There were many deaths at Spearman's, and the burying ground was under
the shadow of the clump of trees which stood at the back of Spearman's
Farm, and of which burying place I have already spoken. Those who died
were carried away to the mortuary-tent, and there each body was sewn up
by the coolies in the brown army blanket or in a sheet. The sewing was
after the manner of the sewing up of a package. The brown blanket,
however, formed but a poor covering at the last, and it made little
mystery of what it shrouded. Beneath its tightly drawn folds there was
shadowed something that was still a man, for was there not the clear
outline of head and chin and shoulders and feet? When the body was
ready it was brought out of the tent, placed upon a stretcher, and
carried to the grave. Over the bodies of the officers was thrown the
Union Jack, but the bodies of the soldiers were covered only by the
brown blanket or the sheet.
There was one funeral which I have in mind, on the occasion of which
eight were buried--eight who had been struck down on Spion Kop--four
non-commissioned officers and four men.
The funeral party drew up near to the mortuary-tent, and halted there in
precise military formation. There was the firing party, who went first,
with inverted rifles; then came the bearers, and then a small company
from the regiments of the dead.
Some little way off stood a cluster of men who had come, in a shy,
apologetic sort of way, to see the last of their pals. They seemed to
think that their presence near by the formal procession was an
intrusion, and they huddled together, some ten of them, at a distance.
From their attitudes one inferred that they did not wish to be
considered as taking part in the funeral. They were pretending to be
merely onlookers. They were restless, and disposed to shuffle their
feet, or they kicked the earth up absently with the toes of their boots.
Some of the ten kept their eyes fixed upon the mortuary-tent, to watch
the bodies come out. As each of the blanket-covered objects was brought
from the tent into the sunlight there were murmured comments from this
small knot of untidy men--these men who did not want to look like
mourners, but who were mourners indeed. "That's surely Ginger," says
one of the number, pointing to the body last brought out. "No, that
ain't Ginger," says his companion. "Ginger never had a chest on him
like that. That's more like Jimmy Evans. Jimmy held hisself like that
often."
So they talked, and they kept up fairly well this pretence at a casual
conversation. But some could not trust themselves to speak, and these
kept their backs to the tent and kicked at the earth absently. Those who
took part in the apparent nonchalant talk had a struggle, I think, to
keep their voices from breaking and their eyes from becoming dim. The
"things" they were bringing out of the tent, done up in blankets, had
once been men who had, perhaps, enlisted with them, who probably hailed
from the same town in the Old Country, and who were the subjects of many
memories.
When all the bodies were ready and the stretchers in line, the
procession started, and marched slowly and silently round the kopje and
along the glade that led to the trees by Spearman's Farm.
But for the tents of a far-off camp the veldt was a desert. There was
scarcely a human being in sight. There was none of the pomp of a
soldier's burial; no funeral march; no awed crowd; no tolling of bells;
no group of weeping women in black clothes; no coffin borne on a
gun-carriage and distinguished by the helmet and accoutrements of the
dead. There were only the eight bundles in the brown blankets on the
eight stretchers. And some little way in the rear were the slouching
company of the ten, who did not want to be regarded as mourners, and
who, with occasional "sniffing," and perhaps a surreptitious wiping of
eyes with a shirt cuff, were shuffling along with a poor affectation of
indifference.
In due course the last resting-place is reached, and here are eight
separate graves in a line, and at the head of them stands the chaplain.
He has on a college cap, a white surplice, riding breeches and putties.
He reads the service with the utmost impressiveness. The men who form
the firing party and the escort are ranged round the place of burial in
precise military lines, and, in spite of the blazing sun, every head is
bared. The words of the chaplain alone break the silence, although now
and then there comes across the plain the boom of the naval gun. And
here, under the dazzling sky of Africa, and at the foot of a kopje on
the veldt, the eight dead are laid in the ground.
There are no onlookers except myself and the little group of ten. They
stand in a cluster at a respectful distance. Their heads are bare, and
more than one man has hidden his face in his helmet, while others have
turned their heads away so that their mates shall not see their eyes.
Their pretence at indifference and at having been drawn to the funeral
by mere curiosity is now of the very slenderest.
As the graves are being filled up the funeral party marches back to the
camp with a brisk step. The slovenly ten, who are not taking the part of
mourners, scatter. They wander off in twos and threes, and they have
become curiously silent. Some have dragged out pipes from their
pockets, and are filling them absently. One is whistling an incoherent
fragment of a tune. They look towards the horizon, and perhaps see
nothing but the barren veldt, or perhaps they see a familiar village in
England, and within a cottage in the small street the figure of a woman
with her face buried in her hands.