On Sunday (August 5th), while the folks at home were preparing for the
Bank Holiday, we Yeomen of Sussex, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Fife,
with our friends "The Roughs," were continuing to advance west in the
direction of Rustenburg. This day we passed through some of the best
wooded country I have seen out here. The trees being quite large and at
a distance very much like small oaks. At about mid-day we halted in
front of Olifant's Nek, and our signallers tried to get into
heliographic communication with the great "B.-P.," who was supposed to
be in possession. At last, after several fruitless efforts, a dazzling
dot in the pass appeared and commenced twinkling in response to ours.
"Twinkle, twinkle, helio,
What a lot of things you know."
Soon we received the order to advance. Then we were halted, "files
about," and galloping about a mile to the rear, were drawn up, and
informed that a Boer laager had been reported under a small kopje of
the Magaliesberg some distance east from the Nek, and we were to go and
investigate the matter. The first three groups of our troop were sent
out to locate it, I being in the centre one. We had some wretched ground
to go over, and finally, without any signs of opposition, reached the
small farms lying at the foot of the range of hills. There the left and
centre group were stopped for some considerable time by a large barbed
wire fence and, as none of us possessed any wire nippers, we finally had
to go out of our way some distance in order to avoid it. I mention this
trivial incident as illustrative of how some Yeomanry matters of
equipment have been neglected. From my own knowledge, based on enquiry,
I find that none of the non-commissioned officers or men of our squadron
were provided with these very necessary implements--one or two happened
to have private ones, and that is all. So much for that grumble. Now to
resume. Having overcome the barb-wire difficulty, we continued our
progress in the direction where we understood the laager was situated,
convinced in our minds that of Boers there were none. _En route_ we
called at the few houses in the neighbourhood and made slight
investigations, with always the same result. There were women and heaps
of children, but of men none. Of course, you know the game. The
chivalrous Boer, having deposited his arms in Pretoria and taken the
oath of neutrality, has rested himself, and is now out again on the war
path, either from choice or through being commandeered. At last one of
our scouts rode up and told us that our right-hand group had found the
laager which had been evacuated. Riding through the trees, it was rather
thickly wooded, we soon came across wandering cows, calves and oxen, and
at length the laager at the foot of a small kopje. In it were the four
men of our right group, cattle, horses, a few donkeys, and a couple of
uneasy-looking niggers, who had evidently been left behind and in charge
by the Boers. It was a fine position for a laager, and well hidden away.
Several of us dismounted here and lighted our pipes while we watched the
fine cattle we had got, and those with bad horses haggled as to who
should possess the best of the Boer mounts, which were being held by the
uncomfortable-looking Kaffirs. Presently through a donga on the left of
the laager came the leading groups of the Fife Light Horse and soon the
laager contained the first troop. I remounted my horse and--_rap!_ went
a shot and over rolled a horse and rider (a Sussex sergeant) on my
right; then into us rapped and cracked the rifles from the near kopje.
There was only one thing to do, and that was to clear. Men and horses
appeared to be tumbling over on all sides, _Bete Noire_ swerved and I
fell off at the commencement of the fusillade. Arising, I doubled after
the sergeant whose horse had been knocked over by the first shot. After
going about a score of yards, I saw him dash into some bushes and
brambles, and following, slipped and rolled down the side of a gully
till I found myself scratched and torn sitting in a small rivulet at the
bottom with my pipe still in my mouth and my rifle, the barrel of which
was half choked with mud, in my hand. Looking round I saw two of our
fellows who had led their horses down from the other side. The place
could not have been improved on for cover, and the others falling in
with my _j'y suis, j'y reste_ remark, we sat down on the moist earth and
rocks and awaited developments, while the bullets whistled and buzzed
through the trees over our heads. Soon a volley whizzed over us from our
fellows who had succeeded in retiring and rallying behind a knoll some
distance back. This went on for a time, and at length the firing ceased.
A Fife man came up from lower down the gully; he had lost both horse and
rifle. However, crawling higher up, he found the latter in some bushes.
Presently a strange figure appeared, clad in khaki, with a dark blue
handkerchief tied over his head, a stick in his hand and leading a
horse. This proved to be another canny Scot. He had assumed this sort of
disguise and managed to secure a horse from near the laager. He was
rather apprehensive lest our own people should fire on him if they
spotted him. As he told us, on our enquiring, that there were two more
horses in the laager, though he advised us not to go out for them then,
the Fife man and I emerged from the donga and with a wary eye on the
treacherous kopjes entered the laager, which was only a score of yards
from our place of concealment, and to my great delight, of the two
horses quietly eating the forage there I recognised _Bete Noire_ as one.
Having now obtained horses, we leisurely proceeded to camp, calling on
the way at a few of the farmhouses and an orange grove we had passed on
our advance to the laager. The Boers had evidently cleared, or they
would have fired on us as we rode to the farms in full view of the
kopjes all the way. I cannot say that the simple Boer women seemed
pleased to see us when we rode up with smiling faces and helped
ourselves (with their permission) to oranges and tangerines, while one
good lady gave me a couple of eggs, which I enjoyed later for tea. Then
gaily bidding them _Auf Wiedersehen_ we retraced our way and came to
where the camp had been established. Arrived there, the stories we heard
concerning the affair were, as you can imagine, marvellous. And, after
all, what do you think the wily Boer bagged as the result of such a
lovely death trap? Not a man. Half-a-dozen horses were shot, and I
daresay some cattle. My rolled overcoat also had a rip suspiciously like
a bullet mark. Once again Boer wiliness had been rendered ineffectual
owing to execrable marksmanship. It seems like ingratitude to thus
criticise their shooting, but it cannot go without comment.
On Monday, the August Bank Holiday, we did not shift camp, and had the
luxury of a late _reveille_ (6 a.m.), and opportunities for very
necessary washes and shaves, and such domestic duties as repairing rents
in our breeches and tunics, and a little laundry work. Some of your
"gentlemen rovers abroad" are finding that sewing the tears in one's
tunic is a far different and more difficult matter than sowing one's
wild oats at home. Owing to having baked the back of one of my boots in
drying it at a fire, after my fourth immersion in a bog, I have had
rather a bad heel, but am easier in that vulnerable part now, having cut
out the back of the boot.
On Tuesday, B-P. very unwillingly evacuated Rustenburg, and we marched
back in the direction of Pretoria.
I don't think, in spite of my verbosity, I have made any particular or
direct allusion to our friend, the mule, so here I will make slight
amends. Alas, he lost the little reputation he possessed at Nicholson's
Nek, but to give the mule his due he is a hard worker--he has to be--he
is born in bondage and dies in bondage (there is no room out here for
the R.S.P.C.A.), and the golden autumn of a hard-lived life is not for
the likes of him. He does not appear to get much to eat, though he will
eat anything, as I found to my cost one night when in charge of the
stable guard. A friend had lent me two _Graphics_, which I left on my
blanket for a few minutes while I went the rounds. On my return I found
a mule contentedly eating one of them--I only just managed to save half
of it. When in camp, the Cape Boys, in whose charge they are, usually
tie some of them to the wheels of the waggons, ammunition and water
carts, the remainder being left to wander tied together in threes and
fours, reminding one for all the world of Bank Holiday festivallers
arm-in-arm on the so-called joyous razzle dazzle.
Out here we wandering humble builders of the Empire have no idea how the
war is progressing, if progressing it is. Our noses are flat against the
picture, so to speak, and, consequently, we practically see and know
nothing; it is you good folks at home who have the panoramic view. Our
cheerful pessimist expressed himself to this effect a few days ago.
About forty or fifty years hence, travellers in this part of the world
will come across bands of white-haired and silver-bearded men in strange
garbs of ox and mule skin patches, and armed with obsolete weapons,
wandering about in pursuit of phantasmal beings to be known in future
legends as land Flying Dutchmen. Anyhow, give Private Thomas Atkins a
good camp fire at night when the Army halts, round which he can
comfortably sit and grumble about his rations, while he partakes of a
well-cooked looted porker or fowl, and afterwards fills his pipe with
the tobacco of the country, which he lights with an ember plucked from
the burning, and talks of home, and the prospects, optimistic or
pessimistic, of getting there some day, and at least, he is content. Oh,
England, what have we not given up for thee this year, Cowes, Henley,
the Derby, Ascot, Goodwood, the Royal Academy, the Paris Exhibition, the
latest books and plays, all these and more--much more. And if we hadn't,
what would we have done? Kicked ourselves, of course.
"Then here's to the Sons of the Widow,
Whenever, however they roam;
And all they desire, and if they require,
A speedy return to the home.
Poor beggars, they'll never see home!"