Looking Back Detail Page

01 Apr

- Garth Grimmer P. L. Wolves

Robert Baden. Powell was born in Lon-don in 1857. His eldest brother joined a training ship and as he was very enthusiastic about out-door life he used to take his younger brothers sailing and hiking. With this opportunity B.P. soon learnt how to cook and camp and took great delight in watching animals in their natural ways and learning their habits. When he grew up he joined the army and was sent to India. Here he carried on his lone scouting.
About seven years later the regiment left India and was sent to Africa. Here B.P. learnt about the Zulus (the scout's left hand shake was taken from the Zulus). He was sent to Rhodesia, then known as Matabeleland. where the natives who had risen and killed a few White settlers, were in hiding. B.P. was to lead the soldiers to their hide-out and he did this so well that he was put in command of the 5th Dragon Guards then in India. He started to teach them scouting, mak¬ing small patrols with a leader called a Patrol leader; they wore a badge which was an arrow head such as is used on the compass to indicate the north (the same badge is still worn by scouts). B.P. then wrote a book called "Aids to Scouting" Then he was sent to South Africa when the Boer War broke out. In the town in which he was stationed there were no men to spare as messengers and so boys were sent with messages. B.P. admired the way they went about carrying mes-sages, sometimes even under fire. And this made him think about training boys as scouts. After the war, B.P. (the hero of Mafe king) found "Aids to Scouting" had been used to train boys. B.P. made an experimental camp at Brownsea Island with a few boys; it proved a success. He wrote all the yarns he had told them at the camp fires, in a book called "Scouting for Boys"
Boys bought this book and formed pat¬rols and the organization soon spread so fast that B.P. gave up his army career as Lt. General so that he could help the development and progress of Scouting. At Gilwel he often held camps in which he trained Scout-Masters and they in their turn taught the boys. At the First Jamboree he was acclaimed Chief Scout of the World. At the end of the Jamboree after his parting message they lifted him shoulder high and carried him out. He died in 1941 leaving the world a better place than before he came into it. And his name and good works will carry down through the centuries and in fact live for all time.