FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA
Towards sundown on Tuesday, September 24th, while most of the Guards'
Brigade was busy bathing in the delicious waters of the Koomati at its
juncture with the Crocodile River, I walked along the railway line to
take stock of the damage done to the rolling stock, and to the
endlessly varied goods with which long lines of trucks had recently
been filled. It was an absolutely appalling sight!
[Sidenote: _Staggering Humanity._]
Long before, at the very beginning of the war, the Boers, as we have
often been reminded, promised to stagger humanity, and during this
period of the strife they came strangely near to fulfilling their
purpose. They staggered us most of all by letting slip so many
opportunities for staggering us indeed. Day after day we marched
through a country superbly fitted for defence, a country where one
might check a thousand and two make ten thousand look about them. Our
last long march was through an absolutely waterless and apparently
pathless bush. Yet there was none to say us nay! From Waterval Onder
onwards to Koomati Poort not a solitary sniper ventured to molest us.
A more complete collapse of a nation's valour has seldom been seen. On
September 17th, precisely a week before we arrived at Koomati,
special trains crowded with fugitive burghers rushed across the
frontier, whence not a few fled to the land of their nativity--to
France, to Germany, to Russia--and amid the curious collection of
things strewing the railway line, close to the Portuguese frontier, I
saw an excellent enamelled fold-up bedstead, on which was painted the
owner's name and address in clear Russian characters, as also in plain
English, thus:--
P. DUTIL. ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIE.
That beautiful little bedstead thus flung away had a tale of its own
to tell, and silently assented to the sad truth that this war, though
in no sense a war with Russia, was yet a war with Russians and with
men of almost every nationality under heaven.
[Sidenote: _Food for Flames._]
Humanity was scarcely less severely staggered by the lavish
destruction of food stuffs and rolling stock we were that day
compelled to witness. In the sidings of the Koomati railway station,
as at Kaap Muiden, I found not less than half a mile of loaded trucks
all blazing furiously. The goods shed was also in flames, and so was a
gigantic heap of coals for locomotive use, which was still smouldering
months afterwards. Along the Selati branch I saw what I was told
amounted to over five miles of empty trucks that had fortunately
escaped destruction, and later on proved to us of prodigious use.
A war correspondent, who had been with the Portuguese for weeks
awaiting our advent, assured me that the Boers were so dismayed by the
tidings of our approach that at first they precipitately fled leaving
everything untouched; but finding we apparently delayed for a few
hours our coming, they ventured across the great railway bridge in a
red cross ambulance train, on which they felt certain we should not
fire even if our scouts were already in possession of the place; and
so from the shelter of the red cross these firebrands stepped forth to
perform their task of almost immeasurable destruction. It is however
only fair to add that the great majority of these mischief-makers were
declared to be not genuine Boers, but mercenaries,--a much-mixed
multitude whose ignominious departure from the Transvaal will minister
much to its future wholesomeness and honesty.
[Sidenote: _A Crocodile in the Koomati._]
Next morning while with several officers I was enjoying a before
breakfast bathe, a cry of alarm was raised, and presently I saw those
who had hurried out of the water taking careful aim at a crocodile
clinging to a rock in midstream. Revolver shot after revolver shot was
fired, but I quickly perceived it was the very same crocodile I had
seen at that very same spot the day before; and as it was quite dead
then I concluded it was probably still dead, though the officers thus
furiously assailing it had not yet discovered the fact; so leaving
them to continue their revolver practice I quietly returned to the
bubbling waters and finished my bathe in peace.
[Sidenote: _A Hippopotamus in the Koomati._]
Later on a continuous rifle fire at the river side close to the
Guards' camp attracted general attention, and on going to see what it
all meant I found a group of Colonials had thus been popping for hours
at a huge hippopotamus hiding in a deep pool close to the opposite
bank. Every time the poor brute put its nose above the surface of the
water half a dozen bullets splashed all around it though apparently
without effect. The Grenadier officers pronounced such proceedings
cruel and cowardly, but were without authority to put a stop to it.
The crocodile is deemed lawful sport because it endangers life, but
the Hippo. Transvaal law protects, because it rarely does harm, and is
growing rarer year by year. I ventured therefore to tell these
Colonials that their sportsmanship was as bad as their marksmanship,
and that the pleasure which springs from inflicting profitless pain
was an unsoldierly pursuit; but I preached to deaf ears, and when soon
after our camp was broken up that Hippo. was still their target.
[Sidenote: _A Via Dolorosa._]
On the second day of our brief stay at Koomati Poort, I crossed the
splendid seven spanned bridge over the Koomati River, and noticed that
the far end was guarded by triple lines of barbed wire, nor was other
evidence lacking that the Boers purposed to give us a parting blizzard
under the very shadow of the Portuguese frontier flags.
Then came a sight not often surpassed since Napoleon's flight from
Moscow. Right up to the Portuguese frontier the slopes of the railway
line were strewn with every imaginable and unimaginable form of loot
and wreckage, flung out of the trains as they flew along by the
frightened burghers. Telegraph instruments, crutches, and rocking
chairs, frying pans and packets of medicinal powders, wash-hand basins
and tins of Danish butter lay there in wild profusion; likewise a
homely wooden box that looked up at me and said "Eat Quaker Oats."
At one point I found a great pile of rifles over which paraffin had
been freely poured and then set on fire. Hundreds more, broken and
scattered, were flung in all directions. Then, too, I saw cases of
dynamite, live shells of every sort and size, and piles of boxes on
which was painted
"_Explosive_ Safety Cartridges
Supplied by Vickers, Maxim & Co.; for the use of
the Government of the South African Republic."
Likewise boxes of ammunition, broken and unbroken bearing the brand of
"Kynoch Brothers, Birmingham" were there in piles; and it was while
some men of the Gordons were superintending the destruction of this
ammunition that a terrific explosion occurred a few days later by
which three of them were killed and twenty-one wounded, including the
"Curio" of the regiment, who was stuck all over with splinters like
pins in a cushion; and in spite of seven-and-twenty wounds had the
daring to survive. Byron somewhere tells of an eagle pierced by an
arrow winged with a feather from its own breast, and in this war many
a British hero has been riddled by bullets that British hands have
fashioned. Moreover, among these bullets that thus littered that
railway track I found vast quantities of the soft-nosed and slit
varieties of which I brought away some samples; and others coated with
a something green as verdigris. It is said that in love and war all is
fair; but we should have more readily believed in the much belauded
piety of the Boers, if it had deigned to dispense with "soft noses"
and "explosive safeties," which were none the less cruel or unlawful
because of British make!
Whole stacks of sugar I also found, in flaming haste to turn
themselves into rippling lakes of decidedly overdone toffee; and in
similar fashion piled up sacks of coffee berries were roasting
themselves not wisely but too well. Pyramids of flour were much in the
same way baking themselves into cakes, monstrously misshapen, and much
more badly burnt than King Alfred's ever were. "The Boers are poor
cooks," laughingly explained our men; "they bake in bulk without
proper mixing." Nevertheless, along that line everything seemed very
much mixed indeed.
[Sidenote: _Over the Line._]
On reaching the Portuguese frontier I somewhat ceremoniously saluted
the Portuguese flag, to the evident satisfaction of the Portuguese
marines who mounted guard beside it. There were just then about 600 of
them on duty at Resina Garcia, and as they were for the most part
dressed in spotless white they looked delightsomely clean and cool.
Indeed, the contrast between their uniforms and ours was almost
painfully acute; but it was the contrast between men of war's men in
holiday attire, which no war had ever touched, and weary war-men
tattered and torn by ten months' constant contact with its roughest
usage. A shameful looking lot we were--but ashamed we were not!
As these foreigners on frontier guard knew not a word of English, and
I unfortunately knew not a word of Portuguese, there seemed small
chance of any very luminous conversation; but presently I pronounced
the magic word "Padre," and pointed to the cross upon my collar, when
lo! a look of intelligence crept into the very dullest face. They
passed on the word in approving tones from one to another, and I was
instantly supplied with quite a new illustration of the ancient
legend, "In hoc signo vinces." In token of respect for my chaplain's
badge, without passport or payment, I was at once courteously allowed
to cross the line and set foot in Portuguese Africa. There are
compensations in every lot, even in a parson's!
The village immediately beyond the frontier is little else than a
block or two of solidly built barracks, and a well appointed railway
station, with its inevitable refreshment room, in which a group of
officers representing the two nationalities were enjoying a friendly
lunch. But great was my surprise on discovering that the vivacious
Portuguese proprietor presiding behind the bar was a veritable
Scotchman hailing from queenly Edinburgh; and still greater was my
surprise on hearing a sweetly familiar accent on the lips of a
Colonial scout hungrily waiting on the platform outside till the
aforesaid officers' lunch was over, and he, a private, might be
permitted to purchase an equally satisfying lunch and eat it in that
same refreshment room. It was the accent of the far away "West
Countree," and told me its owner was like myself a Cornishman. Yet
what need to be surprised? Were I to take the wings of the morning and
fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, I should probably find there
as at Resina Garcia, thriving Scotchman in possession, and a famished
Cornishman waiting at his gate. To these two, in this fashion, have
been apportioned the outposts of the habitable globe!
[Sidenote: _Westward Ho!_]
It was to everybody's extreme surprise and delight that at noon on
Thursday we received sudden orders to leave Koomati Poort at once, and
to leave it not on foot but by rail. The huge baboon, therefore, which
had become our latest regimental pet and terror, was promptly
transferred to other custody, and our scanty kits were packed with
utmost speed. We soon discovered, however, that it was one thing to
reach the appointed railway station, and quite another to find the
appointed train. Two locomotives, in apparently sound condition, had
been selected from among a multitude of utterly wrecked and ruined
ones, but serviceable trucks had also to be warily chosen from among
the leavings of a vast devouring fire; then the loading of these
trucks with the various belongings of the battalion began, and long
before that task was finished darkness set in, so compelling the
postponement of all journeying till morning light appeared. It was on
the King of Portugal's birthday that morning light dawned, and it was
to the sound of a royal salute in honour of that anniversary we
attempted to start on our westward way, while the troops left behind
us joined with those of Portugal in a royal review.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Westerman_
Boer Families on their Way to a Concentration Camp.]
As all the regular railway employes had fled with the departing Boers,
it became necessary to call for volunteers from among the soldiers to
do duty as drivers, stokers and guards. The result was at times
amusing, and at times alarming. Our locomotives were so unskilfully
handled that they at once degenerated into the merest donkey
engines, and played upon us donkey tricks. One of these amateur
drivers early in the journey discovered that he had forgotten to take
on board an adequate supply of coal, and so ran his engine back to get
it, while we patiently awaited his return. Soon after we made our
second start it was discovered that something had gone wrong with the
injectors. "The water was too hot," we were told, which to us was a
quite incomprehensible fault; the water tank was full of steam, and we
were in danger of a general blow up. So the fire had to be raked out,
and the engine allowed to cool, which it took an unconscionably long
time in doing, and we accounted ourselves fortunate in that on a
journey so diversified we escaped the further complications that might
have been created for us by our ever invisible foes, who managed to
wreck the train immediately following ours--so inflicting fatal or
other injuries on Guardsmen not a few.
Meanwhile we noted that "fever" trees, with stems of a peculiarly
green and bilious hue, abounded on both sides the line; trees so
called, not because they produce fever, but because their presence
infallibly indicates an area in which fever habitually prevails.
Hundreds of the troops that followed us into the fatal valley were
speedily fever-stricken, and it is with a sense of devoutest gratitude
I record the fact that the Guards' Brigade not only entered Koomati
Port without the loss of a single life by bullets, but also left it
without the loss of a single life by fever.
At first at the foot of every incline we were compelled to pause while
our engines, one in front and one behind, got up an ampler pressure of
steam, but presently it was suggested that the hundreds of Guardsmen
on board the train should tumble out of the trucks and shove, which
accordingly they did, the Colonel himself assenting and assisting. So
sometimes shoving, always steaming, we pursued our shining way, as we
fondly supposed, towards Hyde Park corner and "Home, sweet Home."
At Waterval Onder we stayed the night, and I was thus enabled to visit
once again the tiny international cemetery, referred to in a former
chapter, where I had laid to rest an unnamed, because unrecognised,
private of the Devons. Now close beside him in that silent land lay
the superbly-built Australian, whom I had so often visited in the
adjoining hospital, and whom our general had promised to recommend for
"The Distinguished Service Medal." Not yet eighteen, his life work was
early finished; but by heroisms such as his has our vast South African
domain been bought; and by graves such as his are the far sundered
parts of our world-wide empire knit together.
[Sidenote: _Ruined farms and ruined firms._]
Throughout this whole journey I was painfully impressed not only by
the almost total absence of all signs of present-day cultivation, even
where such cultivation could not but prove richly remunerative, but
also by the still sadder fact that many of the farmhouses we sighted
were in ruins. Along this Delagoa line, as in other parts of the
Transvaal, there had been so much sniping at trains, and so many
cases of scouts being fired at from farmhouses over which the white
flag floated, that this particular form of retribution and repression,
which we none the less deplored, seemed essential to the safety of all
under our protection; and in defence thereof I heard quoted, as
peculiarly appropriate to the Boer temperament and tactics, the
familiar lines:--
Softly, gently, touch a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.
Amajuba led to a fatal misjudgement of the British by the Boer. In all
leniency, the latter now recognises only an encouraging lack of grit,
which persuades him to prolong the contest by whatever tactics suit
him best. Its effect resembles that of the Danegeld our Saxon fathers
paid their oversea invaders, with a view to staying all further
strife. Their gifts were interpreted as a sign of craven fear, and
merely taught the recipients to clamour greedily for more. Long before
this cruel war closed it became clear as noonday that Boer hostilities
could not be bought off by a crippling clemency, and that an
ever-discriminating severity is, in practice, mercy of the truest and
most effective type.
How great the pressure on the military authorities became in
consequence of these frequent breakages of the railway line, and how
serious the inconvenience to the mercantile community, as indeed to
the whole civil population, may be judged from the fact that only on
the day of my return from Resina Garcia did the Pretoria merchants
receive their first small consignments of food stuffs since the
arrival of the British troops some four months before. Clothing,
boots, indeed goods of any other type than food, they had still not
the faintest hope of getting up from the coast for many a week to
come. War is always hard alike on public stores and private cupboards;
but seldom have the supplies of any town, not actually undergoing a
siege, been more nearly exhausted than were those of Pretoria at the
time now referred to. For hungry and impecunious folk the City of
Roses was fast becoming a bed of thorns.
[Sidenote: _Farewell to the Guards' Brigade._]
From Pretoria I accompanied the Guards on what we all deemed our
homeward way as far as Norval's Pont. Then the Brigade, as such, was
broken up for blockhouse or other widely dispersing duties; and I was
accordingly recalled to headquarters for garrison work. At this point,
therefore, I must say farewell to the Guard's Brigade.
For over twelve months my association with them was almost absolutely
uninterrupted. At meals and on the march, in the comparative quiet of
camp life, and on the field of fatal conflict, I was with them night
and day; ever receiving from them courtesies and practical kindnesses
immeasurably beyond what so entire a stranger was entitled to expect.
Officers and men alike made me royally welcome, and won in almost all
respects my warmest admiration.
Their unfailing consideration for "The Cloth" by no means implied that
they were all God-fearing men; nor did many among them claim to be
such; but gentlemen were they one and all, whose worst fault was their
traditional tendency towards needlessly strong language. To Mr
Burgess, the chaplain of the 19th Hussars once said, "The officers of
our battalion are a very gentlemanly lot of fellows, and you never
hear any of them swear. The colonel is very severe on those who use
bad language, and if he hears any he says, 'I tell you I will not
allow it. If you want to use such language go out on to the veldt and
swear at the stones, but I will not permit you to contaminate the men
by such language in the lines. I won't have it!'"
Not all battalions in the British army are built that way, nor do all
British officers row in the same boat with that aforesaid colonel.
Nevertheless, I am prepared to echo the opinion expressed by Julian
Ralph concerning the officers with whom he fraternized:--"They were
emphatically the best of Englishmen," said he; "well informed, proud,
polished, polite, considerate, and abounding with animal health and
spirits." As a whole that assertion is largely true as applied to
those with whom it was my privilege to associate. Most of them had
been educated at one or other of our great public schools, many of
them represented families of historic and world-wide renown. It was,
therefore, somewhat of an astonishment to see such men continually
roughing it in a fashion that navvies would scarcely consent to do at
home; drinking water that, as our colonel said, one would not
willingly give to a dog; and sometimes sleeping in ditches without
even a rug to cover them.
Wild assertions have been made in some ill-informed papers about these
officers being ill-informed, and even Conan Doyle complains that he
saw only one young officer studying an Army Text-Book in the course of
the whole campaign; but then, when kits are cut down to a maximum
weight of thirty-seven pounds, what room is there for books even on
tactics? The tactics of actual battle are better teachers than any
text-books; and a cool head, with a courageous heart, is often of more
value in a tight corner than any amount of merely technical knowledge.
It is true that some of our officers have blundered, but then, in most
cases, it was their first experience of real war, especially of war
amid conditions entirely novel. It was more personal initiative, not
more text-book; more caution, not more courage that was most commonly
required. To inspire his men with tranquil confidence, one officer
after another exposed himself to needless perils, and was, as we fear,
wastefully done to death. But be that as it may the Guards' Brigade,
men and officers alike, I rank among the bravest of the brave; and my
association with them for so long a season, I reckon one of the
highest honours of a happy life.