GROUPS AND SINGLE DECORATIONS FOR GALLANTRY


Charles Cavendish Cavendish-Bentinck was born in 1868, son of Lieut-General Arthur Cavendish-Bentinck and his second wife Augusta, daughter of the Very Reverend the Honourable H. M. Browne, Dean of Lismore. His father died in 1877 and two years later his half brother, William, a Subaltern in the Coldstream Guards, inherited the Dukedom of Portland from their unmarried and highly eccentric kinsman, the 5th Duke, who had been absorbed with his vast work of building and digging out tunnels at Welbeck Abbey. Granted the title and precedence of a Duke's younger brother Cavendish-Bentinck was educated at Eton and commissioned into the 9th (Queen's Own) Lancers in 1889. Ten years later he joined Baden-Powell in South Africa, where B.-P. was raising two Regiments of Colonial Irregulars, which in the event of war, were to raid the Transvaal, ‘a Ia Jameson’ and so draw off large numbers of Burghers who otherwise might attack vulnerable parts of the Cape and Natal. Plans to raid, however, were abandoned but the presence of Baden-Powell at Mafeking with the 700 strong Protectorate Regiment, to which Cavendish-Bentinck was attached, nevertheless occupied the attentions of some 7,700 Burghers under Commandant-General Piet Cronje, nearly a fifth of the available Boer forces, during the first crucial weeks of war, before British Forces arrived.


The siege of Mafeking began on 14 October 1899, with Cavendish-Bentinck following Baden-Powell’s characteristic instruction to go out and get a ‘chance at the enemy’. Early that morning, when it was still dark, Lord Charles Cavendish-Bentinck, who commanded one of the four Squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment, was returning to town with a patrol. He was approaching the railway line when he and his men heard voices nearby. With a low "Halt" he brought up the patrol. "Dismount" was whispered from man to man and each swung from his saddle, rifle in hand. A party of Boers was observed in a hollow, talking and brewing coffee, magazines and breeches were loaded and at Cavendish-Bentinck's orders a volley was loosed off, followed by another. Within seconds the patrol was mounted and careering away across the veldt to heavy rifle fire from the disturbed Boers. Cavendish-Bentinck made one of the few sound decisions that morning and having completed his patrol, returned to Mafeking to make his report. The alarm was raised in the Boer Camps in that area, to the North of the town and some seven miles from it. In Mafeking the armoured train was soon steaming out into the plain, which was half-lit by the morning light. Both sides drew towards battle. The train, manned by 15 Troopers of the British South Africa Police, passed the patrol of Cavendish-Bentinck as the latter was riding up the line near the town. “Go along and engage them and when you find them, give them beans,” shouted Lord Charles.


Cavendish-Bentinck, having himself fired the first shot of the siege at a Boer scout, was wounded at Mafeking on 24 April 1900. He was also engaged in the dramatic finale to the siege nearly seven months later, when the garrison successfully repulsed Sarel Eloff's all out bid to take the town on 11 May, shortly before the British relief column arrived. Major Alick Godley now concentrated his attention on another Boer position, a stony hillock, where the Boers had also refused to surrender. Six rounds of shrapnel were fired at it and the Boers fled towards the Malopo, intending to get out of the perimeter by the same route as they had used to come in. But Godley had been prepared for this and Lord Charles Bentinck, with a Troop of the Protectorate Regiment, was waiting for them. But Bentinck received an order from Baden-Powell to let the Boers go, he was no doubt conscious of the effect of prisoners on his food supplies and now thankfully confident that no help was coming to Eloff, who had made a lodgement within the perimeter.


Cavendish-Bentinck returned from South Africa, having been, slightly wounded, Mentioned in Despatches and awarded the Brevet of Major on 20 November 1900. The 61st Duke of Portland recalled in his memoirs how "Charlie" brought home a number of shells which fell in Mafeking and also a specimen of the daily ration, consisting of a cake of coarse bread, a handful of meal and a slice of sausage, upon which the defenders had lived and fought for at least two months of the 212 day siege. His dog Podger, was with him all the time. Towards the end Podger grew terribly suspicious of the natives, who had long since killed and eaten all the other dogs in the town. When Charlie returned to England, he brought Podger with him. He accompanied Charlie to a reception at Worksop and I began telling someone about his history, when Charlie nudged me and whispered, "Shut up, you idiot, I had to smuggle him into England. Don’t give us both away".


In 1901 Cavendish-Bentinck was appointed Adjutant of the Gloucestershire Hussars and in 1904 became Commandant of the Yeomanry School and Instructor at the Cavalry School until early 1906 when he retired. He immediately rejoined on the outbreak of the Great War and in 1915 was serving in Gallipoli on the Staff of Godley’s Australian and New Zealand Division. During a day of heavy fighting in early August 1915, Godley recalled “my old friend of Mafeking days, Lord Charles Bentinck and I were sitting together, discussing, with our Medical Officer, Colonel Manders, arrangements for the evacuation of the wounded from the beach. Manders suddenly ceased talking, his head dropped on his shoulder and remaining as he did in a sitting position, it was some moments before we realised that a spent bullet had noiselessly struck him on the temple and that he was dead". Cavendish-Bentinck was himself wounded and evacuated from Anzac a few weeks later. He next served as ‘Corps-Horsemaster’ of Godley's II Anzac Corps in France during the Messines offensive and the battle of Passchendale. In January 1918, when Godley's command was re-titled XXII British Corps and the need arose to select a distinctive symbol for the formation, Cavendish-Bentinck’s and Godley's mutual love of fox- hunting dictated the adoption of a fox-hound in full cry. Ending the War with three Mentions in Despatches and the award of the D.S. O. in 1916, Cavendish-Bentinck ‘who had so much to do with the New Zealanders’, returned to the Gallipoli Peninsula with a small party of V.I.P.s for the unveiling of the N.Z. memorial on top of the Chunuk Bair. An M.F.H. and J.P. for Nottinghamshire, Lord Charles died at the age of 86 years on 19 June 1956.


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