It has been a regular complaint of the Legion of Frontiersmen that the British War Office has always been very unwilling to credit the Legion for many of its achievements. We have here clear evidence that the Frontiersmen played a major part in running Remount Depots in the south of England at the beginning of the First War, most notably at Shirehampton near Avonmouth, also at Swaythling, and probably nearby Romsey, near Southampton. There are two War Office files in the National Archives: WO95/5466 Romsey Remount Depot 1914 November – 1918 April, and Shirehampton Remount Depot: WO95/69 Branches and Services, Director of Remounts 1914 August – 1916 December. Neither file mentions the Legion, but it is made clear regarding Shirehampton that “At the commencement the personnel, with the exception of all the officers were civilians, with a foreman for every 25 men and a farrier foreman and eight shoeingsmiths for each Squadron. In 1915 it was decided to change the depot into a military unit so from February onwards each Squadron, with the exception of one, was in turn enlisted and provided with n.c.o.s”. Although the War Office claims these were civilians, they are referred to as “Squadrons”. We know that Lt.Col. Driscoll was desperate to keep his Frontiersmen together so that they could serve as one unit and was bombarding the War Office with requests for them to serve. Although War Office records state that the manning was civilian, photographs clearly show the men in Frontiersmen uniforms wearing rank chevrons. According to the War Office file, Romsey depot was started “about 15th November 1914” by a firm “Messrs Perry & Co.” Frontiersmen were men of action and not words, so very few of them left clear written accounts of their lives. The story of how Canadian Frontiersmen rushed to enlist is documented (see the Canada page), but there were Frontiersmen working at all sorts of trades all round the world. Frontiersmen had always been certain that a war was inevitable, and as soon as the word arrived with them wherever they were, they took the first available ship back to England and made a beeline for Legion headquarters at 6 Adam Street. From there, Driscoll would have sent them to the Remount depots at Swaythling and at Avonmouth with instructions to utilise their riding skills there until he could send for them for a new Frontiersmen named unit. Driscoll wrote to Frontiersmen officer Seymour Rowlinson of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: “I have a large number of our men in the remounts depots training horses. This enables them to keep employed until such times as they are called out for mounted duty. It also enables me to find a place for the many men who are coming constantly from overseas, so if you know of any men who care to come across they may be sure of getting into something as soon as they report to me.”

Shirehampton was near Avonmouth Docks, and Swaythling and Romsey close to Southampton Docks where the remounts from Canada and America were landed. It seems probable that Swaythling came under Romsey. Sizeable parcels of suitable land would have been needed wherever they could be obtained within reasonable proximity of the Docks to stable the large number of horses passing through. In February 1949, one of the Frontiersmen who had been working at Swaythling, Vahd W. Tobin, wrote an account for a magazine, The Gen, which folded many years ago, of his version of what was to become a favourite “camp-fire yarn” for Frontiersmen over the years. We reproduce this here. The photographs from the Frontiersmen Swaythling Remount Depot are reproduced courtesy of V.W. Tobin’s daughter, the well-known actress June Tobin.

“The affair provided mirth for the camp for days. Legion H.Q. took it with joyous whoops. When sent in the form of a report to the W.O. (as had to be done), it was said that even the grim features of Kitchener twitched on reading it. And this is what led up to it.
In the Legion camp at Swaythling, squads of Frontiersmen had been leaving since dawn with horses for embarkation at Southampton, while others had gone to detrain horses from sidings and bring them into camp. Riding one horse and leading three – the usual practice – had about trained the camp of available men.

The last assignment came towards evening, requiring 25 men at a distant siding to detrain 100 officers’ remounts and bring them into the adjacent depot – which was separate from our camp and in charge of Regular Army remount staff. Only five off-duty men could be found, however: but they were five of the best –Buck, the only n.c.o. left; Yank, an ex-cowpuncher; Digger, from “down under”; Gringo, from the Argentine pampas; and Capey, an ex-Cape Mounted Policeman. To admit failure to find the requisite squad was unthinkable – like letting the Legion down – particularly in view of the fierce rivalry between the neighbouring depot and our own camp.
“We’ll rope in some of our fellows coming off duty from the docks,” said Buck, as the squad saddled up and moved off.

Darkness came soon after Buck’s party left (it was November 1914) and some rain fell. Later, the sky cleared and a bright moon shone.
By the time we judged Buck would be back, we had our camp fire blazing high, billycans of coffee ready, and grub keeping hot.
Presently, from the far end of our lines, a guard reported hearing in the distance Yank’s high yip-ee and the crack of Digger’s stockwhip. Shortly after, from the road junction came a rumble of hooves and the neighing of horses. A few minutes later we saw lantern lights down by the depot main gate.
“Hope old Buck and the rest found enough fellows in town to give a hand,” someone observed. It was more an expression of friendly goodwill than concern, for Buck and his party were known to be a particularly resourceful lot. All the same, we wondered what delayed them so long in handing over the horses.

Finally, the depot lanterns winked out. Soon after we heard Buck and his party in our lines off-saddling and feeding their mounts, and evidently in high good-humour. Questions were fired at them, but they were not to be drawn.

“Coffee and grub first,” laughed Buck. The meal over, pipes and cigarettes going and coffee mugs topped up again, Buck was voted teller of the night’s doings.

“Well” he began, with a vast grin, “as you heard, we couldn’t find any of our fellows in town, and time being short, we headed for the siding away out east of the town. The guard helped us detrain the horses and turn them into a little field, and as soon as he left we acted on Yank’s suggestion, which was to select a route clear of town and make a ‘drive’ of it. With just five there was no other way to handle a hundred horses. So we starts off, Yank taking point position, Digger and Gringo the flanks to block branch roads, and Capey and I the rear.

“Well, the moon was up and things went all right for a time. Then, of a sudden, a dozen horses stampeded to the left down a sunken lane with low-cut hedges on either side, and after them roared the whole darned shooting match hell-for-leather slap-bang towards town. Yank and his flankers tries working up to head ‘em off, but I got jammed in; and Capey and I, of course, had to stay in the rear.
“The stampede started cattle and horses in the fields on either side of the lane rushing up to the hedges, all a-neighing and bellowing like mad. But there was no stopping our lot, and in no time they had galloped right into town. And then, by gum, we remembered it was Saturday night and market night!
“The whole durned town seemed full of people. At one moment they were sort of peacefully shoppin’, and the next our horses were rushin’ about among ‘em. It was sure some entertainment! There were horses mixed up with the traffic and policemen blowin’ their whistle. There were horses clatterin’ along the streets and slippin’ on the pavements, makin’ one hell of a din; and women and kids yellin’ and skedaddlin’ into shops, and dogs barkin’. For a while the situation looked pretty serious – though durned if we could help laughin’ at it.

“However, after chasing horses hell-for-leather up street and down, we got pretty nigh the lot, we thought, bunched in a quiet street, and eventually going quietly along the country road. How many we’d lost we couldn’t tell. That remained for the check-up through the depot shute.
“Well, finally we got ‘em turned into the lane below here. By then, Yank, Digger, and I had worked up ahead so as to report to the old depot C.O. He, with his staff and some civilian orderlies with lanterns met us by the depot gate. And wasn’t that old brass hat in a state?
“‘What’s the meaning of all this,’ he raps out, ‘Galloping these horses through the streets of Southampton. Disgraceful,’ he says, ‘Unheard of.’ And he went on to say the police had telephoned him about us, and that he’d already reported the matter to Remount H.Q. ‘And heaven knows how many of these valuable horses you’ve lost,’ he winds up.

“I thought the old buffer would blow up at any moment. We could see his face getting’ redder and redder in the lantern lights.
“I told him then that I took full responsibility, and that we should get the horses up and counted through the shute. I said this mighty confident, hopin’ the count wouldn’t show more than ten missin’.
“Well we got the horses headin’ up to the shute. Yank and I halts at one side, and the old Colonel – still splutterin’ – posts himself with his staff at the other. Digger and the rest begin hazin’ the horses through. Now for it – I thought – and the count started.
“Close on 70 had gone through – which Yank tallies – and that seemed the lot. Things looked mighty black at that moment. ‘Looks as though a fifth of the horses are missin’ shouts the old brass-hat: and if there wasn’t a note of satisfaction in his voice I’ll eat my Stetson.
“And the, to our relief, along came quite a bunch of horses. That was Gringo and Digger, here, the old sons-of-a-gun, keepin’ ‘em back on purpose just to throw a scare into us up at the shute.
“And horses kept on comin’ – eighty, eighty-five, ninety – and still there were more to come! We could scarcely believe our luck. Looks as if we’ve got ‘em all, I shouts to Yank. But he was grinnin’ at the old Colonel, whose face we could see in the lantern light. He had his mouth open and his eyes half poppin’ out of his head.

“And then – well, we wish you had been there! Yank and I just bellows with laugher. For, on the count of ‘one hundred’, durned if there wasn’t more horses to come. Hundred and one-two-three, shouts Yank at the top of his voice, and went on countin’ to a hundred and seven.
“By then the rest of the boys had come up, and when they hear the total – well. You can imagine their yells. I hands the old brass-hat the guard’s duplicate receipt. ‘The joke’s on you, Colonel,’ I says. But he couldn’t say a word.”
Delighted back-slapping and chuckles greeted Buck’s story. But the big laugh came when someone ventured. “But – look here, Buck, didn’t you say that you gave the guard at the siding a receipt for only a hundred head?”
“Sure,” said Buck, he and the others choking with laugher. “But, don’t you see,” he went on, “we picked up, somewhere, seven horses on the way.”

Right up until the Second War, Tobin was a keen Frontiersman who was often at Frontiersmen summer camps with his friend Roger Pocock. There this yarn was one that would have been told again and again over a pipe of tobacco around the camp fire. As with other “camp-fire yarns”, other versions of the tale could often be given. In a letter to the Frontiersman in 1938, Arthur Marini gave his version of the story and confirmed that Frontiersmen were returning to England hoping to serve in an official Frontiersmen military unit.
“Our numbers were totally inadequate to cope with the task of doing things as Colonel Driscoll wanted them done. Hundreds of horses had to be handled daily, but each day brought Legionaries from all over the Empire. How we welcomed them, knowing the assistance they would render in building up a Remount Camp worthy of the Legion’s name.”
Marini then went on to tell either the same or a similar story to the one described by Tobin.
“Who can forget an occasion when the Camp received an S.O.S. at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning, when most of the men were one leave, from the Railway authorities that 100 horses were in rail trucks having been en route since the day before, and that it was imperative that as speedy attention as possible be given them.
“Poor Dartnell was in charge that night.”
This is the only record found so far of Dartnell being in England. Tobin, who would have known all about the famous Legion V.C. hero, made no reference to him by name or by reputation when writing in 1949.
“The trumpeter sounded the ‘fall in’, but only 32 men turned out who were however considered enough to bring the 100 horses into camp, so we marched two and a half miles down to Swaythling Station…”
Marini’s story is that the horses were at the nearby station and not at Southampton Docks, however he also wrote of a stampede.
“We saddled a horse apiece, and were getting away nicely when a stampede started, so Lieut. Dartnell gave the order for us to drive them back as you would cattle.”
Marini wrote that they then counted 102 in, but branded them all the following morning. On Monday, a local butcher called at the camp to see if they had his two horses which were missing from a field and which had obviously joined the stampede.
The father of a Frontiersman who died some 20 years ago, “Jungle Jim” Biddulph-Pinchard, was also stationed at this camp. In 1975 “Jungle Jim” told Frontiersmen officer Richard Sturrock his father’s version of what seems to be the same story. “(Biddulph-Pinchard) was stationed at the other side of Southampton breaking in horses for the Army with the aid of six frontiersmen. One day the regular army adjutant ordered him to go to Southampton with his six men to pick up 600 horses and bring them back to the camp and ignored the objections of Pinchard who duly went off to the station. After collecting the horses he drove them through Southampton and arrived back at the camp with 624 horses having accidentally picked up the extra horses on the way. Of course the Adjutant had his own problems sorting out a long list of complaints about the damage caused by the horses in Southampton.”

Perhaps something similar to the Tobin event happened more than once, as there would have been many privately-owned horses in fields close to the road who might, unknown to the outriders, have been “captured” by a herd being driven past. Tobin’s version seems the most believable, especially as it was recorded first-hand. Marini’s account is interesting as it links Dartnell to the Frontiersmen before he joined the 25th Service Bn Royal Fusiliers (Frontiersmen). Biddulph-Pinchard’s version was passed verbally to his son and also it seems improbable that only seven men – even if they were Frontiersmen – could successfully drive as many as 600 unbroken horses straight off the ship the several miles to Swaythling. What can be said is that these were indeed great Frontiersmen “camp-fire yarns”, to be told, re-told and perhaps embroidered upon around Legion camp-fires in the 1930s.