_PRISONERS OF WAR_
To be carried off captive after the first hot skirmish into which one
has gone full of confidence and hope is a trying experience for any
soldier, and especially for those who are conscious of having done
manful deeds deserving a better fate. In these circumstances, however,
it implies no humiliation, but only a feeling of rebellious resentment
against the fortunes of war that have, at one fell stroke, swept away
all hopes of further distinction, dashed every ambitious plan, and
severed for a time at least all pleasant associations with comrades
whose friendship is never so truly appreciated under other conditions as
it is amid the rough campaigning experiences that try the temper and the
mettle of all men. The full sense of everything that has been lost comes
upon war-prisoners in the first hours of their captivity with the
crushing force of a hopeless defeat, so that they cannot even find it in
their hearts to be thankful for the lives that have been spared to them.
If this is so in the case of men to whom loss of liberty means no
reproach and who have the proud consciousness that they did not purchase
safety by unfaithfulness to their trust, how much sharper must the sting
be to those who by pusillanimous surrender have brought the dark shadow
of dishonour on themselves and stained the proud blazonry of regimental
distinctions! Happily, British soldiers have not often gone into
captivity with that stigma resting on them; and, though critics at home
were ungenerously prone to assume that the ‘flag of shame’ had been
hoisted too readily in some fights against the Boers, they would have
told a different story if it had been their lot to lie on the bare veldt
within rifle-range of hidden enemies under whose deadly fire it is even
more dangerous to go back than to go forward. The idea of wresting
victory by a rush or wriggling up to it through zone after zone of
hailing bullets across four or five hundred yards of open ground could
only have commended itself to tacticians comfortably ensconced in
arm-chairs far from the buzz and boom of war. Hemmed in by a girdle of
fire that cannot possibly be broken by a charge across such distances,
men must either lie down like sheep to be slaughtered, or walk to their
deaths with eyes open, making useless sacrifices, or surrender; and none
but a braggart who had never been under fire would dare to hurl the
poisoned arrows of reproach at brave men upon whom the last alternative
has been forced. Every soldier knows how unjust is that journalistic
phrase ‘an easy surrender.’ Nobody could have written it if he had
thought for a moment of the bitterness that is in the hearts of men who
have to yield under the white flag; yet it is not necessarily an emblem
of shame for all that. Lumsden’s Horse did not hoist it in their direst
extremity, but they would be the last to jeer at men who have passed
through such an ordeal. If ever captives had the right to hold up their
heads in the presence of triumphant enemies, those men were the troopers
of Lumsden’s Horse who had sacrificed themselves rather than abandon a
wounded comrade. One of them, Corporal Firth, a prisoner in the hands of
the Boers, wrote to his parents from Waterval on May 7, 1900:
You will by this time have seen that I am now a prisoner of war from
the published lists in the papers. I will just give you an outline of
what happened on the 30th ult. An officer, two non-commissioned
officers, and eleven men were told off to hold a hill as a guard
against an attack on the right of a body advancing from our centre;
this centre body had to retire, and we, receiving no orders, held on
as long as possible until forced to retire, which we did, having five
killed, our officer wounded, and four taken prisoners, leaving only
four who escaped to tell the tale. I could have got away, only went
back to the assistance of our officer, who was wounded about ten yards
behind me. I bound him up under a heavy fire, and Providence must have
watched over me that day, as bullets in hundreds were flying all round
me. I am in good health and received very kind treatment from the
hands of my captors, of which I will write more on another occasion,
as I am not yet settled down in my new surroundings.
How he and his fellow-prisoners fared after they had fallen into the
power of their enemies is a story told with graphic picturesqueness in
the following letters from Sergeant Fraser, who was surrounded by Boers
when he lay bruised by a heavy fall in company with Trooper Saunders,
who had gallantly risked his own life in an attempt to bring Fraser out
from under fire:
[Illustration:
_Photo: Johnston and Hoffmann._
SERGEANT DAVID S. FRASER
]
We had imagined that our destination was comparatively close, but we
covered mile after mile without any more satisfaction from our guards
than that it was over the next kopje. The column wound in and out
among many hills ere a halt was called. Though we had started about 11
in the morning, it was not until 4 o’clock in the afternoon that our
escort stopped at an ambulance tent, which was in charge of a
hospitable Swiss doctor. We had had nothing to eat all day. In the
hurry of getting ready so early in the morning neither of us had time
to think of food, and our day’s rations were in our saddles, now in
the hands of the Boers. So the good Swiss fed us plentifully with
soup, meat, and coffee. He examined me and found only bruises.
Saunders’s arm was much swollen, and the surgeon could not ascertain
what the damage was. It afterwards turned out that the muscles were
lacerated and one of the bones in the forearm cracked.
In the doctor’s tent was a wounded officer, Lieutenant and Adjutant
Lilley, of the Victorian Mounted Rifles. He, poor chap, had been shot
through the head during the same engagement, and had been brought in a
waggon from the field. He recognised us in so far as to repeat the
name of our regiment, but seemed woefully wounded and repeatedly broke
out in delirium. The doctor who had been so kind to us seemed
assiduous in his attentions, and I am sure everything possible was
done for the poor Australian. We heard afterwards that he had been
left in hospital at Brandfort by the Boers, and found by our troops a
few days afterwards, when they took possession of that place. He
subsequently died from the wound, which was caused by a bullet passing
through his brain. Marching for another mile we came to the Boer
laager at dusk. Those in camp met us kindly, more particularly as the
news given by our guards was that their own commando had apparently
scored a victory. They gave us coffee at once, and a place to lie down
and rest. And thus began our captivity.
While Saunders and myself were recovering from our exertions,
discussing the events of the day, and generally commiserating each
other upon our misfortunes, we were much cheered to perceive the
approach of two men attired in khaki and helmets. These proved to be
Sergeant-Major Healy, of the Victorian Rifles, and Private Simmons, of
the Duke of Cornwall’s Regiment’s Mounted Infantry. Both had fearful
things to relate of the morning’s action. They had been through all
the heavy fighting preceding the occupation of Bloemfontein, and
agreed that never had they experienced such hot fire as on this
particular morning. About 8 o’clock our guards supplied us with bread
and coffee, and pieces of biltong, stuck on a wire, that had been
thrust into a fire. They then accommodated us with a tent, a blanket
apiece, and an empty sack or two—for we had no coats, and the cold was
intense. In such comfort as we could make for ourselves with these
limited resources we lay down, and soon slept the sleep of the weary.
It seemed but a few minutes since we had turned in when we were
awakened with rough kindliness, and turned out of our tent. The bulk
of the commando had returned to camp after a successful but wearisome
day, and the owners of the tent wanted their own. So out we got into
the bitter cold. They placed us between two tents, and we arranged
ourselves a second time as best we could. Despite the lack of warmth
and comfort, we slept heavily, and the sun was high in the heavens
next morning ere we awoke.
Bread and coffee formed our breakfast, and this meagre meal was
welcome enough. Our guards themselves had no more, so we could not
complain. As the morning wore on, the sun became rather trying, and
once again we were accommodated with a tent, wherein we discussed at
length the events of yesterday. As this conversation turned inevitably
to our own capture, needless to say we gradually began to despond. But
we were shortly to have our hearts lightened by the discovery of
fellow sufferers—how company in trouble eases one! In marched Firth,
McGillivray, Macdonald, Petersen, and Williams, of our own corps,
followed by Coghlan, of Sergeant-Major Healy’s regiment. Coghlan had a
broken leg, done up in plaster of Paris, and lay on an ambulance
pallet. Needless to say, we had much to tell each other, and Saunders
and myself then heard how Franks, Case, Daubney, and H.C. Lumsden had
been killed, and Lieutenant Crane wounded and a prisoner. It was not
until afterwards we heard that Major Showers had been killed and
several others wounded on the same day.
The frugal fare of the morning was repeated in the afternoon, except
in the case of the bread. Of it the Boers had none, but they furnished
us with a plentiful supply of a kind of rusk. This appeared to be
simply broken bread dried in an oven. It made a very good meal, but
tried those of us whose teeth had been somewhat worn down by eating
_moorghis_[9] in India.
To march forth in the morning with a gun in your hand to fight your
country’s battles; to endanger your life that you may return to your
female relatives, decorated and a hero; to hear the vicious ping of
bullets, the shrieking of shells, and know yourself alarmed but
undismayed, are fine things. But to sit at night in the enemy’s laager
with wings clipped, no gun, and a sinking stomach is so untoward a
thing that a man who suffers it may well question the reason of his
birth and entertain hopes that the world is about to end.
Six of us sat in the dusky light of a tent in a Boer laager near
Brandfort, and our own mothers could not have comforted us. It wasn’t
as if we had had a bellyful of fighting, like others who had begun the
campaign in Cape Colony, or as if after a tremendous struggle we had
been overpowered. Without practically a chance to retaliate, we had
been deluged with bullets that went by in such numbers you could hear
them rattle against each other in their flight. Then instead of the
bullets came the Boers, and we were prisoners—hands up, pockets empty,
hopes vanished!—this in our first fight!
When night had fallen, the sentries—there were two of them, with
loaded rifles and revolvers—passed us in a big kettle in which had
been boiled water and, they said, coffee.
One of us sadly asked if they had put in sugar as well, and on
receiving a reply in the affirmative, murmured, ‘What good hot water!’
Then we munched away at rusks, of which light and tasteless provender
they chucked us in a quantity in the bottom of a sack, and I wondered
if the nourishment contained therein would compensate for the energy
expended in chewing them. I know I registered a mental vow never to
feed my horses on bran alone if ever I got back to India. A few of us
had pipes, and there was no difficulty about Boer tobacco; but here,
again, one was reminded of bran, for although the colour was not quite
the same the taste was nearly identical with what I imagine bran would
give if smoked. As it grew late the cold increased, and by 9 o’clock
we were shivering. Those of us who had managed to retain their
greatcoats were not so badly off, but others, who had nothing but thin
khaki tunics, suffered considerably. On representing matters to the
sentries, they procured for us a few blankets and empty sacks, and,
huddled together, each man endeavoured to sleep to the chatter of his
neighbour’s teeth.
The laager next morning showed signs of great activity. A large patrol
was about to start in the direction of the British lines, and the two
hundred or so composing this body shook hands, every man of them, with
half a dozen of their comrades, who, it afterwards turned out, were to
form our escort to Pretoria. According to our preconceived ideas of
how troops should move out of camp the behaviour of the Boers seemed
absurd. No word of command appeared to be given, but in a moment the
aspect of the camp that had been full of men lolling about, talking
and skylarking, was changed. Horses were saddled, bridled, and mounted
in a matter of seconds, the ceremony of hand-shaking gone through, and
in less than five minutes from the first impulse which set them
getting ready the patrol had disappeared over the skyline. Some were
trotting, some cantering, and there was no attempt at formation; but
none the less their method, or want of it, was effective, and one
could not help being impressed with the individual independence of
each man, combined, as it was, with complete unanimity of object in
the whole body.
Our turn came next, and we made our little preparations to start.
These consisted mostly of buttoning up, and, indeed, there was a
charming sense of irresponsibility in having no arrangements to make,
no packing to do, no _hookums_[10] to give. For our conveyance was
prepared a buck-waggon, with the appearance of which the illustrated
papers have made all the world familiar. Twelve mules were stuck in
front, the driver cracked his whip, and the caravan was ready. Down
the centre of the waggon, on a mattress, and propped about with
rolled-up blankets, was placed the wounded Victorian. The rest of us
sat round, with our legs dangling over the side. A Kaffir held the
reins from a raised seat in front, and two Boers sat alongside of him
with loaded rifles on their knees. But they had their backs to the
mules and the points of their guns towards poor us. At the tail end of
the waggon sat two more Boers, also armed. A fifth Boer, unarmed,
barring a whip as long as Chowringhi, marched alongside to curse the
mules and pick holes in their hides when the cursing failed.
As we stood ready the Boers near shook hands all round with us, hoped
the war would soon be over and we be back in our ain countrees and
themselves restored to the bosoms of their families. We moved off with
a jolt that made the poor Victorian groan, and they shouted good-byes
after us and congratulations that we were going to that wonderful
place Pretoria. Soon a rising hid the laager, and around we could see
nothing but veldt—not a tree, not a house, not a Boer. And now, we
thought, is our chance. We only had to lay hold of our guards by the
throats, wrest their rifles away, and so turn the tables completely—a
poor return for their hearty kindness, but then we did not cherish the
same feelings for Pretoria that they did. These ideas of escape were
rippling round cheerfully but guardedly, when our hopes flopped to the
ground, for over the skyline came cantering a couple of Boers, and we
soon found their business was to trot behind. We might easily
overpower the guards in the waggon; but what profit would there be in
that if one mounted man galloped for assistance while the other kept
watch on our movements? Without the mounted men we might have bagged
our guards and got clear away, as no warning of our escape could then
have reached the Boer lines for at least twenty-four hours. But it was
not to be, and we resigned ourselves to the inevitable.
When there’s nothing to see, almost as much to eat, and the Devil’s
own pother to think about, travelling is wearisome. Add to these
conditions a place to sit upon as hard as the heart of Pharaoh and the
ever-present gun to keep you on it, and travelling becomes well-nigh
unendurable.
If it wasn’t for the antics of Brother Boer we should have succumbed
to jaundice, occasioned by nausea of the situation, or some other fell
disease. But the Boer brother, to beguile the tedium of the way,
showed us a thing or two in bullying, in quarrelling, and in
shooting—the last named, to our disappointment, not being a
consequence of the first two. Hanging on to a projection of our waggon
was an attendant to look after the mules, a Kaffir boy about fifteen
years old. His face was unadorned with beard, whisker, or moustache.
One of the Boers snatched the boy’s cap from him, held him tight by
the scruff of the neck, and then chucked the cap into the road.
Meanwhile the waggon proceeded, and soon the cap was a dim speck half
a mile behind. Then the owner of the cap was loosed off, and away he
sped back to his lost property. When he reached it we were a clear
mile away. Thereupon the Boers waxed mighty cheerful, and the
waggoner, loudly chuckling, whipped up his mules into a fast trot, the
little nigger running like a good ’un far in the rear. The going was
too bad for continuous trotting, so in two or three miles the boy had
overhauled us, and, though very blown, he showed his teeth with
pleasure at catching us, apparently bearing no malice for the trick
that had been played on him. But his troubles were not over. As he
laid hold of the waggon to jump on, a great Boer hand was sprawled in
his face and he went down on the road like a thousand of bricks at the
unexpected assault. Loud guffaws from the brethren greeted this
performance. It was repeated again and again till the poor devil was
hopelessly beaten, and unable to continue the game. Then, when allowed
to hang on again, he had to put up with brutal horseplay. His ears
were pulled, his face contorted into extraordinary shapes, and tufts
of wool, bleeding, jerked out of his head. At this point we deemed it
our business to interfere, and, appealing to the man who appeared to
be in command of our guard, and who spoke English well, we asked if it
was usual for the Boers to treat Kaffirs in this way. And if so, we
told him, it was high time every Boer in South Africa was shut up in
St. Helena. This touched him up, and he ordered the two bullies to
drop it. Then ensued a pretty quarrel. Some of us felt sure there were
Hindustani words used—and dreadful they sounded in Dutch mouths. We
fondly hoped there would be shooting, or at least fisticuffs. But the
Boer is like the Bengali—a leviathan in words and a mouse in deeds.
Behind a stone his heart is like that which protects him, and in the
open his heart becomes just like the atmosphere which affords him no
protection.
When cheerfulness was more or less restored somebody espied a herd of
buck about a mile away. The keen sight of the Boers is astonishing,
and the way they detected the movements of the buck at that distance
was a revelation. Some of us could see nothing at all, but the keenest
thought they could spot a little bit of colour which the Boers said
was a herd of about twenty buck. In a minute three of them were
blazing away with their Mausers, but the herd cleared without
casualty. Throughout the rest of the way the Boers blazed away without
intermission at anything and everything that suggested itself as a
target. There certainly was no idea among them then that it would be
well to husband ammunition. I see by the papers that their commandants
are said to be exhorting the Boers now in the field to save their
cartridges for officers, and not to waste any on the Tommies, but at
the date of which I am writing they behaved as if their supply of
ammunition was inexhaustible.
About midday a halt was called, the niggers did something to the
harness, which dropped on the ground, and the mules, freed, were
quickly up to their knees in an adjacent dam, and soon after that
busily engaged with the veldt grass. Only once a day were they
supposed to get a feed of corn, and from all we could hear that day
only came round about once a week. In the meantime the Boers had
fished out an empty wine case, smashed it up, lighted a fire, and
placed a great kettle on top. While that was boiling the carcass of a
sheep was produced from a sack, and all and sundry hacked a piece off.
When the kettle had boiled and the coffee was made, the fire was
heaped up afresh with wood, and every man had his bit of meat on the
end of a stick, held it in the flames, where it fizzled and cracked
and spurted as merrily as any steak on a grill in London town. There
was a dish of salt to dip into when you judged the cooking complete.
Our rusk sack was still partially filled, and wasn’t the dam full of
water within a few yards of us? ‘What more could the —— Englishman
want?’ said Brother Boer, as he lapped up all the coffee! In the
newspapers the Boer is made to speak of the _verdomde rooinek_, but my
experience of the Boer is that he prefers Tommy’s pet adjective before
all others.
Our rustic repast over, the Kaffirs began to collect the mules. This
they did not by running round them, but by sitting still and emitting
sounds into the tenor of which God forbid that any civilised human
being should inquire. Sufficient to say that they were weird enough to
‘kid’ the mules into leaving their feed and travelling half a mile to
the waggon, there to be yoked again in slavery. Thereafter our journey
was uneventful until we struck the railway, where we fondly hoped to
find a train. But the advance of the British from Bloemfontein had
begun, and the Boers, to prevent a sudden descent on the railway
within their own lines, had taken the precaution of blowing up every
bridge and culvert for many miles inside their own outposts. So we had
to traverse six more weary miles, witnessing for diversion the
destruction that dynamite can bring upon the handiwork of man. Great
iron bridges broken and tossed aside, huge embankments shattered,
railway stations annihilated. Cruel signs, but the inevitable
consequences of war. At dark we reached Smaldeel, a little station
sixty miles north of Bloemfontein, and at that time the southernmost
depôt of the Boer forces on the railway. Three days later the British
were in possession of Smaldeel and fired on the last Boer train
steaming out of the station. But knowing that afterwards did not
comfort us a bit when they locked us up that night.
Smaldeel is not an attractive place. We were dumped down in the most
unattractive part of it! Imagine a four-roomed house built of wood and
corrugated iron, one window per room and each one of them nailed down,
as it had been for a long time. Imagine in one of these rooms Boer
lumber—old clothes, empties, forgotten bedding; remember the boarded
window, call for a glass of brandy, and think with sympathy of us poor
sinners condemned to such a place for a livelong night.
What a ghastly night it was! They passed us in a small kettleful of
coffee that ran to about half a mug per man. We were dreadfully
thirsty, but the only water was a single water-bottleful between the
crowd of us—they said there was no more available. For solids we had
the remains of the rusks. On this slender nourishment we had to recoup
our jaded bodies and revive our flagging spirits. Needless to say, in
the morning we looked and felt but sorry representatives of Queen and
country. At daylight we were cleared out of that room, the taste of
which will remain with me until the day I die. The effect on us of the
cold clean air outside was indescribable. We blew ourselves out with
it like pouter pigeons, and nearly dropped down from shock to the
system. We breathed the good air till we forgot to be hungry, thirsty,
or even ashamed of our lamentable plight. The surging of it through
our corrupted lungs was better than—but that would be departing from
the plain unvarnished style with which the soldier man is allowed to
embellish his narrative in lieu of literary grace.
We were popped into a waiting train the carriages of which for
narrowness and hardness were like coffins without the compensating
immunity from pain and trouble so characteristic of the ordinary
coffin. That we might fit in easily they gave us nothing to eat or
drink, and when the train started we rattled about our compartment
like dried peas in a drum. To see us off the station was crowded with
all sorts and conditions of the human race. It was astonishing to
realise that the throat of man was so constituted that it could be
used to emit sounds which were nothing like anything we had ever heard
before. I heard a hundred High Court chaprassies hold the concert in
which their champion sang a solo in so raucous a voice that it caused
the great crack which now ornaments the Calcutta High Court building.
But it was nothing to Smaldeel station! Take a Boer who has lived on
the high veldt of the Transvaal with his next-door neighbour four
miles off, and bring him into a space where his conversation has to
carry for feet instead of miles, and you are overwhelmed by his voice.
Three hundred of that sort endeavoured to hold converse with us,
wanting to know where we had come from, why we had come, and what we
thought of our chances in the hereafter—no Boer thinks anybody who has
taken up arms against the Lord’s anointed people has a million-to-one
chance of salvation. We told them as much as we could, some of it with
regard to the truth, but mostly without. They plainly said we were
liars when we informed them we came from India. They knew all about
Indian coolies, so weren’t to be taken in. They were of opinion that
several of us who were clean-shaven were mere children, and deplored
the sinfulness of a Government that could send such lambs to the
slaughter. The clean-shaven ones cordially concurred, and ventured to
hope the Boer Government would do the right thing and ship the little
pets straight away to their mammas. That was another story, said
they—one that Oom Paul would know how to deal equitably with.
Pretoria! Pretoria! It was always Pretoria, as if that ghastly little
village was the hub of the universe.
I may be allowed here to point out that the Dutch pronunciation of the
name of the late President of the Transvaal differs slightly from that
commonly used in India. Of course, our Indian way is the soundest, but
it may give this feeble narrative a touch of realism to have included
the fact that in South Africa ‘Kruger’ is pronounced ‘Cree-yer,’ with
the accent on the ‘Cree.’ ‘Paul’ is pronounced like ‘towel,’ with a
‘p’ instead of a ‘t.’ The Burgher General Botha, in his native land,
is called ‘Beau-ta,’ both syllables of equal value and spoken rather
quickly—like our Indian word ‘lotah,’ with which word, in fact,
‘Botha’ rhymes. Many other words appertaining to South Africa are
pronounced not at all in the way that we have accepted as fit and
proper. Swears, however, find Boer and Briton unanimous both in
pronunciation and frequency of use.
When we had left the babel of Smaldeel far behind we settled down to a
critical examination of the country we were spinning through. We had
to occupy ourselves with a subject of absorbing interest so as to
divert our minds from dwelling on the vacuity of that part of our
anatomies which it is not considered polite to mention out of a church
or a nursery. But in the matter of country—we found it consoling to
see nothing but rolling downs with never a kopje in sight, right or
left, nearly all the way through the northern part of the Free State.
Surely Bobs and his army would waltz along such easy going and
speedily rescue us from the clutches of the wicked Boer! So far as
Kroonstad there was nothing to stop the British. There a river forming
a deep spruit meandered by, and would certainly give trouble were our
troops to confine themselves to a frontal attack. But by this time the
uses of flanking movements had been thoroughly grasped by our army,
and it could only be a question of a day or two for our fellows to
slip up on either side and squeeze the enemy out.
Steaming into Kroonstad it was comforting to think what a favourable
country the British army would have to operate in, but the feeling was
as naught compared with that aroused in us when we heard we were to be
fed at Kroonstad. Psychologists evolve wonderful things from the mind
of the intellectual man. But let them starve him. Then see how his
inner consciousness changes its base of operations. Thoughts emanating
from the brain lack the vigour and inventiveness of those prompted by
the working of the more humble organ. The war in South Africa proves
this conclusively. Wherever our troops and Generals have been well fed
the tendency has been to make a mull of things. But they have never
been starved without doing grand work: _vide_ the defence of
Ladysmith, the relief of Kimberley, the brilliant marches of Lord
Roberts’s army, where for days on end whole divisions had nothing but
a biscuit or two to crunch per man.
We rushed into Kroonstad station with the familiar feeling of dashing
importance that everybody knows about who travels by rail. We pulled
up with the old jerk, only more so, that we so joyously used to
anticipate when children. We sniffed the refreshment-room, caught a
glimpse of the coloured papers in the bookstall, and everything seemed
just the same as in old England—as if we were only waking up to
pleasant reality after a horrid dream. But when we tried to get out
the grimness of the truth was brought home to us: loaded rifles barred
our way.
However, the grub came, and our sorrows were forgotten in the pleasure
of exercising our fast stiffening jaws. It was great sandwiches of
bully beef, no butter, no trimmings, but mighty good, and bowls of
steaming coffee. There was a fair whack for each man, and none of us
thought of giving half to the poor or saving up any for a rainy day.
Every man ate up all he got and never emitted a sound, other than that
of mastication, until the grunt of interrogation which denoted
finished, and was there any more? There wasn’t, and we got no more
that day, barring what we bought and paid for at extortionate rates.
At any game in the world the Briton can beat the Boer if the
conditions are such that the Briton has any chance at all. This may
seem a reckless statement in view of the fact that 16,000 Boers are
still holding the field against ten times their number. But I make it
with a knowledge of the circumstances, and am willing to demonstrate
the truth of my statement to any unbeliever who has the pluck to call
on me expressing his doubt. At any rate, by night time, when we
crossed the Vaal River and had reached Vereeniging, the first station
in the Transvaal, we had so ‘kidded’ our guards into a belief in our
desire to reach Pretoria that they trusted us on to the platform, from
which we gravitated into the refreshment-bar with a celerity that
would have astonished Sir Isaac Newton. We found it crowded with
people who didn’t seem to think we were particularly remarkable—at any
rate, they did not offer us drinks: these we had to pay for at the
rate of 2_s._ a peg—cheap enough, considering everything. Hard-boiled
eggs 6_d._ each, sandwiches 1_s._, cigars none under 1_s._ The
last-named we could not run to, so set about looking for pipes and
’bacca. Boer tobacco is sold in glazed paper bags, about the size of
14 lb. of sugar, for 1_s._ a time. You can use it either for smoking
or as bedding for horses and cattle—they won’t eat it. Pipes like
those you get at home for 4½_d._ were half a crown, so there is no
need to dissert on the fiscal methods of the Boer: there’s no free
trade about him. He represents McKinley at about two stone in the
matter of Protection. I coveted a pipe for 3_s._ 6_d._ and told the
barman I was very sorry I only had 2_s._ 6_d._, and wouldn’t he give
it to a poor broken-hearted prisoner at a reduction? It was true about
the 2_s._ 6_d._, for I was afraid to produce a sovereign lest some of
them should take a fancy to it, as they had done to so many of our
little valuables. The beast said he’d see me damned first, and I
called him something in Hindustani which attracted more attention than
I liked, when I felt a hand twitching my tunic and saw a little Jew
man winking portentously. I put my hand down, and he slipped a coin
into it—a shilling it was, to enable me buy the pipe. This is one of
the few sporting things I have seen done in the Transvaal, and it was
not a Boer who did it. I don’t think Boers understand sport. They
never do anything until they have got six to four the best of their
neighbour. Every Boer who plays billiards carries a bit of soap, and
the few that are not afraid to play football are adepts at tripping.
They have stopped playing cards entirely, for they invariably found
after a few hands were dealt in a game that nothing but the rags of
the pack remained to be played with, all the good cards having gone up
the sleeves of the players.
However, I bought the pipe, and refunded the kindly little Jew his
bob. Leaving the bar, I passed a little bunch of Boers who had rather
enjoyed my rebuff at the hands of the barman.
I gravely congratulated the Boers on their brother behind the bar, and
asked if they had many other Boers as good looking. Discretion may
sometimes be a branch of valour, but there was very little valour
about the discretion I exercised when I left that refreshment-bar.
The rest of the night in the train was tedious and uncomfortable to a
degree, and cold beyond words. At 3 or 4 in the morning we landed at
Pretoria, and our guards, all South African Republic Police—the hated
Z.A.R.P.—belonging to Pretoria, instead of leaving us in the train
until daylight, hauled us out and marched us off. After a mile or so
we came to a building. We entered by a gate, and found ourselves in a
courtyard with high walls. We were there delivered over to another lot
of ruffians, the first lot clearing off to their homes in high
jubilation at the prospect of rejoining wives and families after many
months in the field. They had not been unkind to us on the whole, and
we found them simple enough, but imbued with considerable contempt of
the Britisher and an unchangeable belief in the ultimate success of
their own cause.
Sitting on the cold stone pavement of the courtyard, chewing the cud
of our misfortunes, we waited for the only friend we’d got—the sun.
Meanwhile strange sounds came from the high walls surrounding us—heavy
sighs, deep gruntings, weird moanings, harsh cries, and loud beatings.
We wondered what manner of place we were in. Daylight revealed the
truth. We were in the Pretoria Gaol, and all around us were the drunks
and incapables, the vagrants and vagabonds, black and white, that had
been scraped out of the gutter the night before. Mostly they were
Kaffir women—huge, unwieldy, hideously ugly creatures, reminding one
of those depicted by Hogarth in his scenes of low life in London
nearly two centuries ago. When the sun rose the doors of the cells
were opened and we saw strange sights. The gaoler prodded the sulky
ones with a long stick and made them come out.
Standing about in the fresh morning light, dirty, frowzled, altogether
abominable to look at, they seemed a blot on creation, and the
knowledge of their mere existence hung heavily on one’s mind. It was
not a pleasant awakening to the splendours of the Boer capital.
For about the tenth time we gave in our full names, and all we could
think of in the way of description, down to red hair, for which the
Boer has a peculiar regard. A Boer with red hair can be a Mormon a
dozen times. Nearly all their clergymen have red hair. In among the
drunks and incapables we found one cell containing representatives of
the British Army, lately free fighting men, but now confined against
their own wishes. One of these, to my astonishment—for his appearance
did not suggest the soldier in the very least—addressed me by name,
and I recognised in him a saddler sergeant who had built me a very
excellent saddle some years before, when his regiment, the 18th
Hussars, was in India. He and a pal had been taken prisoners at the
very beginning of the war in Natal, and so had done six months in
durance vile. They had been so bored with their experiences that they
had escaped and endeavoured to get to Portuguese territory, but
unluckily the ubiquitous Boer had been too many for them, and they
were now being restored to their _status quo ante_, as political
paragraphists describe it. Another was a Yeoman lad from county Notts,
with a very much worn pair of boots to his feet, and it showed fine
public spirit in him that he seemed to deplore this fact more than his
being made prisoner.
In the corner of the courtyard was a tap, and we all did a bit of
washing. The absence of silver-topped scent-bottles, ebony
hair-brushes, Pears’ soap, &c., was rather a drawback, but it did not
prevent us creating at least a zone of cleanliness. We were then
paraded, and in as martial array as was possible, without guns or
swords and incommoded with blankets and empty sacks, we marched forth
with a loud cheer. To be a prisoner of war was a fate that might
overcome the best soldier that ever stepped, but to be herded with
police mud-scrapings injured the dignity of every one of us.
Half-an-hour’s walk past cottages, bakers’ shops, where smiling
lassies stood at doorways, and all the signs of a little country town
at home, we came to a great enclosed space at one corner of which was
inscribed the legend ‘Polo Ground.’ We immediately began arguing about
who was to play in the first chukker, and whether we’d have a
ten-minute chukker, with a change of pony half-time, or chukkers of
six minutes straight away. Two known cracks were agreed upon, and
they, to save unseemly fighting, picked up sides. Then each side began
backing itself for large sums (on the nod), while the unselected ones
scoffed and offered 5 to 4 against either team. Needless to say, while
diverting ourselves in this manner we were girt about by armed
horsemen, who conducted themselves with much dignity and secret
spurrings, especially when passing where comely lassies stood at the
doors. In this respect I have observed the Boer does not differ from
the Briton, nor has he any scruples about endeavouring to attract the
admiration of another Boer’s girl as well as his own. Marching along
one side of the enclosure, we came to a great entrance, and realised
of a sudden that we had arrived at the racecourse, rendered classic by
the experiences of our imprisoned troops within its gates. We entered
and found all the offices so familiar to racegoers—grand stand,
paddock, weighing-room, jockeys’ room, horse-boxes—but no equine
wonders. It filled our hearts with sorrow to see such waste—not even a
booky to trill forth the odds.
But there was a desolation over the scene very different from the stir
and bustle of a racecourse. Our troops had been penned up in a
barbed-wire enclosure that included the paddock, stands, and a bit of
the course itself. Most of the buildings had been utilised as
hospitals, and where or how the poor devils who hadn’t enteric or
dysentery or pleurisy or rheumatic fever existed, Heaven alone knows.
The N.C.O.s had the privilege of sleeping on the steps of the grand
stand, and I suppose the others had to be content with the ground.
Very quickly the accommodation at the racecourse had become
inadequate, and the camp at Waterval was established, leaving only a
hospital and a staff of orderlies. The result was a most woebegone
place, littered with empty tins, rags, paper, and refuse of all sorts.
We elected to occupy a row of horse-boxes facing the paddock. I’m sure
no owner of racehorses would have allowed any of his string to enter
these boxes, but we were only too glad to find a place wherein to lay
our heads. After a long delay they brought us rations of sorts—the
potatoes, I remember well, being little round things about the size of
marbles and everyone gaily sprouting. For the rest we had ½ lb. of
meat and a loaf of bread apiece, plenty of cold water, and the
consolation of being told we had a great deal to be thankful for.
While our troops had been confined at the racecourse some of the
residents of Pretoria had been exceedingly kind in supplying them with
what, to them, were great luxuries to help out the meagre fare allowed
by the Boer Government. A much-appreciated but sticky delicacy was a
considerable supply of golden syrup. In one little hut occupied by a
mess of sergeants, twelve men used to sleep every night, packed as
close as herrings. The morning following the day on which they had
received their share of the golden syrup they found themselves all
stuck together, and had to rise up in one piece like a row of toy
soldiers.
Lieutenant Crane was taken off to the newly formed camp for prisoners on
a barren hillside north of Pretoria, where nearly all officers had been
confined within triple fences of barbed wire since their removal from
the Model School. Non-commissioned officers and troopers of Lumsden’s
Horse had to share the fate of other captive soldiers at Waterval on the
high veldt outside the Magaliesberg, but luckily they were not among the
number hurried away by retreating Boer commandos to distant Nooitgedacht
when our troops entered Pretoria. At Waterval the daily rations were
scanty enough, though luxurious by comparison with the meagre fare
served out at a later date to prisoners in that place away eastwards
with a name that bespeaks desolation. And by the kindness of the
American Consul, Sergeant D.S. Fraser was able to obtain funds from
India for himself and his fellow-sufferers. This enabled them to
supplement the rough rations issued to them during their imprisonment at
Waterval. To cover the advances made for this purpose Colonel Lumsden
authorised a grant of 5_l._ each to the prisoners, being at the rate of
1_l._ per man per week for the period of their captivity. Thus the value
of such a fund as had been raised in Calcutta before the corps left was
demonstrated in an unforeseen way. By means of it Colonel Lumsden had
been able to start with a treasure-chest of 1,000_l._ and a sufficient
credit in the Standard Bank of South Africa to meet all emergencies.
[Illustration: WATERVAL PRISON, NEAR PRETORIA]
Of the uneventful dulness of their life in the prisoners’ camp, where
few visitors ever came, and none whose presence could be considered very
cheerful, we may judge by the fact that hardly anything has been written
about it. The poor fellows who had neither money nor friends to procure
it for them must have fared ill indeed on nothing but Government rations
issued according to the following scale, which cannot be impugned,
seeing that the Editor found it written in choicest official Dutch among
other documents at Pretoria bearing the seal of the Z.A.R. On this scale
the officers were to receive 1 lb. of meat and an undefined ration of
meal, rice, or peas, per head per day, with a weekly allowance of
groceries amounting to 2 oz. of coffee, 2 oz. of tea, and one candle per
head. In practice the meat ration dwindled down at times to as little as
1½ lb. a week for each officer, and the meal, rice, or peas being _à
discrétion_, not of the consumer but of the burgher in charge, were
occasionally off the bill of fare altogether. The rank-and-file were
each to receive 7 lb. of flour, 3 lb. of meal, 3 lb. of rice, 3 lb. of
dried French beans, 21 oz. of sugar, 2 oz. of salt, 3½ oz. of raw coffee
beans, and 2 lbs. of meat _per week_, and had to see that they got it,
as the Boers, being rather short of luxuries themselves, claimed the
right to make reductions frequently on the plea that there had been an
excessive issue for some previous day. Actually at one time the
prisoners at Nooitgedacht, to whom the same scale applied, did not
receive more than an average of 3 lb. of flour and ½ lb. of meat per
head per week, and the beans, which formed their only vegetable diet,
were useless. The captives among whom a few of Lumsden’s Horse found
their lot cast at Waterval were not so badly off as that, but still
there was so much monotony, both in food and in the featureless routine
of daily life, that they must have been very glad to hear the booming of
British guns outside Pretoria and to know that the hour of their
deliverance from bondage was at hand. A few days after the entry of our
troops into the capital, Colonel Lumsden had the gratification of
writing:
Lieutenant Crane’s many friends in India will be pleased to hear that
he is once more with us and in command of his section, looking stout
and well, none the worse for his wound or his enforced stay in
Pretoria.
Sergeant Fraser, Corporal Angus McGillivray, Privates R.N. Macdonald,
Peterson and Leslie Williams are also back with us, all looking fit
and strong.
Lance-Corporal Firth is at present employed in the Financial Adviser’s
office in Pretoria, and has made himself so useful that I cannot
persuade General Maxwell, the Military Governor, to dispense with his
services.