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WITH RIMINGTON
BY
L. MARCH PHILLIPPS
LATE CAPTAIN IN RIMINGTON'S GUIDES
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1902
_All rights reserved_
_DEDICATION_
_This book is dedicated to the memory of my friend Lieutenant Gustavus
Coulson, D.S.O., of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, who fell at
Lambrechtfontein on May 19, 1901._
_The Colonel in command writes that in that action Lieutenant Coulson
rallied some men and saved a gun from falling into the enemy's hands. He
lost his life in bringing off a wounded man from under the enemy's fire.
For this deed, the last of many deeds as brave, he was recommended for
the Victoria Cross._
_I knew him from his childhood, and on the march from Lindley to
Pretoria, and thence far south to Basutoland, we often rode together,
and talked of West Country sport and his Devonshire home and faces that
we both knew and loved there._
_A keen soldier, a cheery comrade, and a brave and kindly English
gentleman, he stands, it seems to me, the very type of those gallant
boys who in this South African war have died for England_.
PREFACE
These letters were written without any idea of publication, and it was
not until I had been home some months that suggestions from one or two
sources caused me to think of printing them. They appear much as they
were written, except that sometimes several letters dealing with the
same event have been thrown into one; and occasionally a few words have
been added to fill up gaps. In no case have I been wise after the event,
or put in prophecies which had already come off.
The parts in inverted commas are extracts from note-books which I used
to carry about in my pocket, and these passages I have left just as they
were jotted down, thinking that such snap-shots of passing scenes might
have an interest of their own.
It is unlucky from a descriptive point of view that the big actions and
fine effects should all have occurred during the first part of the war,
leaving the dulness and monotony for the later stages. During the last
six months of my service it was not my chance to see any important
action, though slight skirmishing was constant, and I find therefore
nothing in the later letters of a very exciting nature.
Such as they are, however, these letters contain a quite faithful
account of things that happened under my own eyes throughout the chief
stages of the western campaign. During the early part of the war many
things happened that were splendid to see and that it gave me great
pleasure to write about. During the later stages nothing particularly
splendid occurred, though the patience and endurance of our men were in
their way fine; but some things happened which were, as we say,
regrettable; and these things also are in their turn briefly described.
L.M.P.
15 BURY STREET,
ST. JAMES'S, S.W.
CONTENTS
LETTER PAGE
I. ORANGE RIVER CAMP 1
II. BELMONT 8
III. GRASPAN 15
IV. MODDER RIVER 22
V. THE 4.7 30
VI. MAGERSFONTEIN 34
VII. A RECONNAISSANCE 43
VIII. SCOUTING ON THE MODDER 49
IX. THE ADVANCE 59
X. RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY 63
XI. PAARDEBERG--THE BOMBARDMENT 73
XII. PAARDEBERG--THE SURRENDER 77
XIII. POPLAR GROVE 83
XIV. BLOEMFONTEIN 89
XV. MODDER REVISITED 97
XVI. JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR 104
XVII. THE MARCH NORTH 112
XVIII. PRETORIA 126
XIX. THE MARCH SOUTH 139
XX. PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER--I 151
XXI. PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER--II 165
XXII. FIGHTING AND TREKKING 173
XXIII. WRITTEN FROM HOSPITAL 185
XXIV. FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING 192
XXV. THE SITUATION 205
XXVI. PLAIN MISTER! 217
WITH RIMINGTON
LETTER I
ORANGE RIVER CAMP
ORANGE RIVER, _November_ 18, 1899.
The sun is just rising on Orange River Camp. Our tents are pitched on
the slopes of white sand, soft and deep, into which you sink at every
step, that stretch down to the river, dotted with a few scraggy
thorn-trees. There are men round me, sleeping about on the sand, rolled
in their dark brown blankets, like corpses laid out, covered from head
to foot, with the tight folds drawn over their feet and over their
heads. A few bestir themselves, roll, and stretch, and draw back the
covering from their sleepy, dusty faces. The first sunbeams begin to
creep along the ground and turn the cold sand yellow.
I am beginning this letter in the shade of a mimosa. The whole scene
reminds me very much of Egypt; and you might easily believe that you
were sitting on the banks of the Nile somewhere between the first and
second cataract. There are the same white, sandy banks, the same narrow
fringe of verdure on each side, the same bareness and treelessness of
the surrounding landscape, the same sun-scorched, stony hillocks; in
fact, the whole look of the place is almost identical. The river, slow
and muddy, is a smaller Nile; there only wants the long snout and heavy,
slug-like form of an old crocodile on the spit of sand in the middle to
make the likeness complete. And over all the big arch of the pure sky is
just the same too.
Our camp grows larger and rapidly accumulates, like water behind a dam,
as reinforcements muster for the attack. Methuen commands. We must be
about 8000 strong now, and are expecting almost hourly the order to
advance. Below us De Aar hums like a hive. From a deserted little
wayside junction, such as I knew it first, it has blossomed suddenly
into a huge depôt of all kinds of stores, provisions, fodder,
ammunition, and all sorts of material for an important campaign. Trains
keep steaming up with more supplies or trucks crowded with khaki-clad
soldiers, or guns, khaki painted too, and the huge artillery horses that
the Colonials admire so prodigiously. Life is at high pressure. Men talk
sharp and quick, and come to the point at once. Foreheads are knit and
lips set with attention. Every one you see walks fast, or, if riding,
canters. There is no noise or confusion, but all is strenuous, rapid
preparation.
Do you know Colonials? In my eight months of mining life at Johannesburg
I got to know them well. England has not got the type. The Western
States of America have it. They are men brought up free of caste and
free of class. When you come among Colonials, forget your birth and
breeding, your ancestral acres and big income, and all those things
which carry such weight in England. No forelocks are pulled for them
here; they count for nothing. Are you wide-awake, sharp, and shrewd,
plucky; can you lead? Then go up higher. Are you less of these things?
Then go down lower. But always among these men it is a position simply
of what you are in yourself. Man to man they judge you there as you
stand in your boots; nor is it very difficult, officer or trooper, or
whatever you are, to read in their blunt manners what their judgment is.
It is lucky for our corps that it has in its leader a man after its own
heart; a man who, though an Imperial officer, cares very little for
discipline or etiquette for their own sakes; who does not automatically
assert the authority of his office, but talks face to face with his men,
and asserts rather the authority of his own will and force of character.
They are much more ready to knock under to the man than they would be to
the mere officer. In his case they feel that the leader by office and
the leader by nature are united, and that is just what they want.
There are Colonials out here, as one has already come to see, of two
tolerably distinct types. These you may roughly distinguish as the
money-making Colonials and the working Colonials. The money-making lot
flourish to some extent in Kimberley, but most of all in Johannesburg.
You are soon able to recognise his points and identify him at a
distance. He is a little too neatly dressed and his watch-chain is a
little too much of a certainty. His manner is excessively glib and
fluent, yet he has a trick of furtively glancing round while he talks,
as if fearful of being overheard. For the same reason he speaks in low
tones. He must often be discussing indifferent topics, but he always
looks as if he were hatching a swindle. There is also a curious look of
waxworks about his over-washed hands.
This is the type that you would probably notice most. The Stock Exchange
of Johannesburg is their hatching-place and hot-bed; but from there they
overflow freely among the seaside towns, and are usually to be found in
the big hotels and the places you would be most likely to go to. Cape
Town at the present moment is flooded with them. But these are only the
mere froth of the South African Colonial breed. The real mass and body
of them consists (besides tradesmen, &c., of towns) of the miners of the
Rand, and, more intrinsically still, of the working men and the farmers
of English breed all over the Colony. It is from these that the fighting
men in this quarrel are drawn. It is from these that our corps, for
instance, has been by the Major individually and carefully recruited;
and I don't think you could wish for better material, or that a body of
keener, more loyal, and more efficient men could easily be brought
together.
Many of them are veterans, and have taken part in some of the numerous
African campaigns--Zulu, Basuto, Kaffir, Boer, or Matabele. They are
darkly sunburnt; lean and wiry in figure; tall often, but never fat (you
never see a fat Colonial), and they have the loose, careless seat on
horseback, as if they were perfectly at home there. As scouts they have
this advantage, that they not only know the country and the Dutch and
Kaffir languages, but that they are accustomed, in the rough and varied
colonial life, to looking after themselves and thinking for themselves,
and trusting no one else to do it for them. You can see this
self-reliance of theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger and
the way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of the carbines on their
hips, the way they hold their heads and speak and look straight at you.
Your first march with such a band is an episode that impresses itself.
We were called up a few days ago at dead of night from De Aar to relieve
an outlying picket reported hard pressed. In great haste we saddled by
moonlight, and in a long line went winding away past the artillery lines
and the white, ghostly tents of the Yorkshires. The hills in the still,
sparkling moonlight looked as if chiselled out of iron, and the veldt
lay spread out all white and misty; but what one thought most of was the
presence of these dark-faced, slouch-hatted irregulars, sitting free and
easy in their saddles, with the light gleaming dully on revolver and
carbine barrel. A fine thing is your first ride with a troop of fighting
men.
Though called guides we are more properly scouts. Our strength is about
a hundred and fifty. A ledger is kept, in which, opposite each man's
name, is posted the part of the country familiar to him and through
which he is competent to act as guide. These men are often detached, and
most regiments seem to have one or two of ours with them. Sometimes a
party is detached altogether and acts with another column, and there
are always two or three with the staff. Besides acting as guides they
are interpreters, and handy men generally. All these little subtractions
reduce our main body to about a hundred, or a little less; and this main
body, under Rimington himself, acts as scouts and ordinary fighting men.
In fact, a true description of us would be "a corps of scouts supplying
guides to the army."
One word about the country and I have done. What strikes one about all
South African scenery, north and south, is the simplicity of it; so very
few forms are employed, and they are employed over and over again. The
constant recurrence of these few grave and simple features gives to the
country a singularly childish look. Egyptian art, with its mechanical
repetitions, unchanged and unvaried, has just the same character. Both
are intensely pre-Raphaelite.
South Africa's only idea of a hill, for instance, is the pyramid. There
are about three different kinds of pyramid, and these are reproduced
again and again, as if they were kept all ready made in a box like toys.
There is the simple kopje or cone, not to be distinguished at a little
distance from the constructed pyramids of Egypt, just as regular and
perfect. Then there is the truncated or flat-topped pyramid, used for
making ranges; and finally the hollow-sided one, a very pretty and
graceful variety, with curving sides drooping to the plain. These are
all. Of course there are a few mistakes. Some of the hills are rather
shakily turned out, and now and then a kopje has fallen away, as it
were, in the making. But still the central idea, the type they all try
for, is always perfectly clear. Moreover, they all are, or are meant to
be, of exactly the same height.
Most strange and weird is this extraordinary regularity. It seems to
mean something, to be arranged on some plan and for some humanly
intelligible purpose. In the evenings and early mornings especially,
when these oft-repeated shapes stand solemnly round the horizon, cut
hard and blue against the sky like the mighty pylons and propylons of
Egyptian temples, the architectural character of the scenery and its
definite meaning and purpose strike one most inevitably. So solemn and
sad it looks; the endless plains bare and vacant, and the groups of pure
cut battlements and towers. As if some colossals here inhabited at one
time and built these remains among which we now creep ignorant of their
true character. The scenery really needs such a race of Titans to match
it. In these spaces we little fellows are lost.
Well, farewell. My next will be after some sort of a contest. There has
been a touch or two; enough to show they are waiting for us. A corporal
of ours was shot through the arm yesterday and struggled back to camp on
another man's horse. The dark-soaked sleeve (war's colour for the first
time of seeing!) was the object, you may guess, of particular attention.
LETTER II
BELMONT
BELMONT SIDING.
It is to be called Belmont, I believe, from the little siding on the
railway near which it was fought. On the other hand it may be called
after the farm which it was fought on. Who decides these things? I have
never had dealings with a battle in its callow and unbaptized days
before, and it had never occurred to me that they did not come into the
world ready christened. Will Methuen decide the point, or the war
correspondents, or will they hold a cabinet council about it? Anyhow
Belmont will do for the present.
What happened was the simplest thing in the world. The Boers took up
their position in some kopjes in our line of march. The British
infantry, without bothering to wait till the hills had been shelled,
walked up and kicked the Boers out. There was no attempt at any plan or
scheme of action at all; no beastly strategy, or tactics, or outlandish
tricks of any sort; nothing but an honest, straightforward British march
up to a row of waiting rifles. Our loss was about 250 killed and
wounded. The Boer loss, though the extent of it is unknown, was probably
comparatively slight, as they got away before our infantry came fairly
into touch with them. The action is described as a victory, and so, in a
sense, it is; but it is not the sort of victory we should like to have
every day of the week. We carried the position, but they hit us hardest.
On the whole, probably both sides are fairly satisfied, which must be
rare in battles and is very gratifying.
Our mounted men, Guides, 9th Lancers, and a few Mounted Infantry,
marched out an hour before dawn. A line of kopjes stood up before us,
rising out of the bare plain like islands out of the sea, and as we
rounded the point and opened up the inner semicircle of hills, we could
distinguish the white waggon tops of the Boer laager in a deep niche in
the hillside, and see the men collecting and mounting and galloping
about. By-and-by, as we advanced, there came a singing noise, and
suddenly a great pillar of red dust shot up out of the ground a little
to our left. "That's a most extraordinary thing," thinks I, deeply
interested, "what land whale of these plains blows sand up in that
fashion?" Then I saw several heads turned in that direction, and heard
some one say something about a shell, and finally I succeeded in
grasping, not without a thrill, the meaning of the phenomenon.
The infantry attack came off on the opposite side of the ridge from
where we were, and we could see nothing of it. But we heard. As we drew
alongside of the hills, suddenly there broke out a low, quickly uttered
sound; dull reports so rapid as to make a rippling noise. The day was
beautifully fine, still, and hot. There was no smoke or movement of any
kind along the rocky hill crest, and yet the whole place was throbbing
with Mausers. This was the first time that any of us had listened to
modern rifle fire. It was delivered at our infantry, who on that side
were closing with their enemy.
The fire did not last long, though in the short time it did terrible
damage, and men of the Northumberlands and Grenadiers and Coldstreams
were dropping fast as they clambered up the rocky hillside. But that
brief burst of firing was the battle of Belmont. In that little space of
time the position had been lost and won, and we had paid our price for
it. During the march across the flat, as I have been told since, our
loss was comparatively light; but when the climbing of the hill began,
numbers of Boers who had been waiting ready poured in their fire. All
along the ridge, from behind every rock and stone, the smokeless Mausers
cracked (it was then the fire rose to that rippling noise we were
listening to on the other side of the range), and the sleet of bullets,
slanting down the hill, swept our fellows down by scores. But there was
never any faltering. They had been told to take the hill. Two hundred
and fifty stopped on the way through no fault of theirs. The rest went
on and took it. That's the way our British infantry put a job through.
Soon, on our side, scattered bands of the enemy began to emerge from the
kopjes and gallop north, whilst right up at the top of the valley their
long convoy of waggons came into view, trekking away as hard as they
could go, partly obscured by clouds of dust. We made some attempts to
stop them, but our numbers were too few. Though defeated, they were not
in any way demoralised, and the cool way in which they turned to meet
us showed that they knew they were safe from the infantry, and did not
fear our very weak cavalry. We did not venture to press the matter
beyond long shots. Had we done so, it was evident we should have been
cut up.
Various little incidents occurred. This one amused me at the moment. We
had captured a herd of cattle from some niggers who had been sent by the
Boers to drive them in, and I was conveying them to the rear. From a
group of staff officers a boy came across the veldt to me, and presently
I heard, as I was "shooing" on my bullocks, a very dejected voice
exclaim, "How confoundedly disappointing." I looked round and saw a lad
gazing ruefully at me, with a new revolver tied to a bright yellow
lanyard ready in his hand. "I thought you were a Boer," he said, "and I
was going to shoot you. I've _got leave_ to shoot you," he added, as
though he were in two minds about doing the job anyway. I looked at him
for a long while in silence, there seemed nothing to say, and then,
still ruefully, he rode away. This, you will understand, was right up
our end of the valley, and I was driving cattle on to our ground, only I
had a soft hat on.
We have plenty of youngsters like this; brave, no doubt, but thoughtless
and quite careless about the dangerous qualities of the men they have to
meet. "They'll live and learn," people say. They'll learn if they live,
would perhaps be nearer the mark. The Boers, on the other hand, such as
I have seen yet, are decidedly awkward-looking customers, crafty, but
in deadly earnest, versed in veldt wars and knowing the country to an
anthill. Looking from one to the other, I fear there are many mothers in
England who'll go crying for their boys this campaign.
Later a troop of us penetrated into the deep recess among the hills
where they had their laager. It seemed evident, from the number of
waggons and the amount of clothing and stores left behind and littered
in every direction, that the Boers had not expected to be shifted nearly
so suddenly as they were. There were heaps of provisions, quantities of
coffee tied up in small bags, sugar, rice, biltong, _i.e._ dried strips
of flesh, a sort of bread biscuit much used by them on the march, and
made at the farms, and other things. All were done up in small
quantities in such a way that individual men could carry it. There were
waggons loaded, or half loaded, with old chests and boxes, and many
heaped about the ground. Most contained clothes, and the place was
strewn in all directions with blankets, greatcoats, and garments of all
sorts, colours, and sizes. I annexed a very excellent black mackintosh,
quite new and splendidly lined with red; a very martial and imposing
garment.
Diligent search was made for any paper or memoranda, which might show
the plans or strength of the enemy, but all we found were the
love-letters of the young Boers, of which there were vast numbers,
extremely amusing. It never seems to have occurred to any of the writers
that they could be going to get the worst of it. They seem to put the
responsibility for the management of the whole campaign into the hands
of the Deity. They are religious but practical. "God will protect us.
Here is a pound of coffee," is about what they all come to. It is the
fashion to scoff at the calm way in which our enemies have appropriated
the services of the Almighty, but all the same it shows a dangerous
temper. People who believe they have formed this alliance have always
been difficult to beat. You remember Macaulay's Puritan, with his "Bible
in one hand and a two-edged sword in the other." The sword has given
place to a Mauser now, but I am not sure that we are likely to benefit
much by the change. As to the Bible, it is still very much in evidence.
Not a single kit but contained one; usually the family one in old brown
leather. Now it is an historical fact that Bible-reading adversaries are
very awkward customers to tackle, and remembering that, I dislike these
Bibles.
More practically important than love-letters and Bibles, we found also a
lot of abandoned ammunition, shell and Mauser. Our ambulance parties
were at work in the hills. Several Boers, as they fled, had been shot
down near the laager. We found one, shot through the thigh, groaning
very much, and carried him into the shade of a waggon, and did what we
could for him. Meantime some of us had gathered bits of boxes and wood,
and made a fire and boiled water. Tea-cups, coffee, sugar, and biscuits
were found, and we made a splendid feast in the midst of the desolation.
Horrid, you will say, to think of food among the dead and wounded. And
yet that coffee certainly was very good. Somehow I believe the Boers
understand roasting it better than we do.
Before going we collected all the ammunition and heaped it together and
made a pile of wood round it which we set ablaze and then drew out into
the plain and reined in and looked back. Never shall I forget the view.
The hills, those hills the English infantry had carried so splendidly,
were between us and the now setting sun, and though so close were almost
black with clean-hacked edges against the sunset side of the sky. To
eastward the endless grassy sea went whitening to the horizon, crossed
in the distance with the horizontal lines of rich brown and yellow and
pure blue, which at sunrise and sunset give such marvellous colouring to
the veldt. The air here is exactly like the desert air, very
exhilarating to breathe and giving to everything it touches that
wonderful clearness and refinement which people who have been brought up
in a damp climate and among smudged outlines so often mistake for
hardness. Our great ammunition fire in the hollow of the hill burned
merrily, and by-and-by a furious splutter of Mauser cartridges began,
with every now and then the louder report of shells and great smoke
balls hanging in the air. But sheer above all, above yellow veldt and
ruined Boer laager, rose the hill, the position we had carried, grim and
rigid against the sunset and all black. And, with the sudden sense of
_seeing_ that comes to one now and then, I stared at it for a while and
said out loud "Belmont!" And in that aspect it remains photographed in
my memory.
LETTER III
GRASPAN
_November_ 26, 1899.
We marched out from our Orange River Camp on November 22nd, and fought
at Belmont on the 23rd. On the 24th we marched north again, and on the
25th (yesterday) fought another action at Graspan, or, as some call it,
Enslin--there is still the difficulty about names. March a day and fight
a day seems the rule so far.
At home, when you are criticising these actions of Methuen, you must
always bear two facts in mind. First, we are bound to keep our line of
communication, that is, the railway, open, and hold it as we advance. We
can bring Kimberley no relief unless we can open and guard the railway,
and so enable supplies to be poured into the town. Second, we are not
strong enough, and above all not mobile enough, while holding the
railway to attempt a wide flanking movement which might threaten the
Boer retreat, or enable us to shell and attack from two sides at once.
If we had anything like a decent force of mounted men I suppose we could
do it, but with our handful to separate it from the main body would be
to get it cut off. "Want of frigates" was to be found on Nelson's heart,
as he said on some occasion, and I am sure by this time that "want of
cavalry" must be written on poor Methuen's. So you must figure to
yourself a small army, an army almost all infantry, and an army tied to
the railway on this march; and if we bring off no brilliant strategy,
but simply plod on and take hard knocks, well, what else, I ask, under
the circumstances can we do?
Yesterday in the early morning we found ourselves emerging from some
stony hills with a great plain before us about four miles wide, I should
think, with an ugly-looking range of hills bounding it on the north and
the railway running north and south on our left. This we had every
reason to believe was the enemy's position; toll-gate No. 2 on the
Kimberley road. We went on to reconnoitre. Rimington led us straight
towards the hills in open order, and when we were somewhere about rifle
range from them, we right turned and galloped in line along their front;
but no gun or rifle spoke. When we reached the eastern point of the
range, we turned it and rode on with the hills on our left; and now,
with the Lancers a little farther out on our right, we offered too good
a shot for the enemy to resist. They opened on us with, as I thought
three, but others think two, guns, and put in some quick and
well-directed shots, of which the first one or two fell short and the
rest went screaming over our heads and fell among the Lancers.
One point of difference, I notice, so far as a short experience goes,
between cavalry and infantry, which is all in favour of the cavalry; and
that is, that when they get into fire the infantry go calmly on, while
the much wiser cavalry generally run away. We retired from these guns,
but when opposite the corner of the range the Lancers got on to some
bad ground in front of us, and we had to halt a minute, which gave the
Boer Long Tom an excellent chance of a few parting words with us. The
first shell came along, making the mad noise they do, whooping and
screaming to itself, and plunged into the ground with a loud snort only
about thirty or forty yards off. The gunner, having got his range, was
not long in sending down another, and when the white curl of smoke
appeared lying again on the hillside, one guessed that the individual
now on his way would prove a warmish customer. It burst with a most
almighty crack, and I involuntarily bent down my head over my horse's
neck. "Right over your head," shouted the next man, in answer to my
question as to where it burst.
If you are at all interested in "projectiles," you may care to hear that
shrapnel is most effective when it bursts over, but a little short of,
the object aimed at; the bullets, released by the bursting charge,
continuing the line of flight of the shell, which is a downward slant.
There is a rather anxious interval, of about ten or fifteen seconds
generally after you see the smoke of the gun, and before anything else
happens. Then comes the hollow boom of the report, and almost
immediately afterwards the noise of the shell, growing rapidly from a
whimper to a loud scream, with a sudden note of recognition at the end,
as if it had caught sight of and were pouncing on you. It is a curious
fact, however, that, in spite of the noise they make, you cannot in the
least distinguish in which direction they are coming. You find yourself
looking vaguely round, wondering where this yelling devil is going to
ground, but till you see the great spurt of earth you have no idea where
it will be. We came back across the plain, having more or less located
the position and the guns. Rimington with one squadron got into a tight
place among some kopjes on our right. The rifle fire was very hot, and
at close range. The Major took up his orderly, whose horse was shot, on
his own pony, and brought him off. For a moment the squadron came under
cover of a hill, but they had to run the gauntlet of the Boer fire to
get away. Rimington laughingly asked for a start as his pony was
carrying double, and rode first out into the storm of bullets. Several
men and horses were hit, but no men killed, and they were lucky in
getting off as cheap as they did. We then drew back to a cattle kraal on
the slope overlooking the plain, from which we watched the development
of the infantry attack.
I usually carry a note-book and pencil in my pocket, partly to jot down
any information one may pick up at farms from Kaffirs, &c., and partly
to make notes in of the things I see. Here is a note from the kraal.
"10 A.M.--There is a wide plain in front of me, four miles across, flat
as the sea, and all along the farther side a line of kopjes and hills
rising like reefs and detached islands out of it. You might think the
plain was empty at first glance, but, if you look hard, you will see it
crawling with little khaki-clad figures, dotted all over it; not packed
anywhere, but sprinkled over the whole surface. They are steadily but
very leisurely converging on the largest end hill of the opposite range.
Meantime, from three or four spots along the sides of those hills, locks
and puffs of white smoke float out, followed at long intervals by deep,
sonorous reports; and if you look to the left a bit, where our naval
guns are at work, you will see the Boer shells bursting close to or over
them. The artillery duet goes on between the two, while still the
infantry, unmolested as yet, crawls and crawls towards those hills."
This is our first sight of an infantry attack, and it doesn't impress me
at first at all. Its cold-bloodedness, the absence of all excitement,
make it so different from one's usual notions of a battle. It is really
difficult to believe that those little, sauntering figures are
"delivering an attack." They don't look a bit as if they were going to
fight. The fact is, they have a long distance to cover before reaching
the hills, and must go fairly slow. Accordingly, you see them strolling
leisurely along as if nothing particular were happening; while the hills
themselves, except for the occasional puffs of smoke, look; quite bare
and empty; ridges of stone and rock, interspersed with grass tussocks,
heaped up against the hot, blue sky.
But now, as they advance farther across the plain, the muffled,
significant sound of the Mauser fire begins. The front of the attack is
already so far across that it is impossible to see how they are faring
from here; but it is evident that our shell fire, heavy though it has
been, for all our guns have been in action some time now, has not turned
the Boers out of their position. The big chunks of rock are an
excellent defence against shrapnel, and behind them they lie, or down in
the hollow of the hills, as we saw them earlier in the day, to be called
up when the attack approached; and now, gathering along the crest, their
fire quickens gradually from single shots to a roar. But it has no
effect on that fatal sauntering! Of the men who leave this side nigh on
two hundred will drop before they reach the other, but still, neither
hurrying nor pausing, on they quietly stroll, giving one, in their
uniform motion over that wide plain, a sense as of the force and
implacability of some tidal movement. And, as you watch, the
significance of it all grows on you, and you see that it is just its
very cold-bloodedness and the absence of any dash and fury that makes
the modern infantry attack such a supreme test of courage.
Of the details of the attack, when it came to the last charge, we could
see nothing. The Naval Brigade, who had the hardest part of the position
to take, lost terribly, but did the job in a way that every one says was
perfectly splendid. It is said, however, that they made the mistake, in
the scaling of the hill, of closing together, and so offering a more
compact mass to the enemy's fire. We came on behind the infantry with
our friends the Lancers, and passed through a gap in the range and on
across some open ground and through a few more kopjes as fast as we
could go. Then we came in sight of the enemy, and the same thing
happened as at Belmont. A lot of horsemen, enough to have eaten us up,
that were hanging about the rear of the Boer column, came wheeling out
against us, and as we continued to approach, opened fire. Luckily there
was good cover for our ponies behind some hillocks, and, leaving them
there, we crawled out among the rocks and blazed at the Boers. But this
was all we could do. We daren't attack. The only hope was guns, and it
was a long and inexplicable time before any guns came up. By that time
the Boer column was almost across the plain, winding its way in among
the kopjes on the farther side, but the 15-pounders made some very
pretty practice at the rear-guard, and considerably hastened their
movements. The Boer retreat seems to have been conducted with much
coolness and method. They ceased firing their big guns while the attack
was still a good way distant, and limbered up and sent them on, the
riflemen remaining till the attack was close upon them, and firing their
last shots right in our infantry's faces, then rushing down to their
horses and mounting and galloping off. No doubt, they exposed themselves
a bit in doing this, but pumped and excited men can't be expected to
shoot very straight, and I'm afraid their losses were light compared to
ours. They have now retired, we presume, to the next range of kopjes,
there to smoke their pipes and read their Bibles and await our coming. I
suppose we shall be along to-morrow or next day.
LETTER IV
MODDER RIVER
MODDER RIVER CAMP,
_December 1_, 1899.
We had a great old fight here two days ago, and suffered another
crushing victory; but though I saw it all, I daresay you know more about
the whole thing by this time than I do.
This is Modder River, deep and still, just beneath my feet. It is a
lovely, cloudless morning, and going to be a very hot day. I am writing
my letter on the banks of the river in the shade of green trees and
shrubs, with birds singing and twittering, and building their nests
round me; it is spring-time here, you know, or early summer. Here and
there, sauntering or sitting, are groups of our khaki soldiers enjoying
mightily a good rest after the hard work, marching and fighting, of the
last ten days. From the river-bed come voices calling and talking,
sounds of laughing, and now and then a plunge. Heads bob about and
splash in the mud-coloured water, and white figures run down the bank
and stand a moment, poised for a plunge. Three stiff fights in seven
days doesn't seem to have taken much of the spring out of them.
You would scarcely think it was the scene of a battle, and yet there are
a few signs. If you look along the trees and bushes, you see here and
there a bough splintered or a whole trunk shattered, as though it had
been struck by lightning. A little lower down the river there is a shed
of corrugated iron, which looks as if some one had been trying to turn
it into a pepper-pot by punching it all over with small holes. They run
a score to the square foot, and are a mark of attention on the part of
our guards, who, lying down over yonder in the plain, could plainly
distinguish the light-coloured building and made a target of it. In many
places the ground is ploughed up in a curious way, and all about in the
dust lie oblong cylinders of metal, steel tubes with a brass band round
one end. These would puzzle you. They are empty shell cases. The tops,
as you see, have been blown off, which is done by the bursting charge
timed by a fuse to ignite at a certain range, _i.e._, above and a little
short of the object aimed at. The explosion of the bursting charge by
the recoil, checks for an instant the flight of the shell, and this
instant's check has the effect of releasing the bullets with which the
case is filled. These fly forward with the original motion and impetus
of the shell itself, spreading as they go. Horizontal fire is easy to
find cover against, but these discharges from on high are much more
difficult to evade. For instance, ant-hills are excellent cover against
rifles, but none at all against these shells. It is shrapnel, as this
kind of shell is called, that does the most mischief. The round bullets
(200 to a caseful) lie scattered about in the dust, and mixed with them
are very different little slender silvery missiles, quite pretty and
delicate, like jewellers' ornaments. These are Lee-Metford bullets. You
could pick up a pocketful in a short time.
The action itself was mainly an infantry one. Here are one or two
jottings taken that day:--
"_November 26th_, 7.30 A.M.--We left camp, six miles south of Modder
River, a little before daylight and marched north. The country is like
what one imagines a North American prairie to be, a sea of whitish,
coarse grass, with here and there a low clump of bushes (behind one of
which we are halted as I write this). One can see a vast distance over
the surface. Along the north horizon there is a ripple of small hills
and kopjes, looking blue, with the white grass-land running up to them.
It is a comparatively cool morning with a few light clouds in the sky
and a pleasant breeze. On our left is the railway, and all along on our
right, extending far in front and far behind, advances the army."
"We incline to the left near to the railway. The horrid, little,
grey-bluish, armoured train crawls in front. It is dreadfully excited
always in presence of the enemy, darting forward and then running back
like a scorpion when you tease it with your stick-end. One can see by
its agitation this morning that the enemy are not far off. Behind it
comes a train of open trucks with the famous Naval Brigade, with their
guns, search-light, &c. The river flows somewhere across the landscape
yonder in the plains. One cannot see it, but a few belts of bushes
indicate its course. It is just that awkward moment before one gets
touch of the enemy. They, no doubt, can see us (I wonder how they like
the look of us), but we cannot see them. They must be somewhere along
the river among those bushes, and probably in trenches. But where does
their main strength lie? where are their guns? There goes fire, away on
the right (probably at the Lancers, who are the right flankers); the
dull short discharge of Mausers. The train moves forward a hundred
yards, but as yet the men keep their places, clustered in the trucks.
Two officers standing on a carriage roof watch with a telescope the
distant fire. It has now ceased. A flag-wagger flutters his flag in
eager question. Nothing moves on the plain save here and there a lonely
prowling horseman, cantering on, or dismounted and peering through his
glass. It was three minutes to eight when the first shot was fired.
'This will be a bit more history for the kiddies to learn,' yawns the
next man to me, leaning idly over his pony."
"It is a half-hour later as the great guns begin their booming; that
solemn, deep-toned sound like the striking of a great cathedral clock.
We moved forward to the top of a rise overlooking the distant river and
village."
"A dead level stretches below us to the river, marked by some bush tufts
and the few roofs of Modder River village. The Naval Brigade have got
their four guns in the plain just near the foot of our hill. They are
hard at work now bombarding the enemy's big gun by the river. This,
after a while, is almost silenced. Each time it speaks again the deadly
naval guns are on to it. At last, when it does fire, it shows by its
erratic aim that its best gunners are out of action."
"9.30.--The naval guns draw slowly closer to the river. Every shell
bursts along the opposite bank where the enemy are. More to the right
and nearer the river our field-batteries are pounding away as hard as
they can load and fire. All the time the subdued rumble of Maxims and
rifles goes on, like a rumble of cart-wheels over a stony road. Now it
increases to one continuous roar, now slackens till the reports
separate. Now, after one and a half hours, the fight seems to be
concentrating towards the village opposite. A haze of smoke hangs over
the place. The guns thunder. The enemy's Maxim-Nordenfelt goes
rat-tat-tat a dozen times with immense rapidity. 'Come in,' says a Tommy
of the Grenadiers who has come to our hill for orders; and indeed it
sounds exactly like some one knocking at a street door. Now the
under-current of rifle fire becomes horrible in its rapidity. Can
anything in that hell down there be left alive? Suddenly their plucky
big gun opens again and sends several well-directed shells among our
batteries. The naval guns turn their attention to it immediately. You
can see the little, quick glints of fire low along the ground at each
discharge, and then the bursting shell just over the big gun on the
river-bank."
"10 A.M.--Both sides are sticking to the business desperately. The
rattle of rifle-fire is one low roar. The air shudders and vibrates
under it. Now the naval guns draw towards the river again; so do the
rest of our batteries. Things can't stand at this tension. The big gun
speaks again, but wildly; its shell bursts far out on the plain."
"10.30.--The aspect of the place is now awful. The breeze has died a
little and the smoke hangs more. It is enveloped in a haze of yellow and
blue vapour, partly from bursting shell and partly firing guns. Those
volumes of smoke, with gleams of fire every now and then, make it look
like some busy manufacturing town, and the blows and throbs with which
the place resounds convey the same idea."
"11 A.M.--The fight is dogged as ever but slower. There are cessations
of firing altogether, and it is comparatively slow when continued. The
stubbornness of the enemies' resistance to our attack and to the fearful
shelling they have had is calling forth expressions of astonishment and
admiration from the onlooking officers on the hill."
"As the circle narrowed and our attack concentrated on the village and
bridge, we all thought that the end was coming, and, on a lull of the
firing about 11.30 the Major even exclaimed, 'There, I think that's the
end, and I can only say thank God for it.' But he was wrong. He had
scarcely said it when that indomitable heavy gun of theirs, re-supplied
with gunners, began again; again the Naval guns, on a tested range,
crack their shrapnel right in its face; the batteries all open and soon
the whole orchestra is thundering again. That dreadful muttering, the
'rub-a-dub, a-dub-a-dub, a-dub-a-dub' (say it as fast as you can) of the
rifles keeps on; through all the noise of fire, the sharp, quick bark of
the Boer Maxim-Nordenfelt sounds at intervals and the mingled smoke and
dust lies in a haze along the river."
It was, all through, almost entirely an infantry action, but about the
middle of the day we were sent down to the river on the Boer right, as
parties of the enemy were thought to be breaking away in that direction.
And here, I am sorry to say, poor Parker who had served in the
Greek-Turkish war, and used to beguile our long night marches with
stories of the Thessalian hills and the courage of the Turks, was hit,
it is feared mortally. The fight itself continued with intermissions all
day, and even in the evening, though parts of the Boer position had been
captured and many of them had fled, there were some who still made good
their defence, holding out in places of vantage with the greatest
obstinacy. These took advantage of the night to escape, and it was not
till next morning that we had the place in our possession. The Boers
themselves, as we are told by people here, thought the position
impregnable. Certainly it was very strong. The river has cut a channel
or groove thirty feet deep in the ground; the edges, sharp and distinct,
so that men can lie on the slant and look out across the plain. A big
loop in the river is subtended by a line of trenches and rifle-pits
hastily dug (they only decided twenty-four hours before the attack to
defend the position; this by Cronjé's advice, who had just come south
from Mafeking, the others were for retiring to the next range of hills),
from which the whole advance of our infantry across the level is
commanded. "We," as the soldiers explained to me, "could see nothing in
our front but a lot of little heads popping up to fire and then popping
down again." These shelters, a long line of them, are littered thick
with empty cartridge cases, hundreds in each; one thinks involuntarily
of grouse-driving. Bodies, still unburied, lay about when I was there.
Such odours! such sights! The unimaginable things that the force of shot
and shell can do to poor, soft, human flesh. I saw soldiers who had
helped to do the work turn from those trenches shaking.
LETTER V
THE FOUR POINT SEVEN
MODDER RIVER CAMP,
_December_ 1899.
A few days ago we welcomed a distinguished stranger here in the shape of
a long 4.7 naval gun. They set him up in the road just outside the
station, with his flat-hatted sailors in zealous attendance, where he
held a day-long levée. The gun is a remarkable object among the rest of
our artillery. Its barrel, immensely long but very slender, has a
well-bred, aristocratic look compared with the thick noses of our
field-guns. It drives its forty-five pound shell about seven miles, and
shoots, I am told, with perfect accuracy. It is an enlarged edition of
the beautiful little twelve-pounders which we have hitherto been using,
and which exceed the range of our fifteen-pounder field-guns by about a
half. Why should naval guns be so vastly superior to land ones?
I interviewed the sailors on the accomplishments of the new-comer, and
on the effects especially of lyddite, about which we hear so much. One
must allow for a little friendly exaggeration, but if the mixture of
truth is in any decent proportion, I should say that spades to bury dead
Boers with are all the weapons that the rest of us will require in
future. The gun uses shrapnel as well, but relies for its main effects
on lyddite. As for this horrible contrivance, all I can say is that the
Geneva Conference ought to interdict it. The effects of the explosion of
a lyddite shell are as follows:--Any one within 50 yards is obliterated,
blown clean away. From 50 to 100 yards they are killed by the force of
the concussion of the air. From 100 to 150 yards they are killed by the
fumes or poisonous gases which the shell ex-hales. From 150 to 200 they
are not killed, but knocked senseless, and their skin is turned to a
brilliant green colour. From 200 to 250 they are so dazed and stupefied
as to be incapable of action, and, generally speaking, after that any
one in the district or neighbourhood of the shock is "never the same man
again." This is no mere rumour, for I have it direct from the naval
gunners themselves.