2 Attachment(s)
Life of a British Soldier b.1871
This is a great little biographical story detailing the life of a Major Fred Neel, an employee at the Long Branch factory, 1940-1957. It was written by my Grandfather, who worked there also, and published in the Canadian Arsenals periodical, the Rocket, for the occasion of Neel's retirement in 1957. Quite a life...
Enjoy!
A SON OF THE WIDOW
MAJOR FRED NEEL
“When ‘arf of your bullets fly wide in the ditch,
Don’t call your Martini a cross-eyed old bitch;
She’s Human As you are – you treat her as sich,
An’ she’ll fight for the young British soldier”
(From Rudyard Kipling’s – The Young British Soldier”)
Fred Neel was a British soldier in the days when the Lion’s roar kept the Russian Bear in the darkest corner of his darkest den and the American Eagle on the highest branch of his highest tree. The accompanying picture shows Fred Neel shooting the first F.N. Rifle assembled on our Production Lines. Though now the shadow of the Bear lies heavy on the land and the scream of the Eagle is heard from tree to tree, the rifle remains as in the days of the Lion, the handmaiden of the soldier on whom he lavishes more care and more attention than he ever would on an ever-loving wife.
Attachment 30673
Fred Neel is our oldest employee in point of age and one of our oldest in point of service. While not a Bisley contender, he has shot in active service more types of rifles than perhaps any other Canadian – the Martini-Henry, the Snider, the Lee-Metford, the Mauser, the Mannlicher, the Ross, the Lee-Enfield, and now while out of service; the Canadian C.1. (F.N.). He has fought in all Britain’s wars he could enter. He tried hard to get in the last one, but Army red tape frustrated him. Apparently there was a regulation which said sixty-nine years of age was too old. Rather than go back to what he considered a civilian life, he came to Small Arms Limited. The year was 1940. He has been with us ever since. Now Rules and Regulations have caught up with him again and he will be leaving us next Spring. He says that at present he has no plans for the future. With all the trouble in the near East, who knows, perhaps his experience will unwind some of the tape and he will again become a soldier of the Queen.
He was born on the Island of Jersey, in 1871, to the low distant thunder of the Prussian guns as they approached Paris, in the Franco-Prussian War. He entered the British Army as a Cadet, graduating from the Artillery School at Woolich and going out to Durban South Africa, in 1891, to join the Royal Artillery then stationed at Fort Napier, Natal.
In 1893, the Matebele War broke out under ‘Lobengula’ Chief of the Matabale. The Matabele had been, a hundred years before, a part of the Zulu Nation at the time of the great ‘M’Chaka’. Defeated on a raiding expedition, they chose not to return to their homeland. It had been decreed by ‘M’Chaka’ that the members of any Zulu Impi(Regiment) who survived a defeat in war, were to be put to death. Had there been ‘red tape’ in the Zulu Nation, the Matabele might have chanced to return and with ingenuity, saved themselves. The direct simplicity of ‘M’Chaka’ laws gave no opportunity to dissemble, so they put many mountains and much desert between themselves and their late homeland and settled in what is now Southern Rhodesia. There they lived for nearly a hundred years, when trouble broke out with the British over gold concessions. A number of British were killed. As a result, a small military force was sent to subdue them. Their power was broken at the Battles of Shangrai and Bembesi. Fred Neel, then Lieutenant Neel, fought his first battle at the Bembesi River Crossing. Formed in Laager very similar to the way the early Western American Pioneers fought off the Plains Indian, 500 English defeated 10,000 Matabele. Fortunately for the English, the Matabele had shortly before the battle received some 1,000 Martini-Henry Rifles through trade with the Boers. These rifles they gave to their greatest warriors, who not knowing how to use them, expended their energy in smoke and noise. Had they fought as they were accustomed, with their Assegais (spears), their battle cry ‘Bulala M’umlungu’, ‘death to the white man’, welling up from one thousand throats, then ever swelling as it flowed back and forth from Impi to Impi; would have burst upon and left shattered and destroyed those English ears, as the great black tide of tossing plumes closed in and passing over ripped with their spears – men, tents and baggage alike, while high overhead as dust clouds settled, the vultures would have come on great circling wings and when all was quiet and night had fallen, the scavengers of the veldt – the hyena and the jackal.
Fred Neel had by this time learned to speak Dutch fluently and in 1894, he went along as an observer with a Boer Commando, under General Joubert, to subdue another native tribe, the Makatese, in the North Transvaal. For seven months, Joubert’s Commando chased the Makatese, under their Chief Malaboch, from kraal to kraal and kop to kop, until their resistance was broken.
In 1896, Dr.Jameson, Administrator of Sothern Rhodesia and friend of Cecil Rhodes, tired of the manner in which the British in Johannesburg were being treated by the Boers, got together an Irregular Force and invaded the Transvaal. The intention of the raid was to help British miners and British mining interests, who were having a rough time under the Agricultural Boer government. Fred Neel went along on the raid, without of course, official sanction. The Boers had word of the raid in time to wait for the Raiders at Doornskop, outside Johannesburg. The Raiders were easily defeated and most were taken prisoner, Neel among them. Through the efforts of a Boer officer he had known on the Joubert Commando, he was permitted to escape. He returned to his unit an officer in good standing, his superiors, none the wiser. The Jameson Raid, however, inflamed the passion of the Boers and English to the point where in a few years war was inevitable.
The Boers for a small country were wealthy. After the Jameson Raid, they began buying arms on a large scale. Mauser Rifles were purchased from Germany, although the Martini-Henry remained their standard military rifle. Field artillery was bought from Creusot, in France, and Howitzers were purchased from Krupp, in Germany.
On a number of occasions, Fred Neel visited Paul Kruger, President of the Boer republic in Pretoria. Visiting Hours were 6a.m. to 8a.m. These hours pretty well eliminated the indolent types who would have wasted the President’s time in idle talk. Kruger’s official residence was a plain white washed cottage with a thatched roof. Two guards were stationed at the front equipped with carbine, sword and bandolier. Kruger dressed in long black frock coat, black trousers, white shirt and black string bow tie, all much rumpled and un-pressed. He was a ponderous man of medium height, slow and deliberate in his movements. Heavy lidded, small, shrewd, non-committal, blue eyes took in the visitor, gave away no state secrets, but sometimes surprised their secrets out of his guests. The National Boer drink was coffee. The more you drank, the better man you were in the eyes of the Boer. Coffee was drunk from a large cup like bowl, almost as big as a soup bowl. On each visit, Fred Neel heard ‘Oom Paul’, Uncle Paul as he was called by the Boers, say four times to ‘Tante Sannie’, Aunt Sannie, his wife, “bring Noch en Comijke voor de Englishmann”, bring another cup of coffee for the Englishman.
On October 11, 1899, Paul Kruger issued an ultimatum to the British to withdraw all their troops stationed along the boarders of Natal and the Transvaal. However, without waiting to see if the British would withdraw, although it was unlikely they would have, the Boers crossed over into Natal. They were all mounted men and at the time were reckoned the finest horsemen in the world. Their field artillery was the best ever seen on a battlefield up to that time, much superior in quality to the British. Their gunners however, were not as well trained. Fred Neel fought all through the South African War, most of the time around Pretoria and Kimberley and was present at the Relief of Mafeking. The rifle he used, when necessary, and the one used by the British throughout the war, was the Lee-Metford. He was shot through the chest by a Boer sniper, while hunting gunrunners in the Sabi Valley, near Delago Bay. His native carriers took him to safety and when he came to (he was on a hospital ship out in the bay) he thought he had wakened too soon, for at his side was a great bearded Sikh, whetting a razor on the palm of his hand. Enormous, seemed the distance from bed to top of turban. Then, with relief; came from the Sikh these words, ‘I have come to shave you Sahib’. The hole, he says, was plugged at both ends and has never bothered him since. The Sabi Valley is located in what is now the famous Kruger National Park.
Because the Boers were well supplied with artillery, the British were forced to split their Batteries, sending one or two guns with each regiment of horse. Near the end of the war, Fred Neel was given charge of a gun attached to a regiment called Kitchener’s Fighting Scouts, operating in the North, along the Limpopo River. The war ended in 1902, and Fred Neel in charge of a Truce Party from Kitchener’s Horse, received the surrender of one of the last of the Boer Generals to give in, General Beyers, a graduate of Cambridge and a lawyer in civil life. The Truce Party met General Beyers and his aides a few miles from the British Camp. The Boers had ‘run out their string’, both men and horses were in the last stages of exhaustion. Their clothes were in rags; their horses were hardly able to support their riders. Beyers later became a Major General in the Army of the Union of South Africa. However, enmity toward the English continued to burn deep within him. When the first Great War broke out, he and a number of other embittered Boers defected to the Germans, in South-West Africa. He was shot and killed, while swimming his horse across the Vaal River, by soldiers of the Army which he had so recently been General.
Dull routine had settled over the Army in Africa after the end of the war. Fred Neel lost interest, resigned his commission in 1905, and took ship for England, marrying soon after his arrival. For their Honeymoon, he and his wife sailed to Canada. The honeymoon being a success and the Canadian people friendly, they decided to stay and become Canadians.
Remembering a farmer’s life in Africa was on the whole a sporting one, Fred Neel decided to become one in Canada. He enrolled in the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph. While in Guelph, he and his wife stayed at the old King Edward Hotel run by Jimmy Johnson, father of Edward Johnson, the famous Tenor and later Manager of the Metropolitan Opera Company and Grandfather of Mrs. George Drew. While at O.A.C. he made the somewhat belated discovery that more than considerable physical effort was necessary to make a Canadian farmer. After ten months at the College, he quit. If he wasn’t to be a farmer, he needed no degree. From O.A.C. he went to work for the construction firm of Mackenzie & Mann. At the time Mackenzie & Mann were building the Canadian Northern Railway, and were operating just north of Barrie. They put him on a hand-car (pumper) at the Union Station in Toronto and told him, if he kept his shoulders down and his head up, with some effort he could expect to be at the job in time for supper. It was uphill all the way. Along about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, even farming looked good. He eventually arrived in Barrie and did get his supper.
When the Railroad was almost to Sudbury, Fred Neel was asked if he would like to name one of the stations along the Right of Way. That evening he asked his wife if she knew a good name. Mrs. Neel suggested ‘Coniston’ after the book ‘Coniston’ by Winston Churchill (not Winston Spencer Churchill), a popular one at the time and one which she had just finished reading. Coniston they called it and Coniston today is a thriving mining community.
Around about 1908, Mackenzie and Mann obtained a contract to build, in Mexico, an aqueduct running from the mountains to Monterey. As Fred Neel could speak Spanish, he was asked to go on this job. While in Mexico he got to know General Huerta quite well. General Huerta was a politician and a soldier. In those days in Mexico, all politicians were soldiers. Vote was by bullet, rather than ballot. Elections however, were thoroughly democratic, for while the politician declaimed from the forum, the little man with his rifle could also make himself heard as well in Mexico City as in Chihuahua.
General Huerta, when he thought he had enough bullets for ballots, decided to take over the Government from President Francisco Madero. He succeeded eventually, although the election was somewhat lengthy and unsettled the country considerably. Mackenzie & Mann closed out their interest when events had begun to warm up. Fred Neel, who liked the country and had a sort of interest in the election through knowing General Huerta, stayed on. Finally the election got to the point where, in addition to the two parties (the Huerta and the Madero), the men of no party, the Independent, after a glass or two of ‘tequila’, would just for the ‘helluvit’, begin firing at both sides. As you could now no longer count upon an honest ricochet, he and his wife decided it would spoil the election for their many Mexican friends and be poor repayment for their hospitality if they were to be on the receiving end of one of these exchanges of mutual regard, took ship for New Orleans.
In New Orleans, the year was early 1913, he obtained a job bossing about 400 laborers repairing the levee along the Mississippi River. In August 1914, when the first Great War broke out, Fred Neel wired Sir Sam Hughes, in Ottawa, offering his services. He had known Garnet Hughes, Sir Sam’s son, while in Mexico. Sir Sam wired back that if he could get over to England, he would find a place for him with the First Canadian Division. It seemed impossible to get passage to England from New Orleans, when one day, a month later, walking down Canal Street, he met a British Officer he had known in South Africa. Within minutes, arrangements had been made for him to take charge of a boatload of Mules bound for England. The Neels and the Mules went to England in style, on the same freighter and with the same Captain who had taken the Neels out of Mexico.
Fred Neel reported to Sir Sam Hughes at the Savoy. He was commissioned in the 12th Battalion C.E.F., station at Shorncliffe. The 12th was a New Brunswick Unit commanded by Col. Macleod M.P. Promoted to Captain and then to Major, Fred Neel was made O.C. of the Bomb and Grenade School at Shorncliffe. From time to time his duties required that he go to France and instruct in bombing, Units on active service in the trenches. On one of these trips he was severely wounded in the head by a rifle grenade. In 1917, by reverting to the rank of Lieutenant, he went to France with the 124th Battalion C.E.F. commanded by Col. Thompson, whose father, Sir John Thompson, had been Prime Minister of Canada. Fred Neel remained with the 124th until the end of the war. Returning to Canada in 1919, he was demobilized in Victoria, 1920. He returned to Toronto and took a job in the Audit Department of the City Hall.
When the Second World War began, Fred Neel left his civilian job and came to Small Arms Limited, where he worked in the Heat Treat Department. In 1946, when Canadian Arsenals Limited replaced Small Arms Limited, he continued with Canadian Arsenals Limited transferring to the Stores Department. He is a collector of Small Arms’ Weapons and has been a Member of the Military Institute in Toronto for thirty-two years.
The Small Arms Division is proud of Fred Neel, and all our Company, we are sure, wish him well. He is of that breed of Englishman you would have found with the first Churchill at Blenheim, with Clive at Plassey, in the lines before Torres Vedras, and who, whenever and wherever they fought England’s battles, achieved a Glory that as in the Crimea, no enemy, no matter how ably supported by mud, snow, disease and incompetence, could ever dim.
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The title is taken from Rudyard Kipling’s – ‘The Sons of the Widow’,
For Fred Neel is truly a son of Queen Victoria, the Widow of Windsor.
“It is safest to let her alone,
For her sentries we stand
By the sea and the land,
Wherever the bugles are blown”.
END
Mr. T.H.Marshall-1956
Printed in ‘the Rocket ~The Journal of Canadian Arsenals Limited~’
VOL. VI, No. 12
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