| Clement is
wearing the two "pips" (showing the rank of Lieutenant)
introduced in the 1902 regulations.
This
photo gives an excellent view of the officers' chained pouch belt,
a distinctive pattern of the 10th Hussars. The Prince of Wales'
Feathers can distinctly be seen on the badge holding the pickers.
Note also how the 10th wore their cap lines under the left arm and
not around the neck.
Clement
Henry Peto was born in 1884 in
London Kensington. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Peto, of Dunkinty, Elgin.
He was educated in at Harrow and Sandhurst, and from the Royal Military College
was gazetted Second
Lieutenant into the 10th Hussars on 3rd February 1904. The 10th Hussars had left South
Africa for Mhow in India in 1903 so it must have taken him a while
to join his Regiment. He'll be promoted to Lieutenant on 22nd
october 1905. In
1908, the 10th moved from Mhow to Rawalpindi. Clement H. Peto will
reach the rank of Captain on 23rd September 1910 (so the photo had
been taken earlier in 1910).The Regiment
will go to Potschefstroom in South Africa in 1913. At
the outbreak of the War, they sailed from Capetown to the UK (august
1914). On arrival they joined the 6th Cavalry Brigade in the 3rd
Cavalry Division at Ludgershall on 22 September 1914. The 10th
Hussars embarked for France and Flanders with the British
Expeditionary Force, landing at Ostende on 8 October 1914. They
formed part of the "Old Contemptibles", a
nickname the original British Expeditionnary Force defiantly
adopted after the
famous "Order of the Day" given by Kaiser Wilhelm II on
the 19th August, 1914: "It
is my Royal and Imperial Command that you concentrate your
energies, for the immediate present upon one single purpose, and
that is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my
soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English; walk over
General French's contemptible little Army." The
regiment was dismounted and served as infantry in the trenches at
Ypres. On 17 November 1914, the Germans attacked. The 10th Hussars
suffered two Officers and ten ORs killed. Captain C.H. Peto was one
of them. He
rests in the Ypres Town Cemetary.
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