IN THE WAKE OF THE ARMY
IV
THE LONG SEA ROAD
In the terms of the street, you make for Madeira from the Needles as
straight as Ushant and Finisterre will permit, keep to the left until
you catch the flare of the solitary light on Cape Verde, go on past that
for about ten days, and Cape Town is the last place on the left. In the
terms of the sea, your course is west-south-west until the Bay is open,
then south-south-west, then south, and then south by east a half-east
for the long stretch. But for most of us the way to the war lay through
a stranger region than that. Years ago (as it seems) on a rainy winter
evening, we watched the buoys of the Solent Channel streaming past us
all aslope on the strong ebb-tide, and as the Trinity Brothers began to
open their eyes for an all-night watch on the south coast, we closed
ours to the world behind.
A day and night of dust and tumble in the Bay, and we awoke on a summer
morning to find the wind blowing softly through the open ports and the
water chiming on the ship's side. After that we lived in a world all our
own; ourselves the sum and centre of it; a blue world that slid through
degrees of latitude and longitude, but held us, its inhabitants, at ever
the same distance from realities. The past was miles away at the end of
the white path astern; the future did not yet so much as smudge the
forward horizon; we were adrift, lost in the present.
Since we were, for the most part, Englishmen, we played games. At first
we had walked about eyeing one another mistrustfully; but Time, the
surest of teachers, soon convinced us of the essential harmlessness of
our fellows. And then we played quoits, and danced and listened to the
band, forgetting the things which were behind and disregarding (for the
moment) the things which were before. Disregarding, but not quite
forgetting. When the last game was over and the last pipe lighted, and
the good, cool hours drew on, men used to sit in little groups watching
the flash of waves tripping and spilling over smooth black furrows; and
then they talked. The C.I.V. officers talked of Lee-Enfields,
trajectories, mass and volley firing; the Indian Staff Corps men, who
were going out on special service, spoke of commissariat and transport,
of standing patrols and Cossack posts, of bivouacks, entrenchments,
vedettes, contact squadrons, tactical sub-units, demolitions and
entanglements. In those dark hours, while alien stars were rising and
swinging westward over the masthead, hard, fit, clear-headed young men
talked coolly and with common sense of the big business before them. The
evening consultations were all that we gave to the future. The past was
even less openly recognised; but it proclaimed itself eloquently in the
withered bunches of flowers on this and that cabin table, in the demand
for the ship's notepaper, in the women's trinkets worn by men who, under
ordinary circumstances, would rather wear sack-cloth than jewellery:
emblems, all of them, of thoughts that travelled the white road between
the rudder and the horizon.
In that strange detached world of ours, energy alone was unsuspended. It
was even stimulated, and in a race and class of men not accustomed to
look inward for recreative resources manifested itself in a violent and
unresting pursuit of artificial amusements. In this pursuit all our days
were passed. The morning sun streams into the port-cabins, the diligent
quartermaster brings our toys on deck and gravely arranges them;
throughout the day we play with them until we are tired, when they are
flung aside untidily; again the quartermaster returns, and, like a kind
nurse, puts them away. The sun slants through the starboard windows and
is quenched in the waters; a little talking, a little dancing, a little
music, and we are all asleep. Such were our days. And ever before,
behind, around and beneath us the moving, mysterious sea, wrinkled and
old as the world, but blowing airs of eternal youth from its crumbling
ridges. Down below iron floors stokers and trimmers were sweating,
engineers were watching and nursing and feeding the great steel
bondagers that drove us along; but how many of the light-hearted
passengers ever thought of them? They were out of sight and mind, hidden
away in their stifling holes, where in their relation to us they
completed the satire of our miniature society.
I might give you a dozen pictures of our life, and yet mislead you as to
its uncommonness; it was really commonplace life in strange and
unfamiliar circumstances. Here is an example. At the first concert it
was noticed, not without surprise, that the Captain's name was down for
a song. Now for days the Captain had tramped alone up and down the
deck--a large man, with a heavy face and drooping eye, and a head set
forward on the shoulders by reason of long hours of staring into the
sea dust; a man past middle-age, silent and (as we thought) surly.
Therefore something like a sensation was produced when it was announced
that the Captain would sing "Mary." I think I see and hear it now. The
saloon filled with people; the windows framing faces of deck hands and
firemen, with a background of moving blue; the heavy central figure, the
kindly (we saw that now) Scotch face; the worn voice, unused to
sustained utterance, gasping for breath in the middle of a line, and
sometimes failing to be ready in time ("I lost the run of it," he
explained to us in the middle of a temporary breakdown); the quaint
simplicity of the words, "Kind, kind and gentle is she, kind is ma
Ma-ary"; the thunder of applause that greeted the close; the immediate
and unassailable popularity of the Captain. If I have described it as I
saw it, you will understand why I shall always like to remember that
scene. Here is another glimpse.
On a Sunday, when the church bells at home were jangling and the streets
were (for a guess) streaming with rain and mud, it was Sunday with us
also, three thousand miles away. The sun was lighting the lazy sea until
it shone like a big blue diamond, the whales were spouting, the
porpoises plunging and blowing, and here and there a shark lay basking
near the surface with a wicked, wriggling, black fin exposed. It was
very hot and still; the great sea people seemed to be revelling in some
sort of Sabbath of their own, and the waters lay quiet and shining under
the eye of Heaven. Here and there a drove of small flying-fishes rose
and skimmed over the surface like swallows, but they too soon plunged
into the blue and sought below that the cool green depths. Into this
tranquil scene steamed the _Kinfauns Castle_ in a triangle of snow, a
big porpoise rolling and rollicking along beside her, now rising on this
side, now on that. When he came very close he could see into the saloon
windows, and presently he saw the Captain standing at the end of a table
spread with the Union Jack and a great crowd of people sitting round the
tables.
"Dearly beloved brethren," began the Captain, and then the porpoise's
tail came up and his head went down with a "pflough!"
When he came up again near enough to see, all the people were muttering
and gobbling over the Psalms, the Captain rolling out his short
alternate verses as though he were directing his own quartermaster on a
course. While the porpoise was very close to the ship and listening hard
the ash-shoot was emptied almost on his head, which scared him so badly
that he dived deep, and did not come up again for a long time. When he
did rise the people were singing, "On, then, Christian soldiers, on to
victory"; again he dived, and again came up with a snort, to hear them
singing with equal vigour, "Make wars to cease and give us peace." But
just then the third engineer opened the exhaust of the waste condenser
water, and my black friend got such a shock when the cloud of steam and
hot water burst from the ship's side that he altered his course three
points, and I saw him plunging and rolling away to the west of south.
One thing the porpoise did not hear, for he was below at the time. In
his course through the Liturgy the Captain had reached the Collect for
the day. I will warrant he was trained in a sterner school of theology
than the Anglican; his voice and tones were never meant for the smooth
diction of the Prayer-book; but that is neither here nor there. The
"Coallect for the fourth Sunday after 'Pithany" rolled from his tongue.
I never hope to hear it in a more appropriate time or place; there was
something almost startling in the coincidence that brought it round on
such a day, and there was significance in the words--"_O God, Who
knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers that by
reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright;
grant to us such strength and protection as may support us in all
dangers and carry us through, all temptations._" Thus prayed the
Captain, the Chief Officer standing beside him; and none knew so well as
those two how many and great were the dangers that lurked in our smiling
environment.
As we drew nearer to our journey's end the desire for news became acute.
At Madeira, on the 24th of January, we heard that the situation in Natal
was practically unchanged, and up to February 3rd we had not seen
another ship pass nearer than five miles. But then it was thought
probable that we should meet the _Dunottar Castle_ on her way home, and
a bright look-out was kept. In the afternoon I was up on the bridge
discussing celestial angles with the Chief Officer; we were snoring into
the south-east trade, and the strong sun-warmed wind was a thing to
bathe in; the bridge binoculars diligently swept the sharp blue line of
horizon. Presently the Third Officer put his glass down. "There she
is," said he, "two points on the starboard bow." We all looked, and we
saw the tiny smear of smoke on the line. How strange it was; both of us
coming up from nowhere and meeting on this roadless waste! In a quarter
of an hour we raised her masts and funnel, and then we perceived it was
not the _Dunottar_. Our course was altered two points, and the three of
us stood up there in the wind and sun watching the growing speck. Down
below they had just seen her, and glasses were levelled by the hundred.
In a little while we could see a red cross on her bow, and we made her
out to be a hospital ship carrying home wounded--Buller's wounded, we
said, from the Tugela fight.
"BWF, HLF, WBQ," fluttered out our signal flags in a bravery of scarlet
and blue and white, which is, being interpreted, "What news since the
24th?"
She was abeam now, a mile away; how slow they were in running up an
answer! We pictured their signal quartermaster racking the pigeon-holes
to spell "Ladysmith," and expected a gaudy display. Presently the
coloured stream blew out from her main topmast stay. Only four flags!
"DFPC," reported the Third Officer, and there was a scramble for the
Code-book. "Nothing important since last accounts."
Could anything be more exasperating? We ran up another question, I do
not know what, but we waited in vain for the answering flutter, and the
hospital ship _Princess of Wales_ rolled along on the blue swell.
"South by east-a-half-east," snapped the Chief Officer; the wheel spun
and the steering engine hissed, and the _Kinfauns Castle_ drove her stem
into it again, while from the promenade deck rose the sound of many
voices.
And so we went driving along again through a wonderful sea of deep blue
rollers jousting on a grey ground. It did not yet appear where we should
go or what would be our lot; to-night or to-morrow we should know; but
to-day it was enough that the sun shone and that the waters were wide.
V
SCENES AT CAPE TOWN
When at last the _Kinfauns Castle_ carried us on a sunny evening out of
blue emptiness into Cape Town harbour and dumped us down on dry land,
about thirty of us who were on our way to the front took elaborate
farewells--only to meet again twelve hours later in the vestibule at
headquarters.
No one was in the least excited by our arrival. If we were special
service men, we were told that there were no instructions for us, and
that we had better turn up three or four times a day and look at the
order-board. If we were correspondents, heads were shaken, and
smooth-spoken people with stars and crowns on their shoulder-straps said
they doubted very much whether Lord Roberts would grant any more passes.
If we were nobodies who had come out (with more or less direct
encouragement from the officials) in the hope of getting commissions, we
were turned away like tramps, and told that there was "nothing for us."
It was all rather flattening and dispiriting.
When we turned up again at headquarters next morning we found the place
empty but for a Kaffir charwoman snuffling over her brushes: Lord
Roberts gone, Lord Kitchener gone, all the staff gone, stolen away like
thieves in the night, gone "to the front." No one was left in authority,
no one knew anything about us; so we went to the barracks and worried
irresponsible officers who would have moved heaven and earth for us if
they could, but they "had no instructions." At last, in a remote corner
of the barrack buildings, someone discovered a major who was in charge
of the Intelligence Department. Didn't we all fall upon him like birds
of prey! In half an hour the telegraph that connected Cape Town with the
Commander-in-Chief was thrilling all our wants northward; in six hours
half the special service men were flying about the town collecting
sardines and whisky and ink; in twenty-four hours only a few of us were
left, still worrying the unfortunate major. Then the wires began to come
back from Lord Roberts saying that no licence must be granted to this
man and that; that there were more than enough correspondents at the
front; and at this news some of us began to quake. At this critical
point, when I was wandering in the corridor of the post office, I found
the Press Censor, all alone and unguarded; so I fastened upon him and
drove him, the kindest and most amiable of men, into his office, and
stood over him while he wrote a long telegram to the chief, in which
many reasons were given why I should go to the front. The result was
that I received the desired privilege, but when I left Cape Town many
men were still haunting the barracks and the post office.
My week of waiting was a busy time, but in the intervals between
sitting down before staff officers, interviewing possible--and
impossible--servants, and trying horses, I contrived to see a little
of the Cape Town life in those martial days.
One seemed to be no nearer the war there than in London or Manchester.
Troops marched to the station and disappeared into the night; so they
did at home. There were hospitals there, filled with wounded men; none
so large or so full as Netley. There was a big camp there; not so big a
camp as Aldershot. And the place was full of officers, coming and going,
even as Southampton had been crowded with officers pausing on their way
to or from the war. Then there was at Cape Town something like a famine
of news; by far the latest and most trustworthy came from London. Things
that thrilled us out there and were cabled home in hot haste were found
to be stale news in England. As the storm blows over the cliff far out
to sea, but leaves the hamlet on the shore in absolute peace, so Cape
Town seemed to be sheltered by the big, dominating mountain from all the
home-going news, and to abide in peaceful ignorance while the
telegraph-rooms resounded to the talk of the needles.
I rather dreaded the hospitals, but they were magnificent. To see so
many men bearing pain bravely and cheerfully were privilege enough; but
to find men who had undergone the most dreadful tortures soberly begging
and hoping to be sent back to the front showed one what can be
accomplished by discipline and an ideal of conduct. Here is an example.
Two men lay side by side in the Wynberg hospital. One had five holes in
his body, made during a charge by as many bullets. He had nearly
recovered. The other had been shot while lying down, and the bullet had
passed along his back and touched the base of his spine, paralysing him
for ever. Both men were almost weeping; the first with joy because there
was a chance of his returning to the front, the second with grief
because he was powerless to help his comrades any more. I could cite a
hundred examples of the astounding spirit that such men displayed. I do
not think that we at home ever doubted their bravery on the field, but
the kind of endurance that is seldom bred but by long habit and early
training was to be found no less universally in these hospital beds. The
people of Cape Town had done well in the matter of hospitals, and fully
half the accommodation was provided by public subscription. But
Government hospitals were far from efficient in their equipment, as well
as far from sufficient in their accommodation. Many things that would be
regarded as necessaries in a pauper hospital at home had to be provided
at Cape Town for the Government hospitals by private bounty.
I walked over to the infantry camp at Sea Point one morning with Mr.
Rudyard Kipling. As we neared the camp we overtook a private carrying in
his hand a large pair of boots. Mr. Rudyard Kipling asked if we were on
the right road, and the man said--
"Yes; are yer goin' there? Then yer can tike these boots. I 'av to
entrine at twelve o'clock, and I ain't goin' ter miss it fer no blessed
boots. 'Ere, tike 'old," he continued, thrusting the boots into Mr.
Kipling's hand, "and give 'em to Private Dickson, B Company; and mind,
if yer cawn't find 'im, jest tike 'em back ter Williams, opposite the
White 'Orse."
Mr. Kipling promised faithfully, and gave a receipt, which he signed;
but the man did not notice the name.
"My friend," said Mr. Kipling, "you'll get your head chaffed off when
you get back to the guard-room."
"What for?" vainly asked the man, and departed, while we continued our
way towards the camp.
No sooner were we inside the railings than Mr. Kipling was accosted by a
military policeman.
"What are you doing here? You must get out of here, you know, sharp!"
"I'm taking these boots to Private Dickson," said Mr. Kipling.
"Well, you ought to take them to the guard tent, and not go wandering
about the camp like this. Out of it, now!"
Now Mr. Kipling had a pass from the Commander-in-Chief to go wherever he
pleased in South Africa, and, besides that, he is Rudyard Kipling, whom
private soldiers call their brother and father; so the situation was
amusing.
Just then a police sergeant rode up and said, "Please, sir, I lived ten
years with the man as you get your tobacco from in Brighton; anything I
can do for you?"
"Yes," said Mr. Kipling, "I want this man taken away and killed!"
The youth was much confused, but he had done his duty; so Private
Dickson had his boots, and great was the mirth and loud the cheering
about the tents of B Company.
This police protection of the camps was surprisingly close, but one
learned the reason when one had moved about for a little while among the
military authorities. For here, even in the heart of British territory,
the Boer spy was feared; he was thought to be the servant of an agency
hardly less invisible and powerful than the Open Eye of the Mormons; and
one was told that his machinations were as patent as his secrecy was
perfect. One morning a section of the railings surrounding picketed
horses would be found demolished; on another the whole milk supply of a
camp would be infected by some poisonous bacillus. It seems almost
incredible, but it is true that all such mishaps were attributed to Boer
treachery. In the popular imagination the Boer agent moved undiscovered
amid the daily life of Cape Town; at noon in the busy street; in the
club smoke-room; in the hotel dining-room--a woman this time, arrayed in
frocks from Paris, and keeping a table charmed by her conversation. And
yet the objects of this superstitious dread were allowed to have
qualities that made some of our officers dislike their business. An
English officer said to me one night:
"One can't say it here without being misunderstood, but I love the
Boers, even though I am fighting them. My father was a colonist, and
these men were like brothers of his. I have been in houses here where I
knew there were guns stored for the enemy, and where the sons would
probably be fighting me in the field, and the people have almost cried
when I have been going away; neither of us talked about it, but each
knew what was in the other's mind. People say they're like animals, and
perhaps they are; at least they're like animals in this, that once you
make them distrust you, you'll never win their confidence again. And
they don't trust us."
That officer is well enough known, and universally admired as a smart
soldier; but not everyone who sees the keen soldier, anxious above all
things for his own country's success, realises with what conflicting
emotions he goes to the fight.
I was anxious to see a real live Boer, as I thought it quite improbable
that I should see one at the front; half the officers and men who had
been wounded had never seen one of the enemy. So, having heard that our
Boer prisoners--450 in number--had been landed from Her Majesty's ship
_Penelope_ and encamped at Simonstown, I went there to visit them.
From Cape Town the land stretches an arm southward to the Cape of Good
Hope and Bellows Rock, where it divides the Atlantic from the Indian
Ocean. The mainland runs about as far southward, so that the arm partly
encloses the waters of False Bay; and in the hollow of its elbow nestles
Simonstown. This is a cluster of white houses on the sea-beat foot of a
hill that sweeps upward to the giddy white clouds. All day long at that
season the hill is steeped in sunshine; all day long its lower slopes
reverberate to the assault of the rollers while the summit is folded in
the silence of the upper air. Close in-shore half a dozen cruisers were
lying like rocks among the deep moving waters; the St. George's ensign
floated from the shore flagstaffs, and an air of whiteness and tidiness
proclaimed the naval station.
The railway from Cape Town runs so close to the shore of the bay that
you cannot hear yourself speak for the noise of bursting surf. It
brought me to Simonstown in the full glare and heat of the afternoon.
The prisoners were encamped about a hundred yards out of the town, and
as we walked through the street we spoke with pity of men imprisoned on
such a day. What we expected I do not quite know--dungeons perhaps, or
cells hewn out of the rock--but it was with something like a shock of
disappointment or relief (according to our notions of appropriate
treatment for prisoners) that we caught our first view of the
encampment. Just beyond the town the hillside takes a gentler slope,
dipping a lawn of sea-grass into the water; and it was upon this
charming spot, enclosed with a double fence, that the prisoners were
quartered. We pressed our faces against the wires and stared, much as
one stares in the Zoo at a cageful of newly-arrived animals that have
cost a great deal of money and maybe a life or two. Fine, big men,
stalwart and burned brown by the sun; stern-looking, but with that air
of large contentment they wear who live much alone and out of doors;
massive of jaw and forehead, moulded after a grand pattern. They were
lying on the grass, standing in little groups, sauntering up and down
in the hot sunshine, playing cricket with ponderous energy, bathing and
sporting in the clear apple-green water. It was not their contentment
that surprised me, but the perfection of their circumstances. They were
encamped on such a spot as people pay large sums for the privilege of
pitching tents upon; they were numerous enough to make themselves
independent of alien company; the sun was shining, the sea breeze
blowing; they had food and drink, and tobacco to smoke; where they
bathed an eight-oar gig from the _Powerful_ swung on the swell, not so
much to prevent escape as to render assistance to tired swimmers.
So our prisoners blinked in the sun and listened to the organ-note of
the surf, and brooded on the most beautiful picture I have ever seen:
masses of bare rock towering into the bright sky, and an endless pageant
of seas rolling grandly homeward from the south, from the infinite
purple and blue of the Indian Ocean, grounding at the edge of the green
lawn and showering snow upon the hot rocks.
VI
IN THE EDDIES OF A GREAT WHIRL
When I arrived at Modder River Camp, on February 17th, the guns were
being hauled back from the hills into camp, tents were being struck, and
waggon transport organised. The plain was a cloud of hot, whirling sand
that shrouded near objects as closely as a fog, but, instead of the damp
coldness of a fog, the plain was radiating heat that sent the
thermometer inside one's tent up to 135 degrees. The place that a few
days before had been resounding with artillery was now silent and (by
comparison) deserted; buck waggons took the place of gun carriages, and
the ambulance cart carried mails from home. One thought of Modder River
as being surely at "the front," but here was the place, here were the
troops, the guns, the hospitals, the sand-enveloped cemetery, and yet
one seemed to be no nearer than before to actual war. As for news, there
was less even than at Cape Town. A few telegrams, days old, fluttered
from the notice-board, and in at headquarters I found that we who had
been sixty hours on the journey from Cape Town were hailed as
newsbearers. There was a press censor, yet one could not send press
telegrams; headquarters had moved on to Jacobsdaal; telegrams must go
through headquarters, and the wire to Jacobsdaal was only to be used for
military purposes. This was something like a block, so Mr. Amery, of the
_Times_, and I, resolved to ride over to Jacobsdaal and see if we could
get any news.
[Illustration: MR. G. LENTHAL CHEATLE, F.R.C.S.
_Consulting Surgeon to Her Majesty's Forces in South Africa_]
We crossed the Riet and Modder drifts, and passed over the island where
the shells and bullets had been singing so shrilly on the day of the big
fight. When we passed the birds were singing instead, sending down with
the cooing pigeons a chorus from the trees. No one could tell us whether
or not the twelve miles to Jacobsdaal were free from the enemy; people
thought so, but they were not quite sure. So we rode along, observing
the dry veldt not without interest, but the lonely road heaved up and
down over the plain and revealed little sign of human occupation. Once
we passed a convoy carrying stores to the front, and at about the eighth
mile a little Boer camp of about a dozen tents, all deserted, and
apparently in haste, for there were half-emptied tins of provisions and
a few cooking utensils scattered about, and a dead horse lay by the
roadside. The heat was very great, and was only supportable when one
kept a drenched handkerchief under one's hat. Indeed, officers who had
come straight out from India protested that they never felt there
anything like the heat of that South African drought.
Jacobsdaal, a little white town or village near the river, appeared at
last from a ridge of the plain. It contained an inn, and the inn
contained cups of tea--a fact in connection with Jacobsdaal that I shall
long remember. In about an hour we were ready to look about a little,
but at headquarters we could only learn that the front had again moved
forward. We could not advance without transport, and we could get no
quarters, so we lay down in a stony field under the stars, and made a
poor shift at sleeping through a concert of complaining oxen and cocks
cheering all night long, with an undertone of rumbling wheels on the
distant road.
Next morning early I rode back to Modder, where I collected with
difficulty two sorry but useful nags and a Cape cart. On my way out I
passed a sentry, who brought me up with the usual cry, "Halt! who goes
there?"
"Friend," said I.
"Advance, friend, and give the countersign."
Now I did not know the countersign, and I had to tell him so. The
private soldier is sometimes zealous and often stupid, and occasionally
both; and in the pause that followed my answer I heard the click of his
rifle. In that second of time I remembered a story which I had heard the
day before of a sentry at Modder, who, when the guard came up in the
dark to relieve him, made the usual challenge. "It's only us, old man,"
said the sergeant. "None of your blooming us," said the sentry, and shot
the sergeant dead.
However the sentry was soon persuaded, and when I passed the outpost,
the sentry who should really have stopped me and examined my passport
treated me as a field-officer and presented arms, so I rode away back to
the dust of Modder. There I collected as much forage as possible, and
the next day rode back with my caravan to Jacobsdaal. Once more there
was a block. The front forty miles away; no more forage, no rations
even; and I starved officially, but was entertained privately by the
commandant. The front was reaching away forward along the road to
Bloemfontein; and as telegrams had to be censored there and handed in at
Modder River, fifty miles away, and as I had no despatch riders, I
decided that the game was up on this line. A dose of fever helped my
decision, and held me afterwards at Modder when great things were
happening at Paardeberg. But for the day during which I stayed in
Jacobsdaal I studied the little town and its alien inhabitants.
Jacobsdaal stands four-square on the northern bank of the Riet River,
eleven miles east-south-east from Modder; and the manner of its
occupation, as described to me by General Wavell (who captured it on the
15th of February and remained in it as commandant), seems to have been
surprisingly neat and effectual. General Chermside, commanding the 14th
Brigade, left Enslin on the 11th and marched to Ramdam, where he was
joined by General Wavell, commanding the 15th Brigade, who had moved
from Graspan. From Ramdam the two brigades marched almost due east to
Dekiel's Drift, which they were delayed in crossing during the whole of
the 13th. They started again on the next evening and made a night march
to Wegdraai, where they arrived at four o'clock on the morning of the
15th. An officer of the North Staffordshire Regiment told me that he
never saw anything so impressive as that night march. The horizon was
level all round like the sea, and all night long it was alive with
streams of lightning that lighted up the plain with the brigade crawling
across it through the thunder. On the 15th General Wavell's brigade was
detached, and at midday started to march upon Jacobsdaal. The brigade
was strengthened by about seventy men of the C.I.V. (who acted as
scouts) and by a battery of artillery. The North Staffordshires acted as
advance guard, the South Wales Borderers and the Cheshire Regiment
formed the main body, and the East Lancashires brought up the rear--half
a battalion as reserves and half as rear-guard with the baggage.
The position was an admirable one for the enemy. General Wavell had the
town ahead and the river on the left parallel with his line of march;
and as he approached, the Boers (about 400 strong) opened a brisk fire
on his flank from the river-bed. The fire was directed at the C.I.V.'s,
who were advancing on the right bank of the river; but it had a double
objective, since what missed the C.I.V.'s had a fair chance of finding
the Staffordshires, who were advancing on a parallel ridge still further
to the right. The C.I.V.'s had a good many horses killed, and many of
the men were wounded and "dropped," but I believe only one was killed.
Finding the attack was coming from the left, the General showed his
force on that side, at the same time shelling the south-east corner of
the town. He would do no more because of the women and children in the
place; and, considering his disadvantage, the Boers with a little more
determination might have held the town. After showing on the left
General Wavell swept round on the right, sending the North
Staffordshires towards the north side. There they entered, and the place
was, so to speak, nipped between the two arms of the brigade, with the
artillery in the middle ready to speak. The Boers now broke and fled
south-west and north-west, followed by showers of shrapnel. "It was an
awfully pretty sight," the General remarked to me, "to see the shrapnel
bursting all round in showers; one of the prettiest things I have ever
seen." The enemy had open country and soon got away, but in the meantime
the Union Jack was blowing bravely over Jacobsdaal, and we were in
possession of a most important square on the big chessboard of the
Orange Free State.
Of course the chief importance of the position was that it formed a
depôt for stores and a halting-place for convoys on the way to the
front. The General, with Captain Carleton (brigade-major) and Captain
Davidson (A.D.C.), was under fire during the whole of this brisk little
action; and Captain Carleton told me that the bullets were whizzing past
as briskly at two thousand yards as at two hundred. It need hardly be
said that since there were only three staff-officers, whose lives were
of the utmost value to the expedition, they spent most of their time in
and about the front firing lines. As soon as the General had occupied
the square he turned his men out and bivouacked them on the plain round
the village. They were exhausted after an eight-mile march, with this
action at the end of it; hot and thirsty too, suffering from such heat
and thirst as is only known in dusty deserts like the Karoo in time of
drought. There was a certain amount of looting--chiefly of cloth and
stuffs from the shops; but it was suddenly brought to an end by Lord
Roberts's startling order that any man found in the act of looting, or
any man against whom acts of looting could be proved, would be hanged,
and his battalion sent down to the base. There was no more looting.
"There _were_ three ducks found with their necks wrung," the General
admitted, "but we paid for them!"
The occupation of Jacobsdaal was, of course, only an incident in the
great whirl of operations which began on the 3rd of February, when
General Macdonald with the Highland Brigade moved westward from Modder
River and seized Koodoesberg. Hitherto we had been waging a very
straightforward kind of war, and Lord Roberts's masterly tactics between
Modder River and Paardeberg were the first hint we had given our enemy
that we also could be cunning. When I arrived at Modder River the wheels
of this great operation were spinning, but Modder itself was in an eddy,
where there was no movement and little news of any. French was racing to
head Cronje off on the north of the Modder River, and the main body of
the army was advancing in his rear, but we at Modder River knew next to
nothing of these movements.
It is worth while to recall the principal events in Lord Roberts's
operations near Modder River. The seizing of Koodoesberg was, of course,
intended to divert the attention of the Boers from the points at which
the real movement was taking place. On the 8th of the month General
Macdonald was recalled to Modder River; on the 9th Lord Roberts arrived
there and assumed command; on the 12th General French marched from
Ramdam, where he had been collecting a big cavalry force, seized
Dekiel's Drift and Klip Drift on the Modder, and the next day occupied a
commanding position on the north of the river, capturing three of the
enemy's laagers. On the 15th, having traversed Cronje's communications,
French reached Kimberley and dislodged the enemy from the southern side
of the town; they evacuated Magersfontein and Spytfontein, and retreated
to Koodoesrand, contriving in their turn to slip through our containing
lines. Jacobsdaal was captured on the same day, and on the 16th of
February began the fighting at Paardeberg, which was only brought to an
end by Cronje's surrender on the 27th.
However, one was only (as I have said) in the stagnant middle of things
at Jacobsdaal, and the outer currents did not reach us. From our point
of view Jacobsdaal was not an important station on the war-path to
Bloemfontein; it was simply a place of insufficient food, bad smells,
choking dust, and many hospitals. The Red Cross flag flew from all the
churches and every available house; furniture was piled in verandahs,
and pews were stacked in churchyards.
Enteric was rife there; but could a man, officer or private, who had
been out for twelve hours on foraging or convoy duty, sit down and boil
his water and then wait for a drink until it cooled? Because the water
looked clear and innocent they drank it by the quart, and therefore the
hospitals were full. Jacobsdaal is responsible for many of the
inglorious deaths of "active service."
Early one morning, while the air was yet fresh and cool, General Wavell
took me round with him on his hospital inspection. He is one of the
small, keen, kind-eyed men who emerge in the senior ranks of the army.
One never meets them as subalterns, and they represent the army's best
workmanship in the matter of moulding and finishing. We were still
talking about the "pretty" little action when we entered the first
hospital--a small Dutch church. I should have said that besides our own
field hospitals at Jacobsdaal there was a Boer hospital and one of the
German Red Cross Society.
This first was the Boer hospital, and even at this early hour the air
was pungent with the reek of strong tobacco. The General spoke to all
the patients, and had a kind word for everyone, and they all greeted him
with gratitude and cordiality. Their one cry was, "We've had as much as
we want. If we could only get back to our farms!" Most of those to whom
I spoke said that they had never wanted to fight us, never hoped to beat
us, and were heartily sick of the whole affair. "I wish I could send you
back to your homes, men," said the General; "but I must obey orders."
They chatted away to us, and said they hoped the General would come in
often. It was much the same in the German and English houses, only here
Boers and Englishmen lay side by side, sharing pipes and papers and talk
with each other. Truly, animosity ceases at the hospital door; and the
attitude of these men who had been menacing each other's lives and now
lay stricken together was not unlike the shame-faced amity of children
who have been caught fighting, and are made to share a punishment.
And no one was more concerned and depressed by the whole business than
the brisk little General, who had been speaking almost caressingly of
his shells and shrapnel. He is surely a good soldier who fights at as
small a cost as possible, disregards that cost while he fights, and
afterwards so behaves that his enemies like to take him by the hand.
Hospitals, where so many virtues too tender for the airs of the outside
world have time to bloom, are generally attractive rather than repulsive
places, and I was on that account the more surprised to find myself
repelled by these field-hospitals. To see men lying about distorted,
impotent, disfigured by all kinds of fantastic deformities, their wounds
still new, themselves lying near the spot where they fell; and to
remember the cause of it all, and how vague that cause really was to the
men who were suffering for it; the grossness and brutality of
mutilation--here a man with lead in his bowels, there a man with his
face obliterated, one man groaning and spitting from bleeding lungs,
another, struck by a great piece of flying iron, silent under the shock
of news that his sight was gone for ever; the feeling that these men
were suffering on our account, and the realisation that every one of us
has had his share in the responsibility for the whole, makes a load that
one cannot, or should not, slough away in a moment.
VII
MAGERSFONTEIN AND KIMBERLEY
There was a train going to Kimberley with cattle and forage on the
afternoon of Thursday, February 22nd, and the stagnation of everything
except dust at Modder being complete, I jumped on the twenty-ninth truck
as the engine was taking up the slack of the couplings and was
immediately jerked forward on the newly-mended road to the north. I had
nothing with me except what I stood in and a waterproof; but as the
journey of twenty-four miles occupied four hours, and as the heavens
poured down a deluge during three hours and twenty-five minutes of the
time I was glad to have even that. The line passes beside Magersfontein
and through gaps in six ridges behind it, affording an excellent view of
the whole position. That position seemed to me practically impregnable.
To have won a way to Kimberley upon this road would probably have meant
six bloody battles, always with the likelihood of a reverse after each
for the attacking army. Imagine a wide and perfectly level plain with a
ridge standing straight across it like a great railway embankment, but
with arms at each end curving towards the front as the arms of a trench
are curved; behind the ridge, and higher, two or three kopjes which
command it; behind the kopjes another ridge like the first, with more
kopjes to command it; the same thing repeated half a dozen times,
without another eminence within fifteen miles. Imagine this, and you see
the country between Modder River and Kimberley. And throughout the
position every piece of open ground was slashed and seamed by trenches
and works, constructed as though for the inspection of an examiner in
engineering--beautiful, artistic, formidable work that filled the mind
of every British officer who saw it with envy and admiration. Behind the
hills were little huts and hiding-places contrived within the shadow of
the low, thick trees that grow there, so that not a soul lived out of
cover. Captain Austin, R.A., who shared the humidity of my truck, and
who had been in charge of a 6-inch field-gun trained on Magersfontein at
eight thousand yards, told me that he could see through his glasses the
whole working of the enemy's admirable system. They had a look-out man
sitting at the far end of a long tunnel of rock and stone; when we fired
he gave the signal, and the Boers got into cover; and twenty seconds
afterwards, when our shell, beautifully aimed and timed, arrived on the
hill, it spent itself upon the flinty rock. Then the Boers showed their
heads and fired; and their shell swept through its arc and exploded,
generally finding its mark.
The battle of Magersfontein has been the subject of more prolonged
discussion than any other single event in the war. Coming on the day
after our reverse at Stormberg, it completed the momentary
demoralisation of a great mass of people at home who had expected the
campaign to resolve itself into a sweeping march on Pretoria. Like the
affair of Majuba, it has been sentimentally magnified out of all
proportion to its military importance. On the strength of the emotions
roused by our disaster, thousands graduated as military critics and
cried aloud for the recall of Lord Methuen. Private soldiers with
shattered nerves wrote home hysterical narratives and criticisms which
were published and commented upon, and treated as valuable evidence. We
lost our heads for the moment; there is no doubt of that; but people who
are thus betrayed into panic will not be appeased until they have made a
scapegoat of someone. Lord Methuen was, of course, the obvious
sacrifice. Why did he make a frontal attack? Why did he fail?
It is well to remember that Lord Methuen was being pressed to relieve
Kimberley, which represented its case as extreme. He must do something.
Naturally he designed the kind of attack which the forces at his
disposal were best suited to deliver. A long turning movement was out of
the question since he had not the mounted men for it. As for the
"frontal attack" at Magersfontein, of which we have heard so much, Lord
Methuen never designed and did not deliver a direct frontal attack. His
plan was to surprise the extreme left of Cronje's position, and at the
same time contain the whole of his front with a strong force. And no
competent critic has ventured to suggest any better disposal of the
forces then available for the purposes of attack. No, Lord Methuen has
not been criticised and abused because he used his force in one way
rather than in another, but simply because he failed.
There is very often more to be learned from a failure than a success,
and this particular failure is worthy of a little study. Everyone knows
that the reason why the attack on Magersfontein failed was, first,
because the Highland Brigade lost its way and came unexpectedly into
contact with the enemy's position, and, secondly, because they failed to
rally after the first confusion, when (in the opinion of many experts
who were present) a little confidence would probably have saved the day.
If any single precaution was neglected, if any pains were spared in the
reconnoitring of the position or in securing the proper conduct of the
troops towards the place from which their attack was to be delivered,
then Lord Methuen was absolutely to blame. But the more that is known
about this unfortunate affair the more clearly it will be seen that Lord
Methuen neglected no precaution and spared no pains. The rain and pitch
darkness were the act of God, and no general in the world can prevail
when Nature is so completely in league with the enemy as she was on the
night of Magersfontein.
I do not care to dwell on the malice and cruel unfairness of many of the
attacks on Lord Methuen, because, for my country's sake, I hope they
will soon be forgotten; but if anyone should still suppose that these
great hysterical waves of public feeling select their victims
impartially, I would ask him to compare the battle of Magersfontein
with the fruitless attack delivered by Lord Kitchener on the Paardeberg
laager on February 18th. In one case time was working against Lord
Methuen, and threatening to exhaust the endurance of Kimberley; in the
other case time was working with Lord Kitchener, limiting the resistance
of Cronje to a calculable number of days and hours. In one case there
was a small force which, owing to the nature of its composition, could
only be used in one way; in the other case there was a large and
splendidly-assorted force, which gave opportunity for an infinite
variety of combinations. In one case the attack was turned by
circumstances which no human being could have prevented into a frontal
contact; in the other case that form of attack was deliberately chosen.
In one case the casualties were about nine hundred; in the other, about
sixteen hundred. And in one case the general officer commanding has been
insulted and attacked and defamed, while the officer responsible for the
second affair is still regarded by the masses as a consummate master of
field operations.
This is a long digression; I have made it here because the subject of
it is inseparable from my memory of the dark and stony ranges which I
saw closely for the first time through the pitiless rain of that
February day. Miserable as the journey was, its passage through the
country occupied so lately by the enemy made it interesting. The way in
which our sappers had toiled to repair the line was beyond praise. Every
telegraph post had been blasted in two pieces by dynamite; every culvert
had been blown up; nearly every insulator smashed; the wires (about
seven in number) had been cut every few hundred yards; yet within four
days from the relief of Kimberley trains had begun to go up the whole
distance and telegraphic communication had been restored. I saw the work
that had been done, and the difficulty of it, and was proud of the way
in which it was accomplished. Not that there is little to be proud of in
the work of the army. On the contrary, one is amazed to see what is
accomplished in spite of the system, amazed to find what can be done by
able men against the most determined opposition from their own side; but
the great fact that was brought out by the earlier part of this campaign
is that the man of intelligence and initiative and ability and energy
was fast in the clutches of the Red Tape spider, which fussed round him
until he was enveloped in the scarlet web and impotent to use brains or
energy. Engineering is one of the few things of which corporate bodies
admit their ignorance; therefore the sappers got through much admirable
work quietly and quickly.
The approach to Kimberley with its mine shafts and hills of blue dust
reminded me of the Black Country. What one noticed first with regard to
the town was the number of holes and shelters and warrens into which
people had crept for safety. Hundreds of them, like human anthills; and
one thought, What strange place is this, where men fear to walk upright?
The menu at the principal hotel, where I dined, would (if it had been
printed) have consisted of one item--horseflesh. I noticed that the
residents ate it eagerly, and even talked about it; but most of us
strangers arose hungry and went quickly into the fresh air.
That night and the next morning I walked through the town and talked to
people who had been living there; and it was when I talked to the people
that I began to realise what had been happening. The few ruined
buildings and riddled walls conveyed little to me. But when one found
man after man thin, listless, and (in spite of the joy of salvation)
dispirited; talking with a tired voice and hopeless air, and with a
queer, shifty, nervous, scared look in the eye, one began to understand.
The thing was scarcely human, scarcely of this world. These men were not
like oneself. If you threaten an inexperienced boxer with a quick play
of fists on every side of his head, even though you never touch him, you
may completely demoralise him; he shies at every feint and every
movement. And these people had been in a situation comparable with that
of the poor boxer. Think of it. The signal from the conning tower, the
clamour of bells and whistles, the sudden silence amongst the people,
the rush for shelter, and then the hum and roar, like wind in a chimney,
of the huge iron cylinder flying through the air, potent for death. And
then, perhaps, the noise of a falling building, or the scream of some
human creature who is nothing but a mass of offence when you come up
five seconds later. Think of this repeated six or seven--sometimes sixty
or seventy--times during the daylight hours, and can you wonder that men
should lose their placid manners and scuttle like rats into their holes
at the dreaded sound? And all this fear and horror to be borne upon an
empty stomach, for the horrors of partial starvation were added to the
constant fear of a violent death. Mothers had to see their babies die
because there was no milk or other suitable nourishment; a baby cannot
live on horse and mule flesh. There was hardly a coloured baby left
alive; and that one statement accounts for whole lifetimes of misery and
suffering.
It was not until the Boers had mounted their 6-inch gun on the 8th of
February that the panic began. People had got used to the smaller
shells, which could often be dodged; besides, the enemy did not fire so
many of them. But when the big gun began its seventy rounds a day people
lost their self-command and began to dig and scratch in the earth for
shelter. Thousands went down the mines and sat all day in the bowels of
the earth. Men walking in the streets jumped if a mule kicked an iron
plate; they screamed when the signal was given; they broke and ran and
burrowed into shelter. Yet so fast do some men anchor themselves to
routine that many kept their offices open and did business--all the
while, however, with one eye on the paper and the other glancing through
the door or window; ever with one ear turned to the speaker and the
other noting the rustle of paper stirred by the breeze and the hum of
wind under the door.
That only twenty people were killed is no fact at all in connection with
the panic; what really matters is that seventy times a day something
happened which might have killed a dozen people.
I have only to add, in case I am accused of exaggerating the state of
terror, that the people who went through this ordeal have not
necessarily the clearest conception of it. I came out of the safe outer
world and saw their faces and eyes, and, if I had not heard a word, I
should have known.
One other thing. A despatch sent by me to _The Manchester Guardian_
contained this sentence complimentary to the De Beers Company: "The
condition of the town would have been deplorable but for the relief
administration of the De Beers Company."
That sentence was not made, but suggested by my good friend the censor;
and it will serve to indicate how great was the bowing down before the
house of De Beers. I wish to disavow any compliment I may have appeared
to pay that company in my telegram, for I think they did their bare
duty. What they did was to provide a ration of soup for the inhabitants
as long as some bullock meat which they possessed lasted; to organise
relief works by making roads and fences in a town which belongs chiefly
to themselves; and to allow people to shelter in their mines. Perhaps
they could do no more. Considering everything, and remembering some
facts in connection with this and other political troubles, I ask, Could
they well have done less?
VIII
PAARDEBERG
From Modder River to Paardeberg the road rolls over a bare yet beautiful
plain, brown and dry before the rain, but after a heavy rain bursting
into endless stretches of purple and scarlet flowers of the karoo. I
went by Jacobsdaal. Early on Wednesday morning, February 28th, I rode
out from the little town with General Wavell, who put me a couple of
miles on the road. You are to understand that this was something of an
adventure. I had nothing but a Cape cart and a couple of horses to draw
it--a thing that holds, with one's kit, about three hundred pounds of
forage. I was going to a camp where I could get no forage and hardly any
food; there was not a despatch-rider to be had at Modder; my telegrams
must be ridden back from the front, now thirty and soon to be ninety
miles away. Sickness had tethered me to Modder River camp throughout the
exciting week that had ended with Cronje's surrender; and now on
February 28th I was following the army, feeling like one who should
enter a theatre as the curtain was falling on the first act.
The thirty-mile ride through the lonely country would have been
delightful but for the dismal trail left by the war--carcases of horses
and oxen lining the road, a carcase every few hundred yards surrounded
by a gorged flock of aasvögels, the foulest of the vulture tribe. With a
nervous horse the passage of these pestilential spots was made difficult
as well as revolting, and it was with a feeling of relief that one saw
the tents and waggons of the Paardeberg camp by the river trees.
Along the road, I should have said, the trail was one of devastation. In
the midst of the dry veldt one sometimes came upon a farmhouse with its
grove of trees, and spring, and pleasant fields; but always the farm was
derelict, windows broken, rooms gutted, stock destroyed, with often some
poor abandoned creature tethered to a tree, and waiting, in the midst of
the dead silence of the empty country, to be fed and watered.
At Paardeberg I found the headquarters camp situated on the river bank,
a place pretty to look at but horrible to be near. The only water to
drink was that from a well by the river--water of a dark and strange
colour; and even while one drank it one sat and watched the carcases of
horses floating down the brown stream from the deserted Boer laager a
mile above. For Cronje and his men had surrendered, not only because of
losses or lack of ammunition, but chiefly, it was said, because the same
conditions that made our camp almost unbearable made his laager in the
river-bed impossible for human accommodation. So he surrendered, after a
resistance that will live in history as one of the bravest pieces of
human endurance.
On my way down I had met a great company of men moving over the plain
surrounded by mounted infantry. These were our prisoners--a noble bag of
more than four thousand. But now that they had gone there was no reason
why the camp should be maintained at Paardeberg, and at noon we
proceeded to thread our way eastward--a long procession of men and
horses and waggons--to the farm of Osfontein, where the force was being
concentrated for the final advance. The delay was fortunate for the
correspondents, for those of us who had only a scanty stock of
provisions and forage could send our carts back once more to Modder for
a supply. In the meantime nothing was likely to happen until a
fortnight's stock of provisions and forage for the army had been
collected.
Before leaving Paardeberg, and in the intervals of arranging the mere
details of living--which on this line of advance were harassing and
formidable--I rode over to the deserted Boer laager, or as near to it as
was safe. The scene was strange and significant. Imagine the river, deep
down between steep terraced banks, flowing through the level plain. On
the left side our position, well entrenched, with a few kopjes about two
thousand yards from the bank. On the right was the enemy's position,
which extended further down the banks of the river and up to the very
edge of our side. On the far bank I saw a line of hundreds of transport
waggons and carts, all empty, many of them smashed and broken by our
shell fire. But it was the river-bed itself that was most interesting.
The water was very low, and there was any amount of cover on the steep
banks, and this was increased by a number of small pits or trenches--not
long trenches like ours, but simple little holes or graves dug in the
banks, with room enough for a couple of men. Graves they proved to be in
many cases, for where the Boers were shot in them the trenches were
simply filled in and the bodies thus rudely buried. But how independent
they were! No bulky commissariat department, no army of cooks and
butchers--every man with his own kettle and biltong or canned beef, his
own rug or sleeping bag, his own water-bottle; so that when he came into
such a position as this he could remain in it for days together. One saw
many pathetic things in these trenches--garments and personal belongings
evidently made by hands that did not work for hire.
In two trenches I found Dutch Bibles; in one a diary of the last few
weeks; in almost all some sign that human beings and not machines had
been at work there; and on all sides spent shells and shrapnel cases and
cartridges, to remind one of the nature of their work. When one
followed, as I had followed so far, in the shadow of the war and not in
the midst of it, in the track of the Red Cross and the wayside cemetery
instead of within sound and sight of the thing itself, one saw a very
dark and unrelieved side of it--the shadow without the substance, the
effect without the cause.