Light Cavalry Action: A gripping military thriller of combat and the courtroom

By Max Hennessy

A military hero? Or a traitor to his comrades and his country? A gripping thriller full of suspense and intrigue, from master author Max Hennessy.

When, in 1939, a letter cast doubts on the military reputation of a man likely to become Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force if war with Germany should be declared, he had no alternative but to bring the matter to court.

The case took the judge, the jury and a fascinated public back to a day in the winter of 1919 when British troops, in action against Bolshevik forces in South Russia, made the last charge of British horsed cavalry. Their commander was Lieutenant General Henry Prideaux: for this, ‘the Balaclava of the Russian Civil War’, he won the D.S.O. and made his name.

But justifiably? ‘The truth,’ one of his subordinates in the action had written, 'is that before – and after – the action at Dankoi, when it came to leading and giving orders, Colonel Prideaux was noticeably not among those present.’

A scintillating story of deceit, conflict and the final days of British cavalry might, this is Max Hennessy at his very best, perfect for fans of Alistair MacLean, John Grisham and A Few Good Men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Action
• Release date: Jul 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800324824

Max Hennessy

Max Hennessy was the pen-name of John Harris. He had a wide variety of jobs from sailor to cartoonist and became a highly inventive, versatile writer. In addition to crime fiction, Hennessy was a master of the war novel and drew heavily on his experiences in both the navy and air force, serving in the Second World War. His novels reflect the reality of war mixed with a heavy dose of conflict and adventure.

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Author’s Note

I have to apologise for a little deviation from court procedure. Normally, there would be a great deal of repetition of evidence as corroboration, but I have chosen to tell the story exactly as it would have happened, and have therefore done away with overlapping corroborative evidence.

Part One

1

Prologue

July 24th, 1939

law report

high court of justice, king’s bench division

prideaux v higgins and others

before mr. justice Godliman

The morning paper headline was as stark as the weather, which was dry and unusually bleak for late July. Outside the club the breeze was moving the dust about the pavements and there was a chill over London that didn’t come entirely from the grey skies and the dry wind.

Willie Potter lit a cigarette and glanced at the door of the reading room, then he sighed and returned to his paper. He was a tall man and still slender, as though he’d been lanky in his youth. His features were good but his eyes and hair and skin were pale enough to make him look as though he’d been badly washed, so that somehow the colour had run out of him. Yet, in spite of his length and thinness, in spite of a general deceptive colourlessness, there was a surprising look of firmness about him – a curious resilience almost – and a mild good humour, which appeared to have enabled him to withstand most of the shocks that had come his way, without much apparent effect.

He glanced round at the door again. There was an old man sleeping in one of the corner armchairs, his head slipped sideways, whom Potter recognised as one of the country’s leading industrialists, but no one else in the room. He turned back to his paper, staring at the headline, and drew a deep breath as he forced himself to start at the main news page and read the International news first.

polish crisis – hitler’s new move – war warning by germany

The megalomaniac upstart on the Continent was on the move again, ranting another of his incessant demands, and companies and squadrons and battalions of brainwashed young men were raising their hands among the long red banners and shouting their ‘Sieg Heils’ like a people in a dream. The blazing-eyed dictator with his fringe of dank forelock was determined to run the whole show in Europe and obviously intended to stop at nothing to do it, and the Germans were rattling their swords once more so that the icy gales were blowing across the frontiers from exactly the same draughty passes as they had twice before already in the last seventy years.

Potter lit a cigarette quickly, sickened by what he read. He had served through the Kaiser’s War, and for relief from the everlasting depression of the International scene of 1939, his eye travelled down the page. The holiday period at home was producing no surprises, he noticed. Surrey were doing badly. There were the usual complaints about the summer weather, and the British and the Japanese were facing each other with bared teeth at Hong Kong. Then, as though his eyes were drawn by a magnet by a single word, his gaze followed the column down the page to a paragraph below, headed ‘Dankoi Libel Action.’ Dankoi! – the word blazed like a torch. ‘General’s Suit Against Former Subordinate’, ran the subsidiary headlines. ‘Case Follows Letter To Magazine.’

Potter shifted restlessly in his chair. ‘A twenty-year-old cavalry charge,’ he read, ‘will be re-fought in the Law Courts tomorrow when the evidence will be heard of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Prideaux, d.s.o., in the libel action brought by him against his former subordinate, Major George Phelps Higgins. The case opens before Mr. Justice Godliman, Sir Gordon Kirkham appearing for the plaintiff and Mr. Patrick Moyalan for the defendants. Counsel will be certain to reach back in history to the day in the winter of 1919 when British troops, in action against Bolshevik forces during the Civil War in South Russia, took part in the last charge of British horsed cavalry. The action, at Dankoi, near Nikolovssk, has become accepted in cavalry text books as one of the most glorious feats in the history of British arms and is known as the Balaclava of the Russian Civil War.’

As he lowered the paper, Potter noticed a small man standing alongside him, quiet, unspeaking, almost like a shadow.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. He sat up and indicated the story he’d been reading. ‘You ever hear it referred to as the Balaclava of the Russian Civil War?’ he asked.

The other man, slightly built and with a lined anonymous pale face that seemed to be full of suffering, shook his head and smiled.

‘How about One of the most glorious feats in the history of British arms. Ever seem like that to you?’

‘Not really.’

‘There’s a piece on one of the middle pages by Murray-Hughes, our Berlin correspondent, who was present at the action!’

‘Can he do that?’ the small man asked, gesturing. ‘Make comments when it’s still sub judice?’

Potter rubbed his nose. ‘It’s a quote,’ he said. ‘From one of his books. Bare facts, and a piece about Prideaux. Career, mostly. It’s safe.’

‘He’ll be called as a witness, won’t he?’

‘Of course.’

‘For Prideaux?’

‘He was always Prideaux’s man.’

The newspaper rattled as Potter fought against the awkward sheets.

‘Seen this?’ he asked. ‘At the bottom. Late news they’ve tagged on the end. British Army Appointments. New Posts For Leading Generals. Prideaux’s being suggested again as possible c.-in-c., b.e.f., in the event of trouble.’

‘He’ll not get it.’

‘Think not?’

The small man shrugged. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘It mustn’t ever be allowed to happen again.’

Potter rose. ‘Whichever way it goes,’ he said in a flat voice, ‘it ought to make a difference.’

They left the reading room. Potter picked up his hat and umbrella from the porter’s desk and slipped a shilling into the hand of the cloakroom attendant alongside.

‘What would you do?’ he asked the small man. ‘If it came to another show-down. With the Germans, I mean.’

The small man shook his head. ‘I’d be over age,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’d stay at home and run the farm. Fortunately the boys are too young.’

Potter looked grave. ‘I was too young when the last one started,’ he pointed out. ‘But it caught me, all the same.’ The other nodded, faintly depressed, as they made their way to the door, then he turned, small, faded, curiously shadowy, his features nondescript in a way that made description difficult.

‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘You’re different. You’re not married.’

Potter seemed curiously more spineless than ever. ‘I’d be there,’ he said in an off-hand way. ‘Territorials are due for it from the first day. I’d not get out of it.’ He managed a grin that lit up his whole face and turned his colourless visage into one of surprising charm. ‘Don’t know that I’d want to, anyway. Half-colonel now. Could be a general by the end if things went right for me.’

The other man smiled again. ‘You’d probably be a good one, too, Willie,’ he said.

‘Just hope I’d be better than some I’ve seen,’ Potter said, his smile dying.

‘Yes.’ The small man nodded. ‘Better than that.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Shouldn’t we be on our way?’ he asked.

Potter nodded and spoke to the porter. ‘Get me a taxi, please, Fred,’ he said, his politeness marked and pointed and strangely old-fashioned, and they stood in the draughty entrance while the porter disappeared, the small man silent and absorbed with his thoughts. Potter remained strangely nonchalant, so that he gave the impression that whatever disaster came upon him he’d still be gravely normal, untouched, and buoyed up by a mild sense of humour that would give enormous strength to his boneless appearance.

He lifted the newspaper again, glancing down the columns. ‘See Surrey’s on the run,’ he commented, making conversation. ‘Not much of a score.’

He closed the paper as the taxi drew up, and folded it neatly. As he reached out for his briefcase, he glanced at the picture of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Prideaux on the main news page. It showed him going into the War Office, thickset, moustached, handsome and immaculate, his head down and his shoulders bunched so that he looked vaguely like a bull about to rush at a gate.

‘Always did look a bit like Haig,’ he observed.

His eyes travelled down the page to another picture, a single-column of a man in a fur cap, muffled against the weather. It was a poor picture, taken apparently in the middle of a snowstorm. Underneath it were the words, ‘Major Higgins in Russia.’

‘One of Murray-Hughes’ collection, I expect,’ he commented, an acid note of dislike in his voice. ‘Always was a rotten photographer.’

The porter waiting by the open taxi door coughed, reminding him that it was chilly outside in the wind, and Potter gave him one of his rare beaming smiles so that the porter returned it, reacting warmly in the way everyone seemed to react when Potter noticed them – as though eager to point out that, although it was cold, it didn’t really matter after all.

‘Coming now, Fred,’ Potter said. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

He tapped the picture of the man in the fur cap and tucked the folded paper under his arm. Then he turned to the small silent figure alongside him with the lined face of a martyr.

‘Not much like you, old man,’ he said.

2

Counsel for the defendant

The girl reading in the waiting room of Mr. Patrick Moyalan, k.c., rose as Potter and Higgins entered. Dressed in a neat blue suit, she was tall and dark with an angular, good-humoured face.

‘Mr. Potter,’ she said as she came towards them, ‘I’ve brought the file. I missed you at the office, so I thought I’d wait here.’

Potter’s face had changed to the warm alert look he seemed to reserve only for people he liked, and he took the file she offered him, introducing her to Higgins.

‘Meg Danielsson,’ he said. ‘My secretary. Proxy to all I do and guardian of my secrets.’

She smiled at Higgins as though Potter were a little mad, then turned again to Potter. ‘All you wanted on Prideaux’s in there,’ she said. ‘There’s a list of witnesses and a note on all the documents. By the way, MacAdoo telephoned from Southampton. He’ll be there.’

Potter opened the file as she turned towards the door.

‘I’ll be in the office if you want me,’ she said.

There was a brief silence as she disappeared, then Potter tucked the file under his arm and began to prowl round the room looking at the sporting prints on the walls.

Moyalan’s chambers were decorated in yellow and white and, inevitably, the room was knee-deep in copies of The Tatler, Illustrated London News, Country Life and Punch.

‘For the wealthier clients,’ Potter commented, poking at them disinterestedly with his umbrella. ‘Gets plenty. He’s good.’

‘So’s Kirkham,’ Higgins pointed out.

Potter shrugged. ‘Past his best,’ he said easily. ‘Won too many cases. Don’t think he always tries as hard as he ought – though he’ll give us a rough passage all right. Cousin of Prideaux’s, of course. Suppose that’s why they briefed him. Prideaux comes from a legal family, but it split somewhere along the line and one half went into the army. Besides, we’re before Godliman and he can’t be bullied.’

Higgins seemed unwilling to indulge in conversation, and Potter, his normal sunny temper damped a little, picked up a newspaper from the table. Inevitably, it was opened at the legal page. There at the top it was again.

prideaux v higgins and others.

It was understandable, he supposed. Everybody in London was going to be reading the case in the next few days. It had all the elementary requisites of good family reading. Scandal – there must be something very odd going on behind the scenes, the man in the street would inevitably think, and just at the moment, with Hitler on the rampage and likely to break out at any time, the army was in everybody’s thoughts. A hint of mystery – why in the name of God would an insignificant major start making accusations against a soldier of Prideaux’s standing, a soldier with the nickname of ‘Thruster’, a d.s.o. and the rank of lieutenant-general, a man who was being suggested as the leader of the b.e.f. – if it came to a b.e.f., and most people, in that late summer of 1939, had long since guessed that it would come to a b.e.f. eventually. The newspapers were going to lap it up.

Potter rubbed his nose, wondering what it would sound like, and if it would appear as it had twenty years before when he’d taken part in it all.

He glanced at Higgins. The other man seemed faintly nervous and ill-at-ease, but Potter wasn’t troubled much by that. Higgins had always seemed faintly nervous and ill-at-ease, but it had never turned out to be very real.

‘Suppose you heard what Danny said?’ he asked. ‘MacAdoo’s arrived from America.’

‘Good of him to come,’ Higgins commented in his non-committal way.

‘Felt he owed it to you.’

‘It’s still good of him.’

Potter gazed at Higgins. His blank anonymity puzzled him, as it always had. Somehow, Higgins had the shadowy character of a mirage. He was always there, somehow dominating the room with his silence, yet always vague enough not to be really noticeable.

He was still staring at him when Higgins looked up. Their eyes met and, faintly embarrassed, Potter made a show of putting down the newspaper.

‘Should think Moyalan’s glad he’s not leading off,’ he said quickly. ‘It’ll take Kirkham some time to give a clear picture of the set-up – all those tangled politics, revenge societies, Canadian disaffection. He’s got to make the jury know what it’s all about so they can understand the case.’

Higgins blinked. ‘Do you think Moyalan’s all right?’ he asked.

Potter nodded. ‘Good as they come,’ he said firmly. ‘Politically left of centre. Next Socialist attorney-general, if you ask me. No end crafty. If he’s got a plan, it’ll be a good one.’

---

As they became silent, Moyalan’s door opened and a clerk appeared.

‘Perhaps you’d like to come in now, gentlemen,’ he said as he ushered them through.

Moyalan was a small man, black-haired and dark-eyed and with a great deal of Irish charm when he troubled to turn it on. For the most part, however, the other side of the Irish was what showed most – that stubborn wilful energetic side that had enabled him to push himself up to his present position. He had a narrow, wedge-shaped face and pale blue eyes that seemed to burn in his head. His manner was crisp and quick, like a terrier’s, and, staring at him, Potter decided that he might well be sharp enough to knock a hole in Sir Gordon Kirkham’s more heavy-weight build-up.

‘I’m glad you came,’ he said as they shook hands and sat down. ‘I think we ought to discuss a few things.’

Potter placed on his desk the file Meg Danielsson had handed him. ‘Details you wanted,’ he said. ‘MacAdoo’s arrived, I’m told. We’ve got all our witnesses.’

Moyalan nodded. ‘That’s a help,’ he said.

He paused, pushing papers around on his desk, then he looked up at them, his face keen.

‘It would seem to me,’ he said, ‘from the evidence I have here which I hope the other side hasn’t got, that Prideaux’s rather rushed into this thing.’

‘Great one for going to law,’ Potter said and began to quote from memory. ‘Prideaux versus Anderson-Smith, 1923 – that case over his boundary. Prideaux versus Wilkinson Cement, 1927 – objection to nuisance when they wanted to build a chimney he was going to see from his house. Prideaux versus Alvanley, 1933 – his daughter’s breach of promise. Won, too. Every time. They salted young Alvanley for quite a bit.’

Moyalan looked up. ‘Don’t let them frighten us,’ he advised. ‘He’s been over-confident and I think the surest defence is not just a hysterical attack on everything he says, but a careful outline of all the facts we possess. I shall pick him up on points, of course, but I suspect he’ll have his answers ready after all these years. I’d rather let the story we have tell itself. Just as it happened. Ought to be more effective than protests.’

He peered intently at his notes, then he looked up. ‘Unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘it’s still only nine-tenths of the story. There’s another one-tenth that we haven’t yet accounted for – the most telling part of all. What was Prideaux thinking when it happened?’

Potter frowned. ‘We’ve got Freeman, the batman, if we need him.’

‘He wouldn’t know what made Prideaux’s mind work the way it did,’ Moyalan objected. ‘And that’s what we must bring out. Not merely what happened, but why it happened. There’s one man we haven’t found yet who could fill in the gaps.’

‘Cheltenham Charlie,’ Potter suggested.

Moyalan looked puzzled and Potter smiled.

‘Nickname,’ he explained. ‘Finch. Chap who came out with Prideaux. Chap who went home with him.’

Moyalan nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Finch. I’m still looking for this Major Finch.’

‘I heard he was promoted Colonel,’ Higgins said abruptly and they both stopped dead and looked at him – as though a shadow had appeared from the corner and spoken. It was strangely disconcerting and it was a moment or two before they went on.

Potter nodded after the pause. ‘Finch was the sort who would reach Colonel,’ he said.

Moyalan shrugged. ‘Colonel Finch then,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I must have Finch. Would he still be in the army?’

‘No.’ Higgins answered immediately. ‘He liked the easy life.’

Moyalan looked at Potter as though he, the outsider, might be able to give a more dispassionate opinion.

Potter nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘Stuck out a mile. Managed to keep out of France throughout the whole war. Ended up commanding some sort of resettlement camp for wounded officers in Cheltenham. God only knows why he volunteered for Russia.’

Higgins cleared his throat and the sound seemed harsh and intrusive.

‘Do you think we shall win?’ he asked.

Moyalan managed a twisted smile. ‘Litigation’s a funny thing,’ he said. ‘The unexpected can always happen, as General Prideaux might discover. I suspect that he feels, like Kirkham and probably ninety-nine per cent of the people who’ve read of the case in the papers, that we haven’t a chance. But perhaps Prideaux’s being over-confident. I hear he’s already said he’s going to offer his damages to Service charities.’

His eyes flashed and he gave a thin smile so that he looked less like a lawyer than a poacher for a second. ‘Let him win them first,’ he ended.

3

Counsel for the plaintiff

The dust was rustling along the pavement as the taxi deposited Potter and Higgins outside the Law Courts next morning. There was an unexpected patch of blue sky over towards Waterloo Bridge, but the sham-ecclesiastic Gothic of the Royal Courts of Justice was still sombre and shadowed.

Just ahead of them another taxi had drawn up and, as they descended, they saw the crowds which had gathered for a glance at the participants, in what promised to be the case of the year, begin to move forward.

‘It’s Prideaux,’ Potter said quietly.

In brief glimpses as he moved forward, they saw the heavily-built man in the dark suit and bowler hat among the crowd, and there was a suggestion of a murmur which grew into a cheer.

‘Thank God he’s not in uniform,’ Higgins said.

Potter smiled. ‘Would be if Kirkham could fix it,’ he said. ‘Straight from the War Office. Business of the nation. Bound to impress the jury – especially with things as they are.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Be worth a point or two with all that red and all those ribbons he wears.’

Prideaux was giving a careless salute now as he walked up the steps, acknowledging the reception, and the crowd turned away as he disappeared. A few people peered at Higgins as he pushed between them, but no one seemed to associate him with the case, and they swung away without a second glance.

There was a smell of age about the gloomy corridors inside that seemed to permeate everything. It seemed to be brought on the draughts that were set up by the breeze outside, out of the shadowy recesses where counsel’s rooms were, down to the main hall. It seemed to be carried up the grey stairs, their worn steps smelling faintly of carbolic from their last scrubbing, into the court where Mr. Justice Godliman was taking his seat and the ushers were still calling out ‘Prideaux versus Higgins and others, Prideaux versus Higgins and others!’

A messenger was sent hurrying to the basement to have the heating turned up a little and another was sent off with a flea in his ear to shut some windows, as the old man in the scarlet robes shuffled himself to comfort and arranged his notebook and pencils alongside him.

At their bench, counsel were untying the tapes of their briefs and arranging their papers, and in the press box the newspapermen sat up, waiting for what they all knew was going to be a most promising story. That their judgment was correct was proved by the number of fashionable women in the public gallery. Ascot and Epsom were over and it was too early for the St. Leger. It promised to be the show of the season, a perfect subject for the evening’s cocktail parties, and a pleasant change from the gloomy news from the Continent and the aggressiveness of Hitler.

Potter, clutching his brief case and sitting with Higgins, looked across to where the plaintiff, General Prideaux, was waiting just behind counsel.

He was trying, Potter decided, to appear absorbed and concerned, but all he was managing was to look as though he were faintly irritated at having been called from his office, and annoyed at having, in these momentous days of planning for the inevitable German aggression, to waste time winning a libel action that obviously couldn’t be lost.

He was probably not far wrong on that score, Potter decided. It was going to need a pretty stiff defence to count against his reputation. Prideaux’s face was too often in the newspapers, a fact which would have the effect of prejudicing even the best of juries in his favour; and the letters he used after his name were enough in themselves to tip the balance. Everybody loved a hero and, to the man in the street, Prideaux was just such an individual.

Abruptly, almost unexpectedly, the judge began to speak and it dawned on Potter with surprise that the case had started.

‘I am advised,’ Godliman was saying over the rail of his desk, ‘that this case is likely to last some time and I will listen to any application by any member of the jury who is likely to suffer exceptional hardship by reason of its duration. Exceptional hardship would include, of course, a man running a business which would have to close down in his absence, or a lady looking after children or sick or elderly relatives.’

He looked over his spectacles at the jury, a small man with a brown wrinkled face like an old walnut, and Potter found it hard to believe that in his youth he had been a brilliant horseman who had once come close to winning the Grand National.

The jury fidgeted and glanced at each other as he spoke – a collection of nameless, faceless people who, by their collective powers of reasoning, were to decide the result of the case. Potter scanned them carefully, looking for any who might have the personality to sway the others. For the most part, he decided, they were pretty nondescript. There was one white-haired, white-moustached man of around sixty who looked as though he could have been a senior officer in the army at some time – one up for Prideaux, he thought – but at the other end of the row there was another man with a battered square face and what looked like a scar on his chin. Ex-ranker, Potter decided – one up for Higgins, unless, of course, he was an ex-sergeant-major, in which case he would be more likely to come down hard on the side of military discipline in the person of Prideaux instead of anarchy in the person of Higgins.

The judge was speaking again, a small figure against dark green curtains. ‘This case,’ he was saying, ‘concerns the period of civil war in Russia that followed the Great War of 1914–1918, and owing to the inflamed feelings of the time, if anyone has any strong political beliefs, I would be glad if he or she would say so.’ Again no one spoke and the judge nodded to Prideaux’s counsel to open the case.

Sir Gordon Kirkham was a stout man with heavy eyebrows and a chin that swept down to his chest apparently without the intervention of a neck. He seemed enormous to Potter as he stood in front of his papers, surrounded by junior counsel, both hands clutching his gown at the chest and rocking back and forth on his heels as he spoke, easily and indifferently, like an actor at a first rehearsal, as though he were holding himself in check and reserving the histrionics for later in the case. He was speaking in the rich resonant voice which had won him so many cases in the past and, with the facts as they were, gave him a good chance of winning this one. He was known to be rude, arrogant, overbearing and ruthless, and had a reputation for browbeating a court into giving him the verdict he wanted.

‘At the end of November last year,’ he was saying, ‘just after the crisis that sent the Prime Minister to Munich – in the news magazine, Comment, there appeared a series of articles on British generals. The international climate being what it was in that year of grace, 1938, and indeed what it still unhappily remains, it has become normal for magazines and newspapers to study military form rather as if they were discussing the runners at Ascot.’

There was a faint titter from the gallery, and one or two members of the jury smiled, then Godliman looked