Sir John French: An Authentic Biography — Reading Notes

Warde was one of three out of a field of four hundred to live through a Warde Union run which was responsible for the death of six hunters before the day was over.

Young French also became a very good whip. Along with Colonel H.M.A. Warde--now the Chief Constable of Kent--he had a thrilling adventure in coach driving. When the regiment first started a coach it was necessary to bring it from Dublin to the Curragh. The two subalterns, neither of whom had ever driven four horses before, commandeered four chargers belonging to brother officers. One of the animals was a notorious kicker. But they took them up to Dublin and drove the coach twenty-eight miles down to the Curragh next day, arriving there alive and with no broken harness!

At that time French differed from his fellow officers probably rather in degree than in temperament. Although a very keen sportsman he did not put sport first. Colonel C.E. Warde, one of his closest friends, gives the following description of the man. "Although he never attempted to go to the Staff College he was continually studying military works, and often, when his brother subalterns were at polo or other afternoon amusements, he would remain in his room reading Von Schmidt, Jomini, or other books on strategy. I recollect once travelling by rail with him in our subaltern days, when after observing the country for some time, he broke out: 'There is where I should put my artillery.' 'There is where I should put my cavalry' and so on to the journey's end."

In spite of these evidences of a soldier's eye for country, there is nothing to show that French had developed any abnormal devotion for his work. He was interested but not absorbed. In 1880 a captaincy and his marriage probably did something to make him take his career more seriously. His wife, Lady French, was a daughter of Mr. R.W. Selby-Lowndes, of Bletchley, Bucks. They have two sons and a daughter.

A few months after his marriage he accepted an adjutancy in the Northumberland Yeomanry. For four uneventful years he was stationed at Newcastle, where the work was monotonous and the opportunities almost _nil_.

[Page Heading: THE WAITING GAME]

Naturally the young man fretted very much at being left behind with the Yeomanry when his regiment was ordered to embark for Egypt in 1882. And he never rested until he was allowed to follow it out in 1884. It was in many ways a new 19th which the young officer re-joined in Egypt. The regiment hurried out in 1882 had at last come under a commander of real genius in Colonel Percy Barrow, C.B., and in that commander French was to find his first real military inspiration. It is difficult to judge what his future might have been but for this one man and the Nile Expedition, which proved the turning point in French's career as it did in that of his regiment.

Then, as ever, French was a man who had to wait for his opportunities. He was thirty-two years of age before he saw this, his first piece of active service. Where Kitchener found, or made, opportunities for military experience, French was content to wait the turn of events. So it has been all through his life. He has never forestalled Destiny; he has simply accepted its call. But when an opportunity presented itself he always seized it, and the Nile Expedition was no exception to the rule. Major French, without Staff College training, without the usual diplomas, was to prove himself once and for all a master tactician.

WITH THE NILE EXPEDITION

A Forlorn Hope--Scouting in the Desert--The Battle of Abu Klea--Metammeh--The Death of Gordon--A Dangerous Retreat--"Major French and His Thirteen Troopers."

Sir John French's first experience of actual warfare was a bitter one. If ever the British Government bungled one of their military enterprises more thoroughly than another, it was the Nile Expedition of 1884-5. What began as a forlorn hope ended in complete failure, and in three short months French experienced the miseries of retreat, of failure, and of work under an invertebrate War Office.