an immense string of oxen, to introduce him to his future victims and
whet his appetite by a taste. The Boer position lies some six miles to
the north of the river. The most conspicuous feature of it is a hill
projecting towards us like a ship's ram and dipping sharply to the
plain. Magersfontein, they call it. The railway going north leaves it to
the right, but other hills and kopjes carry on the position westward
across the railway, barring an advance. It is evident that we shall have
to take the place in front, as we are not strong enough nor mobile
enough to go round.
We have a few reinforcements, notably the Highland Brigade, also the
12th Lancers under Airlie, and some Horse Artillery pop-guns.
There is a good deal of bush on the plain, especially to the right of
the steep hill, where it is quite thick. During the last week we have
been poking about in this a good deal, approaching the hill now on this
side, now on that, under cover of the scrub, examining and searching,
but with very little result. They keep themselves well hidden. The hills
look untenanted except that now and then we have seen parties of Boers
wending their way in between the kopjes and driving in herds of cattle.
In the thick bush on the eastern plain, as we lay one morning at
daybreak, we could hear the shouts of men and catch glimpses of them
here and there riding about and urging their cattle on. Some passed not
far from where we lay crouched (we had left our ponies on the outskirts
of the bush). It seemed funny to watch them riding to and fro,
unconscious of our presence and calling to each other. It reminded me of
some boy's game of hide-and-seek or Tom Tiddler's ground. We have had
two or three casualties, and lost two prisoners, and we have bagged
several of them. The army is resting.
Well, this morning, as I was saying, we take our Long Tom (Joey, as he
is now called, out of compliment to Chamberlain) out for a shot. Here is
a note about it:--
"4.30 A.M.--Our little groups of horse, in threes and fours, are
clustered behind bushes. There is a whispered consultation round our
large gun and his nose slowly rises. The jerk of the lanyard is followed
by a frightful explosion and then comes the soaring noise of the flying
shell and the red spark and column of dust on the kopje. The range has
been well judged, for the first shot falls with beautiful accuracy just
on the hill where they are supposed to be.
"It is worth getting up at this time to enjoy the delicious, pure, and
fresh air. The glow of sunrise is in the sky, but not yet the sun. There
are some long streaks and films of rosy cloud along the east. Already,
after five shots, the whole kopje is enveloped in dust and reddish smoke
from the bursting lyddite, but elsewhere between us and the sunrise the
hills are a perfect dark blue, pure blocks of the colour. The Lancers on
their horses show black against the sky as they canter, scattering
through the underwood with graceful slanting lances. At slow deliberate
intervals the long gun tolls. Dead silence is the only reply. The sun
rises and glares on the rocky hills. Not a living thing is to be seen."
LETTER VI
MAGERSFONTEIN
MODDER RIVER CAMP,
_December 13_, 1899.
When we were camped a day's march south of this, two Boers brought in a
wounded man of ours in a Cape cart. "You will never get to Kimberley,"
they said to us. "It will take better men than you to stop us," said we.
"Not a bit of it," said they, and off they drove. As it turns out, they
were nearer the mark than we were.
While I write this, early on the morning of the 13th, you at home may
just be reading in the papers the accounts of our last two days'
disastrous fighting. It was a defeat, but yet it was a defeat which was
not felt nor realised by the bulk of the army. It was a blow that fell
entirely on one brigade, and the greater part of our force was still
awaiting the order to advance, and expecting to engage the enemy when
already the attack, unknown to us, had been delivered and repulsed.
Last Sunday, December 10th, about 2 P.M., we moved out of camp northward
towards the point of the big hill, that, like a cape, juts south into
the plain. With all our guns ranged about the point of the hill, we then
proceeded to thrash and batter it with shell-fire. No gun-fire that we
have had as yet has approached this for rapidity. The batteries roared
ceaselessly from the plain; the big 4.7 lifting up its voice from a
little in the rear high above the din. The day was cloudy, and rain fell
at intervals, but towards the evening it cleared. My troop was on the
extreme left front, on the west side of the hill, and we had a fine view
of the effect as the shells burst one after another, or sometimes three
or four together, all along the hill flank, up on the crest, or in the
plain along the base.
"5 P.M.--The hill is all one heavy dull hue in the sombre evening light,
and against it the sharp glints of fire as the shrapnel bursts, and the
round puff-balls of white smoke show vividly. Every now and then a great
curtain of murky vapour goes up to show where the old lyddite-slinger in
the rear is depositing his contributions. We had three field-batteries
engaged, the naval twelve-pounders, Joey, and the pop-guns; about thirty
guns altogether."
We slept that night by the side of the railway, tethering our horses to
the wire fence that runs down it. Rain fell heavily all night. Most of
us had no blankets, and we lay bundled up, shivering under our
greatcoats on the sopping ground. Unable to sleep well, I heard, just
about or before dawn, a distant drumming, like the noise of rain on the
window, but recognised immediately as distant rifle-fire. Morning broke,
cheerless and wet. I asked if any one had heard firing during the night,
but no one near me had. Shivering and breakfastless, save for a morsel
of biscuit and a sip of muddy water, we saddle our dripping horses and
fall in. A Tommy sitting in the ditch, the picture of misery; cold, and
hungry, with the rain trickling from his sodden helmet on to his face;
breaks into a hymn, of which the first verse runs:--
"There is a happy land
Far, far away,
Where they get ham and eggs
Three times a day."
I find myself dwelling on the words as we move off. Can there be such a
land? Can there be so blessed a place?
We reach the ganger's hut, and the light spreads and rests on the hills.
Immediately we are deafened by a shattering report close behind us, and
starting round, find the long nose of Joey projecting almost over our
heads, while the scream of the shell dies away in the distance as it
speeds towards the Boer hill. One of the naval officers gives me a first
hint of the truth. There has certainly been an attack, he says, but he
fears unsuccessful.
We took the matter up, then, where we left off yesterday, all our
batteries coming into action and shelling the hills most furiously. The
enemy replied with three guns only, but so well placed were they that we
found it impossible to silence them. While our fire was concentrated on
to any one of them, it would remain silent, but, after a short interval,
would always begin again, to the rage of our gunners. There is
especially a big gun of theirs in a fold of the hill just at the crest,
between which and "Joey" exist terms of mortal defiance. Nothing else it
appears can touch either of them; so while the lesser cannonade rages in
the middle, these two lordly creatures have a duel of their own and
exchange the compliments of the season with great dignity and
deliberation over the others' heads. It has gone all in favour of "Joey"
while I was watching, the Boer gun being rather erratic and most of its
shells falling short. It made one good shot just in front of us, and it
was really comic to see how "Joey," who had been looking for other
adversaries for the moment, came swinging round at the voice of his
dearest foe. The explosion of the big gun almost knocks one backwards,
and I feel the sudden pressure on my ears of the concussion.
Later in the day "Joey" and I got quite thick. There is a double kopje,
detached from the main Boer position on our side, known as the Dumbell
Kopje. From our left-front place we could see a lot of Boers clustered
under the hill, pasted, like swarming bees, up against the lee of it,
while the naval gun's shells--for he evidently had a nonchalant idea
that there was some one about there--went flying overhead and bursting
beyond. This was very irritating to watch, and I was glad to be sent
back to "whisper a word in his ear." Making a hasty sketch of the hill,
I galloped back and presented it to the captain with explanation, and
had the satisfaction of seeing 300 yards knocked off "Joey's" next shot,
which was, I should judge, a very hot one. "Stay and have some grub,"
said the jolly naval captain. We sat on the ground eating and drinking,
while "Joey" peppered the Dutchmen.
As for the fight itself, people seem inclined to make a great mystery
about it and talk about "the difficulty of getting at the truth;" but I
don't see myself where the mystery comes in. What happened was this. The
Highland Brigade (Black Watch, Seaforths, Argyle and Sutherlands, and
Highland Light Infantry) was told off for the night attack and marched
before light to the hill. The night was very dark and heavy rain
falling. The ground was rough, stony, and rocky, with a good deal of low
scrub, bushes, and thorn trees, very difficult to get through at night.
The difficulty of moving masses of men with any accuracy in the dark is
extreme, and to keep them together at all it was necessary for them to
advance in a compact body. In quarter column, therefore, the Brigade
advanced and approached the foot of the hill. I have noticed several
times that when you get rather close to the hill the rise comes to look
more gradual and the ridge itself does not stand up in the abrupt and
salient way that it does from a distance. Whether it was this, or simply
that the darkness of the night hid the outline, at any rate the column
approached the hill and the trench which runs at the foot of the hill
much too closely before the order to extend was given. When it was given
it was too late. They were in the act of executing it when the volley
came.
Of course an attack like this cannot be intended altogether as a
surprise--that is, it cannot be pushed home as a surprise. You cannot
march 4000 heavy-booted men through broken ground on a dark night
without making plenty of noise over it; also the Boers must certainly
have had pickets out, which would have moved in as we advanced and
given the alarm. But had our fellows deployed at half a mile, or less,
under cover of darkness, and then advanced in open order, the enemy
could not have seen clearly enough to shoot with accuracy until they
were fairly close, and I daresay the fire then would not have stopped
their rush.
As it was, the fire came focussed on a mass of men, such a fire as I
suppose has never been seen before, for not only was it a tremendous
volley poured in at point-blank range, but it was a sustained volley;
the rapid action of the magazines enabling the enemy to keep up an
unintermittent hail of bullets on the English column. To advance under
fire of this sort is altogether impossible. It is not a question of
courage, but of the impossibility of a single man surviving. At the
Modder fight our men advanced to a certain distance, but could get no
nearer. They were forced to lie down and remain lying down. The fire of
magazine rifles is such that, unless helped by guns or infinitely the
stronger, the attackers have no chance of getting home. People will keep
on talking as if courage did these things. What the devil's the use of
the bravest man with half-a-dozen bullets through him? It is just as
certain as anything can be that, if the Highlanders had "gone on," in
two minutes not a man would have been left standing. Already in the
brief instant that they stood, dazed by the fire, they lost between six
and seven hundred men. The Black Watch was in front, and nineteen out of
twenty-seven officers were swept down. You might as well talk of "going
on" against a volcano in eruption.
I am writing this on the day after the action in my favourite
lurking-place by the side of the river under the evergreens and big
weeping willows that overhang the sluggish water. Our own small camp is
close to the stream, and here every morning the Highlanders are in the
habit of turning up, usually with much laughing and shouting, to bathing
parade. There is no laughing this morning, only sad, sullen faces,
silence and downcast looks. Still they are glad to talk of it. A few
come under the shade of my tree, and sit about and tell me the little
bit that each saw or heard. You only get a general impression of chaos.
Some tried to push on, some tried to extend, some lay down, and some ran
back out of close range and took up such cover as they could get. This
was, luckily, pretty good, there being a lot of bush and rocks about,
and here they gradually crawled together and got into some sort of
order, and kept up a counter fire at the Boer position. The Brigade,
however, had been badly shaken, and as hour after hour passed all
through the blazing day, and they were kept lying there under the fire
of an entrenched enemy, exhausted and parched with thirst, their
patience gradually failed, and they made another rush back, but were
rallied and led up again to where the Mausers might play on them. They
were not allowed to retire till after five, when all the troops were
withdrawn--that is, until they had been shot over at close range for
about fourteen mortal hours.
The Brigade was asked to do too much, and when at last they staggered
out of action, the men jumped and started at the rustle of a twig. It's
a miserable thing when brave men are asked to do more than brave men can
do.
One thing that added to the panic was that none, at least among the men
and junior officers, knew anything at all about the trench. They thought
they were going to storm the hill. So that things were so contrived that
the bewilderment of a surprise should be added to the terrors of the
volley. You will scarcely believe this perhaps. I have just come from
having tea with the Argyle and Sutherland. Of the eight or ten officers
there, not one had heard of the trench. Here, by the river, I have
talked to a score of Highlanders, and not one had heard of it either.
They "didn't know what the hell was up" when the volley came. We could
scarcely have provided all the elements of a panic more carefully.
Nothing of note followed during the day. Airlie fended off a Boer
flanking move on our right, and the Coldstreams backed up the
Highlanders a bit, but practically only the Highland Brigade was in it.
It was a disaster to that Brigade only, and consequently the rest of the
army does not feel itself defeated, and is not in any way discouraged.
Some people suggest now that we in our turn may be attacked, and that
the enemy may try and retake the river position from which we shifted
him a fortnight ago. It is reported that they have got up heavy
reinforcements from Natal, and some long-range guns that will reach our
camp from the hill. All kinds of rumours are afloat, mostly to the
effect that the Boers are circling round behind us, _via_ Douglas on the
west and Jacobsdal on the east, and mean cutting our communications.
However, as I have long since found out, a camp is a hot-bed of lies.
Nothing positive is known, for every one is kept in careful ignorance of
everything that is going on. The idea is that the British soldier can
only do himself justice when the chance of taking anything like an
intelligent interest in his work is altogether denied him. The
consequence is he is driven to supply the deficiency out of his own
imagination. Ladysmith has already been taken and relieved at least a
dozen times, and Mafeking almost as often. To-day Buller is on his way
to Pretoria; to-morrow the Boer army will be marching on Cape Town.
As for our own little army, we have been digging ourselves in here, and
are perfectly secure, and I daresay we shall be able to keep open the
line all right. As to relieving Kimberley, that is another thing. Cronjé
evidently doesn't think we can, for he has just sent us in a message
offering us twenty-four hours to clear out in. He is a bit of a wag is
old Cronjé.
LETTER VII
RECONNAISSANCE
BIVOUAC ON THE MODDER,
_January 15_, 1900.
At Modder River camp the dust lies thick and heavy. Every breeze that
blows lifts clouds of it, that hang in the air like a dense London fog,
and mark the site of the camp miles and miles away. The river, more
muddy than ever, moves languidly in its deep channel. There is a Boer
laager some miles above the camp, the scourings of which--horrid
thought!--are constantly brought down to us. The soldiers eye the
infected current askance and call it _Boervril_. Its effect is seen in
the sickness that is steadily increasing.
Thank goodness we escape it. An advantage of scouting is, that, when it
comes to a standing camp, with its attendant evils of dirt, smells, and
sickness, your business carries you away, in front, or out along the
flanks, where you play at hide-and-seek with the enemy, trap and are
trapped, chase and are chased, and where you bivouac healthily and
pleasantly, if not in such full security, at some old Dutch farm, where
probably fowls are to be bought, or milk and butter; or under groups of
mimosa trees among stoney deserted kopjes, where there is plenty of wood
for burning, as likely as not within reach of some old garden with figs
in it ripening and grapes already ripe.
One of the little pictures I shall remember belonging to Modder camp is
the sight of the soldiers at early mass. You can picture to yourself a
wide, flat dusty plain held in the bent arm of the river, with not a
tree or bush on it; flat as a table, ankle-deep in grey dust, and with a
glaring, blazing sun looking down on it. The dust is so hot and deep
that it reminds one more of the ashes on the top of Vesuvius--you
remember that night climb of ours?--than of anything else.
Laid out in very formal and precise squares are the camps of the various
brigades, the sharp-pointed tents ranged in exact order and looking from
far off like symmetrical little flower-beds pricked out on the sombre
plain.
A stone's throw from the river is a mud wall, with a mud house at one
side scarcely rising above it, yet house and wall giving in the early
morning a patch of black shadow in the midst of the glare. Here the old
priest used to celebrate his mass. A hundred or two of Tommies and a few
officers would congregate here soon after sunrise, and stand bare-headed
till the beams looked over the wall, when helmet after helmet would go
on; or kneel together in the dust while the priest lifted the host.
Every man had his arms, the short bayonet bobbing on the hip; every
brown and grimy hand grasped a rifle; and as the figures sink low at the
ringing of the bell, a bristle of barrels stands above the bowed heads.
Distant horse hoofs drum the plain as an orderly gallops from one part
of the camp to another. Right facing us stands Magersfontein, its ugly
nose with the big gun at the end of it thrust out towards us. How many
of this little brotherhood under the mud wall, idly I wonder, will ever
see English meadows again?
The Boers still face us at Magersfontein. Their left is south of the
Modder. They have a strong laager at Jacobsdal on the Reit, and have
pushed west and south of that, where, from the kopjes about Zoutspan and
Ramdam, they threaten our lines of communication. The Reit river,
flowing almost south and north for some distance parallel to the
railway, though a good way east of it, is a strengthening feature for
them in that part of the field, and taking advantage of it, they have
brought their left well round. Their right, on the other hand, is
scarcely brought round at all, but stretches about east and west,
following the course of the Modder, and extending as far west as
Douglas, fifty miles from Modder camp. They make raids south. Pilcher
the other day cut some of them up at Sunnyside and took Douglas, but
evacuated it again, and it is now in their hands. Altogether you can
compare the Boer attitude to a huge man confronting you, Magersfontein
being his head, his left arm brought round in front of him almost at
right angles to his body and his right stretched wide out in line with
his shoulders. From time to time he makes little efforts to bring these
outstretched arms farther round, as if to clasp and enfold the British
position at Modder River, and it is with the special object of observing
and reporting on these movements that our scouting is carried on. This
is now attended to by fifteen of us only, under Chester Master, the
rest of the corps, with the Major, having gone down to join French at
Colesberg now that the advance here has ceased. On the east side of the
line we patrol the plain nearly to Jacobsdal, and often lie in the grass
or sit among the rocks and watch the little figures of Boers cantering
along the road that leads south by the river. Further scouting in that
direction is carried on by the garrison along the line.
A strong reconnaissance of ours the other day (January 9th) in the
direction of Jacobsdal was a very dignified and solemn exhibition. Our
guns rumbled forward with their eight-horse teams across the plain,
while our cavalry, stretched out in open order at fifty yards apart,
traversed the country in long strings that might have been seen and
admired by the enemy at a distance, I daresay, of twenty miles. Chester
Master took us forward on the left close to the river, where a party of
the enemy, stealing up from the river-bed, tried to cut us off--there
were only six or eight of us--and chivied us back to the main body as
hard as we could go, two miles _ventre à terre_ through the pelting
rain, blazing away from horseback all the time at us, but naturally
doing no harm. We thought we should lead them into a trap when we lifted
the rise, but our troops had all halted far back in the plain, and our
pursuers turned as soon as they saw them. However, we got some men to
join us, and set to work to chase them as they had done us. It was
really quite exciting; little bent figures of horsemen with flapping
hats on ahead, bundling along for dear life, each with its spot of dust
attending, we following, whooping and spurring. But bustled as they
were, the Boers knew the way they were going. There are some narrow
belts of bush that run out from the river into the plain, and as we
neared one of these, crick-crack, crick-crack, the familiar croaking
voices of Mausers warned us against a nearer approach. We dismounted and
fired away vaguely at the distant foe, not so much with the idea of
hitting anything, but it is always a relief to one's feelings. I don't
know why the guns didn't come up, but was told that they didn't like to
push on too far, as the Boers were supposed to be in force here. It
seemed a pity to miss such a good shot, especially as we had an enormous
great escort and an open country back to camp. But that is the way with
guns; sometimes they rush up to within 500 yards of the enemy before
they shoot, and sometimes they won't shoot at all.