Originally called the Imperial Yeomanry, it became the first real response to the mobility of the Boers.40 White commented: ‘War according to the text book may have been over; hard and continuous fighting was just beginning.’ 41 He joined the 6 th M.I. and it seems to have suited him eminently, galloping around the countryside engaging in guerrilla tactics similar to those employed by the Boers, and with little of the irritating discipline that brought out the worst in him.
On one occasion White was sent on a scouting mission and was captured by some Boers who deprived him of his trousers and horse. He barely escaped being shot but managed to run away and covered a distance of six miles to summon reinforcements to attack the enemy. It is difficult to establish exactly what White did because of the light-hearted way he treats the whole incident. He maintained, for example, that when he was spotted by some local people they were awestruck, having never seen a white man near naked before, and came to the conclusion he was some kind of deity. He was also laughed at by his own forces when he eventually caught up with them.
This unlikely account does not take from the fact that his fellow subaltern, an Irishman called Cameron, whom he described as fearless, was killed in the same adventure. Cameron was mentioned in despatches but it was White who was awarded the DSO.42 There must have been some behaviour of military significance on White’s part for him to win this; a DSO is a level two award in the hierarchy of military awards, ranking just below a VC and above the Military Cross.43
In his resumé of his feelings during the whole event, he is particularly harsh on himself, describing how he lost heart when separated from his comrades and how frightened he was. He said that to do himself justice he did his best to prevent himself getting the award and told his commanding officer that he had behaved like a coward. Accentuating his alienation he says, ‘I was already becoming accustomed to the non-acceptance of my standards of merit or demerit.’44
This is an impressive piece of openness, something far beyond the false self-deprecatory stance of many so-called heroes. Protesting that he had behaved as a coward, he speculated that ‘Kitchener seems to have been so tickled at the idea of me running away in my shirt that nothing would do him but to recommend me for the DSO.’ 45 (There is another later light-hearted notion that, as his father had been awarded every other decoration, the DSO went to the family to make up the collection.) Again one is reminded of Orwell in his accounts of military action and their depiction of destructiveness and logistical insanity.
There is no political analysis of the war itself offered anywhere. He is brief but honest about the depredations engaged in by the British under the directions of Kitchener in an attempt to crush the Boer resistance: ‘We led the life of filibusters and stole everything we saw’ and talks about his unit as one of ‘the “pastoral” columns [that] had been at work, taking the women into concentration camps, burning the farms, destroying every living thing, except the men, whom we couldn’t catch’. 46
Of course it is far too early to detect any kind of philosophy in a period prior to much consciousness on his part of the struggles of the world, whether in defence of class, country, or vested interests, although his taste for the metaphysical is first recorded when he recalls lying in the Crocodile River and having the ‘most complete sense of physical well being’ he had ever known.47 As his life developed, he began to place more and more importance on these transcendent experiences. But even from the vantage point of thirty years later, White still makes little or no comment on what was essentially a serious reversal of Britain’s place in the world and possibly the earliest harbinger of fragmentation in the Empire. His critiques are concerned with warfare, its practice, and its administration, rather than as a political weapon per se, although that perspective was to change later with his rather idiosyncratic adoption of pacifism.
This apolitical stance could also be taken as a demonstration of where White’s original loyalties lay and where they remained to some extent right up to his death. There is little evidence of any sympathy on his part for nationalist causes in Ireland at any time, and it could be argued that his antipathy towards the Unionists lay in what he saw as a movement inimical to the interests of the United Kingdom despite its overt agenda. He said in a letter to the new Northern Ireland Prime Minister J.M. Andrews on 16 December 1940:
I was Red – I was never Green, I never had any use for neutrality in this war, so little indeed that though I have done all in my power to forestall such a terrible possibility, I believe I would fight against Eire if it came to the pinch.48
Although written to impress upon a sceptical government his value as a soldier in the fight against Nazism and probably causing consternation among his nationalist admirers, it displays little that could be said to be inconsistent with his actions and speeches down through the years.
Chapter 3
Awakenings
Gibraltar
Sir George had been appointed Governor General of Gibraltar but, because of his poor health after the siege of Ladysmith, he was not able to take up the position until well into 1900. He appointed his son as an aide-de-camp (ADC) when Jack had returned to the Gordon Highlanders’ barracks at Aberdeen after his own campaign had finished in 1902. White described himself as an ‘invitation ADC; managing the invitation list, making out the plan of the table, writing the menus and dancing with the plain women’.1 Gibraltar was a port of call for the northern European aristocracy who might be heading for the Mediterranean by sea for their vacations and for more important diplomatic missions in North Africa. In fact, Sir George’s autograph book for that period is filled with illustrious signatures and provides a comprehensive list of mainly British but also some European members of the dominant elite of the time.2 His daughter Rose, along with her three sisters and her mother, Lady Amy, provided in-house diplomatic services for visitors, and Rose describes a visit by King Edward VII when he commented on what a fine looking woman Lady Amy still was. The king had a penchant for inviting ladies to dinner specifically without their husbands, ‘to equalize the party a little’ according to the innocent Rose.3
France and Germany at that time had been wrangling over the benefits they wished to bring to Morocco, and although the conference of Algeciras did not take place until 1906, the year after the Whites left, there was much activity and sabre-rattling in the meantime. Even the British Royal Navy, whose country had even less business in the proceedings, was occupied in steaming up and down in battle formation through the straits and carrying out various naval manoeuvres. Here Jack White, so reticent in his criticism of his military commanders in Africa, emerges in full iconoclastic regalia. He maintained that ‘the royalties were the business agents to get their countries a place in the Moroccan sun, and Gibraltar was the jumping off ground’. He goes on to critique generally and analyse specifically some of these people, with a particular emphasis on the ‘courts’ that accompanied them:
My experience included Edward VII of England and William II of Germany and one or two minor lights. It would be presumptuous to say I had seen through them and what they stood for; but they no longer interested me. I was inoculated against that particular form of hypnosis. They were no different from other people. They were the summation of, shall we say, the most ordinary and least interesting side of other people. Their function, I had seen as invitation A.D.C., was to bring out in strong relief an aspect of other people which at other times lurked in decent concealment. Far be it from me to claim that I was exempt from this undesirable aspect myself. I was as big a snob as the rest; but with one eye open.4
This development in perception he claimed had come about through a transformative experience, Damascene in its suddenness and scope. He described it as something that ‘changed the very mechanism of my consciousness and the whole course of my life’.5 It will have to be examined in greater depth later because it remains as a continuing theme through the rest of his writings, in particular those at the end of his life. However questionable his powers of perception may be in analysing the types of individuals who made
