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From Happy Odyssey, Adrian Carton de Wiart 1950
[Boer War South Africa] When I first got my commission the Second Imperial Light Horse was commanded by Colonel Briggs of the King's Dragoon Guards, a first-rate officer who rose to the corps commander in the 1914-18 War and after that became chief of the Birtish Military Mission to Denikin in Russia, when I was chief of the British Military Mission to Poland.
( page 25 )
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General Briggs, who had been my commanding officer in the Imperial Light Horse, came to see me in Warsaw. He was chief of the British Military Mission to Denikin who commanded the White Russian troops. Denikin had started a big offensive against the Bolsheviks, and he was advancing so fast that it looked as if he would reach Moscow. Briggs had been sent to ask me to persuade Pilsudski to join in the offensive. I took Briggs to see Pilsudski and explain the situation, and to ask him personally for his co-operation. During the interview I could see that Pilsudski was not in the least impressed by what Briggs was telling him, and when Briggs had left Pilsudski said that Denikin would fail to get to Moscow, and worse still, that he would soon be back in the Black Sea. In view of Denikin's rapid advance this seemed a fantastic statement to make, but Pilsudski's judgment rarely failed, and I had such confidence in him that I reported this at once to the War Office.
I returned home to report, and Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then at the War Office, asked me to lunch. Mrs.
Winston Churchill and Jack Scott his secretary were the only other people at the lunch. It was the first time that I had met Mr. Churchill. I was immensely flattered by the idea of discussing with so great a man what was at that moment an important situation. Mr. Churchill wished me to get the Poles to join in Denikin's offensive, but I repeated Pilsudski's warning, and I remember Mrs. Winston Churchill saying : 'You had much better listen to General de Wiart.' I hastened to point that it was not my opinion that I was giving but Pilsudski's, and that he had never put me wrong.
Within a very few weeks Pilsudski had proved a good prophet, for Denikin was back in the Black Sea.
London : Cape 1950, pp. 25, 118-9.
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