Hamilton & Gallipoli: British Command in an Age of Military Transformation

By Evan McGilvray

This is a study of Sir Ian Hamilton VCs command of the Gallipoli campaign. Appointed by Kitchener after the failure of the initial Allied naval offensive in the Dardanelles, Hamilton was to lead the ambitious amphibious landings that were intended to open the way to Constantinople. In the event, however, opportunities immediately after the landings were squandered and, in the face of unexpectedly effective Turkish resistance, soon stalled in attritional trench warfare like that on the Western Front. Hamilton has often been criticized for this failure and in many ways seen to typify the stereotype of a British general clinging to outdated Victorian thinking. Yet this fresh reappraisal, drawing on original archival research, shows that Hamilton did display some progressive ideas and a realization that warfare was rapidly changing. Like all generals of this period he faced the challenge of unprecedented technological and tactical revolution as well as the political and media battle. It is as a case study of command in these circumstances that Evan Mcgilvray's assessment of Hamilton will be most valued.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781473854932

Evan McGilvray

Evan McGilvray has written several books on Polish military history for Helion and is writing a book about Poland, NATO and the failure of democracy in Poland since joining the European Union.

Book preview

Chapter One

General Sir Ian Hamilton and the British Army, 1853–1915

General Sir Ian Hamilton was born on 16 January 1853 on the island of Corfu. Today Corfu is a popular holiday destination, but in 1853 it was part of the Union States of the Ionian Islands and a British Protectorate since 1815 and remained so until 1864 when the islands united with Greece. Hamilton was born into a military family with his father serving as a Captain with the 92nd Gordon Highlanders. Ian Hamilton was destined to live long, dying at the age of ninety-four in 1947 and so was to witness to the many changes which occurred during his lifetime. These not only included changes as advances were made in science or in society, but also those which affected his chosen career, that of an officer serving with the British Army. Indeed Hamilton was also to influence some of these changes as the nature of warfare moved rapidly from man and horsepower. Instead of men marching and horses galloping, modern armies at the beginning of the twentieth century began to use motorized vehicles and explore aviation. While scientific developments allowed for more deadly weapons, medical advances saved many soldiers from illnesses and wounds which previously would have killed them.

Hamilton was born shortly before the outbreak of the Crimean War, which was largely fought from horseback in cavalry manoeuvres, including the famous Charge of the Light Brigade. At the Crimea the infantry still used muskets and the artillery continued to fire cannons loaded with cannon balls. By the time of Hamilton’s death, military technology had progressed, if that is the right word for the obliteration of two Japanese cities during August 1945 by the Americans using atomic bombs; the first and only example to date of nuclear war.

Between 1853 and 1945 the nature of warfare had altered totally with civilians becoming mass casualties for the first time owing to aerial bombardment. Advances in technology and communications meant that mass armies could be moved around the world reasonably swiftly. This led to world war, protracted battles, chemical warfare and mass casualties as particularly experienced during the First World War. Scientific advances also made genocide possible as the mass slaughter of European Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War using poisonous gas, gas chambers and an efficient rail network was surely the nadir of so-called European civilization.

During Hamilton’s life the British Army experienced a great number of reforms in which Hamilton was involved. The first of these reforms began just after the end of the Crimean War which British society considered had been badly conducted and poorly led. The British Army may have been part of the victorious alliance against the Russian Empire, but the senior officers who had commanded the British Army at the Crimea had led it in a manner that was more suited to the Napoleonic Wars, which had been fought forty years earlier. The poor leadership and command of the British Army during the Crimean War meant that before finally achieving victory the British Army had suffered many setbacks and became the object of examination and eventual overhaul where necessary.¹ The situation regarding the Crimean War and its aftermath does not initially affect the Hamilton story, however the question of modernity does run through this work and begins with journalism at the Crimea.

The Crimean War was the first media war and was well covered in The Times of London by W.H. Russell, who, in his regular despatches was deeply critical of the British military leadership in the Crimea. His despatches were published within hours in London, owing to the advances in electric telegraphy, and so gave the British general public a regular review of what was going on in their name. Russell’s criticism of the British commanders caught the public imagination in Britain and was partly responsible for the fall of Lord Aberdeen’s Government in 1855. At the same time Roger Fenton’s photographs of the war (as yet not in newspapers owing to the lack of technology to do so) illustrated the conflict and its aftermath vividly and more honestly, rather than images as depicted in heroic paintings as had been the case previously. In 1915 Hamilton was to fall foul of journalists reporting of his command of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) at Gallipoli.

The reform of the late Victorian Army was chiefly the work of Edward T. Cardwell who was Secretary of State for War between 1868 and 1874. This neatly overlapped with Hamilton being gazetted to the 12th Suffolk Regiment as a Second Lieutenant during December 1872 after passing through the Sandhurst Military Academy.

During 1870, Cardwell examined the role of the British Army and concluded that its main duties were wide ranging and included home defence against an external attack, which throughout much of the nineteenth century manifested itself as periodic fears of a French invasion. Externally, the role of the British Army was to provide adequate garrisoning of India following the Indian Mutiny (1857), as well as supplying troops for colonial garrisons scattered across the globe. Nearer to home the Army was also expected to bolster the civil authorities, especially in Ireland where Fenian para-militaries sought the removal of British rule from the island. The British Army was ill equipped to respond to this threat.²

Cardwell set about reforming the British Army from top to bottom. His reforms encompassed administrative, penal and regimental reforms, as well as providing the basis for establishing a military reserve to supplement the regular army. His most memorable reform was the abolition of the purchasing of commissions and promotions within the army, with the exception of the Royal Engineers and Royal Artillery where promotion only came on merit. The abolition of the purchasing of commissions was passed into law during 1871.³ It was only after this law was passed that the British Army could finally embark on the establishment of a truly professional officer corps rather than one dominated by wealth and privilege. Hamilton was gazetted one year after this reform was passed.

By the 1870s it was considered that there was a ‘younger, brasher generation (of officers who were) agitating for reform’.⁴ Hamilton was less than a year with the 12th Suffolks. He spent much of his time in Ireland where he was stationed either fishing or practising drill. In July 1873 his battalion transferred from Athlone to the Curragh where he took up polo. It was there that he met some of the troubles of Ireland when the Suffolks, with fixed bayonets, cleared a public square during an affray.⁵ Eventually, as expected, his transfer to his father’s regiment, the Gordon Highlanders, was finally granted. In November 1873 Hamilton set sail for India on HMS Jumna to join the regiment, which was stationed at Mooltan in the Punjab.⁶

Once in India, Hamilton began to take his military career more seriously than he had done previously in Ireland. He spent the next five years usefully learning Hindustani as well as Urdu, Nagri and Arabic script, and so qualified as an interpreter and spoke in Hindustani to Indian troops whenever he could. Not everybody was impressed with this accomplishment and the Regimental Adjutant was furious and told Hamilton to confine himself to regimental duties and not to ‘indulge in ridiculous side-shows’.⁷ A problem for Hamilton, and one that he should have been aware of, was that the Gordon Highlanders was a very traditional regiment and that any variance from the norm was frowned upon. Amazingly, at that time no officer from the Gordons had ever volunteered for Staff College, for active service or for anything at all. As Hamilton’s nephew observed in his biography of his distinguished uncle, the Gordon Highlanders lived and fought as a regiment and did very little else.⁸ Hamilton was already showing that he was going to be different, and the reforming late Victorian British Army was definitely the place to try to make a difference for an ambitious young officer with an eye to the future and for promotion.

Hamilton did not only take an interest in the languages of India, which should have been made compulsory for those wishing to rule India, he also took an active interest in military training. Just after his upbraiding by the Regiment Adjutant, Hamilton once more showed initiative at a General’s parade when he used his intelligence rather than just blindly following orders and thus avoided chaos. This time he was commended by the inspecting General for showing common sense.⁹ Hamilton was to make further changes, as when he was on his first six months leave in the UK from India he was ordered by the War Office (WO) to attend a musketry course at Hyde, an establishment in Kent. In 1855 Hamilton’s father had spent time at the same place on the same course.¹⁰

This was something that Hamilton had wanted to do, but owing to the strict traditions of his regiment he dared not volunteer. Hamilton did well on the course and obtained an ‘Extra First’ Certificate and thanks to this and possibly his reputation as a skilled big game hunter in India, he was gazetted Musketry Instructor of his regiment on his return to India. Hamilton’s nephew observes that this was trivial in itself, but made a distinct difference in his uncle’s career.¹¹ Hamilton knew that infantry training in the Victorian British Army was based on the use of the bayonet with troops formed up into squares, four deep, to repulse cavalry; the famous British Square. However, Hamilton could see that this tactic might prove disastrous if these squares came under concentrated fire from modern rifles. To remedy this, Hamilton began to consider that the shooting skills of every individual soldier should be improved so that in future combat, soldiers could work individually or in groups depending on circumstances. As Musketry Instructor, Hamilton took his idea to an extraordinary length, even to the point of buying extra cartridges at his own expense for additional shooting practice. Steadily the shooting skills of his battalion increased until they were the best in India. This brought him to the attention of senior officers who began to consider that there was something in the training led by Hamilton and that perhaps he was an extraordinary young officer.¹²

Following the Indian Mutiny the British tried to follow a policy of noninterference in Central Asia, but once the Russians recovered from their defeat in the Crimean War, they returned to the policy of expanding the Russian Empire into Asia. The Russian policy included annexing territories in a gradual move towards Afghanistan and India; the so-called ‘Great Game’ so beloved by the British writer Rudyard Kipling. The British Government considered trying to reach an agreement with the Afghan ruler, Emir Mohammad Yaqub Khan, but they were too late as Russian influence in the Afghan capital, Kabul, was absolute. The spectre of Russians in Kabul alarmed the British Government, who interpreted this move as a direct threat to Indian and British interests there. Therefore on 1 December 1878 the British embarked on an invasion of Afghanistan.

Initially the invasion was a success and the road to Kabul was open. During January 1879 the British settled down for the winter after opening negotiations with the Afghans, who by then had been deserted by the Russians. It was during this campaign that Hamilton, as a Lieutenant, saw active service in the Kurram Valley area. This valley was a little known route which headed towards Kabul. This was where Major-General Frederick Roberts, Commander of the Kurram Field Force decided to establish communications to his advanced post at Alikhel, about fifty miles from Kabul. However, fifty miles by land is a long way in Afghanistan, even today. Negotiations dragged on throughout the Spring of 1879 until finally a treaty was agreed between the Afghans and the British. Two out of the three columns that had invaded Afghanistan, the Kandahar and the Khyber were more or less disbanded. Hamilton’s column, the Kurram, remained intact and concentrated at Alikhel.

During the summer of 1879 Hamilton contracted malaria and was extremely ill. He was sent to recover at Peiwar Kotal, the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Kurram Column, about ten miles east of Alikhel and still a dangerous place, as events were to prove.

Despite being reported as very ill and too weak to walk, Hamilton was riding with another officer in the forests near Peiwar Kotal when they heard shots from the forest above them and then saw soldiers running down the hillside in some disorder. Hamilton and his comrade intercepted the soldiers and discovered that Afghans had attacked the soldiers’ signalling post and had overrun it. Furthermore, two British soldiers were missing. The officers sent two of the soldiers on their own ponies to raise the alarm and then drawing their revolvers began to climb the hillside followed by one of the remaining soldiers, who still had his rifle. Once the brow of the hill had been reached they found the post unoccupied and no sign of the enemy. Taking up discarded rifles, the trio loaded them, fixed bayonets and mounted guard in full expectation of a further Afghan attack.

They were finally relieved by a company from the 8th King’s Regiment complete with a signals officer. It was decided to pursue the enemy down the far side of the hill, but Hamilton in his weakened condition became separated from the pursuing party and came face-to-face with the Afghan raiding party. From behind a stout tree trunk Hamilton engaged the Afghans with his revolver, but the enemy began to outflank him. One of the party, ‘an old Mullah’ fired at Hamilton at point blank range with an ancient flintlock. Luckily for Hamilton it misfired and the Afghan was killed, probably by British soldiers attracted to the spot by the firing. The rest of the raiding party fled. Hamilton picked up the sword of the old warrior as a souvenir of the encounter.

This incident in itself was a minor scrimmage of Victorian colonial warfare, but was to be important to Hamilton and his career. There was not only talk of Hamilton receiving a decoration for his actions, but also Major-General Roberts sent for him, gave him a glass of sherry and then asked for a first hand report. Hamilton considered this to have been a turning point in his career as not only did Roberts show him great kindness, but two and a half years later appointed Hamilton to his Staff. The immediate result of Hamilton’s heroism was that he was gazetted ADC to Brigadier General ‘Redan’ Massy, a veteran of the Crimean War and who by 1879 commanded the Cavalry Brigade of the British force which had invaded Afghanistan. He was shortly to take command of the entire force when Roberts left Afghanistan for a conference with the Viceroy of India, who governed India on the behalf of his monarch, Queen Victoria.

The Times informed its readers that the war in Afghanistan was over and that ‘the campaign was marked by no decisive actions, by no brilliant feat of arms. There were no disasters like Isandlana [sic], and no heroic episodes like Rorke’s Drift to appeal to the passions of the multitude.’¹³ These were obvious references to actions fought during the recent Zulu War which had indeed caught the public imagination, even if they had to wait for several weeks before news of that war was received. However, The Times was wrong about the Afghan War as even if it proved too boring to report regularly, events were about to take a tragic turn.

Fighting broke out once more between the British and Afghans following the massacre by Afghans of the entire British Mission including the British Military Commander, Major Cavagnari in Kabul. Roberts hurried back to take charge at Alikhel while Hamilton’s new boss, Brigadier General Massey, seized the Shutargardun Pass which commanded the route to Kabul, fifty miles distant. The advance into Afghanistan began once more on 30 September 1879 and by 13 October 1879 Roberts made his formal entrance into Kabul. Despite being an infantry officer, Hamilton, as a result of being ADC to Massey, spent the campaign with the cavalry while the Gordons fought a most distinctive campaign, but he regretted nothing.

After this stage of the campaign in Afghanistan, Hamilton sought to rejoin the Gordons but had another bout of malaria and was forced to recover at Rawalpindi. Whilst he was ill he missed the winter campaign as the Afghans rose up against the British once more. Finally, after passing a medical, he was able to return to active service. Hamilton then had a frustrating time travelling around India trying to catch up with his regiment. He finally caught up with it just in time for the Battle of Kandahar, on 1 September 1880. Hamilton said of that day that he had arrived ‘early enough to have been shot, but too late for the distinction of the Kandahar Star’. He had to be content with a medal, two clasps and two mentions in despatches.¹⁴

After the Second Afghan War (1878–80) the Gordons were ordered to return to the UK. Before the regiment had even left India it received orders to embark for Natal in Southern Africa. This embarkation was necessary as the British, during 1880, had sought to annexe the territory of Transvaal, occupied by farmers of Dutch descent known as Boers. The Boers revolted and stood their ground and fighting broke out which turned into irregular warfare. The Boers were not professional soldiers but knew their country well. In addition, they were skilled riflemen who used large bore game rifles and they swiftly inflicted a series of defeats on the British Army in Southern Africa. The transfer of Hamilton and his comrades to Natal was also the result of a ploy by them, as they cabled Sir Evelyn Wood, the recently appointed Second-in-Command (2-i-C) to General Sir George Cooley, Governor and Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C), Natal Province, to the effect that subalterns from 92nd Highlanders from a ‘splendid battalion’ were eager to see service nearer Natal than England and requested to be sent to South Africa. Their wish was granted and The Times reported that Lieutenant I.S.M. Hamilton and other officers of the 92nd Highlanders were en route to the Front, having come from India and disembarked at Durban on 29 January 1881.¹⁵

Service in the First Boer War was to cost Hamilton dear, as it is not unreasonable to consider that like many Victorian military officers he probably thought that the war with the Boers would not be a great challenge beyond firing a few shots, planting the Union flag and carrying on home to the UK. He was wrong. The Boers were considerable guerrilla fighters even if they had never trained to be so. It was the Boer way of life which had unconsciously prepared them for this; living in the saddle, shooting since they were children and knowing their environment and the ways of the South African Bush; the ‘Veldt.’

The evening of 26 February 1881 found Hamilton on a night march heading towards a steep sided hill which was in fact an extinct volcano called Majuba. The small force with which he was marching was a mixture of infantry and a company of sailors from the Royal Naval Division (RND). The appearance of sailors on the South African veldt some consider to have been the intrusion of politics onto the battlefield – it was all about sharing glory.¹⁶ It was not the last time that Hamilton was to serve alongside a Naval Division.

Hamilton’s force moved onto the Majuba under the cover of darkness. They discovered that it was extremely steep sided, as their ascent was at times made only by crawling on their hands and knees, pulling themselves up using tussocks of the long grass which grew there. It was not until first light that the British began to appreciate their position, but still had not realized the peril in which they had placed themselves.

From their position on the hill the British could see many Boers, who were unaware of the British presence until they were fired on. The British made several mistakes in their seizure of Majuba Hill. Their biggest mistake was not digging in their position or reinforcing it, despite the picks and shovels which they had taken with them. It is also probable that Major General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, the British Commander on the Majuba, thought that the Boers would be overawed by the British presence on the heights and withdraw. He certainly had not anticipated that they would attack his position from below.

The Boers attacked the British, swarming up in small groups using the tall grass as cover while panic set in amongst the defending British. At one point in the fighting, thirteen out of eighteen of Hamilton’s men had either been killed or wounded. Hamilton had had several close shaves as he dashed from his position to the HQ on the hill. His kilt and coat had been slashed several times by bullets. Once the Boers got to the rim of the Majuba they fired straight into it. As Hamilton was trying to organize a counterattack he was wounded; shot through the wrist. At this point he realized that the British line had given way; Colley shouted orders to hold the rear ridge of the volcano’s crater, the direction in which the British were running. Despite his shattered wrist, Hamilton, under heavy fire, ran towards the ridge and just about reached it. Once more a bullet had cut his coat and another had grazed his knee. The Boer fire was murderous and relentless. Then Hamilton was hit by something at the back of his head and fell unconscious.

After a couple more encounters with the Boers in which Hamilton not only lost his sword, a Claymore given to him by his father, Hamilton, he dragged himself into the shade of a thorn bush on the ledge below the crest from which he had fallen, and was nearly murdered by a young Boer fighter, out collecting cartridges. The young man clearly saw that Hamilton was wounded and defenceless, but still would have shot him but for an old Boer gently pulling the young man’s rifle to one side and so preventing murder. The Boers treated his wounds, but did not bring water for the wounded. Hamilton, wounded as he was, set out for water to bring back, but lost his way and collapsed. He never expected to rise again. The next morning he was found in a pitiful state by a British search party. The harrowing experience of Majuba Hill no doubt made an everlasting impression on Hamilton. Its fiasco raised concerns of how British troops fought and how they were led. Indeed, the British defeat in South Africa was reported by The Times as a tragedy. The death of Hamilton’s Commander, Major General Colley was reported, killed at Majuba. Hamilton was reported as being amongst the wounded, even if he was recorded as Lieutenant ‘J’.S. Monteith Hamilton. This error was amended on 3 March 1881 and he was reported as doing well on 19 March 1881.¹⁷ The slip was a simple mistake to make as Hamilton was known to his closest friends as ‘Johnnie’ – ‘Ian’ being the Scots version of ‘John’ and considered quite exotic for Victorian tastes. Later, letters from the Commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) serving at Gallipoli, Major-General Sir William Birdwood, in correspondence with Hamilton after 1915 always began with the salutation ‘Dear General Johnny.’¹⁸

Once Hamilton was fit to travel, his brother, Vereker, who over a four-month period had looked after him, took him back to the UK. Once back home, Hamilton consulted the great Joseph Lister, who carefully examined Hamilton’s ruined hand and then suddenly seized it, causing Hamilton to faint from the resulting pain. Lister strongly agreed with the military surgeons at Newcastle, South Africa, who had suggested that the hand should be amputated, remarking ‘save you a lot of trouble, my boy – chloroform and fees.’¹⁹ However, the hand remained intact for the remainder of Hamilton’s life, neatly manicured but useless. Meanwhile, Hamilton railed in vain against the armistice concluded between the British Government and the Boers. Hamilton considered that the arrival in South Africa of reinforcements meant that the British could have defeated the Boers.²⁰

Hamilton’s actions in South Africa furthered his career, even if his wound threatened to end it. He was recommended for the Victoria Cross for his services at Majuba, but it was decided that he was too young and that there would be amble opportunity in his career to have another chance to win the VC, the highest award for gallantry while serving in the British armed services. Ironically, the next time he was recommended for a Victoria Cross it was considered that he was too old and too senior for the award. Hamilton was also feted by polite British society and during August 1881 dined with Queen Victoria. He was granted a private audience with his monarch during which he gave her an account of the fighting on Majuba. Elsewhere he was received as the gallant young hero, home from the wars, and then in the autumn he began cramming for the next Staff College examination. Within a few days of the exam, Roberts, now C-in-C at Madras offered to make Hamilton his ADC and so he went to India for the next twenty years.

If the fighting in Afghanistan and South Africa introduced Hamilton to the realities of war, the next twenty years of service in India taught him maturity as he learnt how to deal with the routine administration which keeps an army going rather than just fighting wars. In February 1882 Hamilton was promoted to the rank of Captain, but did not arrive to take up this promotion and his new post in India until June of the same year.

In 1887 Hamilton married Jean Muir, the daughter of a Glasgow businessman. Hamilton’s life became a mixture of work and leisure, especially literary pursuits, but changes in the administration of the British military owing to the Cardwell Reforms were beginning to make their mark, even out in distant India.

The Cardwell Reforms were not universally welcomed and Hamilton’s mentor and sponsor, Roberts, openly condemned them, especially the system for short service. This was prior to the system of democratic civil-military relations which demands that serving military personnel, notably NATO members, abstain from publically commentating on contemporary political issues and serve only in an advisory role to their elected political masters. However, in the 1880s there was no such obstacle and Roberts wrote several articles in the influential journal XIX Century. In Roberts’ opinion the way to modernize the British Army and to make it more effective was to promote long-term enlistment as well as an improvement in the social status of the ordinary soldier. Basically, he wanted to promote the Army as a career choice rather than something which was slightly better than the workhouse.

Equally, Roberts was against conscription. This was used extensively across the European mainland. The Europeans used conscription as a method for building up a trained military force while the British considered that there was something unsound about this and considered it to be ‘un-British’. The average Briton then and today wanted the state to have as little interference as possible in their life; conscription clearly would have been a major interference. Roberts was convinced that if his ideas were acted on, they would make the Army an attractive career choice and would attract recruits. Hamilton was heavily influenced by Roberts and learnt much from him. Indeed while fighting at Gallipoli, Hamilton, in letters home to his wife, Lady Hamilton, still found time to rail against short term service and the spectre of conscription which was yet to come to the UK in 1915 but was introduced in 1916. Hamilton often denounced conscription as being ‘un-British’.²¹

At times Hamilton’s notions of being British seem to be at odds with reality and it would seem that he considered that being British meant being like him – in other words from the so-called ‘upper classes’. His 1911 study of the question of conscription in the UK rather reveals that in the terms of British society, he is rather out of touch. At the level of international politics he is extremely accurate as he noted that unlike most of the European states and Empires, the British Empire was large overseas; furthermore the British homeland frontiers were not land but sea. Therefore a strong navy was needed to protect British interests at home and overseas.²² Regarding the Army, Hamilton genuinely feared that conscription would weaken it, but he was also willing to take advantage of the unfairness and unemployment widely found in the British work market prior to the First World War.

Hamilton had clearly examined work patterns in the UK and had noticed that most recruits joining the British Army were about eighteen to nineteen years of age who could not find regular employment once they ceased being ‘boys’ in the workplace and so could command an increased wage. This meant that employers were unlikely to employ them, especially unskilled workers, and instead employed young boys who could do similar work but at a lesser salary. Hamilton claimed that about eighty per cent of recruits joined the Army as they could not find work at fifteen shillings (75 pence) a week, which was half of what a labourer might have expected to earn at that time. Following the introduction of the Workmen’s Compensation Act in 1906 Hamilton also noticed that recruitment also increased as employers become even more reluctant to employ seventeen to eighteen year-old men in case they were subject to a compensation claim owing to this new legislation. Hamilton clearly saw the unfairness and irregular practices of the workplace as great sources of recruitment and warned once more against conscription. He wrote that if ‘hungry hobbledehoys’ knew that they would be conscripted with ‘continuous housing and feeding during the winter, the Regular Army would begin to shrivel up from the roots’.²³ Clearly Hamilton knew no charity for most of his countrymen and only saw them as the undeserving poor, to be shorn of any aid that they might have received and revealing that the best recruiting sergeants are unemployment, hunger and homelessness. This is a theme discussed by Chris Bellamy when he considers the future of the Gurkhas and that of the British Army. He noted that