Recessional in a country churchyard

Every now and then one comes across a reminder of the relentless changes that Britain has undergone since the beginning of the twentieth century: a time when there was no welfare state to speak of; faith in God and the Christian Church was general; the British Empire spanned the globe and the class system reigned supreme; warfare was a matter for professionals and had not yet been transformed into mechanised mass slaughter. I found one such mute witness in the churchyard of the Oxfordshire village we moved to a couple of years ago.  A finely carved memorial cross stands close by the door of St Giles’ church, Bletchingdon, a few miles from Oxford. The dedication is succinct:

“To the glory of God, and in memory of Arthur Annesley, Captain X Royal Hussars, elder son of Arthur, 11 th Viscount Valentia, killed in action at Zillebeke, near Ypres Belgium, November 16 th 1914, aged 34, this cross is dedicated by his parents. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

The Latin tag, from the Roman poet Horace, translates as: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” That had been a conventional sentiment for centuries, though of course it concealed immense pain. Our understanding was transformed by Wilfred Owen’s bitter poem later in the war in which he called it “the old lie”. But in 1914 it was still, just about, a comfort to a grieving family.

The Annesleys were viscounts in the Irish but not the British peerage, having originally begun their rise from obscurity under Queen Elizabeth. They were one of the hard-handed English and Scottish families who had done very well – socially and financially – from helping to subjugate Ireland in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. By 1914, the family had lived at Bletchingdon Park for several generations, in the 1780’s building the grand house that still stands there. They were good landlords by the standards of the time and were much involved in public life.  Arthur’s father, the 11th Viscount,  was also the Member for Oxford, and generally reckoned an excellent, public-spirited MP.

His heir, the Hon Arthur Annesley, born 24 th August 1880, had a younger brother and four sisters. He would have learned to ride here in Bletchingdon, before going to Eton, and then serving in the Oxfordshire militia for two years from 1898. Having thus gained useful military experience, he was commissioned into the Tenth (Prince of Wales’ Own) Royal Hussars in 1900. His father and grandfather had also served in the regiment, though neither of them remained long. His father did, however, play in the first recorded polo match in Britain, when the Tenth Hussars beat the 9 th Lancers on Hounslow Heath in 1869.

The Tenth Royal Hussars was a fashionable cavalry regiment, originally raised in 1715. It fought in many of the great battles of the 18 th and 19 th centuries, including Culloden, Minden, the Peninsula (where it particularly distinguished itself), Waterloo and the Crimea. Many of the regiment’s officers were aristocrats. It was reputed to be the most expensive regiment in the army after the Life Guards, and officers needed a substantial private income. Its nickname in the army was “the shiny Tenth”. However,  its record shows that it was a highly professional regiment as well as a smart one.

Arthur saw immediate action in the Boer War, and was awarded several campaign medals. He was promoted to Lieutenant after only a few months in the army, suggesting he possessed both efficiency and dash. Thereafter he settled to the life of a professional soldier during the Edwardian heyday of the British Empire. The Hussars were stationed in India from 1902 to 1912, and Arthur Annesley served for a time on the Northwest Frontier. He was promoted to Captain and command of a squadron in 1907.  A posting to India was no holiday: about a tenth of the Hussars died during those years, either in action or of disease.

But Captain Annesley particularly excelled as a polo player. To quote from The Roll of Honour by the Marquis of Ruvigny:

“Captain Annesley, like his father, was a distinguished polo player. In 1907 he played at No. 1 for the 10th Hussars, when they won both the Inter-Regimental and the Subaltern Tournament of India, and, excepting in 1909, he was always at No. 1 in the team, which, between 1907-12, ran up such a remarkable series of successes in the Indian Inter-Regimental tournaments. He also assisted the 10th Hussars to win the Indian Championship at Calcutta.”

In 1912, when the Tenth Hussars were posted once more to South Africa, Captain Annesley was detached to serve as ADC to Major General Julian Byng, the British commander in chief in Egypt. This might have presaged a rise within the command structure of the army – his new boss was an influential senior cavalryman, also a Tenth Hussar and a keen polo player. However, at the outbreak of war in August 1914, Byng was recalled to England to take command of the Cavalry Division, and, rather than follow him,  Arthur Annesley chose to rejoin his regiment, which had returned from South Africa.

Captain Annesley, September 1914

Being in transit from South Africa, the Tenth Hussars did not take part in the earliest battles of World War I, such as Mons and Le Cateau. They reached Belgium on 6 th October 1914 and were soon in action against the Germans who were pushing to take Ypres. The veteran British and Indian cavalry regiments sent to war in 1914 outperformed the less experienced German cavalry, but were increasingly used as a mobile infantry reserve.

By early November, having suffered significant losses in officers, men and horses, the Hussars were resolutely holding the line at Zillebeke near Ypres. Captain the Hon.  Arthur Annesley was shot dead by a German sniper on 16 th November, an otherwise uneventful day.

Such are the fortunes of war: though it was statistically unlikely that Arthur would have survived unscathed the next four years, during which his regiment was constantly engaged and suffered grievous casualties. Few of the men of October 1914 were still there in November 1918.

Arthur Annesley had been the heir to the Valentia viscountcy, which passed on their father’s death in 1923 to his younger brother Caryl Arthur James Annesley.  When Caryl died, unmarried and without issue in 1948, the peerage went to a distant relative and the Bletchingdon Park estate was sold.

Arthur’s death was just one in a million suffered by British Empire forces in WW1, each a tragedy to a family. But at this early stage of the war, the nation – and the army – was just beginning to adjust to the scale of death and injury. The old regular army, the army celebrated so acutely by Rudyard Kipling, had ceased to exist by the end of the year.  The war would be prosecuted by citizen armies of volunteers and eventually by conscripts.

As so often, Kipling sensed the profound changes before most. To quote from his great Recessional of 1897:

God of our fathers, known of old,

  Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

  Dominion over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;

  The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

  An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;

  On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

  Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

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