• • • • •
When in hospital Hudson was told that his command would automatically lapse three months after he was wounded. He was keen to get back to his battalion before the three months were up and this entailed passing a Medical Board. Unfortunately all efforts to graft skin onto a wound in his foot had failed. He could walk but with some discomfort. He thought it unlikely that the Medical Board would pass him fit for active service but nevertheless he tried. To his surprise he passed, later discovering that the Chairman of the Board had persuaded his colleague to pass him on the argument that having got a VC, two DSOs and an MC, he was clearly determined to get himself killed and they may as well let him get on with it.
When he reached Calais, to his astonishment he was told that he had been appointed to command the second battalion of his regiment, which was serving in France, and that he was to report direct to the battalion which was one of the only two regular battalions in the regiment. This was a great shock, not only because he was very young – just 26 – but because regular battalions were normally commanded by officers with far more than his very limited military experience of only three and a half years.
On his arrival on 20 September 1918 he found that the battalion had just withdrawn from one of their heaviest actions in the war in which they had lost in killed, wounded and missing nearly 400 officers and men. Furthermore, the commanding officer, a very gallant soldier, had just been ordered to report to the Corps School as commandant. The implication that he had failed in some way was unavoidable and Hudson’s arrival was the final straw in his discomfiture. To add to Hudson’s difficulties, the divisional general made it clear that he had great doubts as to his suitability for command and that he had asked for another officer who, unfortunately, was not available. Hudson’s interviews with his new brigade and divisional commanders were, as he put it in his journal, ‘very chilling experiences’.
The commanding officer who had been superseded was, nevertheless, extremely helpful. A fortnight after Hudson’s arrival the battalion was called on to go into action. He knew none of the remaining officers and during that fortnight many new officers and men had arrived. It must have been a difficult time for all concerned. They set out for the front on 4 October on a long march which crossed the Hindenburg Line. Hudson was astonished that the Germans had not defended these formidable obstacles and concluded that German morale must be at a very low ebb. He determined to push through any gap he found, secure in the knowledge that the enemy would be most unlikely to be able to mount a counter-attack.
The last month or so of the war was far from a quiet experience for the 2nd Sherwood Foresters. The battalion mounted a series of attacks and a number of officers and men were killed. Hudson was hit and knocked over by a fragment of shell which did not, however, penetrate his Sam Browne belt. Later, he was setting his map with a compass on the edge of a shell hole when a shell hit the lip and blew the map and compass high into the air without doing him any damage. He certainly had a charmed life.
At one stage he was with the leading company as usual when he saw through his field glass 1,000yd away two six-gun German batteries behind hedges. To his astonishment a young, immaculately dressed subaltern in highly-polished field boots appeared beside him. He said that he was from the Scots Greys, he had left his troop a short way behind and had come forward to get in touch with the leading infantry. Hudson told him that he had a chance that few cavalrymen had had in the history of war. Hudson’s company could hold the attention of the German batteries while he took his troop round the flank and attacked the batteries from behind. The subaltern said that he had been told not to get involved in any fighting but to find out what was happening and report when a breakthrough had occurred. Hudson was reluctant to persuade him to disobey orders but, borrowing his orderly’s horse, he rode back with him to his troop in order to lead them forward round the guns. On the way they saw the German guns limber up and disappear. He later discovered that, had the operation taken place as he had planned it, it would have been a disaster, as a concealed sunken road lay on the route which they would not have seen until they were right on it.
In the event, the battalion took its objective and had captured 5 German officers and 450 men, 6 field guns, 12 machine guns and a lot of other booty, but they had lost 9 officers and over 150 men. They were well ahead of the troops on their flanks.
Hudson spent the night in a German dugout, the headquarters of a machine gun battalion. They had captured the commanding officer, who appeared in a sparkling uniform wearing white gloves. He was a thoroughly objectionable Prussian officer who blamed the scum of socialists at home for the disasters they were facing. Hudson’s second visitor that night was:
about as different a personality as human nature was capable of producing on a field of battle. He introduced himself by shouting cheerily down the steps in a broad American accent. All he wanted, he explained, was a light and cover from the rain so as to read his map. He had lost his way, and he had left his battalion ‘some ways back’. I asked him where he was making for and he pulled out three or four pages of closely typewritten orders. He said he had only read as far as a paragraph which told him to march his battalion to a certain map reference. He had not got there yet, but when he had he would read the rest of the order.
Hudson then went to sleep, fortunately wearing his gas mask. When he woke up he found that the second-in-command, the signals officer and a number of signallers, including the signaller sergeant, were practically blind from the effects of mustard gas. He had already lost his adjutant, killed in action, and at his headquarters he only had one very young intelligence officer. There were only two company commanders unwounded.
The advance continued. At one stage they were held up by heavy fire from a brickworks near the village of Vaux Andigny. Having succeeded in driving the Germans out, Hudson established his headquarters in the house owned by the manager of the brickworks. He implored Hudson to send his family, consisting of an elderly granny, his wife, a nurse and a little girl of 12, back to friends in the town of Bohain in Army transport. Hudson did so. Eleven years later there occurred an almost miraculous coincidence. While at the Staff College Hudson went on a battlefield tour with three other students, including the future General Brian Robertson. He suddenly recognised the brickworks and was persuaded to call in on the manager’s house. The door was opened by a man in a dinner jacket who fell on his neck with pleasure and excitement. The little girl of 12 was now in her 20s and about to get married that very day. Her father had written to Hudson via the War Office, but had got the name wrong and Hudson never received the letter. The manager was just about to leave for the wedding, having stayed behind the rest of his party to make some final arrangements. Clearly Hudson and his friends would have to attend.
As they arrived, the bride was anxiously standing at the door waiting for her father. The church was very crowded but, to their embarrassment, they were ushered to the front, clearly very incorrectly dressed in the circumstances. The manager and his friends did not believe that Hudson had not received his letter.
The next major battle undertaken by the battalion was on 23 October. The battalion had been reduced to an officer strength of eight. Hudson was sent four more officers, two of whom announced they were suffering from shellshock and were quickly sent home. The advance was slow, but eventually they succeeded in crossing the Oise Canal. They held the line along the river while other troops continued the advance.
In the village of Ors they found a British soldier who had been concealed in the attic of a cottage since 1914. The cottage had been searched many times, but he had avoided detection by lying at full length between the floor of one room and the ceiling of the one below. His saviour, the lady owner of the cottage, was in a terrible plight as was the British soldier, both emaciated beyond belief. Hudson never found out whether they survived.
Talk of the end of the war had been discouraged since, if they expected the war to end any minute, it would be very difficult to induce soldiers to take necessary or unnecessary risks. The end came as a complete surprise, the message reading: ‘All hostilities will cease as from 11.00 tomorrow, 11 November. ACK.’ (In Army terminology the last word demanded an acknowledgement).
No doubt like many others, Hudson found it impossible to rejoice.
I sat with my head in my hands while the tears welled up in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. So this is how war ends, I thought. Hundreds of my friends and comrades have suffered and died and I just write the letters – ACK.
The battalion had reached the town of Bohain. Many British soldiers, however, were not so restrained and it was not long before the whole town was in a state of hilarious delirium. The next morning, early, the German plenipotentiaries passed through the town in a decrepit Ford of the old high-seated type. In the back seat sat two resplendent German officers with their swords between their knees. Between them, looking rather sheepish and very scruffy in contrast, sat a British officer who had evidently come straight out of the line. The impression was the Germans were the victors and the British the vanquished.
At five minutes to eleven o’clock the Americans fired off all their guns, both artillery and machine guns. The British remained silent. The French were extremely angry at the damage to their countryside the gunfire must have made.
The battalion started a march to Cologne on 14 November. Having crossed the border, in one village a deputation headed by the mayor asked for an interview. The mayor, a very old man, had clearly been pushed into making a request which he expected to be refused. He explained that the following day was the anniversary of a battle fought in the war of 1870 in which a number of villagers had been killed. To mark the anniversary, ever since the battle the survivors put on their 1870 uniforms and marched at the head of a procession to the churchyard where a service was held at the war memorial. They wanted permission to conduct the ceremony as usual.
Hudson told them there would be no objection. The mayor then went on to ask if Hudson would give orders that there should be no interference or demonstration against the march by the British soldiers. Hudson replied he would give no such order since it would be quite unnecessary, for British soldiers would never dream of misbehaving themselves on such an occasion. The Germans remained doubtful. However, next morning the British soldiers stood watching the procession in complete silence. They were obviously touched. Behind the tattered flag came three old soldiers dressed in their 1870 uniforms. They held themselves proudly and behind them marched all the men of the village, wearing their mourning clothes. The women had assembled at the memorial and, throughout the march, the church bell tolled. In the event, as the procession passed, the British soldiers reverently removed their caps.
Shortly after the battalion arrived at its final billets on the outskirts of Cologne, Hudson had a severe attack of flu and was sent to hospital in England. On recovery he was given three months’ leave and told that, since a number of officers senior to him had rejoined his battalion, he would revert to the rank of captain and would be lucky if he became second-in-command of a company. This was not a very attractive proposition and he went to the War Office to ask if he could be sent to Russia.
I knew that there were several British Forces spread around the borders of Bolshevik Russia and I was curious to know what was going on, both in the military and the political sense. I had no idea what the political theories of the Bolsheviks were, but at any rate they certainly seemed worthy of investigation.
Hudson was told that there was no question of him going since, far from sending officers out to Russia, there was at that time a tendency to withdraw them. Hudson heard that ships for Russia normally sailed from Harwich, although he was told that the last convoy for Russia had already sailed. Nevertheless he went to Harwich and managed to persuade an American naval captain whose ship was due to sail to Murmansk in the north of Russia, to take him with him. He heard that Arctic clothing had been issued from the Tower of London. He went there and got himself fitted out with a mass of suitable kit without any questions being asked.
This intervention in Russia in 1918–20 was an extraordinary affair. Servicemen from sixteen countries including Britain, the United States, Japan and France entered Russia from the north, south, east and west initially in order to support those Russians (known as the Whites), who wished to continue the war against Germany, in their struggle against the revolutionary Reds who wanted to make a separate peace and to establish a Communist (Bolshevik) state. After the German surrender (when Hudson arrived) the intervention became a simple matter of support for the Whites against the Reds. It was a total failure on all fronts. The main British effort was in the north of Russia at Murmansk and Archangel. (Miles Hudson, Intervention in Russia 1918– 1920, A Cautionary Tale)
The ship duly sailed for Murmansk, the American naval officers being very friendly to the only two non-Americans on board: a Canadian major and Hudson.
It was exciting easing our way down the Kola River through the ice floes to Murmansk, then only a quay and a number of tin shanties. On arrival I went ashore to call on Command HQ in search of a job. I was passed on to the Chief Intelligence Officer, one Colonel Thornhill, who had been assistant military attaché in tsarist days and was a fluent Russian speaker. He told me he was looking for a British officer to lead a reconnaissance party of Russian partisans to gain contact with the White Finns on the Russo-Finnish border, a cross-country trek of about 100 miles. He refused my immediate acceptance of this mission, telling me I should sleep on it first. He then explained that, though he could more or less guarantee the loyalty of the interpreter he would provide, since he would certainly be shot if not tortured as well if he was caught by the Reds of either country, it was never possible to guarantee the loyalty of the partisans, who would change sides to suit themselves without a qualm.
A rendezvous with the Finn Whites had been arranged but, there again, no one could tell for certain who in fact would turn up on the day appointed and if I were to fall into the hands of the Reds there was little if anything he could do about it if they chose to treat me as a spy. I was to return on the following day and if I still wanted to go, he would introduce me to the leader of the partisans and my interpreter.
On leaving Thornhill I went to see the harbour master to beg the use of a boat, for I had been invited to dinner at HQ ashore and my American captain had intimated he was very hard-pressed for boats.
The harbour master, a naval captain, was in a conference and I was shown into his private office to await his return. I had my back to the door when he burst in and began cursing me with a non-stop flow of lurid language. Who the hell was I? What was I doing in his private office? For all he knew I was a spy hoping to get a look at his secret papers. I seemed to be dealing with a madman and indeed, from what I heard afterwards, I very nearly was, for the Arctic winter had sent many men off their normal balance. I tried to mollify him, but was put under arrest and only after I had insisted on a phone call to Colonel Thornhill did I escape incarceration. My only consolation was that in the end I got my boat.
I told Thornhill the following day that I was still prepared to take a chance on the Finnish venture and transferring myself ashore I spent some days practising skiing whilst plans were discussed; but in the end, and not altogether to my regret, the whole expedition broke down because the partisans cried off.
It was Thornhill who told me that two teams of sleigh dogs, belonging to Shackleton of Antarctic fame, were being sent by the land route to Archangel and that if I cared to go with them he could arrange it. He told me, too, that I would have a much better chance of getting congenial employment on the Archangel front than at Murmansk. Gratefully I accepted the offer.
The two sleighs, with Russian drivers, were to start before light but, as was typical of Russian methods, it was some hours after dawn before we got off and then only on the strength of a liberal tip to the head driver.
It was a fine sunny day and the huskies ran with spirit, tugging at the traces, while the driver jumped on the skids at any slight decline in the normally level track. We had run a few miles, and the leading sleigh was already out of sight, when a small sleigh pulled by a reindeer and driven by an old Russian peasant, joined the track from the forest, about 50yd ahead of us. This encounter was too much both for the reindeer, a mangy old beast, and our huskies. The reindeer fled and before our driver could control them our dogs were in full cry. The small sleigh, loaded down with wood, hit a mound of snow on the side of the track, the traces broke, and the reindeer, freed, set off at full gallop across the country. My driver’s shouts, as he clung desperately to the reins of my sleigh, only encouraged the excited team the more, and soon he was dragged off his feet and fell flat on his face in the snow. There was nothing I could do, enclosed as I was in a sack of straw, except hold on as best I could. Before long the sleigh turned over, the traces parted, and I was precipitated into the snow, sack and all, with a severe thump on the head from the overturned sleigh.
As the team disappeared among the trees I extricated myself from the sack, ruefully rubbed the back of my head and finally sat down on the upturned sleigh. I heard loud lamentations behind me and, turning, saw the Russian peasant stumbling through the snow, stopping at frequent intervals to cross himself. I offered him a cigarette, but he only moaned the louder. Some rouble notes did much to restore his equanimity and the last I saw of him he was plodding off in pursuit of his precious reindeer.
In the event, Hudson managed to get on the first ice-cutter to attempt the journey to Archangel through the frozen White Sea. After four days the vessel arrived at Archangel: ‘Suddenly we rounded a bend in the river and saw the five green, white and gold cupolas of Archangel Cathedral. It was an enchanting sight.’ Shortly after arrival Hudson was taken to see the formidable General Ironside, who commanded the British troops in North Russia.
Ironside was a big man who made use of his imposing presence in a big way. I was not too sure of my ground and the General’s opening remark did little to reassure me.
‘I gather,’ he said, ‘that you have come out here to bounce me into giving you a job, because you don’t want to go back to your regiment.’
I told him I had not thought of it only in that way, but nevertheless I hoped I might be of some use to him although the War Office had told me no more British officers were wanted in North Russia. This set him off.
‘They told you that!’ he shouted, ‘when in every cable I send them I ask for officers. But I want good ones and how am I to know that you are any good?’
I replied politely that I imagined he was fully capable of judging that for himself, and he grunted.
Eventually Hudson was appointed as Brigade Major to Brigadier General Turner, who had himself only recently come out to Russia. He commanded a force of all arms and various nationalities holding the railway line about 90 miles south of Archangel. Two other columns of Russian troops under British officers were also under General Turner, one on the Onega River, 60 miles to the west, and the other holding a place called Seletskoe, 30 miles to the east. Before he left, Hudson asked General Ironside to authorise his appointment with the War Office in London and to tell it that he was not a deserter.
Turner also had under his command a strong Polish machine gun company, two companies of Americans, some Russian engineers, a troop of Cossack cavalry and an armoured train manned by Russian sailors.
The headquarters was in the large village of Obozerskaya, with an outpost further south at the village of Bolshie Ozerki. In March the French officer in charge, Commandant Lucas, had heard of the approach towards Bolshie Ozerki of a Bolshevik column. According to his British staff, he sat down to write ‘An Appreciation of the Situation’, aided by liberal potions of brandy. As his morale alternately rose and fell as a result of the rumours of the strength of the enemy and the effects of the brandy, he destroyed and rewrote his conclusion. In between times he could be heard striding up and down his office compartment muttering, ‘What would Foch do?’ By nightfall he had decided not only that Foch would withdraw from the village, but that he would withdraw his headquarters’ train from Obozerskaya to a siding 10 miles north. Orders were given that the train was to be prepared to move at short notice. The British staff were mortified by this order and ‘the brigade major, staff captain and signals officer crept down to the engine at night and while one held the attention of the engine driver the others poured boiling water on the rails further down the line’. This, they had been told, would have the effect of spinning the icebound wheels of the engine when it reached the doctored track. The Bolshevik column, if it existed, never turned up and the next day General Ironside replaced Commandant Lucas with Brigadier General Turner.
Our force included a few aged aeroplanes and in one of these I went over to visit our column on the Onega River. It was the first time I had ever flown. The Bristol Fighter was piloted by a young British officer and as the only other seat was that of the rear-gunner, I had perforce to undertake his duty. Bolshevik planes were very rarely seen on our front, but there was always the off-chance that we might encounter one. The rear-gunner’s machine gun was attached to a rail which ran round the back of my small compartment. When we got into the air I picked up the gun, to make sure I could operate it, and seeing we were about to fly over a lake in the forest, I thought I would test myself and the gun by firing a burst at the lake surface. To do this I had to stand up and lean well out, in order to depress the muzzle of the gun sufficiently to aim at the lake. As soon as I fired, the aeroplane swept abruptly up at a high angle into the air and almost at the same time I had the impression that the ground was rushing up towards me. I realised when we landed that the pilot had performed some sort of acrobatic feat, and I accused him of trying to be funny and frighten me out of my wits, which indeed he had.
He explained that he had only carried out the correct action as taught at the time. When the rear-gunner fired, the pilot had to assume that an enemy aircraft was on his tail; he therefore automatically looped the loop with the object of placing his own machine on the tail of the attacker and shooting him down with his forward gun. I had, in fact, been far too frightened to realise we had looped the loop.
On the evening of 20 July, Hudson was working in his office just before dinner when his chief clerk, a Russian, crept in furtively, keeping below the level of the windows. The blind having been drawn at the chief clerk’s request, he said that a note had been handed to him by a Russian private soldier, obviously having mistaken him for a Russian sergeant major in one of the reserve battalions to whom it had been addressed. The note made it clear that the enemy would attack on the railway at dawn on 23 July. The two White Russian battalions in the line would offer no resistance and would arrest their officers just before the attack, shooting any who resisted. The writer, who signed with a code name, said that he anticipated no difficulty in overrunning the remainder of the brigade who would be taken entirely by surprise, and for this reason only the forward battalions had been informed of the plan. The note also said that a special column which was to attack Force Headquarters was already in position in the forest and that the recipient of the note had to arrange to cut a gap in the wire, at the place arranged, during the night preceding the attack. In a final paragraph the writer said that arrangements had been made for communications to be cut in good time.
The only absolutely reliable troops were about twenty British at headquarters, the Polish company of machine-gunners and, possibly, the crew of the armoured train who were Russian sailors and, as such, on bad terms with the Russian soldiers.
It was clearly vital to relieve the two forward battalions as soon as possible. Having finished the dinner as normal, in order not to excite the suspicion of the Russians who were serving them, a plot was hatched. The plan was that two reserve battalions would be paraded and told that cholera had broken out in the two forward battalions and that relief would be carried out by train, company by company, immediately after the parade. As each forward battalion approached the station, which would be surrounded by the Polish machine-gunners, the men would be told that the armoured train had broken down, blocking the line, and they were to get out of the train, leaving their equipment behind them. They would then be disarmed and marched to prisoner of war cages under Polish escort. If any attempt to resist was made, the armoured train and the Poles would be used to overpower them. The senior White Russian colonel would be in charge.
The whole affair went exactly according to plan. Eight times the manoeuvre was put into operation and every time it worked smoothly. However, it remained important to find the names of the leaders of the conspiracy. As each company was disarmed, the Russian colonel asked for the names of these men. When no one volunteered any information he told them he would pick on any man in the ranks, count ten men down from him and that man would be shot. When the first batch of men was singled out, a Polish party marched them away into the forest. This was followed by a burst of fire. Hudson, who was observing, although he knew that the men were not being shot, was staggered by the phlegmatic way in which the majority of the men, even those who knew they were about to be shot, faced their apparent fate. At intervals, for hour after hour, this process went on. It was getting on for ten o’clock that night when the last company was marched away and still no information was forthcoming. Hudson wrote in his journal:
As the last company passed us, a young boy, a bugler, broke away and approached the colonel and myself and, having been promised a release from the Army and a return to his village, told us who the ringleaders were.
When the Bolsheviks attacked on the morning of 23 July they were faced by the reserve battalions which had been moved to the Front and which repulsed the attack. As for the potential mutineers, after heavy interrogation, including, it was admitted by the Russian colonel, some torture, a large number of noncommissioned officers and men were executed. Hudson was extremely unhappy about the proceedings, but the British had always made it clear that they were in no way responsible for the discipline of the Russians who had their own code of law. The method of execution, too, must have been revolting, although he did not know it at the time. The firing party consisted of two Lewis machine guns fired at ground level. They could not aim higher than at their victims’ legs.
When Hudson expostulated about Russian methods, the Russian colonel replied bitterly: ‘You British don’t realise what we are up against. You come out here from comfortably secure homes, knowing full well you can return to them. For us, it’s a good deal more than just our own individual life and death. The issue affects the whole of Russia.’ He went on to explain the methods used by the Bolsheviks in their bid to take over Russia and, he said, the world. Hudson was silenced.
At Force Headquarters there was a sprinkling of British officers and among them a young intelligence officer. He had fallen in love with a very beautiful Russian nurse in the hospital, a Baltic baroness. Her father had been shot by the Bolsheviks.
After the failed mutiny, Hudson was sitting in his railway carriage office when a clerk announced that the baroness was outside asking for an interview on a matter of urgent importance. He was entirely taken aback when she indignantly told him that the Russian commanding officer of the hospital had refused her permission to witness the executions of the mutineers and she wanted the general to overrule him.
Nothing I could say would shake her determination. She became almost hysterical and stormed at me. Ever since she had seen her own father shot, she had sworn to be present at the shooting of some Bolsheviks. She could never be at peace until she had. As she raved on I saw through the window behind her a party of dejected-looking prisoners surrounded by armed guards being marched down the platform and I realised that if I could keep her talking a little longer she would be too late. In the hope of pacifying her, I told her the General was out but I would see what I could do. Then I sat down and wasted time in writing a note to her Commanding Officer. In it I said, if he could detain her a little longer, the executions would be over. I was told later that as soon as he had released her, she had run nearly a mile, round by a circuitous route, to avoid the guards surrounding the place of execution and though too late to see the shooting, she had insisted on being shown the horribly mutilated bodies before they were buried. To me it seemed almost impossible to believe that this educated, and in every other way apparently well-balanced and refined girl, could have been capable of this. I had yet a lot to learn.
Russians are born intriguers, and the atmosphere in which we lived was especially conducive to intrigue. It was almost impossible to talk for any time to any educated Russian without becoming acutely conscious of the tragedy in his personal life. All were cut off from their homes and few, if any, had escaped without the loss by violence of some at least of their nearest relatives. Amongst the White Russians those officers belonging to the upper classes mainly adopted the attitude of eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, but in fact they could only hope to be merry under the influence of drink. At all other times they were obsessed with suspicion both of each other and in particular of those who had risen through the ranks, whom they knew had a chance of rehabilitation in their own country if they were to bow the knee to Communism. No officer could entirely trust his men, for all knew that there were many Bolshevik agents in the ranks, busily engaged in anti-White Russian propaganda. This in itself was terribly unsettling. Apart from the now familiar ideological appeal, the propagandists pointed to the withdrawal of the French troops, followed later by the Americans and set it about that the British intended to seize and hold North Russia for good. Alternatively they asked, what exactly was the White Russian policy? Was it to set up another tsarist regime? As no two White Russian leaders could agree on any clear-cut answer to this question, the Red propagandists had it all their own way. They offered peace, the Whites an endless civil war. The men were told they were fighting either for the British against their own countrymen, or for some puppet counterfeit Tsar to be set up by the British in the teeth of public opinion. No man likes to be told he is a traitor to his country, a supporter of foreign usurpers.
There was something very childlike and confiding in the Russian soldiery in spite of all this, and I used to enjoy visiting them in their blockhouses. The men were not in the least subservient and laughed at the simplest sally. They were easily pleased by any word of praise, and were delighted to show their skill, which was considerable, in the building of their defences. I admired their extreme hardiness and cheerfulness in the bitter conditions of the front line.
Colonel Thornhill, the Chief Intelligence Officer on the Archangel front who had befriended me at Murmansk, visited us in connection with negotiations over an exchange of prisoners between ourselves and the Bolsheviks. He was to meet a small party from the other side, in no man’s land, and I asked if I could accompany him.
At the appointed hour we marched out from our foremost post on the railway, preceded by a soldier carrying a large white flag. On reaching what we judged to be about half-way we halted and awaited the negotiators. We received no reply to our shouted enquiries and so we began to walk slowly forward. As we approached, it was evident there was great excitement in the enemy lines for soldiers were seen scurrying about. In spite of shouts of remonstrance we continued walking until we could conduct a conversation without having to shout. At long last three negotiators appeared. The understanding had been that we were all to be unarmed. I could not of course understand the conversation and, while they were busily employed, I stepped discreetly into the background hoping to get a photograph. One of the Bolsheviks turned round, saw me with the camera in my hand, and immediately drew a revolver. At this Thornhill let drive such a volley of imprecations that he soon had the Russians in complete and almost subservient control.
They had brought with them enlarged photographs of mutilated hands and feet belonging, they declared, to prisoners who had escaped from the White Russians and had been tortured while prisoners of war. On examination, these photos showed in at least one or two cases the stamp of the RAF photographic section which had been clumsily erased. When this was pointed out to them they hastily withdrew the photos, which were in fact photos of tortured men sent to the Bolsheviks by the White Russians on a South Russian front as proof of the fact that White Russian prisoners had been tortured. Thornhill told me later that he was certain the Reds had never had the slightest intention of arranging exchanges but they wanted the onus of refusal to rest with us.
Orders were received in early August 1919 for the total evacuation from North Russia of all British and other allied servicemen. The plan was for an attack to take place in order to cover the withdrawal. British troops were to take part, only in the opening phase, the Russians were then to take over. It was hoped that the Russian Government of the North would be firmly established. However, virtually nobody in touch with the reality of the situation believed this.
Some recently arrived RAF pilots had brought with them first-class photographic apparatus and I took the opportunity to get them to take photographs of the track running south from our outpost village of Bolshie Ozerki, which was not shown on any map we had. The photos showed that the track came out near a large railway bridge, and I asked the General if he would let me lead a mounted raid down this track, with the object of blowing up the bridge so that the Bolsheviks could not support their forward troops by railing forward reinforcements when we attacked.
He took some persuading but eventually he agreed and I set about collecting a party to carry out the scheme. Our Russian Prince, who combined the duties of interpreter and troop leader of our sixteen cavalrymen, was enthusiastic and offered to recruit a number of gunners who could ride to be used as mounted infantrymen and the necessary engineers. I impressed upon him that the whole party must be volunteers but must not be told the route or objective until we were well on our way. My plan was to spend the first night at Bolshie Ozerki, a short ride, but enough to get the party settled down. The British liaison officer at the village, a Northumberland Fusilier by name of Hutchinson, was very astonished to see us ride in and very keen to accompany us and as I had two Irish horses I agreed to him using one. The cavalrymen were mounted on troop horses and the rest on shaggy little Russian ponies. The gunners insisted on carrying enormous cavalry sabres in addition to their rifles, a ludicrous sight for the sabres almost reached the ground. Our gear, reduced to a minimum, was carried on pack ponies as we had two bridgeless rivers to cross.
We started well before dawn with the cavalry, the Prince and myself in the advance guard and Hutchinson at the head of the main body, in all fifty or sixty men. The first river presented no obstacle but it was getting late by the time we reached the second and we decided to camp on the near bank and tackle the crossing, which looked formidable, the following morning.
The passage of the river next day gave our Cossacks an opportunity of exhibiting their skill in standing on their saddles as their horses half waded, half swam, across. I got my legs wet. The stores had to be floated across on improvised rafts and the ponies persuaded to swim.
I was riding with the Prince, his sergeant major and a dozen men behind us, when suddenly the two scouts ahead of us came galloping back and almost at the same moment a burst of machine gun fire zipped through the trees high above our heads. The Prince, ever impetuous, wanted to charge, but I pulled my horse across the path and told him to find out from the scouts first if there was wire ahead. The fire stopped after the first burst and a gong was furiously beaten. The scouts said there was a barricade across the track. It was an old woman gathering sticks who had raised the alarm. They had seen a big lake in the forest behind the barricade with a lot of soldiers bathing or rowing about in boats. They had only seen one sentry at the barricade but he had a machine gun. It seemed obvious that if we could get round the flank of the barricade in time we could win the day but the horses, of which mine was the worst offender, were plunging about, frightened by the fire.
Perhaps unwisely, I decided to dismount. I had just told the Prince to come with me and six men when Hutchinson arrived. He had come on alone to see what was happening. I told him to bring forward all the riflemen he could and I would send back to the track for them. A short detour through the forest enabled us to see that the barricade was only a short one and had no wire round the sides. This was good enough. If we could get the main body up in time we could overrun the garrison before they were ready for us, for judging from the shouting they were in panic. Leaving our few men to watch, the Prince and I started running back to the track to bring them up. What with horse-holders and engineers we were reduced to about thirty men all told and as the Prince addressed them I got the impression that they were far from enthusiastic. It dawned on me that many of them were deliberately holding back. The forest, though clear of undergrowth, was fairly thick; I had edged my way well out to the left when I saw three enemy tip-toeing through the trees to my right and about 40yd away. The man nearest me made a warning gesture with his hand as the other two dropped down, then he went down on one knee behind a tree and slowly raised his rifle. I saw that Hutchinson, quite oblivious of his danger, was the target. I fired wildly very approximately in his direction a fraction of a second before he fired.
Very quietly I drew back and started running with pounding heart round to where Hutchinson was, praying he had not been hit. At my shot a lot of fire was opened up from the barricade but it was all well above our heads. I found Hutchinson unhurt but he told me the Russians had all run back and the Prince had gone back to rally them. The Prince began to address them. A man stood out and spoke. He said they were not cowards and that they would have been ready to follow their officers anywhere if proper arrangements had been made for dealing with the wounded but, as it was, what chance had a wounded man of getting back alive? We had not even got a doctor with our party.
‘We’ve got medical panniers and two trained dressers,’ the Prince whispered.
‘Tell them that,’ I said, ‘and tell them that when they get back everyone will know as well as we do that it’s only an excuse for running away.’
As the Prince finished his translation, outcry and argument broke out and it was obvious that by now our hope of success was shattered and I told the Prince to give the orders for an ignominious withdrawal, his Cossacks now acting as a rearguard.
An incident occurred on the way back which shows how easily panic can break out among demoralised men. Just as we ourselves were about to get mounted, a capercaillie, a great heavy bird, came silently flapping over our heads. The Sergeant Major automatically raised his rifle and I said, ‘Go on, shoot, I bet you don’t hit it.’ The Sergeant Major fired and the bird heeled over but flew off unscathed.
Failing to catch the party up at a trot we broke into a canter but still failed. I began to let my horse out and was really galloping when I heard shots ahead. Coming round a bend I found myself in full pursuit of our own men. When we managed to bring them to a halt they said they had been attacked from the rear. The Sergeant Major’s single shot had grown into a hail of fire from which only by the skin of their teeth had they escaped. Thus, ingloriously, ended our raid behind the enemy lines, but realised that this was largely due to faulty preparation. I had left too much to the Prince who like most Russians of the old Tsarist days expected blind obedience without understanding. I doubt very much if the men were really volunteers. On the whole we were lucky the raid did not end in a disaster.
The attack on the railway was a great success. The Australians met little resistance, and the Russians then took over.
On about 10 September Hudson’s brigade headquarters embarked on a train at Obozerskaya en route to Archangel where they were destined to board a ship to return to Britain. In full uniform on the platform stood the commanding officer of the White Russian battalion, which had nearly mutinied and with whom Hudson had become very friendly. This, in spite of his dismissive attitudes towards the normal tenets of military law, Russian or British. As the train drew out, he shot himself.
Hudson’s ship called in at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. He left her there and found his own way home.
I had gone out to Russia intending to find out what I could about Bolshevism, and on return I tried to sum up in my mind what I had learnt. The conclusion I came to, which did not alter much after, was that the regime based on absolute materialism, supported by force and ruthless cruelty, could not survive indefinitely. But to overcome such a regime two things were needed: first, a positive appeal; second, a leader who could inspire the people with an abiding faith in the Cause which they could understand.
The White Russians had no appeal, other than a blind hatred of their opponents, and, having none, no leader could arise who could weld opposition to the existing evil regime into successful action.
When asked how long I thought it would be before the necessary conditions were forthcoming, I suggested ten or twelve years. I did not understand then the inherent strength of a Police State. (These words were written long before the dismantling of the Soviet Empire.)
At this stage it may well be opportune to examine Hudson’s motivations during his remarkable military career in the First World War. His conventional social background of the country gentry in England at the turn of the century no doubt was a major factor in his state of mind during the many actions in which he was involved. But he certainly was no military automaton. He thought for himself and had a broad range of literary interests. His poems, some of which appear in this book, speak for themselves. He searched for beauty, and truth often touched with humour in almost any situation. He was not a rebel in the sense of broadening his perception of the futility of war into an active campaign against it, as, at one stage of his turbulent life, did Siegfried Sassoon. He accepted situations as they were and did his best in the circumstances to improve matters whatever the personal risk he might incur, and that was often very considerable. On the other hand, he had little respect for authority, particularly if he thought it was exercised in a thoughtless or stultifying manner. Throughout his career, and this will again become clear later on in this book, he was prepared to disregard orders if it seemed to him at the time to be right to do so. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this came when he personally cut the line to battalion headquarters in order to make an unauthorised attack, which in the event was highly successful (page 90).
As already stated, his social background although in no way prompting his tendency to rebellion against existing authority and disobeying orders – very much the opposite – undoubtedly was a factor in his capacity for leadership. It also contributed to his almost fanatical regard for honesty in all aspects. He was brought up in a deferential world where status was accepted as an unquestioned fact of life. As far as he was concerned there was no question of letting down those who found themselves, however temporarily or irrationally, under his command. As has already been pointed out, this did not necessarily apply to his dealing with his superiors.
Again and again, however, one is forced to conclude that the most formative incident of his life came at his preparatory school when he was unmercifully bullied by a sadistic headmaster. Here was born Hudson’s disregard for authority and his capacity to overcome physical stress in all its forms: if he could survive the regular nightly ordeals at the hands of his tormentor he could survive anything. His self-confidence – and throughout his life this was a prominent but non-arrogant feature of his character – stemmed in part from his success in overcoming physical stress at his public school. It also came about from the realisation that he was not, as he had repeatedly been told, stupid. The world, with all its problems, complexities and delights was opened up for him by his schoolmaster at Sherborne, Trevor Dennis.
Hudson’s motivation was, at least in part, a determination to prove himself not so much to others as to himself. It was a personal struggle, which he was determined to win again and again. And he did.
A further element in Hudson’s motivation was his deep love for his country. Whatever happened he was not going to let his country down. Nowadays patriotism is widely held to be incorrect, politically and in every other way. Instant communication has shrunk the world and devotion to one small part of it appears irrational, selfish and petty. It was not so in the early twentieth century. There was an immense, and justified, pride in the creation of the British Empire with all its faults and glories. This almost unbelievable creation by the peoples of a small offshore island was seen as a colossal, almost sublime, achievement.
Throughout his life, and particularly during the First War when death was highly likely, Hudson thought a great deal about the eternal questions of a possible afterlife and the existence of a beneficent God. As a very young man he had been impressed by the Buddhist monk he met in Ceylon and in his unquestioning acceptance of the transmigration of souls. Brought up in an all-pervading acceptance of Protestant Christian belief in all its aspects, he came to be very doubtful about some of the assertions it made. As far as the war was concerned, he did not see it as a personal crusade against evil. He was doubtful about all the certainties which pervaded much of government inspired propaganda. His doubts had extended to the many instances of premonition he had seen in some of his fellow officers. Sometimes these turned out to be true and death had indeed followed a premonition of that disaster, but sometimes it had not. On one occasion, just before the action in which he won his Victoria Cross, his premonition of personal disaster had been well founded. This led him to reflect on his attitude to the Almighty.
With an attack pending, it was natural that I should be nervous, but there was a certainty of impending personal disaster in my mind, which was quite different in kind from any previous experience. Whether the outcome was to be death or not seemed curiously unimportant. In a way I find my feelings difficult to explain. I was not fighting fear. I was struggling with myself for strength to accept anticipated physical pain, and overcoming it by something greater, which I knew existed though I was unable to define it. It was a very real experience.
When at last I rose and made my way back to Headquarters, my mind was at rest. To say that I had prayed, and that comfort had resulted, would be the easy explanation, but I knew the truth was not as simple as that. My faith in God had remained as uncertain as ever it was throughout my struggle. I had not just submitted my will to God. I did not believe that a thinking man could evade his own responsibility so easily. A child does not overcome his childish difficulties or fears merely by calling on his parents for help, however loving and willing to help they may be. Almost immediately after infancy, a child is conscious of his own individuality, and knows he must fight his own battles in matters other than purely material ones. Consciousness of free will is one of the first experiences of life. It is only later that attempts are sometimes made to refuse to accept the reality of free will and personal responsibility.
Again and again when one examines Hudson’s motivations one comes up against the fact that, although he was inevitably largely a product of his background in all its aspects, political and religious, he thought for himself. He made his own decisions on the basis of his own personal beliefs. He was his own man.