formation of an advance and makes us almost a passive target to attack.
Our convoy with Ian Hamilton must have been seven or eight miles long,
and was often delayed for hours at fords and creeks, where scenes of
wild confusion took place and you were deafened with yelling Kaffirs and
cracking whips. This convoy has of course to be guarded throughout,
which means a very attenuated and consequently weakened force, an attack
on one part of which might be carried on without the knowledge of the
rest of the column, or the possibility of its giving much help anyway.
When we left Lindley we had a sharp rearguard action, and the Boers
pushed their attack very vigorously. They did the same on the right
flank, and the advance guard also had some fighting. Neither of these
parties knew that the others were engaged at all, and probably the bulk
of the main column were quite ignorant that a shot had been fired
anywhere.
Lindley is one of those peculiar, bare, little Dutch towns, the presence
of which on the lonely hillside always seems so inexplicable. It is
even more than usually hideous. There is the inevitable big church, the
only large building in the place, occupying a central position, and
looking very frigid and uninviting, like the doctrine it inculcates; a
few large general stores, where you can buy anything from a plough to a
pennyworth of sweets, and some single-storey, tin-roofed houses or
cottages flung down in a loose group. But around it there are none of
the usual signs of a town neighbourhood. No visible roads lead to it; no
fertile and cultivated land surrounds it; no trees or parks or pleasure
grounds are near it. The houses might have been pitched down yesterday
for all the notice the veldt takes of them. Spread out over the hills
and valleys for some hundreds of miles each side this barren treeless
veldt, which, after all, is the main fact of South African life, seems
to carry these little unexpected towns on its breast with the same ease
and unconsciousness that the sea carries its fleets of ships;
surrounding and lapping at their very hulls; not changed itself nor
influenced by their presence.
During our stay of a day or two at Lindley it became increasingly
evident that the people of that neighbourhood resented our presence
there. Our pickets were constantly engaged. There are some rather abrupt
hills on the east side of the town, among the nearer ones of which our
look-outs were stationed while the Boers prowled among the others. Here
the Mausers and Lee-Metfords talked incessantly, and the conversation
was carried on in a desultory way down in the river valley and among the
rolling hills on the southern side. It was plain that the enemy was
quite prepared to "put up a show" for us, and no one was surprised, when
the morning of our departure came, to see the strong force of Mounted
Infantry told off for rearguard, or note the presence of the General
himself in that part of the field.
There are long slanting hills that rise above the village on its south
side, the crests of which were occupied by our pickets. As the pickets
were withdrawn, the Boers rapidly followed them up, occupied the crest
in turn, and began to put in a heavy fire and press hard on our
retreating men.
From a square and flat-topped kopje just north of the town we had the
whole scene of the withdrawal down the opposite slopes before our eyes.
Our Mounted Infantry were hotly engaged but perfectly steady. They lay
in the grass in open order, firing, their groups of horses clustered
lower down the hill; then retired by troops and set to work again. This
giving ground steadily and by degrees is a test of coolness and
steadiness, and it was easy to see that our men were under perfect
control. At last they came under the protection of our hill. We had got
our battery of guns up it, and it was a moment of great satisfaction to
all concerned, except possibly the Boers, when the first angry roar rose
above the splutter of rifles, and the shell pitched among some of the
foremost of the enemy's sharpshooters. In a duel of this sort the
interference of artillery is usually regarded as decisive. Guns, as
people say, have "a moral effect" that is sometimes out of proportion to
the actual damage they inflict. Anyway, skirmishers seldom advance
under gun-fire, and the Boers on this occasion were decisively checked
by our battery. Even when the guns left, we were able from the
vantage-ground of the hill to keep them at arm's length until the time
came to catch up the column.
On the right flank they were more successful, pressing home a heavy
attack on the Mounted Infantry on that side. A squadron got cut off and
rushed by the enemy, who rode in to it shooting at pistol-shot distance,
and shouting "Hands up!" We lost pretty heavily in casualties, besides
about fifty prisoners. These small mishaps are of no great importance in
themselves, but they encourage the enemy no doubt to go on fighting. The
story as it goes round the farms will lose nothing in the telling.
Probably in a very short time it will amount to the rout of Hamilton's
column, and the captured troopers will lend a colour to the yarn.
Burghers who have taken the oath of allegiance will be readier than ever
to break it. However, time no doubt will balance the account all right
in the long-run.
From Lindley, fighting a little every day, we marched north to Heilbron,
where Broadwood got hold of the Boer convoy by the tail, and succeeded
in capturing a dozen waggons. From there we cut into the railway, and
crossed it at Vredefort, passing through the main body of the advance in
doing so. Anything like the sight of these vast columns all pushing in
one direction you never saw. In this country one can often see thirty or
forty miles, and in that space on the parched, light-coloured ground
you may see from some point of vantage five or six separate streams of
advance slowly rolling northward, their thin black lines of convoy
overhung by a heavy pall of dust. As we closed in and became involved
for a moment in the whole mass of the general advance, though accustomed
to think no small beer of ourselves as an army, for we number 11,000
men, we realised that we were quite a small fraction of the British
force. Endless battalions of infantry, very dusty and grimy, but going
light and strong (you soon get into the habit of looking attentively at
infantry to see _how they march_); guns, bearer-companies, Colonial
Horse, generals and their staffs, go plodding and jingling by in a
procession that seems to be going on for ever. And beside and through
them the long convoys of the different units, in heavy masses, come
groaning and creaking along, the oxen sweating, the dust whirling, the
naked Kaffirs yelling, and the long whips going like pistol-shots. The
whole thing suggests more a national migration than the march of an
army. And ever on the horizon hang new clouds of dust, and on distant
slopes the scattered advance guards of new columns dribble into view. I
fancy the Huns or the Goths, in one of their vast tribal invasions, may
have moved like this. Or you might liken us to the dusty pilgrims on
some great caravan route with Pretoria for our Mecca.
We crossed the Vaal at Lindiquies Drift, being now on the west flank,
and met the Boers the day before yesterday two miles from here on the
West Rand. The fight was a sharp one. They were in a strong position on
some ridges, not steep, but with good cover among stones and rocks. We
came at them from the west, having made a circuit. Our advance was
hidden by the rolling of the ground, but the enemy guessed it, and sent
a few shells at a venture, which came screaming along and buried
themselves in the ground without doing much damage that I could see
beyond knocking a Cape cart to pieces. By 2 P.M. we had crawled up the
valley side and got several batteries of artillery where they could
shell the Boer position. The two great "cow-guns," so called from the
long teams of oxen that drag them, were hauled up the slope. The enemy
got an inkling of our intention now, and his shells began to fall more
adjacent. Then our fire began. It was difficult to see clearly. The dry
grass of the veldt, which is always catching fire, was burning between
us and the Boers; long lines of low smouldering fire, eating their way
slowly along, and sending volumes of smoke drifting downward, obscuring
the view. Half the ground was all black and charred where the fire had
been; the rest white, dry grass. The Boer position was only about two
miles from our ridge; a long shallow hollow of bare ground, without bush
or rock, or any sort of cover on it, except a few anthills, separating
us from them. Our field-batteries opened, and then the great five-inch
cow-guns roared out. We ourselves were close to these with Hamilton (we
are acting as his bodyguard), and with the other officers I crept up to
the ridge and lay among the stones watching the whole show. After a shot
or two all our guns got the range, a mere stone's throw for the great
five-inchers. Their shrapnel burst along the rise, and we could see the
hail of bullets after each explosion dusting the ground along the top
where the Boers lay. The enemy answered very intermittently, mostly from
their Long Tom far back, which our big guns kept feeling for. I never
heard anything like the report of these big guns of ours and the shriek
of the shells as they went on their way.
After the cannonade had been kept up for a bit, the infantry began their
advance. This was, I think, the finest performance I have seen in the
whole campaign. The Gordons did it; the Dargai battalion. They came up,
line by line, behind our ridge and lay down along with us. Then, at the
word "Advance," the front line got up and walked quietly down the slope,
and away towards the opposite hill, walking in very open order, with
gaps of about fifteen yards between the men. A moment or two would pass.
Then when the front line had gone about fifty yards, the "Advance" would
again be repeated, and another line of kilted men would lift themselves
leisurely up and walk off. So on, line behind line, they went on their
way, while we watched them, small dark figures clearly seen on the white
grass, through our glasses with a painful interest. Before they had
reached half way across, the vicious, dull report, a sort of double
"crick-crack," of the Mausers began. Our guns were raining shrapnel
along the enemy's position, shooting steady and fast to cover the
Gordons' advance; but the Boers, especially when it comes to endurance,
are dogged fellows. They see our infantry coming, and nothing will move
them till they have had their shot. Soon we can see the little puffs of
dust round the men, that mark where the bullets are striking. All the
further side, up the long gradual slope to the Boer rocks, has been
burnt black and bare, and the bullets, cutting through the cinders,
throw up spots of dust, that show white against the black. Men here and
there stagger and fall. It is hard to see whether they fall from being
hit, or whether it is to shoot themselves. The fire gets faster and
faster, our guns thunder, and through the drifting smoke of the veldt
fires we can still see the Gordons moving onward. Then among the
looking-out group, crouched near the guns, goes a little gasp and mutter
of excitement. We catch on the black background, glistening in the sun,
the quick twinkle of a number of little steel points. They are fixing
bayonets! Now the little figures move quicker. They make for the left
side of the ridge. A minute more, and along the sky-line we see them
appear, a few at first, then more and more. They swing to the right,
where the enemy's main position lies, and disappear. There is a sharp,
rapid interchange of shots, and then the fire gradually lessens and dies
away, and the position is captured. They have lost a hundred men in ten
minutes, but they've done the trick.
Later on, Hamilton, one of the most beloved of our Generals, gallops
forward, and on the hill they have won, as evening is closing, says a
few words to the Gordons. "Men of the Gordons, officers of the Gordons,
I want to tell you how proud I am of you; of my father's old regiment,
and of the regiment I was born in. You have done splendidly. To-morrow
all Scotland will be ringing with the news." This charge will, no doubt,
take rank as one of the most brilliant things of the war.
Next morning at dawn, escorting the cow-guns, I came to where the Boers
had held out so long among the scattered rocks. The Gordons were burying
some of the Boer dead. There were several quite youngsters among them.
One was a boy of not more than fourteen, I should think, like an English
schoolboy. One of the Gordons there told me he saw him, during the
advance, kneeling behind a stone and firing. He was shot through the
forehead. There is something pathetic and infinitely disagreeable in
finding these mere children opposed to one.
These infantry advances are the things that specially show up the
courage of our troops. Each man, walking deliberately and by himself, is
being individually shot at for the space of ten minutes or more, the
bullets whistling past him or striking the ground near him. To walk
steadily on through a fire of this sort, which gets momentarily hotter
and better aimed as he diminishes the distance between himself and the
enemy, in expectation every instant of knowing "what it feels like," is
the highest test of courage that a soldier in these days can give.
Nothing the mounted troops are, as a rule, called upon to perform comes
near it. Knowing exactly from experience what lay in front of them,
these Gordons were as cool as cucumbers. As they lay among the stones
with us before beginning the advance, I spoke to several, answering
their questions and pointing them out the lie of the ground and the
Boer position. You could not have detected the least trace of anxiety or
concern in any of them. The front rank, when the order to advance was
given, stepped down with a swing of the kilt and a swagger that only a
Highland regiment has. "Steady on the left;" they took their dressing as
they reached the flat. Some one sang out, "When under fire wear a
cheerful face;" and the men laughingly passed the word along, "When
under fire wear a cheerful face."
LETTER XVIII
PRETORIA
PRETORIA, _June 6_, 1900.
It is generally considered rather a coup in war, I believe, to take the
enemy's capital, isn't it? like taking a queen at chess. We keep on
taking capitals, but I can't say it seems to make much difference. The
Boers set no store by them apparently; neither Bloemfontein nor Pretoria
have been seriously defended, and they go on fighting after their loss
just as if nothing had happened.
For months Pretoria has been our beacon, and at first it seemed quite an
impossibly long way off. Looked at from Bloemfontein, across 300 miles
of dreary veldt and rugged kopjes and steep-banked rivers, and allowing
for the machinations and devilments of ten or fifteen thousand Boers,
our arrival here did seem a vague, indefinite, and far-off prospect. And
yet in a day or two over the month here we are. Lord Roberts has brought
us up in the most masterly way. He has moved with a big central column
on the railway, while at the same time other columns, stretched far to
right and left, moved parallel and threatened to outflank and enclose
the enemy at every stand. So with wings beating and body steadily
advancing, like some great kite or bird of prey, we have flapped our way
northward.
Even here no stand was made. The town is strongly defended with several
new forts, armed, we were told, with 10-inch guns, with a range of about
twelve miles, which we supposed would put the noses of our poor cow-guns
completely out of joint. The Boers had burnt the grass on all the hills
to the south of the town, so that the blackened surface might show up
the khaki uniform of our men, and offer a satisfactory mark, and things
generally, as we slowly approached the tall black rampart of mountain
south of Pretoria, seemed to point to a big engagement. But here, as so
often elsewhere, it was borne in upon them that if they finally stayed
and defended their capital, they would assuredly be surrounded and cut
off; and so, though only at the last moment, we hear, they decided to
leave. They put up an afternoon fight on the hills near the town, but
this was only the work of a handful of men, probably intended to stave
us off for a while while they finished their packing in Pretoria and got
away. Lord Roberts got a battery up to the crest of a great big ridge,
and we got a pompon up a still steeper one, and a vigorous cannonade was
kept up and a good deal of rifle-fire indulged in till nearly dark. But
this is often very deceptive. No doubt if it was the first battle you
had been at, you would have put down the casualties, judging from the
noise made, at several hundred. As a matter of fact, the peculiar thing
about all this shooting is that, like the cursing in the _Jackdaw of
Rheims_, "nobody seems one penny the worse." Loading is now so easy that
it is not the slightest trouble to fire. The consequence is that a
glimpse of a Boer's head on the sky-line a couple of miles off will
find work for a battery of guns and a few score of rifles for the rest
of the afternoon. About sunset time, when it begins to get cold, they
will limber up and come away, and the report will go in that our
shelling was very accurate, but that the enemy's loss could not be
positively ascertained.
The day after the fight we made a triumphal procession through Pretoria,
and marched past Lord Roberts and his staff, and all his generals and
their staffs, assembled in the big square facing the Parliament House.
We came along a long, straight street, with verandahed houses standing
back in gardens, and trees partly shading the road, a ceaseless, slow,
living river of khaki; solid blocks of infantry, with measured, even
tread, the rifle barrels lightly rising and falling with the elastic,
easy motion that sways them altogether as the men keep time; cavalry,
regular and irregular, and, two by two, the rumbling guns. Mile after
mile of this steady, deliberate, muddy tide that has crept so far,
creeps on now through the Dutch capital. Look at the men! Through long
exposure and the weeding out of the weak ones, they are now all picked
men. The campaign has sorted them out, and every battalion is so much
solid gristle and sinew. They show their condition in their lean,
darkly-tanned faces; in the sinewy, blackened hands that grasp the rifle
butts; in the way they carry themselves, with shoulders well back and
heads erect, and in the easy, vigorous swing of their step.
I should like, while I am about it, to speak to you rather more at
length about the British soldier. I should think my time spent on
service, especially the five months in the ranks, time well spent, if
only for the acquaintanceship it has brought with soldiers. In the
field, on the march, in bivouac, I have met and associated and talked
with them on equal terms. Under fire and in action I have watched them,
have sat with them, long afternoons by rivers and under trees, and
yarned with them on tramps in the blazing sun. Their language, habits,
and character have to some extent grown familiar to me.
They are not, to begin with, a bit like the description I sometimes read
of them in newspapers. In one of Kipling's books there is a description
of a painting of a soldier in action; realistic and true to life; dirty
and grimed and foul, with an assegai wound across the ankle, and the
terror of death in his face. The dealer who took the picture made the
artist alter it; had the uniform cleaned and the straps pipe-clayed, and
the face smoothed and composed, and the ferocity and despair toned down
to a plump and well-fed complacency, and made, in fact, all those
alterations which were supposed to suit it to the public taste.
The newspapers describe the British soldier, I suppose, to suit the
public too, much on the same lines. He is the most simpering,
mild-mannered, and perfect gentleman. If you asked him to loot a farm,
he would stare at you in shocked amazement. He is, of course, "as brave
as a lion," his courage being always at that dead level of perfect
heroism which makes the term quite meaningless. Except, however, when
they are shining with the light of battle, his eyes regard all people,
friends and foes alike, with an expression of kindness and brotherly
love. He never uses a strong word, and under all circumstances the
gentleness and sweet decorum of his manner is such as you would never
expect to meet outside the Y.M.C.A.
This is about as much like our dear, old, real Tommy Atkins as Kipling's
portrait was. Such a likeness does no honour to the man. It is simply
lifeless. Whatever Tommy is, he is a man; not a round-eyed, pink-cheeked
waxwork stuffed with bran. The truth is coarse and strong, but he can
stand having the truth told about him.
Soldiers as a class (I take the town-bred, slum-bred majority, mind) are
men who have discarded the civil standard of morality altogether. They
simply ignore it. This, no doubt, is why civilians fight shy of them. In
the game of life they don't play the same rules, and the consequence is
a good deal of misunderstanding, until finally the civilian says he
won't play with the Tommy any more. In soldiers' eyes lying, theft,
drunkenness, bad language, &c., are not evils at all. They steal like
jackdaws. No man's kit or belongings are safe for an instant in their
neighbourhood unless under the owner's eye. To "lift" or "pinch"
anything from anybody is one of the Tommy's ordinary everyday interests,
a thing to be attended to and borne in mind along with his other daily
cares and duties. Nothing is more common than to see some distracted
private rushing about in search of a missing article, which he declares
in anguished tones he has only just that instant laid down; his own
agitation a marked contrast to the elaborate indifference of every one
near him.
As to language, I used to think the language of a merchant ship's
fo'c'sle pretty bad, but the language of Tommies in point of profanity
quite equals, and in point of obscenity beats it hollow. This department
is a speciality of his. Of course, after a little it becomes simply
meaningless, and you scarcely notice it, but the haphazard and
indiscriminate way, quite regardless of any meaning, in which he
interlards ordinary sentences with beastly words, at first revolts you.
Lying he treats with the same large charity. To lie like a trooper is
quite a sound metaphor. He invents all sorts of elaborate lies for the
mere pleasure of inventing them. He will come back from headquarters and
tell you of the last despatch which he has just read with his own eyes
(a victory or disaster, according to his mood at the moment), with all
kinds of realistic details added; and you go and see for yourself, and
there is no despatch at all. Looting, again, is one of his perpetual
joys. Not merely looting for profit, though I have seen Tommies take
possession of the most ridiculous things--perambulators and sewing
machines, with a vague idea of carting them home somehow--but looting
for the sheer fun of the destruction; tearing down pictures to kick
their boots through them; smashing furniture for the fun of smashing it,
and may be dressing up in women's clothes to finish with, and dancing
among the ruins they have made. To pick up a good heavy stone and send
it _wallop_ right through the works of a piano is a great moment for
Tommy. I daresay there is something in it, you know.
These are roughish traits, are they not? Sit down by this group of
Tommies by the water-hole in the mid-day halt. They are filthy dirty,
poor fellows. Their thin, khaki, sweat-stained uniforms are rotting on
them. They have taken off tunics and shirts, and among the rags of
flannel are searching for the lice which pester and annoy them. Here is
a bit of raw humanity for you to study, a sample of the old Anglo-Saxon
breed; what do you make of it? Are thieving, and lying, and looting, and
bestial talk very bad things? If they are, Tommy is a bad man. But for
some reason or other, since I got to know him, I have thought rather
less of the iniquity of these things than I did before.