Those night rides over the veldt were all alike. Your vision was
limited to the man in front of you, who was a blurred shape that you,
in a half-dream, were always chasing and never coming up with. It
was a dream that seemed to go on for years and years, and then your
mule would stumble and bring you to your senses with a jerk. In that
light--for it is never very dark in Africa--men appear as trees, and
thorn bushes dismount and take aim at you.
Dawn would find the whole patrol riding with eyes glued to the horizon
and lips closed on unlit cigarettes. The order regarding smoking on
those night-marches is strict. Once when we were escorting a captured
German patrol, one of our men thoughtlessly lit up. One of the
prisoners promptly leaned over and said, in English: "You mustn't do
that; the enemy will see us."
The scenery was always the same there--rolling stretches of sun-browned
veldt, kopje upon kopje, wonderfully shadowed, patches of thornscrub,
and, clothing the banks of rivers and streams, strips of forest; the
climate cold by night and hot by day. Africa is a queer, baffling,
changeable country. Exactly the same scene can take on absolutely
different aspects at different hours in the day. The thorn-tree flowers
into a white brush with a sweet smell, and in the early morning, with
a whitish haze hanging over and a cool wind blowing, the country seems
beautiful and the trees appear as though laden with apple blossoms.
Yet, in the hard, hot light of midday, with inky shadows outlined and
the dust settling on the trees, the same place is ugly and repellent.
On these patrols we moved by night, and failed to sleep by day, because
the patch of shade that will remain shaded for even a few hours is
non-existent. I usually woke to find my body too hot to touch and my
water-bottle on the boil.
Later, when the South African forces came over and we got going, we
had easier times, could travel by day, and lost that feeling of being
little veldt-mice creeping out of our holes.
Once patrol was over and we were "home" in camp, we led a curious life,
half soldier, half country gentleman. We lived in roomy _bandas_,
or grass huts, a section in each, and as nearly every trooper had a
"boy," or native servant, our meals were brought to the _banda_, and we
clubbed together for luxuries. Also, we picked up our own sections, so
that if four pals elected to go through the war together, they got the
O. C. to fix it up.
Leave was the one thing that really mattered--those ten glorious
days when you went back to your own life, and bathed daily and ate
what you wanted to, instead of what you could get. No one minded
night-rides across the veldt with that end in view, and I have slept
very comfortably under the stars, with my saddle for a pillow, dreamily
wondering if the lion in the distance was making that noise because he
was hungry or because he had had too much to eat. Once in Nairobi, you
bought a silk shirt, and could display the trousers with the crease
in them and the socks that mother sent you. You wallowed in your bath,
and walked down Government Road pretending that you had never shovelled
damp earth out of a trench or groomed an accumulation of sticky African
mud off a truculent mule. In the afternoon you sat in the fashionable
tearoom and ate cakes and sweets and ices, and in the evening there was
a dance, and you met the dearest girl. It was all like heaven!
When we really _did_ start--I was with the mounted column that came
down from Longido, to sweep round and threaten the German rear--the
people I was sorry for were the transport drivers. The rains broke soon
after the advance began, and swamped us out at Kahe, where we had a
three days' scrap in thick brush. What with weather and scrapping, and
mud and broken bridges, we had a hard enough time ourselves--we had
dropped the "country gentleman" part of it--but the wonder is that the
transport ever got through at all. We used to curse at it sometimes.
When you have been under fire all night and scrapping all day, when
you have lost your pipe in the river and the cigarettes have run out,
when you are very dirty and very hungry, and word is passed down that
no one knows where the food-wagons are--that is the sort of happening
that is calculated to make your spirits rise with a bound. Then they
come along, like bearded and very dirty angels, dumping supplies of
bully beef and potatoes, bread and jam, and dates and coffee, and all
is forgiven.
It isn't always fun being a soldier in East Africa, but I think the
transport driver who "gets there" every time deserves a Military Cross
at the least.