IN RAGS AND TATTERS
Baden-Powell now had what one might term a roving commission. He was
sent by Colonel Plumer in charge of a patrol to wander over the vast
country covered by the rebellion and see what he could of the enemy,
and when found make a note of. It was exactly the work B.-P. liked
above all others. There was romance in the dangers of it, and
intellectual joy in its difficulties. There was freedom in it, and the
glorious feeling that every step he took he was carrying his life in
his hand. And not only was life menaced by the bullets and assegais of
Matabele lurking in the tall yellow grass, but there was considerable
danger, though of a more humorous order, even in the taking of a bath,
as B.-P. discovered in going down to a pool and spotting just in time
a leering crocodile in the reeds. Lions, too, were stumbled upon in
clumps, just as in peaceful England one walks upon a covey of
partridges. Then, lying down one day after dinner for a nap, B.-P.
discovered on awaking that a snake had selected precisely the same
spot for its own siesta. The charm of night marches, too, was
occasionally broken by the growling of a bloodthirsty hyæna, following
and snarling at the heels of the horses. These were dangers, however,
that added the few touches necessary to complete the picture of our
smart adjutant of Hussars in cowboy hat, grey flannel shirt, breeches
and gaiters, with a face as brown as a Kaffir's, wandering over the
South African veldt. During these expeditions, by the way,
Baden-Powell's wardrobe came to ignominious grief, and under the
tattered breeches, the stained shirt, and the split boots, he was a
mere network of holes. The ankles of his socks remained true to the
end, but the rest of them, in B.-P.'s euphemistic phrase, were most
delicate lace. The one drawback to the tub in the river, leaving out
the chance of a stray crocodile, was the difficulty he experienced in
getting back into these delicate open-work socks, and the only way of
surmounting this difficulty was by bathing--socks and all!
The marches, too, had their intervals of fighting, and the little
patrol was frequently so in touch with the enemy that Tommy Atkins and
Master Matabele could exchange compliments. "Sleep well to-night," the
grinning savages would shout from the hills; "to-morrow we will have
your livers fried for breakfast!" And the compliments became sterner
whenever the Matabele recognised in the little force of whites the
dread "Wolf that never Sleeps." "Wolf! Wolf!" they shrieked with
savage ferocity, and if Baden-Powell had the nerves of some of us he
must have had many a bad night after hearing that yell, and marking
the gleaming eyes and the frothing lips that twitched with lust for
his destruction.
Then there was the bitterest work of all. The closing of suffering
eyes that had grown so strangely dear during the hardships of such
work as this; the saying of farewells to the men who had raced by
one's side with Death at their heels for how many hard weeks. Of one
of these Baden-Powell writes in his diary: "His death is to me like
the snatching away of a pleasing book half read." And solemn as the
funeral service ever is, one fancies how awe-inspiring, how poignant
its impressiveness, when in the dark, "among the gleams of camp-fires
and lanterns, with a storm of thunder and lightning gathering round,"
a few fighting Englishmen heard its message over the body of a
fellow-soldier.
Baden-Powell's description of the day's work at this time gives one a
good idea of the life of a patrol. This is what he wrote in his diary
for his mother's eyes: "Our usual daily march goes thus: Reveillé and
stand to arms at 4.30, when Orion's belt is overhead. (The natives
call this Ingolobu, the pig, the three big stars being three pigs, and
the three little ones being the dogs running after them; this shows
that Kaffirs, like other nations, see pictures in constellations.) We
then feed horses--if we have anything to feed them with, which is not
often; light fires and boil coffee; saddle-up, and march off at 5.15.
We go on marching till about 9.30 or 10, when we off-saddle and lie up
for the heat of the day, during which the horses are grazed, with a
guard to look after them, and we go a-breakfasting, bathing, and in
theory writing and sketching, but in practice sleeping, at least so
far as the flies will allow. At 3.30 saddle-up and march till 5.30;
off-saddle and supper; then we march on again, as far as necessary,
in the cool hours of the early night. On arriving at the end of our
march, we form our little laager; to do this we put our saddles down
in a square, each man sleeping with his head in the saddle, and the
horses inside the square, fastened in two lines on their 'built up'
ropes. To go to bed we dig a small hole for our hip-joints to rest in,
roll ourselves up in our horse-blanket, with our heads comfortably
ensconced in the inside of the saddle, and we would not then exchange
our couch for anything that Maple could try and tempt us with."
But after months of this hard work, the tireless B.-P. began to knock
up. Fever and dysentery attacked him, and he said unkind things to
people who bothered him--as witness the message sent to one of the
patrolling columns: "If you let the men smoke on a night march, you
might as well let the band play too." The justness of the gibe!
B.-P. relates a good story, by the way, of smoking while on guard. A
Colonial volunteer officer, Captain Brown, in times of peace Butcher
Brown, ordered a sentry found smoking to consider himself a prisoner.
"What!" exclaimed the volunteer soldier, "not smoke on sentry? Then
where the ---- _am_ I to smoke?" The dignified Captain only reiterated
his first remark. Then did the sentry take his pipe from his mouth and
confidentially tap his officer upon the shoulder. "Now, look here,
Brown," said he, "don't go and make a ---- fool of yourself. If you
do, I'll go elsewhere for my meat."
To return. B.-P., having lived straight and hard, soon fought down the
fever, and in little more than a week was back again at work. It is
nice to know that during the time of his being on the sick-list Sir
Frederick Carrington went regularly to his bedside and sat for a long
time, retailing all the cheerful news of the campaign. Sir Frederick
and Baden-Powell, by the bye, are probably the two Imperial officers
who know most about South Africa.
During his illness Major Ridley had started off with a column to make
war upon the Somabula, and when B.-P. got about again he was ordered
to go in search of this force, with three troopers as an escort, and
to take command of it. "I could picture nothing more to my taste," he
says, "than a ride of from eighty to one hundred miles in a wild
country, with three good men, and plenty of excitement in having to
keep a good look-out for the enemy, enjoying splendid weather,
shirt-sleeves, and a reviving feeling of health and freedom." So the
man who had only just got off a sick-bed started for a ride into the
forest after Ridley's column, and during the ride the twentieth
anniversary of his joining Her Majesty's Service came round and
brought its reflections for the diary. "I always think more of this
anniversary than of that of my birth, and I could not picture a more
enjoyable way of spending it. I am here, out in the wilds, with three
troopers.... We are nearly eighty miles from Buluwayo and thirty from
the nearest troops. I have rigged up a shelter from the sun with my
blanket, a rock, and a thorn-bush; thirteen thousand flies are,
unfortunately, staying with me, and are awfully attentive.... I am
looking out on the yellow veldt and the blue sky; the veldt with its
grey hazy clumps of thorn-bush is shimmering in the heat, and its vast
expanse is only broken by the gleaming white sand of the river-bed and
the green reeds and bushes which fringe its banks." How could a man
feel unhappy with the whole of his wardrobe packed away in one wallet
of the saddle, and his larder in the other? Be sure that Lucullus
never enjoyed a banquet with the same sharpness of delight as
Baden-Powell squatting amid the yellow grass of the veldt with his
cocoa and rice.
But there were anxious moments coming for the man who kept on the open
veldt the twentieth anniversary of his joining Her Majesty's army with
gladness in his heart. After he had found the column and had got into
the Lilliputian forest with its stunted, bushy trees and its sandy
soil, he was brought face to face with the greatest enemy that can
harass, fret, and wear down nerves of steel--absence of water. A
commander whose mind is racked by the difficulty, perhaps the
impossibility, of finding water for his troops is like the man haunted
day and night, waking and sleeping, by debt. "This was our menu," says
Baden-Powell: "weak tea (can't afford it strong), no sugar (we are out
of it), a little bread (we have half a pound a day), Irish stew
(consisting of slab of horse boiled in muddy water with a pinch of
rice and half a pinch of pea-flour), salt, none. For a plate I use one
of my gaiters, it is marked 'Tautz & Sons, No. 3031'; it is a far cry
from veldt and horseflesh to Tautz and Oxford Street!" But this was at
a time when B.-P. wrote in his diary: "Nothing like looking at the
cheery side of things." The morrow came when he could see nothing but
arid miles of sand, when his eyes ached as they ranged the pitiless
desert for water; there is no cheery side to that view. Halting his
party to give them a rest, he and an American scout named Gielgud
started off to make one grand effort to find river or puddle. Hill
after hill was climbed to find only a valley of dead, baked grass
beyond, and at last, broken-hearted and weary, the two riders turned
their horses' heads back to camp. Soon after this the American's head
began to bob till the chin rested on the chest, and he forgot the
quest of water in the fairyland of dreams. But B.-P. could not sleep,
and those keen eyes of his were ranging the desolate country every
dreary minute of that ride. And at last he noticed on the ground
certain marks which he knew to be those of a buck that had scratched
in the sand for water. Overjoyed he got down from the saddle and
continued the work of the buck, digging and digging with his lean
sunburnt fingers till he came to damp earth, and then--to water. At
that moment he saw two pigeons get up from behind a rock some little
way off, and leaving his oozing water in the sand he hastened there
and discovered to his supreme joy the salvation of his party--a little
pool of water.
On this expedition you will be interested to hear that a man who lent
valuable assistance to Baden-Powell was your hero of the
cricket-field--Major Poore. In the days of the Matabele campaign he
had not slogged Richardson out of the Oval, nor driven Hearne
distracted to the ropes at Lord's; he was there as Captain Poore of
the 7th Hussars, working like a nigger, brave as a Briton, and quite
delighted to be soldiering under the peerless Baden-Powell. His fame
came afterwards.
During this expedition Baden-Powell gave brilliant evidence of his
capacity as a general. He had drawn up a plan for an attack by his own
and another column upon a great chief named Wedza, who lived with his
warriors in a mountain consisting of six rocky peaks ranging from
eight hundred to a thousand feet high. On the top of these peaks were
perched the kraals, while the mountain itself, nearly three miles
long, resembled nothing so much as a rabbit-warren, being a network of
caves held by the burrowing rebels. Wedza's stronghold was steep, and
its sides were strewn with bush and boulders; only by narrow and
difficult paths was it accessible, and these paths had been fortified
by the Matabele with stockades and breastworks. This important and
well-nigh impregnable stronghold was held by something like sixteen
hundred Matabele--six or seven hundred of whom were real fighting men.
Baden-Powell, nevertheless, drew up his plan for the attack, and sat
down to wait for the other column which was to act with him. That
column never came; only a letter arrived by runner saying that it
would be unable to join in the attack after all. "The only thing we
could do," says Baden-Powell, "was to try and bluff the enemy out of
the place."
So he arranged to win the battle by cunning of the brain. Sending
five-and-twenty men to climb a hill which commanded a part of the
stronghold, with instructions to act as if they were two hundred and
fifty, and giving small parties of Hussars similar instructions
regarding the left flank and rear of the enemy, Baden-Powell got his
artillery ready to bombard the central position. Just as the
five-and-twenty reached the summit of their hill, however, they were
observed by the enemy and instantly fired upon. From hilltop to
hilltop rang the call to arms, and B.-P. watched through his telescope
the yelling savages rushing with their rifles and assegais to massacre
his gallant little force of five-and-twenty men under a lieutenant. To
create a diversion, Baden-Powell galloped off with seven men to the
left rear of the stronghold, crossing a river on the way, and opened
fire upon a village on the side of the mountain. By continually moving
about in the grass and using magazine fire, B.-P. with his seven men
gave the enemy the impression that he had a large army there, and soon
the strain was taken off the five-and-twenty on the hilltop. Then
Hussars and Artillery joined the five-and-twenty, while a 7-pounder
flung deadly shells at every important point of the mountain. Soon
after this the enemy made a backward move, and the lieutenant on the
hilltop (with the Field-Marshal's baton already in his hand)
incontinently began to harry him effectively from the rear.
The end of it was that Wedza's warriors were completely bluffed by the
resourceful B.-P.; they were driven out of their stronghold, and the
stronghold itself blown into smithereens. During this attack
Baden-Powell narrowly escaped death, a small party he was with being
fired upon at close range by a number of the enemy hidden behind a
ridge of rocks. "My hat," says B.-P., "was violently struck from my
head as if with a stick."
This reminds me of the service rendered by Baden-Powell as a doctor.
"Three times in this campaign have I taken out to the field with me a
few bandages and dressings in my holster, and on each occasion I have
found full use for them." Once he doctored some Matabele women and
children who had been hit by stray bullets while lying in the long
grass. On this occasion he invented what he calls a perfect form of
field syringe: "Take an ordinary native girl, tell her to go and get
some lukewarm water, and don't give her anything to get it in. She
will go to the stream, kneel, and fill her mouth, and so bring the
water; by the time she is back the water is lukewarm. You then tell
her to squirt it as you direct into the wound, while you prize around
with a feather."
After the breaking of Wedza there was work to be done in Mashonaland,
and then, when the rebellion had been crushed and the colonist was
able to search fearlessly among the charred beams of his homestead ere
setting about building anew, the gallant Baden-Powell turned his face
towards Old England. Before leaving South Africa, however, he spent
the Christmas Day of that memorable 1896 in Port Elizabeth. "After
breakfast," he writes in his diary, "to church. Everything exactly
ordered as if at home: the Christmas Day choral service with a good
choir and a fine organ. And as the anthem of peace and goodwill rolled
forth, it brought home to one the fact that a year of strife in savage
wilds had now been weathered to a peaceful close."
Then came the voyage across the 6000 odd miles of ocean with Cecil
Rhodes, Sir Frederick Carrington, and other interesting people. After
that the English coast, and the train to London. And, after that,
"through the roar of the sloppy, lamp-lit streets, to the comfort and
warmth--of Home."