Blood and Thunder Read Free Page B

Turkey as well as the far reaches of the Sultan’s empire. His career as a diplomat lasted until 1905 when at the age of 25 Aubrey left Constantinople. He soon decided to resurrect his travelling and toured extensively through the Mediterranean, Arabia, Palestine, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and India. Compelled by an agreement with his mother that he would settle down to life in politics he returned glumly to England.
    By 1912 Aubrey had married and been elected as MP for Yeovil. He proved enthusiastic in his political endeavours; but within a year he was off again, this time to the Balkans, travelling from Vienna to Sarajevo and then on to Albania. He would fall wholeheartedly in love with this last country. At the conclusion of the First Balkan War, Aubrey assisted an Albanian delegation visiting London for a peace conference. This rendered him a national hero to the extent that he would twice be offered the throne. He toured the country in 1913 triumphantly, but politely declined the opportunity to become King of Albania.
    With his eyesight, Aubrey never would have been passed fit for military service. He was, however, determined to take care of unfinished business, having missed out on the Boer War. Having volunteered to go to Africa, concerns about what the dry climate might do to his eyes compelled him not to go and he had long felt it a stain upon his honour. In August 1914 he resorted to buying a khaki uniform and attaching himself to the 1st Irish Guards as they marched out of barracks and headed for France. The battalion’s commander was complicit and his presence was only revealed after their transport had sailed, but by then it was too late. With his fluency in multiple languages he was to act as an interpreter.
    Another of the first OEs to report for embarkation with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) but again not one of the most likely, was Walter George Fletcher. As war was declared he was with a contingent of over 500 Etonian boys and masters at Mytchett Farm near Aldershot with the Eton College Officer Training Corps. Every year, in addition to field days and parades the OTC, which provided the boys with basic military training, would congregate under the supervision of regulars with contingents from other public schools and universities for a two-week camp. In 1914 the camp rapidly broke up as it became apparent that war was imminent and as the regulars were mobilised the boys were turned out and sent back to school early.
    George Fletcher should have been in the Navy. That was his parents’ plan when they decked their middle son out in a little sailor suit as a child. He duly made such an awful mess of it that his father Charles saw it as a bad omen and began having second thoughts. When his brother piped up and said that actually he wouldn’t mind going to sea instead, the plan changed. George had always had an interest in soldiering, having been at Oxford a member of the cavalry section of the University OTC and an extremely keen territorial; or ‘Terrier’.
    The middle child in a family of three sons, George’s father was a noted historian and all three boys, Alexander ‘Leslie’, George and the youngest, Reginald William, or ‘Regie’, were born and raised in Oxford and sent to the Dragon School as day boys. Nicknamed ‘Dormouse’ within the family, George had been educated at Eton as a King’s Scholar like his father before him; rowed with the VIII and had gone up to Balliol College, Oxford in 1906 on the fringes of a set of great minds that included the likes of Raymond Asquith and Monsignor Ronald Knox.
    Now 26, George was stocky, ‘slightly ungainly’ but memorable for his ‘gorgeous laugh’. Bubbly, witty, always with a good story to tell, he was passionate about climbing, travelling and Italy in particular. George had spent two recent years teaching English in Schleswig and in addition to German he also spoke French and