A Mountee always gets his man.

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Conrad Faulk O'Brien-ffrench. Artist and Spy.

The making of a secret agent begins

with a life in the saddle.

From his sketchbook

circa 65

Conrad Battle Creek 1912

Reproduced with kind permission of John Ffrench

King George V

Conrad begun his first adventure. He felt...

"...fear of letting go of that to which I was previously attached. Moreover, my life in Europe had been a comfortable one surrounded by goodwill and consideration and Nell, but here in the wes t it was each man for himself and a question of survival" dm p23

His travels in the west began with a transcontinental journey on the Canadian Pacific Railway. The vastness of the new land he said filled him with loneliness. At Moose jaw he had to change trains wait overnight for his connection on the freezing station. The only hotel was full and little more than a doss house. Western Canada was not for those who liked their creature comforts in those days. It was the wild frontier of an ever expanding Canadian State . He finally left the railway at Tuxford and made his way by road to Buffalo Lake. His host welcomed him in to his home. It was a busy ranch and Conrad spent much time alone wrestling with misgivings for the life he had left behind. Nevertheless he found his feet.

Soon he was at the Regina barracks of the Royal North West Mounted Police presenting himself as a prospective recruit. A troop of mounted police being sent to London to represent the Mounties at the coronation of King George V had passed him by. There was a shortage of recruits and as a consequence they rushed through basic training and were sent on to their far flung postings in a matter of a month. Conrad soon found himself on detachment near the US border. Here the intensive training continued. He was taught how to use his revolver; then told that under no circumstances was it ever to be drawn. The Mounties reputation rested upon their strength of personality and resolve, not upon their gun craft. To quell a brawl in a rough outpost saloon by force of personality and unflinching adherence to the rule of Law was the substance that made a Mountie a figure of so much respect. This foundation in self reliance and courage was the making of the man.

Battle Creek 1910

After his basic training was completed Conrad was posted to Cypress Hills. So named by the French fur traders of the 1800's who mistook the local Lodge pole pine for Jack pine (Cypress in French) it is now a National Park but then it was the absolute of untamed wilderness. Conrad’s quest for adventure had placed him in the ultimate 'sink or swim' situation in the realest of real worlds. the Frontier. He learned the value of the spirit not just the word of the law. He tells tales of involvement in neighborly disputes concerning potatoes to felonious acts which deserved imprisonment being dealt with in common sense ways all parties being agreeable to the fairness of young Conrad’s judgment.

Watercolour circa66

On smooth watercolour Paper

Conrad was posted to Willow Creek. The character of the land he had chosen as his home became known to him one month after his arrival. One day on patrol he set out from a ranch he had stayed at overnight. He noticed it was a dark day, with a rising wind and falling temperature, he continued on his way regardless. He found himself overtaken by a blizzard and was soon enveloped in a blinding whiteness. Sometimes he could only see as far as his horses ears.

"Fear I had felt for a bunch on trigger happy drunks was nothing compared to this. It was as if one was in a white hell... One was being consumed by white tongues of ice...I felt too numb to think for the cold seemed to freeze my brain...Dropping my reins I left it too my horse. " dm p31

After hours floundering about in the drifts Conrad blundered into a barbwire fence. Eventually he found a gate and soon a Ranch. He notes later how often a Mountie owed his life to his horse. Conrad received news from home. His mother was ill, applied for his release and was on his was home. He had fallen in love with the west he knew he would return. So he would, but much much later than he could have imagined. The press was still full of the Titanic as Conrad sailed home. Conrad’s mother fell into her final decline she died the following summer. Conrad saw her interred next to his beloved Rollo.

The Great War was coming Conrad joined a special Reserve battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment (The Tipperary Militia). Having seen his little sister Yvonne cared for he reported to barracks. "A wilder month I have never spent!" He enrolled in a military school to prepare him for exams. Exams he was never to take. War came instead. Conrad and his regiment were in

France

in good time there first engagement was to be at a small French village of Mons. The Daily Mail correspondent, George Curnock, Reports the Tipperary Rangers in France Pre Mons in Boulogne in August 1914 - "as a company of the 2nd Battalion Connaught Rangers passed us singing, with a note of strange pathos in their rich Irish voices, a song I had never heard before" The song? “It's a long way to Tipperary”. Soon for Conrad Leicester Square and Piccadilly would be a long way away.

ink and Watercolour

Pencil and Pastel

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Supporting Reference

Wikipedia

All photographs from Delicate Mission reproduced with the kind permission of John Ffrench.