12,000 soldiers.

In previous blogs I have referred to the time in 1909 when 12,000 soldiers arrived in Caerwys to play war games. Some of the hills around the town are still Ministry of Defence property and I have seen soldiers (including the Ghurkas) carrying out training exercises on the slopes of Moel y Parc. I doubt though that any have been on the scale of those held in 1909. In charge of the whole exercise was General Bethune; he gave an interview to the local press in which he stated his wish that the training should be a realistic as possible. The General even admitted that the normal times for dinner would not be observed as 'the soldier on active duty eats when he jolly well can'. As my previous blog showed, the soldiers did take a break for religious services as is shown by the remarkble photograph of the priests carrying out the service on the mountain side in front of thousands of soldiers. I have come across another photograph from a slightly different angle; here it is:

If anything this photograph gives an even greater appreciation of the scale of this event; it is hard to imagine how those on the periphery of the crowd could have heard the words of the church service. It is interesting to observe the woman in the foreground of the image in her typical Edwardian dress.
As mentioned above, the entire exercise was commanded by Lieut. Colonel Edward Bethune. He was a well known army leader having seen action in Afghanistan (what changes?) and South Africa. The following is a painting commissioned of the man himself:

 As can be seen, Bethune was a cavalryman. He would later play a role in the Great War, but in the age of the machine gun his speciality of fighting on horse back would soon be completely redundant.