In recent years it has been realised by the official historians of the Legion of Frontiersmen that it is unwise to accept many stories told or written by old Frontiersmen as the unvarnished truth. In addition to tales about their own adventures, Frontiersmen were often involved in propaganda stories. The most recent problem has been to sort out the truth of the story of the Manchester Frontiersmen who served with the 3rd Belgian Lancers in 1914 early in the First War. The result of this can be seen on our recently revised page on the First World War on this site. Frontiersmen stories can vary from the truth all the way through exaggeration via propaganda to downright fabrication. In the past we have covered such men as Collier-Gates, allegedly the most decorated man in the Legion. He was a most charming and helpful man to fellow Frontiersmen, but one who had no claim to most of the medals he wore. In some cases, such as John Boyes, there is absolutely no way of verifying his claimed adventures as those allegedly happened deep in the African bush miles from any other westerner. There is a link between many of the tellers of tall tales in that a majority had usually spent time on the African continent, not only fighting in South Africa, but also wandering its vast expanses. Writing from his own experiences in what was then Rhodesia, John Buchan said …England now and then sent us some highly-coloured gentry. The country was still in many people’s minds a no-man’s-land, where the King’s writ did not run, and in any case it was a jumping-off ground for all the wilds of the North.¹ In his “Forty Years in Africa”, Major Tudor Trevor quoted A.W. Lloyd, later a Captain in the 25th Battalion Royal Fusiliers (Frontiersmen). For many years Lloyd worked as …the popular parliamentary caricaturist to ‘Punch’. Lloyd had been …the historical caricaturist of South Africa in Lord Milner’s days, [who] once said in the Rand Club, “You don’t need to be a caricaturist in this country, every man is a caricature. You only need to be a photographer.” It is quite true.² The late Victorian and Edwardian eras were times when men of reasonably affluent birth, often public-school educated, and whom we might describe as “third sons” went off to see the world and try and earn the fortune denied to them by not being one of the elder sons. There was for them no thought of a comfortable 9 to 5 job followed by a quiet retirement; they wished to live life to the full and if they died young, that was the way of the world. These then were often our early Frontiersmen, a band of like-minded men with whom they could empathise, could exchange “camp-fire yarns”, and whose traditional greeting to each other was “Come n’have a drink”.

The stories they told in the early Legion days of German spies and of revolution in some far off country may have at times owed more to fantasy that fact, but the Frontiersmen were noticed and their stories often believed, none more so than those of William Le Queux. Le Queux’s sensational “The Invasion of 1910” first appeared in 1906 as a serial in the “Daily Mail” and was heavily promoted by them, later appearing as a book. The Legion of Frontiersmen, of which Le Queux was a prominent early member, believed Le Queux’s warnings. In fact Frontiersmen appeared in “The Invasion of 1910” several times as examples of brave patriots ready to sacrifice their lives for King and Country, being referred to as “…that splendid corps, the Legion of Frontiersmen”³ also, “…the daring actions of the ‘Frontiersmen’”⁴ Already smarting from the unintended way the Legion mis-interpreted their badly-worded letter of February 1906, which the Legion incorrectly took as granting official recognition, the War Office found some of the “German spy stories” passed to them irritating. However Vernon Kell who in 1909 became the head of the newly founded Secret Service Bureau, in 1910 found the activities of the Frontiersmen of interest: I saw L at the officers on his return from the East Coast where he had been trying to get in touch with some of the Legion of Frontiersmen…I will enter them among my likely agents.⁵ The east coast was the home of the very active Maritime Division of the Legion and included Erskine Childrers whose “Riddle of the Sands” had made such an impact and also the influential E.G. Pretyman, M.P.. Kell also commented that: The first commandant of the London Command of the Legion of Frontiersmen was almost certainly in the secret service of Germany and therefore had to be got rid of. His report contained a note in the border “Who is this?” Of course this was de Hora whose stories we now know were far more fantasy than fact.⁶

Several Frontiersmen involved themselves in revolution in Morocco in 1909, mainly as reporters but possibly closer than that. Certainly “Kaid” Belton acted as a general for the rebel leader. As the British and the French supported the other man, who initially lost power, their behaviour was not popular with the British authorities. The only reasonably clear account of events is to be found as background to a rather steamy work of romantic fiction from 1911, “City of Shadows” by Charles Beadle. Hugh Pollard and Alan Ostler were apparently present at the time. They were the two men mainly responsible, how officially it is not known, for the ‘Phantom Russian Army’ story from the beginning of the War in 1914. This is the first known case of a Frontiersmen tall story becoming propaganda. Pollard certainly served in Intelligence during the First War, although his life story is one of considerable mystery. He told more about his adventures to his friends than he did to his family. The Legion Founder, Roger Pocock, served for a brief time late in 1917 in MI7 (b) and recorded in his diary that one of those also serving in MI7 when he made his farewells on being transferred to the RAF was Hugh Pollard. It seems that several Frontiersmen or past Frontiersmen were involved in MI7. Capt A J Dawson had been a contributor to The Frontiersman’s Pocket Book although, as a keen supporter of National Service, his views were opposed to Driscoll’s. Driscoll gave a number of speeches before the First War commending voluntary service. Ostler travelled widely in North Africa and in 1911 was expelled from Morocco. He was commissioned in the R.F.A. and served in Gallipoli until invalided home with typhoid fever. Upon recovering he was posted to France where he was wounded in the left arm and left eye. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an observer and was killed in action in 1918. Like many early Frontiersmen his was a short but adventurous life.

Pollard and Ostler’s invention that a Russian army of 72,000 men had left Archangel and landed in Aberdeen on the night of August 27th to be conveyed on special trains to Harwich, Grimsby and Dover and thence to Ostend found its way into many London newspapers. A report that 250,000 Russians had reached the Western Front appeared in the Rome newspaper “Tribuna”. It even made the front page of the “New York Times”.⁷ Pollard personally thought up the charwoman who “knew it was them Roosians” because she had swept the snow from their boots from the railway carriages.⁸ This has to be considered to be one of the cleverest propaganda stories of all time as it was taken up by newspapers in so many countries and all over Britain. There has never been any rumour like it, wrote A.G. Garner in his 1915 book “The War Lords”. He devoted seven pages to discussing a rumour that swept the country from John o’Groats to Land’s End. Over the years the story has been discussed in many books. Lady Olave Baden-Powell in her autobiography wrote that: I solemnly recorded in my diary that Russian troops had been seen going through Scotland to Belgium. So rife was this rumour that when staying in Perthshire that week, I hurried down to the station to watch for them on the trains.⁹

“At Carlisle the Russians called for vodka, at Rugby they drank all the coffee, at Durham they jammed roubles in station slot-machines, in East London they threw their useless coins to children. Euston Station was said to have been closed for thirty-six hours while the Czar’s myrmidons detrained. No town liked to be left out of the saga. A landlady at Crewe had four Russians billeted on her and was unable to satisfy their fierce Slav appetites.¹⁰

All the time and also through following years, Hugh Pollard said nothing, other than to Roger Pocock and to a few Frontiersmen friends. An interesting aside is that Churchill wrote to Kitchener on August 28th saying that it “would probably be easy” to ship Russian troops from Archangel to Ostend, where two army corps could make an effective intervention. How much did Churchill know of Pollard and Ostler’s story? However no further mentions have apparently been found in Churchill’s other writings. Pollard’s other notable propaganda story from later in the War in 1917 was an unpleasant one, but one that was still believed by many, that the Germans were melting down corpses to make margarine.¹¹

Truth, fantasy or propaganda? It is a painstaking task to unravel Frontiersmen stories and decide what heading to use to file them. Others may prefer the exciting Frontiersmen myths but, as can be seen also from the revised First War page on Belgium, this website is where the truth is discovered and told. Other than the erroneous claim that has constantly surfaced over the past hundred years that the Legion was “officially recognised” in February 1906, there are many other myths and claims. Some are easily seen by historians as ignorant. An example of this is the claim that the 25th Battalion Royal Fusiliers (Frontiersmen) were awarded Battle Honours for their service in East Africa. Any military historian knows that Battle Honours are awarded to Regiments, in this case the Royal Fusiliers, and not to individual Battalions. This has not stopped the assertion by agencies claiming Frontiersmen links appearing – even adding some imaginary and imaginative extra Battle Honours. If anyone has any questions regarding stories attached to the Legion of Frontiersmen, please contact any of the five historians connected to this website where the truth, as far as we know it, is always told.

Notes:

¹ John Buchan, Island of Sheep, 30
² Major Tudor G. Trevor, Forty Years in Africa,136
³ William Le Queux, The Invasion of 1910, 289
⁴ William Le Queux, The Invasion of 1910, 335
⁵ BNA, KV14
⁶ The story of de Hora, his life, adventures and fantasies is to be found in the excellent de Hora: a man of many places & many names by Bruce G. Fuller, obtainable from the author via fenreach@ihug.nz
⁷ New York Times, front page September 4th 1914. More details appeared in the same paper of September 5th. This quoted several passengers who had sailed from Liverpool on the White Star liner Cedric on August 27th. One said that he had found Liverpool “…in a state of excitement over the passage through England of Russian troops”.
⁸ Geoffrey A Pocock, One Hundred Years of the Legion of Frontiersmen, 49/50 has the full Legion account of the propaganda story.
⁹ Olave Baden-Powell, Window on my Heart, 100
¹⁰ E.S. Turner, Dear Old Blighty, 53
¹¹ Pocock, One Hundred Years of the Legion of Frontiersmen, 49, quoting from Ivor Montagu, The Youngest Son, 63

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