreproachable precision in drill and smartness in bearing they are useless as fighting men.
Large crowds of well-dressed persons, natives, and equipages of all descriptions followed the corps up to the camp, where gunners of the 45th Field Battery lined the way. On arrival there three hearty cheers were given for the men of Lumsden’s Horse, the cheers being repeated over and over till the men were dismissed. In camp the scene was an animated one. Men of the corps, singly and in groups, were centres of attraction to friends and strangers alike. Conversation was free, eager questions being good-humouredly answered, and questions repeated and answered over and over again. The scene was well illuminated. A well-ordered little camp of twenty tents has been pitched on the old cricket ground of the Calcutta Cricket Club, exactly south of the Eden Gardens. The camp has been furnished in ordinary military style and is pitched in rows of three, with one tent for the officers of the corps, a large mess tent, a canteen, and the usual necessaries. Camp furniture only is allowed, consisting of a wooden folding-bed with a straw mattress and pillow, and a few zinc tubs and basins for lavatory purposes. The mess tent consists of four fly tents, open at the sides, with a long table, big enough to accommodate a hundred hungry men, running along its entire length.
After dinner, the men were formed up at 8.45 P.M. and marched into the Town Hall, where they arrived at 9 P.M. After a short stay downstairs they were ordered upstairs, where a most brilliant reception awaited them.
This evening reception at the Town Hall was an entire success. The decorations of the hall were most elaborate and characterised by great taste.
On the landing upstairs, in addition to greenery in profusion, a number of naval 9-pounders and a Hotchkiss machine gun, Nordenfeldts and Maxims were arranged to form a central group, all these being flanked by a number of small ancient ship’s brass cannons and howitzers.
A daïs was erected in the centre of the hall, facing the main entrance, which was occupied by His Excellency the Viceroy, Lady Curzon, His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor, the Commander-in-Chief, General Leach, Sir E. Buck, Bishop Welldon, Sir F. Maclean, Lady Jenkins, and others, while the space in front was roped off, and here stood in lines the members of Lumsden’s Horse, whose Colonel, as the Viceroy’s party passed through, presented to His Excellency every officer of the corps in turn. No time was lost, after the arrival of Lord and Lady Curzon, in proceeding with the object of the gathering.
His Excellency the Viceroy said:
Colonel Lumsden, Officers and Men of Lumsden’s Horse,—It is not yet a year since I was bidding you farewell at Kidderpur Docks. You had appointed me the Honorary Colonel of a corps of Volunteers that had never seen warfare, but that was starting out at the call of duty, and in many cases at great personal sacrifice, to fight for the Queen and the Empire. Now you have come back, the war-stained and laurel-crowned veterans of a long and arduous campaign; and we are all here this evening to welcome you home and to do you honour. I, your Honorary Colonel, am as proud of you as if I had been through the campaign at your side, which being a man of peace I am very glad to think that I was not called upon to do; and all of us here, the citizens of Calcutta who subscribed to your outgoing, and have kept a watch upon you ever since, feel a sort of parental glow at receiving back again our one corps of Indian Volunteers to South Africa, who have shown that the Englishman in India is not one whit behind his countrymen at home or his cousin in the Colonies in daring and risking and suffering for the flag that waves above us all.
For we know well through what hardships and experiences you have passed since you steamed away down the Hugli in February last. The one characteristic that has struck me most in this South African campaign has been the physical strain and suffering which it has imposed. We have robbed travel and sport and adventure nowadays of most of their roughness, but war, even when your enemy is out of sight, and you scarcely ever set eyes upon him, though it has lost in romance, has not lost, nay—I think it has gained—in peril and privation. We have followed you in your breathless marches across the dismal veldt, in your assaults upon those deadly kopjes, in your days of endurance and fighting, in your grim nights under the cold stars. We have commiserated you when some of your number were taken prisoners, but we were consoled when we heard that you were more frequently the pursuers than the pursued, that you captured far more of the enemy than the enemy did of you. We felt a thrill of pleasure when you were praised by the Generals and, above all, by the brave old Field-Marshal who knew what our men from India could do; and when you were publicly thanked in despatches we all of us felt as if our own names had appeared in the ‘Birthday Gazette.’ One thousand five hundred miles of marching, twenty-nine actions of one kind or another—and all this in the space of ten months. This is not a bad record for our pioneer body of Indian Volunteers.
I was delighted, Colonel Lumsden, that in one respect you most strictly obeyed the final instructions which as your Commanding Officer, in mufti, I ventured to address to you in February of last year. I urged you and your men to be there or thereabouts when the British forces entered Pretoria. Knowing your keen sense of discipline, it was with no surprise that I learned that on June 5 Lumsden’s Horse marched into that place in the van of Lord Roberts’s occupying force. I only regret that I did not issue a few more timely injunctions to you, such, for instance, as the capture of General De Wet, since I have little doubt that you would have carried them out to the letter.