HEKPOORT.
_Saturday, September 8th, 1900._
I fancy I stopped in my last near the end of a rather long-winded
account of the shelling we experienced at the hands of Brother Boer, on
Thursday evening last. To conclude that day's events, we finally shifted
our horse lines a bit and turned in, spending a night undisturbed by the
distant booming of the Boer guns or the ear-splitting cracking of our
4.7. The next day we returned to our old lines, and settled down for a
good day's rest, as we heard that Clements was waiting for Ridley to
come up.
I had hardly unsaddled, however, when the sergeant-major came round and
told half-a-dozen of us to saddle up and go out with the two guides
(civilians, British farmers, who are with this column and know the
locality). So we flung on our saddles, and slipping on our bandoliers,
mounted and set out in our shirt sleeves (mark that!) with our guides in
their civilian togs (mark that!). From these individuals we gathered we
were off cattle-lifting, the Boers having left some in a kloof about a
couple of miles south of the camp. With jocular allusions to our last
quest of a similar nature (the laager near Rustenburg) we smoked and
trotted along, comfortable in our shirt sleeves after so much of the
usual marching order. Following, came four "boys" to drive the cattle
home. We soon reached our objective. The "boys" were sent into the
kloof, while we dismounted a little way up the stone-covered kopje on
the right, and leaving a couple to look after the gees, the guides and
the remainder of us started to climb the heights and cover the "boys" if
necessary. Soon a rifle report was heard, and then another. The guides
said it was a picket of ours firing on us in mistake from the kopje on
the left, and suggested that one of us should work round and let them
know who we were. Most of us argued that the report was a Mauser one.
However, the guides prevailed, and I was deputed for the job, when the
"boys" came running in breathless and told us pantingly that Boers had
been sniping them. So seeing that it would be impossible under the
circumstances to lift the cattle, we retired on our horses, mounted and
moved off. And then the beggars, who had evidently moved up closer, gave
it to us fairly warm, and we had to open out and break into a gallop in
the direction of the camp. We were about clear of the Mausers and riding
through some bush, when, suddenly above a stone wall not a hundred yards
in front of us, helmets and heads appeared, also glistening rifle
barrels, which pointed, oh no, not on the kopje behind, but on us. [This
is where the civilian clothes and shirt sleeves came in.] An officer
shouted "Don't fire! Don't fire!!! Down with those rifles." This order
was obeyed reluctantly, then "Who are you?" "Friends! Yeomanry!" "What
Yeomanry?" "Sussex." "All right." They proved to be a picket of the
Northumberland Fusiliers. Then we crossed a drift, our horses nearly
having to swim, and finally reached camp. This morning (Saturday,
September 8th) our squadron and the Fifes had to go back about
half-a-dozen miles to meet Ridley. Our troop acted as advance party. It
was rather an interesting sight to see the two parties meet; the advance
of Ridley's force was Kitchener's Horse. When we met, we halted and
chatted, waiting for orders. As we did so, the merry snipers started a
desultory fire, which gradually became more rapid. Several suspected
houses in the vicinity, whose owners had, as usual, taken the oath of
neutrality and broken it--_Punica Fides_ will have to give way to a new
phrase, Boer Faith--were then burnt down. War is not altogether a game,
it has its stern aspect. The women and children were loud in their
lamentations as the red flames blazed and the dense smoke rolled away on
the fresh breeze which was blowing. They cursed us and wept idle tears,
but they had their own dear friends, husbands and sons, to thank after
all, as nearly all the sniping in this lovely valley is being done by
the farmers who live in it. We brought about 25 Boers in camp with us,
either suspected or to save them from temptation. To see them, with
their roll of blankets, saying good-bye to their weeping families would
have touched anything but the hardened, homesick heart of a "Gentleman
in Khaki," for he knows full well that the simple peasant in this, as in
other localities, usually combines business with pleasure by sniping you
in the morning and selling you eggs in the afternoon, as our troop
leader puts it.
[Illustration: Hate.]
Sunday, September 9th. A late _reveille_ (6 o'clock). A lovely, lazy day
in camp, during which I have been stewing fruit, smoking, and, alas, my
bad habits still cling to me, perpetrated for my own amusement a little
rough-and-ready rhyme, which I have the temerity to enclose. We had a
short service, at which our O.C. Major Percy Browne, a real good man,
presided. Ridley, who works with Clements, the same as Mahon did with
Ian Hamilton, has with him Roberts' Horse, Kitchener's Horse, some
Australians, the 2nd and 6th M.I., some artillery and two pom-poms. We
advance to-morrow.