PRISONERS OF WAR
Pretoria: November 24, 1899.
The position of a prisoner of war is painful and humiliating. A man
tries his best to kill another, and finding that he cannot succeed asks
his enemy for mercy. The laws of war demand that this should be
accorded, but it is impossible not to feel a sense of humbling
obligation to the captor from whose hand we take our lives. All military
pride, all independence of spirit must be put aside. These may be
carried to the grave, but not into captivity. We must prepare ourselves
to submit, to obey, to endure. Certain things--sufficient food and water
and protection during good behaviour--the victor must supply or be a
savage, but beyond these all else is favour. Favours must be accepted
from those with whom we have a long and bitter quarrel, from those who
feel fiercely that we seek to do them cruel injustice. The dog who has
been whipped must be thankful for the bone that is flung to him.
When the prisoners captured after the destruction of the armoured train
had been disarmed and collected in a group we found that there were
fifty-six unwounded or slightly wounded men, besides the more serious
cases lying on the scene of the fight. The Boers crowded round, looking
curiously at their prize, and we ate a little chocolate that by good
fortune--for we had had no breakfast--was in our pockets, and sat down
on the muddy ground to think. The rain streamed down from a dark leaden
sky, and the coats of the horses steamed in the damp. 'Voorwärts,' said
a voice, and, forming in a miserable procession, two wretched officers,
a bare-headed, tattered Correspondent, four sailors with straw hats and
'H.M.S. Tartar' in gold letters on the ribbons--ill-timed
jauntiness--some fifty soldiers and volunteers, and two or three
railwaymen, we started, surrounded by the active Boer horsemen. Yet, as
we climbed the low hills that surrounded the place of combat I looked
back and saw the engine steaming swiftly away beyond Frere Station.
Something at least was saved from the ruin; information would be carried
to the troops at Estcourt, a good many of the troops and some of the
wounded would escape, the locomotive was itself of value, and perhaps in
saving all these things some little honour had been saved as well.
'You need not walk fast,' said a Boer in excellent English; 'take your
time.' Then another, seeing me hatless in the downpour, threw me a
soldier's cap--one of the Irish Fusilier caps, taken, probably, near
Ladysmith. So they were not cruel men, these enemy. That was a great
surprise to me, for I had read much of the literature of this land of
lies, and fully expected every hardship and indignity. At length we
reached the guns which had played on us for so many minutes--two
strangely long barrels sitting very low on carriages of four wheels,
like a break in which horses are exercised. They looked offensively
modern, and I wondered why our Army had not got field artillery with
fixed ammunition and 8,000 yards range. Some officers and men of the
Staats Artillerie, dressed in a drab uniform with blue facings,
approached us. The commander, Adjutant Roos--as he introduced
himself--made a polite salute. He regretted the unfortunate
circumstances of our meeting; he complimented the officers on their
defence--of course, it was hopeless from the first; he trusted his fire
had not annoyed us; we should, he thought, understand the necessity for
them to continue; above all he wanted to know how the engine had been
able to get away, and how the line could have been cleared of wreckage
under his guns. In fact, he behaved as a good professional soldier
should, and his manner impressed me.
We waited here near the guns for half an hour, and meanwhile the Boers
searched amid the wreckage for dead and wounded. A few of the wounded
were brought to where we were, and laid on the ground, but most of them
were placed in the shelter of one of the overturned trucks. As I write I
do not know with any certainty what the total losses were, but the Boers
say that they buried five dead, sent ten seriously wounded into
Ladysmith, and kept three severely wounded in their field ambulances.
Besides this, we are told that sixteen severely wounded escaped on the
engine, and we have with the prisoners seven men, including myself,
slightly wounded by splinters or injured in the derailment. If this be
approximately correct, it seems that the casualties in the hour and a
half of fighting were between thirty-five and forty: not many, perhaps,
considering the fire, but out of 120 enough at least.
After a while we were ordered to march on, and looking over the crest of
the hill a strange and impressive sight met the eye. Only about 300 men
had attacked the train, and I had thought that this was the enterprise
of a separate detachment, but as the view extended I saw that this was
only a small part of a large, powerful force marching south, under the
personal direction of General Joubert, to attack Estcourt. Behind every
hill, thinly veiled by the driving rain, masses of mounted men, arranged
in an orderly disorder, were halted, and from the rear long columns of
horsemen rode steadily forward. Certainly I did not see less than 3,000,
and I did not see nearly all. Evidently an important operation was in
progress, and a collision either at Estcourt or Mooi River impended.
This was the long expected advance: worse late than never.
Our captors conducted us to a rough tent which had been set up in a
hollow in one of the hills, and which we concluded was General Joubert's
headquarters. Here we were formed in a line, and soon surrounded by a
bearded crowd of Boers cloaked in mackintosh. I explained that I was a
Special Correspondent, and asked to see General Joubert. But in the
throng it was impossible to tell who were the superiors. My credentials
were taken from me by a man who said he was a Field Cornet, and who
promised that they should be laid before the General forthwith.
Meanwhile we waited in the rain, and the Boers questioned us. My
certificate as a correspondent bore a name better known than liked in
the Transvaal. Moreover, some of the private soldiers had been talking.
'You are the son of Lord Randolph Churchill?' said a Scottish Boer,
abruptly. I did not deny the fact. Immediately there was much talking,
and all crowded round me, looking and pointing, while I heard my name
repeated on every side. 'I am a newspaper correspondent,' I said, 'and
you ought not to hold me prisoner.' The Scottish Boer laughed. 'Oh,' he
said, 'we do not catch lords' sons every day.' Whereat they all
chuckled, and began to explain that I should be allowed to play football
at Pretoria.
All this time I was expecting to be brought before General Joubert, from
whom I had some hopes I should obtain assurances that my character as a
press correspondent would be respected. But suddenly a mounted man rode
up and ordered the prisoners to march away towards Colenso. The escort,
twenty horsemen, closed round us. I addressed their leader, and
demanded either that I should be taken before the General, or that my
credentials should be given back. But the so-called Field Cornet was not
to be seen. The only response was, 'Voorwärts,' and as it seemed
useless, undignified, and even dangerous to discuss the matter further
with these people, I turned and marched off with the rest.
We tramped for six hours across sloppy fields and along tracks deep and
slippery with mud, while the rain fell in a steady downpour and soaked
everyone to the skin. The Boer escort told us several times not to hurry
and to go our own pace, and once they allowed us to halt for a few
moments. But we had had neither food nor water, and it was with a
feeling of utter weariness that I saw the tin roofs of Colenso rise in
the distance. We were put into a corrugated iron shed near the station,
the floors of which were four inches deep with torn railway forms and
account books. Here we flung ourselves down exhausted, and what with the
shame, the disappointment, the excitement of the morning, the misery of
the present, and physical weakness, it seemed that love of life was
gone, and I thought almost with envy of a soldier I had seen during the
fight lying quite still on the embankment, secure in the calm philosophy
of death from 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.'
After the Boers had lit two fires they opened one of the doors of the
shed and told us we might come forth and dry ourselves. A newly
slaughtered ox lay on the ground, and strips of his flesh were given to
us. These we toasted on sticks over the fire and ate greedily, though
since the animal had been alive five minutes before one felt a kind of
cannibal. Other Boers not of our escort who were occupying Colenso came
to look at us. With two of these who were brothers, English by race,
Afrikanders by birth, Boers by choice, I had some conversation. The war,
they said, was going well. Of course, it was a great matter to face the
power and might of the British Empire, still they were resolved. They
would drive the English out of South Africa for ever, or else fight to
the last man. I said:
'You attempt the impossible. Pretoria will be taken by the middle of
March. What hope have you of withstanding a hundred thousand soldiers?'
'If I thought,' said the younger of the two brothers vehemently, 'that
the Dutchmen would give in because Pretoria was taken, I would smash my
rifle on those metals this very moment. We will fight for ever.' I could
only reply:
'Wait and see how you feel when the tide is running the other way. It
does not seem so easy to die when death is near.'
The man said, 'I will wait.'
Then we made friends. I told him that I hoped he would come safely
through the war, and live to see a happier and a nobler South Africa
under the flag which had been good enough for his forefathers; and he
took off his blanket--which he was wearing with a hole in the middle
like a cloak--and gave it to me to sleep in. So we parted, and
presently, as night fell, the Field Cornet who had us in charge bade us
carry a little forage into the shed to sleep on, and then locked us up
in the dark, soldiers, sailors, officers, and Correspondent--a
broken-spirited jumble.
I could not sleep. Vexation of spirit, a cold night, and wet clothes
withheld sweet oblivion. The rights and wrongs of the quarrel, the
fortunes and chances of the war, forced themselves on the mind. What men
they were, these Boers! I thought of them as I had seen them in the
morning riding forward through the rain--thousands of independent
riflemen, thinking for themselves, possessed of beautiful weapons, led
with skill, living as they rode without commissariat or transport or
ammunition column, moving like the wind, and supported by iron
constitutions and a stern, hard Old Testament God who should surely
smite the Amalekites hip and thigh. And then, above the rain storm that
beat loudly on the corrugated iron, I heard the sound of a chaunt. The
Boers were singing their evening psalm, and the menacing notes--more
full of indignant war than love and mercy--struck a chill into my heart,
so that I thought after all that the war was unjust, that the Boers were
better men than we, that Heaven was against us, that Ladysmith,
Mafeking, and Kimberley would fall, that the Estcourt garrison would
perish, that foreign Powers would intervene, that we should lose South
Africa, and that would be the beginning of the end. So for the time I
despaired of the Empire, nor was it till the morning sun--all the
brighter after the rain storms, all the warmer after the chills--struck
in through the windows that things reassumed their true colours and
proportions.