A Cross-Section Of Empire

Striking Description of Coronation Procession By a Representative of Fiji

By Major Clive B. Joske, M.C.

London, May 14.

to play a minor part in the Coronation was an intensely moving experience, and it is something to have had the rare privilege of being even one of five thousand men selected to repre sent the armed Forces of an Empire of half a thousand million citizens. Both Ratu Edward Cakobau and I represented the Fiji army—Edward, whose great grandfather, King Cakobau, ceded Fiji to this King’s great-grandmother, and myself, a merchant masquerading as a major.

Edward and I had officially arrived in England by the Strathnaver on April 30.

Quarters were allotted to us at the R.A.M.C. Officers’ Mess at Millbank, a comfortable old-fashioned building on the banks of the Thames. About half the officers of the Colonial Empire Corona tion Contingent—what a mouthful—were at Millbank, whilst the remainder were at the Vanderbilt Hotel. Edward and I considered ourselves fortunate; it is much more fun to live in a Mess, especi ally when one is treated as an honoured guest.

The Contingent consisted of 53 officers and 73 men, as odd an assortment as you ever saw. The men seemed to be drawn

mainly from Africa, 30 odd from the R.W.A.F.F. and 20 from the K.A.R., strapping great African negroes, black as coal, in khaki shirts and shorts, but wearing over their shirts something rather like a waistcoat in red, yellow or blue, heavily embroidered in contrasting colours of yellow or red and topped off with a red fez. Two of them, garbed in long knitted singlets stretching half way to their knees, belong to the Camel Corps, K.A.R., which patrols the borders of Kenya and Soamaliland.

Then there was a trooper from the Trans-jordan Frontier Force, light olive skin, with a long-skirted tunic in a shade of khaki which I can only describe as crushed mulberry, and with a cossack type of head-dress of astrakhan. A Euro pean tea planter, Sergeant in the Ceylon

Planters’ Rifle Corps, paraded alongside a short squat Chinese sergeant-major from Hong Kong; a couple of Malays with green pillar-box caps set jauntily over their right eyebrows were next to an aged and corpulent Warrant Officer who had already been to the previous Coronation.

The officers were just as wonderfully assorted. A number came from the various units of the R.W.A.F.F. or K.A.R., but amongst us there was a Lieutenant-commander from Hong Kong, colonial-born pfflcers from the West Indies: Malays; and a native officer from the Aden Protectorate Levies who liter ally had not used a knife and fork until he reached England.

In my section alone there were officers from Trinidad, Falkland Islands, Sierra

Leone, Hong Kong, the F.M.S. and British Guiana—not a bad little cross-section of Empire in itself.

Edward was unique—he was the only soldier to be bareheaded on parade!

Thus the Colonial Contingent, through its complete lack of uniformity, its racial variety and its odd mixture of drab khaki and garish colour was sharply contrasted against the scarlet, blue and gold that were the dominating colours of the procession. The spectators, in their hundreds of thousands, looking at us, savoured to the full the glamour and romance of their Colonial Empire, stretching to the uttermost ends of the earth.

At Wellington Barracks

Contingent were paraded together on Monday, May 10, when each

of us 1 saw for the first time his strange bedfellows. Our headquarters were at Wellington Barracks, the home of the Guards, and I think we were all fascinated to find ourselves in precincts so consecrated to military tradition. The Guards “carried on” but we were as thrilled as children by the clock-work precision of their most minor movements.

The weather had been cold with a dank mist almost every day, and the War Office had issued an order that all troops must be in possession of greatcoats in case a general cloaking order should be issued. Edward’s clothing allowance from the Fiji Government was almost ex hausted but representations to the Colonial Office put us in funds once more, so we were in a position to “cloak” at a moment’s notice.

It looked as though this would have to be done, for on the Tuesday, London treated us to a tropical downpour. How ever, the Great Day dawned cold, misty, but fine. My servant said it was “mild,” so I donned two woollen singlets to keep warm, and Edward and I put on our white tunics.

We then proceeded to play our parts in a really comfortable manner. There was no rising at crack of dawn for us — not a bit of it. After a leisurely break fast we left our comfortable quarters at 9 a.m. for Wellington Barracks by motor bus. The run across took only a few minutes. As we were not required to parade before 11.30 a.m., Edward and I strolled over from Wellington Barracks to a point of vantage just opposite the gates of Buckingham Palace —it was not unduly crowded, since admission here was limited to ticket-holders—and we had an excellent view of the arrivals of the distinguished and the departures of the various processions to the Abbey.

We saw at close quarters the triple Guard of Honour, Sailors, Guards and Airmen, the unhurried ease of the Escort of Lifeguards, the fairy-tale splendour of the Glass Coach —and at length their Imperial Majesties set forth amid a wave of cheering that shrilled away into the distance, whilst we paraded at the Bar racks and set forth in our turn.

In The Procession

OPPOSITE Buck House we halted, whilst each little bit of the jig-saw was fitted into its place, and the pro cession for the return from Westminster Abbey was complete, save for the Cap tains and the Kings.

The Colonial Contingent was at the head, which sounds as though we occu pied the post of honour. However, in a State procession you rank from the front backwards; the first shall be last, and so forth. The same rule applied to the Contingent itself—junior officers in front

and senior in rear—so, as we dressed by the left flank, it came to pass that the whole of the procession took its dressing from a young naval volunteer midshipman from Singapore!

Whilst halted, we could hear snatches of the service broadcast from the Abbey.

When the Archbishop placed the Crown on the King’s head the crowds in the packed stands about us all rose to their feet and joined with those inside the Abbey in acclaiming King George VI. as King of all the Kingdoms.

And one realised with some degree of awe that millions all over the world were also hearing those voices charged with emotion vibrating from the Abbey into space!

At length, we moved off and swung into the Mall behind the Band and Bugles of the Rifle Brigade. Here the crowd had already enthused over the Royal Processions earlier, and so we were greeted with applause which seemed restrained by comparison with that which was to greet us later. Few people, too, had been allowed into Whitehall and there was not much more than handclapping.

Then “Eyes, Right” followed at the Cenotaph and we wheeled left-handed along Victoria Embankment. Here there were 40,000 school children who had been there for hours and we were the first piece of the pageant they had seen. So' there was a gale, a storm, a wild hurri cane of high-pitched, shrieking, deliriods enthusiasm. Only an iceberg could have remained cold and unresponsive to this.

The enthusiasm was just as full-bodied, if not such a cataclysm of sound, along Pall Mall, St. James’s Street, Piccadilly and Regent Street. It was smiling, shouting, cheering faces everywhere imaginable, and in numbers incalculable, whilst the pavements grew forests of periscopes.

In Upper Regent Street we halted, which meant that the end of our pro cession was in position by the Houses of Parliament, ready to move off as soon as the King and Queen entered the glass coach at Westminster Abbey. Here we stood at ease and munched our ration of chocolate until a policeman, from the wireless van in front, waved a red-striped disc and then lowered it, signifying that the King had joined the procession.

On into Oxford Street, and I got a sudden view of an empty street stretch ing undisturbed by traffic, an odd sight in London. Here it seemed that enthus iasm reached its zenith and that the crowds were packed more densely.

But the unforgettable sight came as we swung through Marble Arch into Hyde Park. The road widened out on either hand to trees in their new spring green ery, and the tiered faces, stretching out wards and upwards, enhanced the air of spaciousness. It was growing darker, and the mist lay heavier—everything was as unreal as a dream.

On through a grey-white arch, topped with pink rhododendrons, and down narrow Constitution Hill, where we passed aged Chelsea pensioners, who sat staring motionless at us—a reminder that there had been glorious pageantry in England before to-day and that our glory, too, would fade into a memory of

the past. And so past Buckingham Palace to Wellington Barracks, surprised and relieved to find that a lunchless ten miles had been as only three.

It has been worth coming fourteen thousand miles to play a minor part in this brilliantly unforgettable spectacle.

Of the organisation I can only say, perfection; of the stage management, in credibly perfect; and of our audience, those patient laughing English hosts who lined the streets, I can only repeat the comment of a young native officer from Malay who said to me: “Sir, these English people are very good-humoured and orderly. If all the people of the world behaved like them, sir, the world would be a better place.”