No-one outside of the British nobility and the families of tin-pot South American dictators is born with a string of letters after his name that challenges the capacity of the alphabet, so we can see at a glance that George White must have been an exceptional man.

He was Irish; born in the village of Broughshane, County Antrim, in 1835, and readers approaching middle age with minimal credit in the Bank of Achievement may take heart from the fact that he had to wait until he was 43 before he began to make his mark. His chance came during the second Afghan War. Afghanistan may seem remote and more than a little mysterious, but in the 19th Century, as now, the country was a major preoccupation for the nations of the west, and in particular Great Britain. The British ruled India, and decided that it would be a good thing to rule Afghanistan too, if only to thwart the similar ambitions of the Russians. In pursuit of that end they invaded the country in 1838. Against fearful odds they fought their way doggedly to Kandahar where, in 1839, they installed their chosen puppet, Shah Shoja as ruler. To their immense surprise, the Afghans considered this intrusion and the imposition of a foreign-backed monarch impertinent and rose in revolt. In January 1842, severely chastened, they were forced into an ignominious retreat.

Despite this setback, the British continued to meddle in Afghan affairs, and for complex reasons well beyond the scope of this article, hostilities erupted again in September 1879 when a British envoy and his escort were brutally murdered in Kabul.

Britain did not take kindly to having its envoys murdered, and once more the troops were sent in. George White was then a Major in the 92nd Regiment (later re-named The Gordon Highlanders). His moment of madness and glory came on October 6th at a place called Charasiah. An enemy force, outnumbering his own men by an estimated eight to one, was entrenched on a fortified hill. Eight to one seemed like decent odds to White, so he ordered his troops to attack. They did their best but, not surprisingly, they eventually tired of running halfway up a hill and being shot at. White would have none of it. Cursing his underlings for a bunch of pusillanimous ninnies he grabbed a rifle, ran up the hill alone like a mountain goat on amphetamines, and shot the enemy leader. Naturally, the Afghans immediately stopped laughing and wiggling their fingers with their thumbs stuck in their ears. Rapidly replacing their tongues in t h e i r mouths, t h e y fled. L a t e r he repeated the performance, or did something very similar, at the battle of Kandahar, personally capturing one of two enemy guns. His gallantry, as such conspicuous lunacy under fire was traditionally dubbed, earned him the Victoria Cross. Had he been old enough to serve in the first Afghan war this would not have been possible. The Victoria Cross was introduced in the wake of the Crimean War of 1854-1856.

There can be no doubt that George Stuart White had an abiding love for the military life in general, and the particular buzz of doffing his cap chivalrously to passing death in battle. After winning the VC in Afghanistan he went on to fight with notable ferocity in Burma. Since the VC was as good as it got in the medal stakes, he was rewarded in this instance with a knighthood. Next he was bundled off to India where, as commanderin- chief from 1893 to 1898 he spent much of his time, as he had in Afghanistan two decades before, dashing Russian attempts to gain a foothold on the sub-continent.

Yet the moment of his greatest fame was still to come. Many readers who are unfamiliar with the name of Charasiah will nod knowingly at the mention of Ladysmith. The 118-day siege of the South African town, from November 2nd 1899 to February 28th 1900, became not only one of the defining moments of the Boer War, but an enduring legend; a symbol of British grit and a yardstick by which to measure the stiffness of the upper lip. And the commander of the British forces who took the town and withstood the siege was George Stuart White.

But White was now 65 years old, and much as he would have liked to go on storming stoutly defended hills and single-handedly routing squadrons of unruly natives, time was catching up with him. Having been rescued from Ladysmith, he was given a pair of slippers and gently told that, at his age, he should consider wearing them a little more often than he did his boots. To ensure that he did so, he was made Governor of Gibraltar.

Military honours were not quite a thing of the past, since in the third of the four years that he served as Governor, he was granted the title of Field Marshal. As he approached his seventieth year, he could sit in the shadow of the Rock, gaze wistfully into the Mediterranean sunset, and reflect on a long and distinguished career. And, perhaps, to curse his luck in having spawned such a son as Jack.

George had married Amelia Baly, daughter of the Archbishop of Bombay (perhaps the least coveted post in the English church). Between them they produced five children, of whom Jack was the eldest and the only boy.
Not that Jack White was a reprobate and a villain. He had all of his father’s courage (he also fought valiantly against the Boers), and emulated the elder White by being first over the top at the Battle of Doorknop. It’s just that he and his father saw the world, well, differently.

The senior White was a military man to his fingertips. Discipline was sacred. Superior officers were barely a half-step from God, and their orders were as sacrosanct as anything inscribed on Moses’ tablets. What he would have made of his son Jack’s reported actions at the aforementioned Battle of Doorknop we can only guess. Yes, he would have been proud of the lad’s selfless courage, but one incident would have troubled him deeply. It is said that as Jack was about to storm into battle, he looked back and saw a 17-year old recruit cowering in the trench trembling with terror. An officer, who looked coldly on such emotion as unacceptable in a representative of the British Empire, ordered him to be shot immediately. Jack White, so the story goes, aimed his own pistol at the officer and said, “Do so, and I’ll shoot you”.

It was probably his own courage, and the eminence of his father, that saved Jack from the firing squad himself. It was the usual penalty for such gross insubordination. To his father ’s growing dismay, Jack became disillusioned with military life and resigned from the army. Back in Ireland, where he had been born at the family’s ancestral home in Broughshane in 1879, he became rapidly converted both to socialism and the struggle for home rule. Whether his actions and loudly voiced opinions induced apoplexy in his father we cannot with certainty say, but in retrospect it is probably a good thing that George Stuart White quietly departed this life in 1912, a year before his son founded, along with James Connolly, the Irish Citizen Army – an important forerunner of the IRA.

In many ways the life of James Robert “Jack” White’s was equally as eventful and dramatic as his father’s. Certainly it was more controversial. George Stuart was an unshakeable pillar of the British establishment, a quintessential son of the Empire. But there was never a chance of his son Jack following in his footsteps as governor of Gibraltar. In 1916, Jack was sent to prison for three months for inciting Welsh miners to strike in support of his friend Connolly, who had been sentenced to death for his part in that year’s Dublin uprising. In time he became an anarchist, and ironically, a slim pamphlet entitled, “The Meaning of Anarchism”, is the only example of his writing that has survived. This is a direct result of his family’s disdain for his deeds. Immediately after Jack’s death in 1946 his relatives swooped like a pack of impatient vultures and destroyed all of his papers.

George Stuart White, knight, soldier, scion of the British Empire, governor of Gibraltar, and Jack White, revolutionary socialist and anarchist, were as different as two men could be. To an outside observer they might have come from different planets. They both became heroes, though not to the same people, and had the senior White been alive in 1946 there can be no doubt that he would have been among the most enthusiastic destroyers of his son’s legacy. Nevertheless, they lie side by side in the family plot at the First Presb y t e r i a n church in Broughshane. We must hope that they do so in peace, but I wouldn’t like to bet on it.