Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

9 Introduction; It’s runs that count his inspiration as the personification of resilient discipline and stoical demeanour. For whatever obscure reason, the poem had a long-standing popularity in Canada – and Sir Henry found it something of ‘a millstone’ round his neck, so frequently was it quoted. The engagement in question was the 1885 Battle of Abu Klea in Sudan at a meander in the River Nile north of Khartoum. The Camel Corps, part of the force led by Major General Sir Herbert Stewart to relieve that city and, vainly, rescue General Gordon, were confronted by a host of the Mahdi’s Dervishes. Some 3000 of them attacked the square formed of 1400 British troops. In fact, the square was not broken although it was decidedly dented, with the loss of 71 killed and 64 wounded. The colonel – Colonel Frederick Burnaby – was killed, but military purists insist the gun that ‘jammed’ was a Gardner, not a Gattling machine gun. The battle is regarded as a victory in British military records. Sir Henry Newbolt uses his poem to underpin a triple lesson. The public school taught leadership suffused with valour and honour. It did so in preparation of its pupils for selfless service on behalf of the nation, with heroism in the army on colonial duty a kind of dual example. It chose sport as its chief curricular device – and cricket was the paramount game. From Tom Brown’s Schooldays onwards and, for roughly a century, the predominating staple of reading for young people was a rich diet of boarding school tales, full of sporting adventures, many of them of a cricketing kind, all of them carrying Sir Henry’s message of resolute bravery and unyielding candour. His sometimes forgotten third verse, with its ‘torch of flame’ as the veritable ‘Lamp of Life’, aptly summarises his intent. He promulgates, in effect, a religious code for life, one that, even at the end, one endeavours to pass on to those who follow. Henry Newbolt’s second-best known poem, Drake’s Drum , references the legend that the naval hero promised to return from the dead should his drum be beaten in the hour of English peril. It, too, is resonant of resolution under dire threat. Its last four lines read: