Campaign to restore Victorian soldier's reputation

 
Another item from the BBC News today:

One of the most celebrated soldiers of the Victorian era is to be commemorated in his Highlands home town of Dingwall more than 100 years after he died.

Maj Gen Sir Hector MacDonald was a household name.

But campaigners say a scandal surrounding his death led to his true place in history being ignored.

Nicknamed Fighting Mac, he was the son of a Ross-shire crofter but rose from the ranks as a teenage soldier to become a senior officer.

He was regarded by his peers to be a brilliant military strategist.

Some of his techniques are still taught at the British Army's Sandhurst military academy today.

He led his men from the front and after conspicuous bravery in the Afghan wars and in north Africa he became an aide to Queen Victoria.

However, rumours about sexual activity with young boys led to threats of a court martial and he shot himself in a Paris hotel in 1903.

Now the Clan Donald Society wants to rehabilitate his reputation and will hold a ceremony this weekend to mark almost 150 years since his birth at a tower built in Dingwall in honour of Fighting Mac.

Who's Who in Scottish Military history - Major General Sir Hector MacDonald

Today’s Who’s Who is about someone you have probably heard of - Major General Sir Hector MacDonald aka Fighting Mac. At the height of his fame he was lauded throughout the Empire as one of its most famous sons for his actions across two continents. There are too many actions to recount on a blog post so I’ll just concentrate on the end of his life.

He was the crofter’s son from Easter Ross who’d fought across Afghanistan and Africa and risen from private to general. But the fame which MacDonald had earned though his bravery and hard work also had made him powerful enemies because he was ‘stealing’ their plaudits.

MacDonald had always been an outsider in the army. He was the educated man amongst the drunken ‘squaddies’; the ex-ranker in the officers mess; and the couthy Scottish general amongst the Eton-educated staff officers. There is also speculation that he was a homosexual which of course was still a crime in the nineteenth century. No wonder McDonald felt so comfortable as an officer in the Egyptian Army where his many years in the Sudanese desert would have kept him away from the social straightjacket of the Victorian British Army.

In 1903 things came to a head. Kitchener wanted to sideline MacDonald because he was jealous of MacDonald’s reputation as the man who saved the day (and Kitchener’s back) at the Battle of Omdurman. Instead of a command on the North West Frontier amongst the type of men he knew, he was packed off to Ceylon. Perhaps it was seen as a cushy posting for a general who was exhausted and needed a good rest but MacDonald was a fish out of water. All he knew was soldiering and fighting. Diplomacy and interaction with an insular colonial community led to tensions.

Eventually matters came to a head and unsubstantiated allegations of inappropriate behaviour by MacDonald escalated into a threat of a court martial in India.

MacDonald rushed to London to see if his old friends could help him but he was cold shouldered and he quickly left to return to India. En-route he stopped off in Paris and rather improbably met up with Aliester Crowley for dinner. That fact is recorded in Crowley’s diary of the time. A fictionalised account of that meeting was turned into a novel by Jake Arnott called “The Devil’s Paintbrush”. In it Crowley is portrayed as a selfish buffoon but MacDonald comes across very sympathetically.

If it was pure fiction there may have been a happy ending with MacDonald running away to a South Sea island. But it was based on fact and so there is the unhappy ending of MacDonald killing himself in his Paris hotel room after the scandal is broken by an American newspaper.

It was a tragic end to a remarkable life but it never stopped him being remembered as a great man in his native land. His magnificent gravestone is in Edinburgh (tens of thousands of people passed his grave in the week after he was buried), and in Dingwall they built a tower. Not a monument to a man who shot himself rather than bring shame on his family; but a suitably grand tribute to one of our greatest soldiers.

The SMRG Advent Calendar - Day 16

Today's "treat" is a poem by the worst poet of all time, William Topaz McGonagall.

The Battle of Omdurman

Ye Sons of Great Britain! come join with me
And King in praise of the gallant British Armie,
That behaved right manfully in the Soudan,
At the great battle of Omdurman.

'Twas in the year of 1898, and on the 2nd of September,
Which the Khalifa and his surviving followers will long remember,
Because Sir Herbert Kitchener has annihilated them outright,
By the British troops and Soudanese in the Omdurman fight.

The Sirdar and his Army left the camp in grand array,
And marched on to Omdurman without delay,
Just as the brigades had reached the crest adjoining the Nile,
And became engaged with the enemy in military style.

The Dervishes had re-formed under cover of a rocky eminence,
Which to them, no doubt, was a strong defence,
And they were massed together in battle array
Around the black standard of the Khalifa, which made a grand display.

But General Maxwell's Soudanese brigade seized the eminence in a short time,
And General Macdonald's brigade then joined the firing line;
And in ten minutes, long before the attack could be driven home,
The flower of the Khalifa's army was almost overthrown.

Still manfully the dusky warriors strove to make headway,
But the Soudanese troops and British swept them back without dismay,
And their main body were mown down by their deadly fire-
But still the heroic Dervishes refused to retire.

And defiantly they planted their standards and died by them,
To their honour be it said, just like brave men;
But at last they retired, with their hearts full of woe,
Leaving the field white with corpses, like a meadow dotted with snow.

The chief heroes in the fight were the 21st Lancers;
They made a brilliant charge on the enemy with ringing cheers,
And through the dusky warriors bodies their lances they did thrust,
Whereby many of them were made to lick the dust.

Then at a quarter past eleven the Sirdar sounded the advance,
And the remnant of the Dervishes fled, which was their only chance,
While the cavalry cut off their retreat while they ran;
Then the Sirdar, with the black standard of the Khalifa, headed for Omdurman.

And when the Khalifa saw his noble army cut down,
With rage and grief he did fret and frown;
Then he spurred his noble steed, and swiftly it ran,
While inwardly to himself he cried, "Catch me if you can!"

And Mahdism now has received a crushing blow,
For the Khalifa and his followers have met with a complete overthrow;
And General Gordon has been avenged, the good Christian,
By the defeat of the Khalifa at the battle of Omdurman.

Now since the Khalifa has been defeated and his rule at an end,
Let us thank God that fortunately did send
The brave Sir Herbert Kitchener to conquer that bad man,
The inhuman Khalifa, and his followers at the battle of Omdurman.

Success to Sir Herbert Kitchener! he is a great commander,
And as skilful in military tactics as the great Alexander,
Because he devised a very wise plan,
And by it has captured the town of Omdurman.

I wish success to the British and Soudanese Army,
May God protect them by land and by sea,
May he enable them always to conquer the foe,
And to establish what's right wherever they go.