THABA NCHU._Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) Letters from the Front

The Battle of Constantia Farm will not rank as one of the big events of

this war, but it is worthy of a full description, because in this battle

the Briton for the first time laid himself out from start to finish to

fight the Boer pretty much on his own lines, instead of following

time-honoured British rules of war. Before attempting to portray the actual

fighting, I think a brief sketch of our movements from the time we left the

railway line to cross the country will be of interest to those readers of

_The Daily News_ who desire to follow the progress of the war with due

care.

The Third Division, which had been at Stormberg, and had done such

excellent, though almost bloodless, work by sweeping the country between

the last-named place and Bethany, rested at the latter place, and built up

its full strength by incorporating a large number of men and guns. General

Gatacre, who had retrieved his reverse at Stormberg by forcing Commandant

Olivier to vacate his almost impregnable position without striking a blow,

and later by his masterly move in swooping down on Bethulie Bridge and

preventing the Boers from wrecking the line of communication between Lord

Roberts and his supplies from Capetown, only remained long enough with his

old command to see them equipped in a manner fit to take the field, and

then retired in favour of General Chermside. It was under this officer that

we marched away from the railway line across country known to be hostile to

us. Almost due east we moved to Reddersburg, about twelve and a half miles.

We had to move slowly and cautiously, because no living man can tell when,

where, or how a Boer force will attack. They follow rules of their own, and

laugh at all accepted theories of war, ancient or modern, and no general

can afford to hold them cheap. A day and a half was spent at Reddersburg,

and then the Third Division continued its eastward course in wretched

weather, until Rosendal was arrived at. This is the spot where the Royal

Irish Rifles and Northumberland Fusiliers had to surrender to the Boers. We

had to camp there for the best part of three days on account of the

continuous downpour of rain, which rendered the veldt tracks impassable for

our transport. To push onward meant the absolute destruction of mules and

oxen, and the consequent loss of food supplies, without which we were

helpless, for in that country every man's hand was against us, not only in

regard to actual warfare, but in regard to forage for man and beast.

Here we were joined by General Rundle with the Eighth Division, which

brought our force up to about thirteen thousand men, thirty big guns, and a

number of Maxims. When the weather cleared slightly we moved onward slowly,

the ground simply clinging to the wheels of the heavily laden waggons,

until it seemed as if the very earth, as well as all that was on top of it,

was opposed to our march. Our scouts constantly saw the enemy hovering on

our front and flanks, and more than once exchanged shots with them. General

Rundle, who was in supreme command, thus knew that he could not hope to

surprise the wily foe, for it was evident to the merest tyro that the Boer

leader was keeping a sharp eye upon our movements, and would not be taken

at a disadvantage. We expected to measure the enemy's fighting force at any

hour, but it was not until about half-past ten on the morning of Friday,

the 20th of April, that we were certain that he meant to measure his arms

with ours, though early on that morning our scouts had brought in news that

a commando, believed to be about two thousand five hundred strong, with

half a dozen guns, commanded by General De Wet, was strongly posted right

on our line of march. Slowly we crept across the open veldt, our men

stretching from east to west for fully six miles. There was no moving of

solid masses of men, no solid grouping of troops; no two men marched

shoulder to shoulder, a gap showed plainly between each of the khaki-clad

figures as we moved on to the rugged, broken line of kopjes. There was no

hurry, no bustle, the men behaved admirably, each individual soldier

seeming to have his wits about him, and proving it by taking advantage of

every bit of cover that came in his way. If they halted near an ant-hill,

they at once put it between themselves and the enemy.

Slowly but steadily they rolled onward, like a great sluggish, but

irresistible, yellow wave, until we saw the scouts slipping from rock to

rock up the stony heights of the first line of hills. Breathlessly we

watched the intrepid "eyes of the army" advance until they stood

silhouetted against the sky-line on the top of the black bulwarks of the

veldt. Then we strained our ears to catch the rattle of the enemy's rifles,

but we listened in vain; and we were completely staggered. What did it

mean? Was it a trap? Was there some devilish craft behind that apparent

peacefulness? Trap or no trap, we had not long to wait. The long, yellow

wave curled inwards from both flanks, the men going forward with quick,

lithesome steps. The mounted infantry shot forward as if moved by magic,

and, before the eye could scarcely grasp the details, our fellows held the

heights, and men marvelled and wondered whether the Boers had bolted for

good. But they soon undeceived us, for the hills shook with the

far-reaching roar of their guns, and shells began to make melody which

devils love; but they did no harm. Not a man was touched. Then came the

short, sharp word of command from our lines. Officers bit their words

across the centre, and threw them at the men. The Horse Artillery moved

into position, some going at a steady trot, others sweeping along the

valleys as if they were the children of the storm. The left flank swung

forward and encircled the base of an imposing kopje. The men swarmed up

with tiger-like activity, quickly, and in broken and irregular lines; but

there was no confusion, no wretched tangle, no helpless muddle. They did

not rush madly to the top and stand on the sky-line to be a mark for their

foes. When they almost touched the summit they paused, formed their broken

lines, and carefully and wisely topped the black brow; and as they did so

the Boer rifles spoke from a line of kopjes that lay behind the first. Then

our fellows dropped to cover, and sent an answer back that a duller foe

than the Boers would not have failed to understand. The Mauser bullets

splashed on the rocks, and spat little fragments of lead in all directions;

but few of them found a resting-place under those thin yellow jackets.

By-and-by the shells began to follow the Mauser's spiteful pellets, but the

shells were less harmful even than the little hostile messengers; for,

though well directed, the shells never burst--they simply shrieked, yelled,

and buried themselves. Our gunners got the ground they wanted, and soon gun

spoke to gun in their deep-throated tones of defiance. The Boers were not

hurting us; whether we were injuring them we could not tell.

In the meantime our whole transport came safely inside a little

semi-circular valley, and arranged itself with almost ludicrous precision.

The nigger drivers chaffed one another as the shells made melody above

their heads, and made the air fairly dance with the picturesque terms of

endearment they bestowed upon their mules, between the welts they bestowed

with their long two-handed whips. When two of their leaders jibbed and

refused to budge, they howled and called them Mr. Steyn and Ole Oom Paul;

but when they got down solid to their work they laughed until even their

back teeth were showing beyond the dusky horizon of their lips, and endowed

them with the names of Cecil Rhodes and Mistah Chamberlain, which may or

may not appear complimentary to the owners of those titles--anyway, the

mules did not seem to be offended. One thing was made manifest to me then,

and confirmed later on, viz., the nigger is a game fellow; give him a

little excitement, and he is full of "devil"--it's the doing of deeds in

cold blood that finds him out. After seeing the way the transport was

handled, I moved along to look at the ambulance arrangements, and found

them practically perfect. The medical staff was cool and collected, the

helpers were alert and attentive to business; the waggons, with their

conspicuous red crosses, were all well and carefully placed--though in such

a fight it was a sheer impossibility to dispose them so as to render them

absolutely immune from danger, for shells have a knack of falling where

least expected, and when they burst he is a wise man who falls flat on his

face and leaves the rest to his Creator and the fortune of war. My next

move was to secure a position on the top of a kopje, to try to gather some

idea concerning the actual strength of the Boer position. It needed no

soldier's training to tell a man who knew the rugged Australian ranges

thoroughly that the enemy had chosen his ground with consummate skill. To

get at the Boers our men had either to go down the sides of the kopjes in

full view of the clever enemy, or else make their way between narrow

gullies, where shells would work havoc in their packed ranks. After they

had reached the open, level ground, they had to cross open spaces of veldt

commanded by the Boer guns and rifles, whilst the Boers themselves sat

tight in a row of ranges that ran from east to west, mile after mile, in

almost unbroken ruggedness. If we turned either flank, they could promptly

fall back upon another line of kopjes as strong as those they held. Away

behind their position the grim heights of Thaba Nchu rose towards the blue

sky, solemn and stately. Far away to the eastward, a little south of east

perhaps, I could see the hills that hid Wepener, distant about eighteen

miles from the Boer centre. There we knew, and the enemy knew, that the

Boers held a British force pinned in. They knew, and we knew, that

Commandant Olivier, with eight or nine thousand men and a lot of guns, held

the reins in his hands; and the men our force were engaging knew that

unless they could keep us in check Olivier would soon be the hunted instead

of the hunter.

By-and-by the rifle fire on our left flank grew weaker and weaker--our guns

were searching the kopjes with merciless accuracy--and before sundown it

died away altogether, and we had time to collect our wounded and ascertain

our losses, though we could not even guess how the Boers had fared Our

wounded amounted to eight men all told, none of them dangerously hurt; of

dead we had none, not one. When their fire slackened the enemy doubtless

expected to see an onward dash of troops from our position, but it was not

to be. General Rundle had decided to play "patience" and save his men;

there was no necessity for him to rush on and force the Boer position, and

he chose the better part. Steadily our fellows were worked into position,

until every bit of ground that could bear upon the foe was lined with

British troops. Every available point, front or flank, where a gun could be

placed to harass the foe was taken advantage of; nothing was left to

chance, nothing was rashly hurried. Carefully, methodically the work was

done. There was to be no carnival of death on our side, no trusting to the

"luck of the British Army," no headlong rush into the arms of destruction,

no waving line of bayonets. The Boer was to play a hand with the cards he

loves to deal. He was to be shelled and sniped. If he wanted straight-out

fighting, he had to come out into the open and get it. He was to have no

chance to sit in safety and slaughter the British soldiers like shambled

deer, as he had so often done before. As the sun went down our men

bivouacked where they stood, and nothing was heard through the long, cold

night except at intervals the grim growling of a gun, the sentinels' swift,

curt challenge, or the neighing of horses as steed spoke to steed across

the grass-grown veldt.

At the breaking of the dawn I was aroused from sleep by the simultaneous

crashing of several of our batteries. It was Britain's morning salutation

to the Boer. I hurried up to a spot on the kopje where a regiment of

Worcesters lay amongst the broken ground, and saw that the battle was just

about to commence in deadly earnest. It was a huge, flat-topped kopje where

I located myself. The outer edges of the hill rose higher than the centre,

a little rivulet ran across tiny indentations on the crown of that rampart,

and there was ample space for an army to lie concealed from the eyes of

enemies. If the Boers were strongly posted, so were the British. Away past

our right flank Wepener range was plainly visible in the clear morning

light, and just behind Wepener lay the Basuto border, with its fringe of

mountains. About two thousand yards away, directly facing our centre, a

white farmhouse stood in a cluster of trees. This farmhouse gave the

battlefield its name, Constantia Farm. The enemy could be seen by the aid

of glasses slipping from the kopjes down towards this farm and back again

at intervals. Cattle, horses, goats, and sheep went on grazing calmly, the

roaring of the guns doubtless seeming to them but as the tumult of a storm.

Turning my eyes towards the valley behind our position, I saw that we

intended to try to turn the enemy's left flank. Little squads of mounted

men, 95 in each group, swept along the valley at a gallop. They were the

Yeomanry and mounted infantry, and numbered about 600. A more workmanlike

body of fellows it would be hard to find anywhere. They sat their horses

with easy confidence, and looked full of fight. Some of them carried their

rifles in their hands, muzzle upwards, the butt resting on the right thigh;

others had their guns slung across their shoulders. Group after group went

eastward, and the Boers knew nothing of the movement, because we were for

once employing their own tactics. I watched them out of sight, and then

turned my attention to the guns. There was very little time wasted by our

people. The gunners on our left flank poured in a heavy fire, the centre

took up the chorus, and the guns on the right repeated it. For miles along

their front the Boers must have been in deadly peril. We seldom saw them.

Now and again a group of roughly clad horsemen would flash into view and

disappear again as if by magic, with shells hurtling in their wake. Our

artillery could not locate their main force with any degree of certainty,

nor could they place us properly. They were not idle; their guns, of which

they had a decent number, sought for our position with dauntless

perseverance. Their shells soon began to drop amongst us, but they did no

harm at all. They fell close enough to our troops in many instances, but

they were so badly made that they would not explode, or if they did they

simply fizzed, and were almost as harmless as seidlitz powders.

The spiteful little pom-poms cracked away and kept us on the alert, until

one grew weary of the everlasting noise of cannon. At mid-day, tired of the

monotony of the game, I turned my horse's head towards camp, and, in

company with three other correspondents, soon sat down to a lunch of

mealies and boiled fowl; but we were destined not to enjoy that meal, for

before the first mouthful had left my plate there came a wailing howl

through the air, then a strange jarring noise, and a shell plunged into the

earth forty yards away from the tent. A few minutes later another visitor

from the same direction crashed on top of one of the transport waggons

within a stone's throw of our tent. That decided me; in a few seconds I had

scrambled up the side of a kopje, with the leg of a fowl in one hand and a

soldier's biscuit in the other. The shells had not burst, but no man could

say when one would, and I had no particular interest in regard to the

inside of any shell myself. I was not the only one who made a hasty exit

from the camp; in ten seconds the side of the kopje was alive with men. The

shells continued to fall right amongst the waggons every few minutes for

over two hours; yet only one man was killed, a negro driver being the

victim, a shell dropping right against his thigh. The range of the Boer gun

was absolutely perfect, but the shells were mere rubbish. Had they been as

good as ours, half our transport would have been in ruins. The British

gunners manoeuvred in all directions in order to locate that particularly

dangerous piece of ordnance. They blazed at it in batteries; they tried to

find it by means of cross-firing; they lined men up on the sky-line of

kopjes to draw the fire; they limbered up and galloped far out on the

veldt, until the enemy's rifle fire drove them in again; but all in vain.

The Boer leader had placed his gun with such skill that the British could

not locate it, and it kept up its devilish jubilee until the night set in.

That day our scouts captured one Free State flag from the enemy; the

Yeomanry and mounted infantry did not succeed in their efforts to turn the

Boers' left flank, but they checked the enemy from advancing in that

direction, which was an important item in the day's work. We did not want

the Boer left to overlap our right; had they done so they could then get

behind us and harass our convoys coming from the direction of Bethany

railway station. We had very little dread of them turning our left flank,

because we knew that General French was moving towards us on that side from

Bloemfontein, with the object of getting the Boers on the inside of two

forces, and so giving them no chance of escape. We had only a few men

wounded, one petty officer of the Scouts killed, and a negro driver killed,

which was simply marvellous when one considers the terrible amount of

ammunition used during the day. That night all the correspondents had to

sleep, or try to sleep, with the transport. It was a wretched night; we

knew the Boers had the range, and we fully expected to get a hot shelling

between darkness and dawn, but, curiously enough, the foe kept their guns

still all the night But the suspense made the night a weary one.

The following day was Sunday, and at a very early hour our scouts informed

us that the Boers had made a wide detour towards Wepener, and had

overlapped our right flank. They slipped up into a kopje, which would have

enabled them to enfilade our position in a most masterly manner; but before

they could get their guns there our artillery was at them, and the kopje

was literally ploughed up with shells. It was too warm a corner for any man

on earth to attempt to hold, and they soon took their departure, falling

back in good order, and leaving no dead or wounded behind them. The

Yeomanry had advanced on the kopje, under the protection of the shell

firing, and when close to the position they fixed bayonets and dashed up

the hill; but when they topped it they found that the Boers had retired. It

was a quick bit of work, neatly and expeditiously done. Had the Boers held

the hill long enough to get their guns in position they would have played

havoc with us, for they could then have swept our whole line. From morning

until night-fall we kept at them with our big guns; whenever a cloud of

dust arose from behind a range of kopjes we dropped shells in the middle of

it; wherever a cluster of Boers showed themselves for a second a shell

sought them out. No matter how well they were placed, they must have had a

lively time of it. During the Sabbath they scarcely used their guns at all,

but they opened on our troops with rifle fire as soon as they made a

forward move at any part of the line, showing clearly that they were

watching as well as praying. The day closed without incident of any

particular character; we had a few wounded, but no deaths, and could form

no idea how the Boers were faring. Now and again during the night one or

another of our guns would bark like sullen watchdogs on the chain, but the

Boer guns were still.

Monday morning broke crisp and clear, and once more the big-gun duel began,

only on this occasion the Boers made great use of a pom-pom gun This

spiteful little demon tossed its diminutive shells into camp with painful

freeness. They knocked three of the Worcesters over early in the day,

killing two and badly damaging the other. As on all other occasions in this

peculiar engagement, the Boer gunnery was simply superb; but their shells

were worthless. Shells grew so common that the "Tommies" scarcely ducked

when they heard the report of a gun they knew was trying to reach them, but

smoked their pipes and made irreverent remarks concerning things made in

Germany. About midday a party of Boers, who had somehow dodged round to our

rear, made a dashing attempt to raid some cattle that were grazing close

under our eyes; but they had to vanish in a hurry, and were particularly

lucky in being able to escape with their lives, for a party of scouts

darted out after them at full gallop on one side, whilst another party of

mounted infantry rode as hard as hoofs could carry them on the other side

of the bold raiders. They unslung their rifles as they dashed across the

veldt, and the Boers soon knew that the fellows behind them were as much at

home as they were themselves at that kind of business.

Late on Monday evening the Boers located a little to the left of our centre

moved forward a bit. Though with infinite caution, and commenced sniping

with the rifle. It was an evidence that they were growing weary of our

tactics, and would greatly have liked us to attempt to rush their position

with the bayonet, so that they could have mowed our fellows down in

hundreds. But this General Rundle wisely declined to do; it was victory,

not glory, he was seeking, and he was wise enough to know that a victory

can be bought at far too high a price in country of this kind against a foe

like the wily Boer. On Sunday night our strength was augmented by the

arrival of three regiments of the Guards, and on Monday night we, knew for

a certainty that General French was close at hand. The Boer was between two

fires, and he would need all his "slimness" to pull him out of trouble.

During a greater part of the night our guns continued to rob sleep of its

sweetness, and the enemy's pom-pom mingled with our dreams. On Tuesday

morning news came to us that Wepener had been relieved by Brabant and Hart,

and that the Boers who had invested that place were drawing off in our

direction, so that our right flank needed strengthening. The Boers

displayed no sign of quitting their position, though they must have known

that Brabant and Hart would be on their track from the south-east, and

General French from the north-west. They held their ground with a grim

stubbornness against overwhelming odds of men and guns, and dropped shells

amongst us in a way that made one feel that no spot could be labelled

"absolutely safe."

At about 7 p.m. we sent a force out south, consisting of about 4,000 men,

under General Boyes. Amongst that force were the West Kents, Staffords,

Worcesters, Manchesters, all infantry. The Imperial Yeomanry and mounted

infantry also accompanied the expedition. But there was little for them to

do except hold the enemy in check, which they did. There were some

phenomenally close shaves during the day. On one occasion the enemy got the

range of one of our guns with their pom-pom, and the way they dropped the

devilish little one-pound shells amongst those gunners was a sight to make

a man's blood run chill. The little iron imps fell between the men, grazed

the wheels, the carriage, and the truck of the gun; but

He, watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps.

Nothing short of angel-wings could have kept our fellows safe. The men knew

their deadly peril, knew that the tip of the wand in the Death Angel's hand

was brushing their cheeks. One could see that they knew their peril. The

hard, firm grip of the jaw, the steady light in the hard-set eyes, the

manly pallor on the cheeks, all told of knowledge; yet not once did they

lose their heads. Each fellow stood there as bravely as human flesh and

blood could stand, and faced the iron hail with unblenching courage and

intrepid coolness. Had those khaki-clothed warriors been carved out of

bronze and moved by machinery, they could not have shown less fear or more

perfect discipline. The pom-pom is a gun which I have been told the British

War Office refused as a toy some two years back. I have had the doubtful

pleasure of being under its fire to-day, and all I can say is that I would

gladly have given my place to any gentleman in the War Office who happens

to hold the notion that the pom-pom is a toy.

Somehow the enemy got hold of the position where General Rundle and staff

were located, and all the afternoon they swept the plain in front of the

tents, the hills above, and the hill opposite with shells; but they could

not quite drop one in the little ravine itself. Half an hour before sundown

I had to ride with two other correspondents to headquarters to get a

dispatch away. We got across safely, but had not been there five minutes

before a grandly directed shell sent the General and his staff off the brow

of the hill in double quick time. We delivered our dispatches, and were

getting ready for a gallop over the quarter mile of veldt, when, _pom,

pom, pom, pom_, came a dozen one-pounders a few yards away right across

our track. It made our hearts sit very close to our ribs, but there was

nothing for it but to take our horses by the head, drive the spurs home,

and ride as if we were rounding up wild cattle. I want it to stand on

record that I was not the last man across that strip of veldt. There was

not much incident in the day's fighting; there seldom is in an artillery

duel, carried on by men who know the game, in hilly country. Once during

the afternoon the big gun belonging to the Boers became so troublesome that

half a dozen of ours were trained upon it, and for best part of an hour it

sounded as if a section of Sheol had visited the earth, so deadly was the

fire, so fierce the bursting missiles, that not a rock wallaby, crouching

in its hole, could have lived twenty minutes in the location. We heard no