Our dinner was furnished by the roosters of the farmyard, which three of
our number had initiated in the laws of hospitality. Certain
protestations are raised by the victims, during which I call and scold
my poor Nelly, who is lying perfectly innocent at my feet. But the
ambulance men will think it was she who was pursuing the poultry....
One should always try to save appearances.
We take a very light sleep, and towards three o'clock a Kaffir comes to
tell us that he has just met a numerous band of English. We harness up
rapidly, and make off still more rapidly at a hand-gallop, while in the
dawning light we make out the scouts of the enemy on the neighbouring
kopjes.
All day we marched across the plain without a guide, and at six in the
evening we reached Botha's camp. Our comrades, who had gone off on a
little reconnaissance, which proved to be fruitless, came in at about
8.30.
A rumour that we had been taken prisoners together with the trolley had
preceded us; it had been brought in by the Irish Americans, and
confirmed by a heliographic message from the commissary at Brandfort.
On the 28th all the Europeans were told to hold themselves in readiness
to start as an advanced guard. I meet with a very cordial reception
from the officers of the staff, for I find among them the Adjutant,[#]
Marais, who was with us at Poplar Grove. The order to start was given
at two in the afternoon.
[#] The title of Adjutant to a Boer General often corresponds to that of
head of the staff, and not to the subordinate rank implied by the grade
in France.
We have just heard that Von Loosberg, an ex-lieutenant of the German
army, whom we knew at Abraham's Kraal, and who had since taken service
in the artillery, had received seven Maxim bullets at Dewetsdorp, two in
the head and five in the body. He recovered!
At five o'clock we reach a little stream. Here we are to encamp for
three days. From 1,200 to 1,500 are gathered here with Botha, Delarey
and Kolby. The tents are set up a little apart. We are very
comfortable.
At about 8.30 we had finished dinner, and were about to seek a
well-earned repose; several of the party were already rolled up in their
blankets. Suddenly there was a noise of the tramp of horses and strange
murmurs. We went in search of information. All the camp was astir, and
the Boers were making off quietly.
'The English! Be off!'
We struck our tents hastily, saddled our horses, and harnessed the
mules, without getting any more precise information, and then we joined
in the general retreat. The questions we ask call forth answers
precisely like those given by young recruits at their first manoeuvres.
'The enemy!'
'Where?'
'Over there!'
A sweeping gesture embraces the whole horizon; the indication is all the
more vague in that it is ten o'clock, and that the night is very dark.
'Are there many of them?'
'I don't know.'
'Which way are they going?'
'I don't know.'
I almost think that if one asked rather sharply, 'Did you see them?' the
man would answer, 'No.'
Nevertheless, the convoy takes an easterly direction, and the men are so
disposed as to cover the retreat. We are on a rocky kopje swept by an
icy wind. Thinking we were to bivouac again further on, we had packed
up our cloaks and rugs on the trolley. Our benumbed fingers can no
longer grasp our rifles; we shiver, swear, and sneeze in chorus. It was
a horrible experience!
After a night that seemed interminable, dawn and sunlight put an end to
our torture. During the morning certain information is brought in. The
camp has been broken up, 1,500 men have been mobilized, and have spent
the night on the _qui vive_. A patrol of thirteen Lancers passed close
by.
The 29th is a Sunday. The Boers sing hymns. We pitch our tents again
about two hours' distance from our camp of the night before.
On the 30th, at eight o'clock, orders are given to transport our laager
to the foot of the high kopjes we see four or five miles off in the
direction of Taba N'chu.
Towards 9.30 the Maxim suddenly opens fire, without our having seen or
heard anything to account for it. We gallop off to the kopjes straight
in front of us, making for one of the highest, which is called Taba
N'berg. But a field-cornet comes after us at a gallop, and sends us
more to the left to join General Kolby. It is all the same to us, as we
know nothing of what is on hand. We take up a position on a little
rocky peak.
The kopjes form a large semicircle, slightly oval, the curve of which
lies to the north-east and the opening to the south-east. A group of
trees in the midst of the arid yellow basin is Taba N'chu. To the west
of our position twenty miles off is Bloemfontein. All the bottom of the
vast hollow is full of men in khaki.
It is ten o'clock. We have one cannon on our left, and on our right,
between us and the big kopje, another cannon and a Maxim gun. Later in
the day two or three Grobler guns appeared on the scene. One English
battery took up a position about 4,000 metres from us, then another,
distributing common shell and shrapnel all along our line. A brisk
fusillade was also brought to bear upon us at a long range (about 2,500
yards).
Judging the distance to be too great for effective rifle-fire, we did
not respond to this, but did our best with our guns. At eleven o'clock,
however, our Maxim was silenced.
The Duke of Edinburgh's Volunteers and the Royal Irish charged our right
wing four times, and finally succeeded in establishing themselves on the
flank of the incline, which was relatively slight on their side.
Von Braschel was killed, and Brostolowsky, both former officers in the
German army; also Baudin, a former sergeant of marines, who had served
his fifteen years, and had come to the Transvaal while waiting for the
liquidation of his retiring pension.
About 4.30 we were ourselves vigorously charged by the infantry, but a
brisk fire, unerringly delivered, dispersed those who did not fall.
The fighting ceased with the day. In the evening, owing to the
unexpected nature of the engagement, we had neither provisions nor
coverings. A box of sardines between ten of us was our dinner, and the
intense cold debarred us from the sleep that would have consoled us for
our missing meal.
We remained in position, and at daybreak on May 1 the battle began
again.
With the Germans, we were sent to occupy the big kopje against which the
English attack had been most violent the night before. Its dominant
position made it of great strategic value; but the Boers who had held it
were guilty of the disastrous negligence, only too habitual with them,
of retiring from it in order to sleep comfortably, instead of
strengthening their position upon it.
The English, on the other hand, had spent the night digging trenches,
and were firmly established on the ground they had gained in the two
days. From the very beginning, therefore, our position was less
favourable.
The ascent of Taba N'berg by a rocky, steep, and almost precipitous
incline took about thirty-five minutes. So rugged was the hillside that
it was impossible to use litters to bring down the wounded. We were
forced to drag them down by the feet, or to make them slide down
sitting. Our shelters were therefore often stained with long trails of
blood.
Our horses were left at the bottom of the hill, without anyone on guard
as usual. On reaching the top, we were greeted by steady infantry fire
and by a few shrapnel shells, which we received without responding till
ten o'clock. Then, leaning a little upon our right, we began to fire.
We numbered about a hundred--fifty foreigners, and as many Boers; for
the majority of those who had been with us the night before--perhaps 500
Europeans, and a rather smaller number of Burghers--had returned to the
laager, and had not come back.
It is true that the day had been a hard one for them, and that they had
had to bear the brunt of the battle under a heavy artillery fire.
Up to this moment nothing serious had been attempted. But about eleven
o'clock the whole of the Royal Canadian contingent arrived in open
formation. They were greeted on their passage by our two 75 millimetre
guns, which had taken up a position on our left at the foot of the
kopje.
I heard afterwards that the guns, though they had been remarkably well
laid, had not been very effective, the shells with fuses having fallen
without exploding. In consequence of this, only two or three men, who
had been struck full by the shells as if they had been bullets, had been
killed. Several others were knocked over by the shock, but picked
themselves up unharmed. I got this information later from a superior
officer of an English regiment who had been present in the engagement.
About one o'clock, without any order and without any reason, the Boers,
who were occupying another little kopje on our left, forsook their
position. The English artillerymen at once rushed forward, and now
began to fire upon us at a distance of 3,500 metres. Then, all at once,
there was a cry of, 'To the horses!' At our feet, behind us in the
plain, a regiment of Lancers, who had come round the big kopje where we
were stranded as on an island, sweep forward in loose order, to seize
our horses which are sheltered below.
There is a rush to protect them. A few Boers, coming from I know not
whence, took ambush in a little spruit, and drove off the Lancers by a
withering fire; but while this feint was being carried out, the English
made another rush forward, more serious than the first. A fierce
fusillade was kept up on both sides.
We are now only hanging on to the kopje by the left corner.
Suddenly, not having been able to seize our horses, the enemy open a
terrible artillery fire upon them obliquely. The Boers retreat before
it, and the position becomes untenable; we have only just time to reach
our horses. As we come down the kopje, one of my comrades, who is a
great declaimer of verse, recites 'Rolla'; but his memory fails him at a
certain verse, and he asks me to help him out. I reply that I don't
know 'Rolla,' but my answer is cut short by a shell which, passing
between us, bursts and carries off the head of a Burgher clean from the
nape of the neck.
And through the crash of shells and the whistle of bullets I hear a few
metres off the voice of my friend De C---- speaking to someone I cannot
see:
'It was at Tabarin, you know.'
At last we reach the horses; Buhors arrives, bringing the water-bottles
he has filled at a little spring a hundred metres off under a hail of
projectiles. An ambulance is on the spot, riddled with bullets, and the
doctor, admirably calm, tends the wounded, while the natives hastily
harness the mules. We see two or three more men fall; a horse drops
disembowelled by a shell; then we are in the saddle.
Four or five men, who were firing at us from a distance of about 200
metres on top of the kopje we had just abandoned, and the battery which
was working away unceasingly 3,000 yards off, had got us in an angle of
fire. The ground was ploughed up by a hail of projectiles, and the
shower of bullets raised thousands of little clouds.
A hard gallop of 2,000 metres under these convergent fires carried us
pretty well out of danger.
A German, with a long fair beard, whom I knew well, galloped past me.
He had no coat, no hat, no arms; his horse had neither saddle nor
bridle; he was guiding it by a halter. Pale, with staring eyes, his
face contracted, he dashed past me. There was a large blood-stain on
his shirt. He had been shot right through the body!
It was half-past two o'clock.
These two days cost us twenty killed, among them six Europeans, and
about fifty wounded, of whom twenty were Europeans.
Scarcely had we got beyond range, when we met Botha, who posted us on a
little slope. There were about sixty of us. Then Botha went off. When
he had disappeared, a Burgher went slowly up to his horse, mounted it,
and left the field. Another followed him, just as slowly, then a third.
Soon there were only about fifteen Europeans left.
We could see nothing on the horizon, neither convoy nor retreating
troops. We in our turn departed, saluted by a few shells.
Here and there a few wounded, and one or two men who had lost their
horses, were going away. No one knew what had become of the army.