long feelers, are pushed out in front. Its scouts, that is, among which,
if you belong to our corps, you will probably find yourself, go
cantering on ahead. They pass the pickets on the hill, who promptly
shoulder blankets and turn back to camp, and break into extended order,
and throw out little feelers of their own in front and to the sides as
they enter an unexplored country. Following them come several companies
of infantry, a block of solid strength, marching at the top of the
column, and a battery or section of guns. Then comes the long line of
convoy waggons, piled high with provisions, fodder, and kit,
strengthened and protected at intervals by companies of infantry
marching at ease, with the two great cow-guns somewhere about the
middle. The tail of the column, like the head, is strengthened by a
considerable force of infantry, followed at an interval of a mile or so
by the mounted rearguard, which has scattered its scouts far and wide
across the track of the column, and withdraws them from point to point
as we advance. Likewise to left and right, far out on the plain, the
horsemen of the flank guards are scattered in little bands of twos and
threes, cantering along or stopping and spying, sniffing cautiously
round kopjes or peeping into farms, and by-and-by you will probably hear
from one direction or other a few scattered single shots, and yonder two
scouts in the distance, lately advancing so quietly, are now seen to be
turned and galloping back as hard as they can split, while two or three
Mausers crack at them from the sky-line.
It is a pretty sight, from some hill far in advance, to turn back and
watch the army coming into view. You push on, scouts feeling the way, to
occupy some prominent kopje on the line of march, and climbing up and
sitting among the rocks, command with your glasses a view far and wide
over the plain. The air has been very cold and sharp, with an intense
penetrating cold hitherto, but now the sun is shining and its mellow
warmth is instantly felt. The rich pure colour-lines, only seen when the
sun, rising or setting, is low in the sky, lie straightly ruled across
the plain, brown and orange and pale yellow, and in the distance blue.
The ten-mile off rocks look but a mile in this air. Every object,
distant or near, is exact to the least detail. So clear are the outlines
you would think there was no atmosphere here at all, and that you might
be looking out over the unaired landscapes of the moon. One would think
that such an air would breed an exceptional race, and that the men, and
horses too, for that matter, of this country would show something of the
Arab character, sensitive, fiery, and high strung. Yet nothing can be
conceived less Arab like than your stolid but practical Dutchman and the
underbred screw he rides.
Left and right of you, your two or three flankers, half a mile off, have
halted, in obedience to your halting, and are standing by their horses'
heads scanning the country. Under the kopje your main body are sitting
about, while their ponies, with bridles thrown over their heads, graze.
Far back, two or three miles, the bits of dark kilt showing behind their
khaki aprons, a company of the Camerons comes into view, the brown
colour so exactly matching the plain that they are first visible only by
their motion. Here come the flank guards, sprinkled far out over the
country. And now, at the point where the distant kopjes slope to the
plain, the air grows heavy with dust-wreaths, rising like steam from a
cauldron, and underneath, slowly emerging, comes something dark and
solid. It is the head of the column. The great caterpillar is crawling
forward. You must push on--"Stand to your horses!"
LETTER XX
PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER--I
CAMP, NEAR FOURIESBERG, _July 26_, 1900.
We have a whole day of peace and rest before us--very welcome after the
hard fighting we have been doing lately. This lull is to allow
Bruce-Hamilton and Macdonald to stop the exits at the eastern end of the
valley. We don't want to push the enemy east till we are sure the passes
in that direction have been secured. Some of us are annoyed at the
delay. We were in touch with the enemy this morning, our scouts and
advance guard exchanging shots with their rearguard. We could see them
prancing about on the bare hills east of Fouriesberg, and making off in
a leisurely way up the eastern valley, and most of us were quite
expecting that we should give chase immediately.
Hunter rode forward to have a look. He watched the tiny horsemen
hovering on the hills or cantering away; then back he came with a quiet
smile on his face, and instead of ordering the advance, as the impetuous
ones expected, he led his column back over the way we had come for
several miles, and then camped.
So here we are, sitting or lying about, sleeping, smoking, or reading.
Our camp is in a small plain, five or six miles from Fouriesberg,
surrounded by ranges of great hills. Those south and east, their gaunt
peaks rising, streaked with white, above the lower and nearer ones, are
in Basutoland. They play an important part in our programme, for it is
against that huge barrier that we are pressing the Boers. There are some
rounded, turf-clad hills, but most are rocky. Sharp points and stony
ridges rise up with jagged and clear-cut outlines into the sky, with
gorges and valleys retreating in between, full of deep blue shade, and
often horizontal bands of strata, showing like regularly built courses
of white masonry along the flanks of the mountains. It is very fine,
though gaunt, bare, and untenanted. We have had nothing but level veldt
to march on for weeks past, and the change to the eye is a pleasant one.
Nevertheless, it is a bad country for our business. To us mountain
ranges are not fine scenery, but strong positions; and rocks and crags
are not grand and picturesque, but merely good cover. We always serve
out extra-ammunition when we come to a pretty bit of scenery.
The present position is this: We have got the Boers, a big lot of them,
at any rate, into a very broken and mountainous country, a country
which, though it suits their tactics and is strong for defence, is
nevertheless very difficult to get out of. The way south is barred by
the Basutoland border. They dare not cross that or they would have the
hordes of Basutos, who are already buzzing and humming like a
half-roused hive, on to them. The other passes Hunter occupies in this
way: Rundle comes up from the south-west to Fouriesberg through Commando
Nek. Paget and Clements march south towards the same point through
Slabbert's Nek. A little farther east Hunter himself forces Retiefs
Nek, while farther east still Bruce-Hamilton, helped by Macdonald, is to
hold Naawpoort Nek and block the Golden Gate road. The western columns,
_i.e._ Rundle's, Clement's, Paget's, and Hunter's, are to force a
simultaneous entrance into the Fouriesberg valley, and having got the
enemy's force jammed against the Basuto border, to force it to turn
eastward up the rugged Caledon valley, the only two exits to which are,
we hope, by this time held by Bruce-Hamilton and Macdonald. This we have
now done. Now it only remains to see whether these eastern exits have
been successfully occupied by our columns or not.
[Illustration: PLAN TO ILLUSTRATE PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER]
From the moment of leaving Bethlehem, at which place we remained nearly
a fortnight while the General placed his columns, we entered among the
hills and fighting was continuous. Our passage to force was Relief's
Nek, and, as we had expected, the Boers made a determined stand there.
The ground lay in a naturally defensive position; a narrow plain among
steep, almost precipitous, ranges, and in the plain, arresting further
progress, an abruptly sunken valley, scooped out to a depth of a couple
of hundred feet; as though, what must perhaps have happened, some sudden
collapse down below had allowed the ground here to fall in. The sides
are in most places precipitous, but to the north they shelve up by
degrees in terraces of sloping rock which a man can easily clamber up.
The first terrace is only a few feet deep, and accordingly a number of
men can form here along the brink and fire across the plain, being
totally concealed from the advancing troops. Moreover, the edge of this
curious and sudden valley is indented and pierced with a number of
little crevices and fissures in which riflemen can snugly ensconce
themselves with little risk of being seen by attackers in front. This
was the main Boer position. You see it departed from the general rule,
and instead of occupying a hill, occupied a hollow. They are
past-masters in the art of choosing ground. The adjacent heights were
also held.
On the morning of the 23rd we struck our camp a few miles north of the
Nek, and advanced to find out whether the enemy were in position here or
not. We started before daylight. The night had been intensely cold and
very wet. On the high mountains snow had fallen. The sky was heavily
clouded, and about sunrise-time dense masses of mist rose and clung
about the hills, sometimes closing in the view at fifty yards and then
drifting off and leaving it clear again. Our scouts advanced steadily,
reconnoitring hill after hill and ridge after ridge, but still there was
no sound of firing, and we began to think that the enemy had abandoned
the place altogether. This preliminary scouting work, poking about in
the hills with a handful of men to find the enemy, always reminds me of
tufting for deer in the Exmoor woods before the pack is laid on.
Then there came a few shots from our extreme right, from the hills on
the right of the valley's nose, sounding very muffled and dull in the
mist, and we, out on the left, advanced with the more caution. It was my
chance to come upon the enemy first on this side, and as it will give
you a fair notion of the usual risks of scouting, I will tell you how it
happened!
I was out with my tufters on the left front, and we were drawing with
all possible care the hills on that side. In front of us was a tall
peak, and I sent a few men to work round it on the left while I went
round the right. This hill really overlooked the Boer position. My left
flankers got round and rejoined me in front. Either they must have been
concealed from the Boers by the mist or have been mistaken for a party
of Boers themselves, for they had passed within a few hundred yards of
the edge where the enemy lay and were not fired at.
Damant, our captain, coolest and bravest of officers, now joined me, and
with two or three men we pushed cautiously on towards some loose rocks,
which, from the top of the rise, seemed to command a view of the valley
beneath. We had advanced to within eighty yards of the rocks, in open
order, when we thought we heard voices talking, and immediately
afterwards some one said loudly in Dutch, "Who rides there?" And then
another voice more to the right exclaimed, "Here they are!" At the same
instant one caught a motion as of heads and shoulders cuddling down and
adjusting themselves in a disagreeable way. There they were and no
mistake, all tucked in among the rocks like wood-lice.
Our position then was a curious one, for we had actually walked quite in
the open up to within speaking distance of the main Boer position, a
position that was to defy our army for a day and a half.
The ground sloped down in a slight hollow. It was thickly sprinkled with
snow and dotted here and there with little green spots where the grass
tufts showed through. A wire fence crossed the hollow lower down.
Luckily we heard their voices before they started shooting, and
instantly we turned and rode for it, the Mausers all opening
immediately and the bullets cracking and whistling round our ears. As
bad luck would have it, my pony, which, like most of them, knows and
dreads the sound of rifles fired at him (though he will stand close to a
battery or among men firing without minding it in the least), became so
frantic at the noise of the bullets that I was quite unable to steer
him. With head wrenched round he bored away straight down the hill
towards the wire. As we got to it I managed to lift him half round and
we struck it sideways. The shock flung me forward on to his neck, which
I clasped with my left arm and just saved myself falling. For an instant
or two he struggled in the wire, a mark for every rifle, and then got
clear. In his efforts he had got half through his girths and the saddle
was back on his rump. A pretty spectacle we must have looked, I sitting
back on his tail, my hat in my hand, both stirrups dangling, and the
bullets whistling round both of us like hailstones. However, I lugged
him out at last, and we went up the side of the fence broadside on to
the shooters, as hard as ever we could lay legs to the ground. It is a
difficult thing to bring off a crossing shot at that pace, and in a few
hundred yards we were over the slope and out of shot. I have seen lots
of our men have much narrower escapes than this.
Well, after all that, we will get back to the action. Having located the
enemy, the Guides all collected behind the conical hill, climbed up, and
from the edges of it began shooting down into the Boer position. Here we
were joined by the Black Watch, who carried on the same game. It was
not, however, at all a paying game, and the fact that the Boers had not
held this hill themselves, though so close to their position, is
sufficient of itself to show their remarkable skill in choice of ground.
For the hill, conical and regular in shape, was perfectly bare, and
while they behind the sharp ledges and in the fissures of the rocks
below were well concealed from the men above, these as they crept round
the smooth hillside came into immediate view against the sky. The sleet
of bullets shaving the hill edge was like the wind whistling past. The
Black Watch lost a lot of men here. In the afternoon the Guides and some
of Lovat's Scouts pushed forward on the left and gained a low ridge,
where, lying down, we could command a part of the enemy's position, and
send in a flanking fire. This manoeuvre was useful and suggested a plan
for next day. That night I had to take out a picket on a hill on our
south-east front and had but a sorry time of it; for it was a bitterly
cold, rather wet night, and the position was not without its anxiety. I
got little sleep.
Next morning, July 24, soon after light, the main body of the Guides and
Lovat's Scouts (who are under Rimington at present) came out, and we
rode down to the slopes on the left of the Boer valley again. Here we
crept up as far as we could and began to put in our fire. It must have
been very annoying for them, for a part of their position was quite
exposed to us. We could see the short white cliff at the edge of the
basin and the Boers moving about and running up and down, diving into
fissures and getting under cover, for all the world like rabbits, as our
fire searched the position. They replied, but though a lot of bullets
were whistling about, no one was hit. There was a Maxim at the foot of
the conical hill rattling away, and the Black Watch were again on the
hill itself, blazing away at the rocks as vigorously as ever. Then at
last between us and them up gallops a section of guns, and the little
puff balls begin to burst along the rock edge in a way which we could
see was very disconcerting for the Boers, who were rapidly finding the
place too hot for them. A little after, some one sings out, "Here comes
the attack!" and true enough we can make out the little khaki dots in
long loose strings moving forward round the hill towards the valley
head. It is the Seaforths. We on our side "carry on the motion," dash
forward, lie down and shoot, and on again. We make for a kopje on our
edge of the valley. The fire is too hot for the Boers to dare to show up
much and there is not much opposition. But I can assure you that a
charge of 1500 yards, even without the enemy's fire, is a serious thing
enough. Puffing and panting, I struggle on. Long-legged Colonials go
striding by land leave me gasping in the rear. When at last we reach the
kopje and look down into the sunken valley, the Seaforths are pouring in
their fire on the retreating Boers, our fellows are doing the same from
the kopje top, but I myself am too pumped out to care for anything and
can only lie on the ground and gasp.
I see in your last letter you want to know about the character of the
Guides, and whether there has been any cases of treachery among them. I
don't know what started these old yarns. They were invented about
Magersfontein time, probably to account for that awful mishap, and got
into the local press here and made a lot of fuss, but we have heard
nothing since on that score. There is such a lot of treachery put here
(owing to the intermingling of English and Dutch in their two
territories) that almost anything in that line seems credible, and there
are numbers of people about, loafers in bars and fifth-rate
boarding-houses, to whom anything base seems perfectly natural, and who
delight in starting and circulating such tales. At the same time there
are also numbers of honest and loyal men, and it is from these, and
exclusively from these, that the fighters are drawn. In South Africa,
and among the South Africans, a war of this sort, between neighbours and
cousins, is the sternest test of loyalty. Many have failed to stand it.
But the loyalty of those who have not wavered, but have taken up arms
for their country in a quarrel like this, is of a sort you can trust to
the utmost extremity. There are no men in the field who feel so deep an
animosity towards the Boers, and whom the Boers in their turn hate so
much, as the fighting South African Colonials. As for the Guides, I can
assure you that there has not been a single case of any one of our men
having been accused of treachery, nor suspected of treachery. I have
made careful inquiries, lest such a case might have occurred without my
knowledge, and I am assured by our adjutant (C.H. Rankin, Captain 7th
Hussars) that there has been no such case, and that the slander was
without the slightest foundation whatever.
Shortly after Magersfontein the greater part of the Guides turned back
to Colesberg, leaving fifteen of us with Methuen, the services of the
whole corps not being required, as Methuen's force was now stationary.
Before it left, Methuen paraded the corps and spoke in the warmest terms
of the good work it had done. Nevertheless it was their turning back, or
being _sent back_, as it was called, that gave a pretext to the slander
that was then started. Later, when his attention was called to the
story, Methuen wrote to the _Cape Times_ a most emphatic letter
vindicating the corps from the least suspicion, and indignantly denying
that the least cause for any had existed. Lord Roberts himself, who came
up soon afterwards, wrote a very handsome and decisive letter to the
same paper, and since then I don't think we have heard anything about
it. The whole story is so ridiculous, considering the way the Guides
hate the Boers, and the danger of the services they do, that to any one
who knows anything about the corps it is a tale rather to be laughed, at
than seriously resented. I saw the other day a letter from Hunter to
Rimington, in which the General speaks of the corps with a kind of
weighty deliberation that is very satisfactory, mentioning emphatically
its "trustworthiness," its "bravery," and its "exceptional and proved
value in the field."
Our casualty list so far is about forty per cent., I believe; but this
loss, though not light, does not in a Colonial corps give an adequate
idea of the service done. All the Colonials, so far as I know (the
Australians and South Africans certainly), have much the same qualities
that make our enemies so formidable. They have individual intelligence
and skill, a faculty for observation, and the habit of thinking for
themselves. They are therefore able to take care of themselves in a way
which our regular troops, mostly town-bred men, without independent
training, cannot do.
The difference comes out chiefly in scouting, including all the flanking
and advance guard business, extending for several miles to left and
right, and in front and rear of an army column, by which that column
feels its way through an enemy's country. The regulars usually carry out
these tactics in long lines with wide intervals between the men. But
nothing is so conspicuous as a long line of men riding at fifty yards'
interval. They can be detected a dozen miles off, and plenty of
opportunities will occur for a mobile, cunning enemy like the Boers to
lie in ambush and get a shot at the outsider. Our regulars are better at
this game than they used to be, but many lives have been lost at it. On
the other hand, Colonials adopt more the tactics of a Scotch gillie in a
deer forest, whose object is to see, but not to be seen. Sky-lines are
avoided and cover taken every advantage of. From places where a good
view is to be obtained the country is intently studied; not by a
horseman poised in relief like the Achilles statue in Hyde Park, but by
a man who has left his horse on the reverse slope and lies hidden among
the rocks with his glass. Again, if a farm or suspicious-looking kopje
has to be approached, this is partly encircled, and threatened or
examined in flank or rear before being occupied; while if the place, a
long range of hills for instance, has to be approached in front, a
sudden left or right wheel at long range may often draw the enemy's
fire. These are a few of the many expedients that sometimes suggest
themselves to lessen risk. In all, the first necessity is personal
intelligence in the men and the habit of taking notice and thinking for
themselves, faculties which the independent, self-reliant life of the
Colonials has greatly developed. Just the same holds good when it comes
to shooting; choosing cover, keeping oneself hidden, creeping on from
point to point without giving the enemy a fair shot, or detecting the
probable bushes or rocks behind which an enemy may be lying, or any sign
of his whereabouts. The Tommy as he advances is apt to expose himself,
because he doesn't think. The Colonial will get to the same spot perhaps
quite unperceived. This is why I say that our loss does not give an
adequate idea of the work done by the corps. The defence of the conical
hill here at Relief's Nek is a good example. Our men hold the hill for
several hours before the regulars come up, and lose one man. As soon as
the regulars arrive (though by this time the exposed places are known
and the enemy located), they begin to lose men, and by the conclusion of
the action have lost, I am told, over forty. I think, and have often
spoken so highly of our soldiers' courage, that I don't hesitate to
point out their weakness. They are lacking in personal intelligence.
For all their pluck, they don't know how to look after themselves. There
have been, as you will have heard, many cases in which detached parties
of our cavalry, mounted infantry, and yeomanry have been cut off and
captured. How often has this happened to the Colonials?
LETTER XXI
PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER--II
_August 4th_.
We have been up the valley and back again, and I write this once more
from Fouriesberg. We passed through here, joining Rundle, as I told you
a week ago, and pushed on eastward in the direction of Naawpoort Nek and
the Golden Gate. Six miles out from here, passing through a very rugged
country, we came on their outposts. These we shelled and drove back.
They then retired to some hills not very high, but with perpendicular
sides of low white cliffs commanding the approach across the plain.
These they held till nightfall. We shelled them a good deal and knocked
out the only gun they had, and the infantry pushed forward in front and
we took a hill on the right, but the attack was not pressed home, as it
would have cost too many lives. The infantry took the hill during the
night, but found it evacuated, the Boers having retired as soon as it
got dark.