Page 70 - They Also Served

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Jack White 1899.
James (always known as Jack) Robert
White was born in Broughshane,
County Antrim, in 1879, the son of
national figure Field Marshal Sir George
White VC, who was later known as
‘the Hero of Ladysmith’. It was perhaps
inevitable that he would join the army.
After appointment as an honorary Queen’s cadet at Sandhurst, he was commissioned into his father’s regiment, the Gordon Highlanders, in 1899. White was by no means a model cadet and was punished for riding in a point-to-point race which he had been expressly forbidden to attend. His 62-year-old father was, at the time, adjutant general and recovering from breaking a leg in seven places riding in another race. When taken to task by his father, White refused to be cowed and replied: ‘I heard you came to grief in a somewhat similar manner’.
Seeing extensive action in the Boer War, he received the DSO and was MiD. During the war, White became disillusioned with the British ruling class, which he said arose from an incident as they went ‘over the top’ in an attack at Doornkop. A young soldier was immobile with fright, and another officer told White to shoot him. White refused and threatened the officer with his own revolver. After South Africa, he was ADC to his father, by then the governor-general of Gibraltar, where he met and married a local Roman Catholic girl, much against the wishes of his parents.
Dissatisfied with military life, he resigned his commission in 1907 and, for a while, lived in a commune in Bohemia before returning home to Ireland. There, he became involved in the Home Rule movement, speaking against what he perceived to be the bigotry of the Unionist Party. Invited to Dublin, he became a socialist, involved in the struggle to win trade union recognition. Later, in 1913, he joined the Irish Volunteers, a group prepared to offer armed resistance to British rule. After the 1916 Easter Rising, he went to Wales to attempt to organise a miners’ strike to resist the execution of the rebel leader James Connolly but was arrested and imprisoned.
Returning to Ireland after his release, he briefly flirted with Communism before joining the Workers’ Socialist Federation along with many ex-soldiers, campaigning for the rights of the impoverished agricultural community. During the Spanish Civil
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