Far, far away,
Where they get ham and eggs
Three times a day."
I find myself dwelling on the words as we move off. Can there be such a land? Can there be so blessed a place?
We reach the ganger's hut, and the light spreads and rests on the hills. Immediately we are deafened by a shattering report close behind us, and starting round, find the long nose of Joey projecting almost over our heads, while the scream of the shell dies away in the distance as it speeds towards the Boer hill. One of the naval officers gives me a first hint of the truth. There has certainly been an attack, he says, but he fears unsuccessful.
We took the matter up, then, where we left off yesterday, all our batteries coming into action and shelling the hills most furiously. The enemy replied with three guns only, but so well placed were they that we found it impossible to silence them. While our fire was concentrated on to any one of them, it would remain silent, but, after a short interval, would always begin again, to the rage of our gunners. There is especially a big gun of theirs in a fold of the hill just at the crest, between which and "Joey" exist terms of mortal defiance. Nothing else it appears can touch either of them; so while the lesser cannonade rages in the middle, these two lordly creatures have a duel of their own and exchange the compliments of the season with great dignity and deliberation over the others' heads. It has gone all in favour of "Joey" while I was watching, the Boer gun being rather erratic and most of its shells falling short. It made one good shot just in front of us, and it was really comic to see how "Joey," who had been looking for other adversaries for the moment, came swinging round at the voice of his dearest foe. The explosion of the big gun almost knocks one backwards, and I feel the sudden pressure on my ears of the concussion.
Later in the day "Joey" and I got quite thick. There is a double kopje, detached from the main Boer position on our side, known as the Dumbell Kopje. From our left-front place we could see a lot of Boers clustered under the hill, pasted, like swarming bees, up against the lee of it, while the naval gun's shells—for he evidently had a nonchalant idea that there was some one about there—went flying overhead and bursting beyond. This was very irritating to watch, and I was glad to be sent back to "whisper a word in his ear." Making a hasty sketch of the hill, I galloped back and presented it to the captain with explanation, and had the satisfaction of seeing 300 yards knocked off "Joey's" next shot, which was, I should judge, a very hot one. "Stay and have some grub," said the jolly naval captain. We sat on the ground eating and drinking, while "Joey" peppered the Dutchmen.
As for the fight itself, people seem inclined to make a great mystery about it and talk about "the difficulty of getting at the truth;" but I don't see myself where the mystery comes in. What happened was this. The Highland Brigade (Black Watch, Seaforths, Argyle and Sutherlands, and Highland Light Infantry) was told off for the night attack and marched before light to the hill. The night was very dark and heavy rain falling. The ground was rough, stony, and rocky, with a good deal of low scrub, bushes, and thorn trees, very difficult to get through at night. The difficulty of moving masses of men with any accuracy in the dark is extreme, and to keep them together at all it was necessary for them to advance in a compact body. In quarter column, therefore, the Brigade advanced and approached the foot of the hill. I have noticed several times that when you get rather close to the hill the rise comes to look more gradual and the ridge itself does not stand up in the abrupt and salient way that it does from a distance. Whether it was this, or simply that the darkness of the night hid the outline, at any rate the column approached the hill and the trench which runs at the foot of the hill much too closely before the order to extend was given. When it was given it was too late. They were in the act of executing it when the volley came.
Of course an attack like this cannot be intended altogether as a surprise—that is, it cannot be pushed home as a surprise. You cannot march 4000 heavy-booted men through broken ground on a dark night without making plenty of noise over it; also the Boers must certainly have had pickets out, which would have moved in as we advanced and given the alarm. But had our fellows deployed at half a mile, or less, under cover of darkness, and then advanced in open order, the enemy could not have seen clearly enough to shoot with accuracy until they were fairly close, and I daresay the fire then would not have stopped their rush.
As it was, the fire came focussed on a mass of men, such a fire as I suppose has never been seen before, for not only was it a tremendous volley poured in at point-blank range, but it was a sustained volley; the rapid action of the magazines enabling the enemy to keep up an unintermittent hail of bullets on the English column. To advance under fire of this sort is altogether impossible. It is not a question of courage, but of the impossibility of a single man surviving. At the Modder fight our men advanced to a certain distance, but could get no nearer. They were forced to lie down and remain lying down. The fire of magazine rifles is such that, unless helped by guns or infinitely the stronger, the attackers have no chance of getting home. People will keep on talking as if courage did these things. What the devil's the use of the bravest man with half-a-dozen bullets through him? It is just as certain as anything can be that, if the Highlanders had "gone on," in two minutes not a man would have been left standing. Already in the brief instant that they stood, dazed by the fire, they lost between six and seven hundred men. The Black Watch was in front, and nineteen out of twenty-seven officers were swept down. You might as well talk of "going on" against a volcano in eruption.
I am writing this on the day after the action in my favourite lurking-place by the side of the river under the evergreens and big weeping willows that overhang the sluggish water. Our own small camp is close to the stream, and here every morning the Highlanders are in the habit of turning up, usually with much laughing and shouting, to bathing parade. There is no laughing this morning, only sad, sullen faces, silence and downcast looks. Still they are glad to talk of it. A few come under the shade of my tree, and sit about and tell me the little bit that each saw or heard. You only get a general impression of chaos. Some tried to push on, some tried to extend, some lay down, and some ran back out of close range and took up such cover as they could get. This was, luckily, pretty good, there being a lot of bush and rocks about, and here they gradually crawled together and got into some sort of order, and kept up a counter fire at the Boer position. The Brigade, however, had been badly shaken, and as hour after hour passed all through the blazing day, and they were kept lying there under the fire of an entrenched enemy, exhausted and parched with thirst, their patience gradually failed, and they made another rush back, but were rallied and led up again to where the Mausers might play on them. They were not allowed to retire till after five, when all the troops were withdrawn—that is, until they had been shot over at close range for about fourteen mortal hours.
The Brigade was asked to do too much, and when at last they staggered out of action, the men jumped and started at the rustle of a twig. It's a miserable thing when brave men are asked to do more than brave men can do.
One thing that added to the panic was that none, at least among the men and junior officers, knew anything at all about the trench. They thought they were going to storm the hill. So that things were so contrived that the bewilderment of a surprise should be added to the terrors of the volley. You will scarcely believe this perhaps. I have just come from having tea with the Argyle and Sutherland. Of the eight or ten officers there, not one had heard of the trench. Here, by the river, I have talked to a score of Highlanders, and not one had heard of it either. They "didn't know what the hell was up" when the volley came. We could scarcely have provided all the elements of a panic more carefully.
Nothing of note followed during the day. Airlie fended off a Boer flanking move on our right, and the Coldstreams backed up the Highlanders a bit, but practically only the Highland Brigade was in it. It was a disaster to that Brigade only, and consequently the rest of the army does not feel itself defeated, and is not in any way discouraged. Some people suggest now that we in our turn may be attacked, and that the enemy may try and retake the river position from which we shifted him a fortnight ago. It is reported that they have got up heavy reinforcements from Natal, and some long-range guns that will reach our camp from the hill. All kinds of rumours are afloat, mostly to the effect that the Boers are circling round behind us, via Douglas on the west and Jacobsdal on the east, and mean cutting our communications. However, as I have long since found out, a camp is a hot-bed of lies. Nothing positive is known, for every one is kept in careful ignorance of everything that is going on. The idea is that the British soldier can only do himself justice when the chance of taking anything like an intelligent interest in his work is altogether denied him. The consequence is he is driven to supply the deficiency out of his own imagination. Ladysmith has already been taken and relieved at least a dozen times, and Mafeking almost as often. To-day Buller is on his way to Pretoria; to-morrow the Boer army will be marching on Cape Town.
As for our own little army, we have been digging ourselves in here, and are perfectly secure, and I daresay we shall be able to keep open the line all right. As to relieving Kimberley, that is another thing. Cronjé evidently doesn't think we can, for he has just sent us in a message offering us twenty-four hours to clear out in. He is a bit of a wag is old Cronjé.
LETTER VII
RECONNAISSANCE
BIVOUAC ON THE MODDER,
January 15, 1900.
At Modder River camp the dust lies thick and heavy. Every breeze that blows lifts clouds of it, that hang in the air like a dense London fog, and mark the site of the camp miles and miles away. The river, more muddy than ever, moves languidly in its deep channel. There is a Boer laager some miles above the camp, the scourings of which—horrid thought!—are constantly brought down to us. The soldiers eye the infected current askance and call it Boervril. Its effect is seen in the sickness that is steadily increasing.
Thank goodness we escape it. An advantage of scouting is, that, when it comes to a standing camp, with its attendant evils of dirt, smells, and sickness, your business carries you away, in front, or out along the flanks, where you play at hide-and-seek with the enemy, trap and are trapped, chase and are chased, and where you bivouac healthily and pleasantly, if not in such full security, at some old Dutch farm, where probably fowls are to be bought, or milk and butter; or under groups of mimosa trees among stoney deserted kopjes, where there is plenty of wood for burning, as likely as not within reach of some old garden with figs in it ripening and grapes already ripe.
One of the little pictures I shall remember belonging to Modder camp is the sight of the soldiers at early mass. You can picture to yourself a wide, flat dusty plain held in the bent arm of the river, with not a tree or bush on it; flat as a table, ankle-deep in grey dust, and with a glaring, blazing sun looking down on it. The dust is so hot and deep that it reminds one more of the ashes on the top of Vesuvius—you remember that night climb of ours?—than of anything else.
Laid out in very formal and precise squares are the camps of the various brigades, the sharp-pointed tents ranged in exact order and looking from far off like symmetrical little flower-beds pricked out on the sombre plain.
A stone's throw from the river is a mud wall, with a mud house at one side scarcely rising above it, yet house and wall giving in the early morning a patch of black shadow in the midst of the glare. Here the old priest used to celebrate his mass. A hundred or two of Tommies and a few officers would congregate here soon after sunrise, and stand bare-headed till the beams looked over the wall, when helmet after helmet would go on; or kneel together in the dust while the priest lifted the host. Every man had his arms, the short bayonet bobbing on the hip; every brown and grimy hand grasped a rifle; and as the figures sink low at the ringing of the bell, a bristle of barrels stands above the bowed heads. Distant horse hoofs drum the plain as an orderly gallops from one part of the camp to another. Right facing us stands Magersfontein, its ugly nose with the big gun at the end of it thrust out towards us. How many of this little brotherhood under the mud wall, idly I wonder, will ever see English meadows again?
The Boers still face us at Magersfontein. Their left is south of the Modder. They have a strong laager at Jacobsdal on the Reit, and have pushed west and south of that, where, from the kopjes about Zoutspan and Ramdam, they threaten our lines of communication. The Reit river, flowing almost south and north for some distance parallel to the railway, though a good way east of it, is a strengthening feature for them in that part of the field, and taking advantage of it, they have brought their left well round. Their right, on the other hand, is scarcely brought round at all, but stretches about east and west, following the course of the Modder, and extending as far west as Douglas, fifty miles from Modder camp. They make raids south. Pilcher the other day cut some of them up at Sunnyside and took Douglas, but evacuated it again, and it is now in their hands. Altogether you can compare the Boer attitude to a huge man confronting you, Magersfontein being his head, his left arm brought round in front of him almost at right angles to his body and his right stretched wide out in line with his shoulders. From time to time he makes little efforts to bring these outstretched arms farther round, as if to clasp and enfold the British position at Modder River, and it is with the special object of observing and reporting on these movements that our scouting is carried on. This is now attended to by fifteen of us only, under Chester Master, the rest of the corps, with the Major, having gone down to join French at Colesberg now that the advance here has ceased. On the east side of the line we patrol the plain nearly to Jacobsdal, and often lie in the grass or sit among the rocks and watch the little figures of Boers cantering along the road that leads south by the river. Further scouting in that direction is carried on by the garrison along the line.
A strong reconnaissance of ours the other day (January 9th) in the direction of Jacobsdal was a very dignified and solemn exhibition. Our guns rumbled forward with their eight-horse teams across the plain, while our cavalry, stretched out in open order at fifty yards apart, traversed the country in long strings that might have been seen and admired by the enemy at a distance, I daresay, of twenty miles. Chester Master took us forward on the left close to the river, where a party of the enemy, stealing up from the river-bed, tried to cut us off—there were only six or eight of us—and chivied us back to the main body as hard as we could go, two miles ventre à terre through the pelting rain, blazing away from horseback all the time at us, but naturally doing no harm. We thought we should lead them into a trap when we lifted the rise, but our troops had all halted far back in the plain, and our pursuers turned as soon as they saw them. However, we got some men to join us, and set to work to chase them as they had done us. It was really quite exciting; little bent figures of horsemen with flapping hats on ahead, bundling along for dear life, each with its spot of dust attending, we following, whooping and spurring. But bustled as they were, the Boers knew the way they were going. There are some narrow belts of bush that run out from the river into the plain, and as we neared one of these, crick-crack, crick-crack, the familiar croaking voices of Mausers warned us against a nearer approach. We dismounted and fired away vaguely at the distant foe, not so much with the idea of hitting anything, but it is always a relief to one's feelings. I don't know why the guns didn't come up, but was told that they didn't like to push on too far, as the Boers were supposed to be in force here. It seemed a pity to miss such a good shot, especially as we had an enormous great escort and an open country back to camp. But that is the way with guns; sometimes they rush up to within 500 yards of the enemy before they shoot, and sometimes they won't shoot at all.
The afternoon was spent in carrying out our reconnaissance. A reconnaissance is undertaken with a view to exposing the enemy's position and strength. Without intending a real attack, you demonstrate, feign a forward movement, push on in one place or another, or threaten to turn his flanks; so obliging him to move his men here and there, expose his strength and the limits of the position, and, perhaps, the whereabouts and number of his guns, if they should be tempted to open fire at our scouts. This is the theory of the thing. In practice it doesn't quite work, owing to the utter ignorance of the Boers of all military tactics. On all occasions when we have carried out these manoeuvres, notably round the Magersfontein hills before the battle, they have not only failed to make the proper responses to our moves, but have neglected to take notice of them in any way whatever. Not a gun speaks, not a man is to be seen. We demonstrate before empty hills. Creepily, you may conjecture the fierce eyes along the rock edge, but nothing shows. In vain we circle about the plain, advance, retire, curtsey, and set to him; our enemy, like the tortoise, "will not join the dance." Nothing is more discouraging. It is like playing to an empty house. However, as young B—— said to me, we did our part anyway, and if they are so ignorant as not to know the counter-moves, well, they must take the consequences. Manoeuvres of this kind, I must tell you, are a high test of military skill, and are often not fully intelligible to the lay mind. As an instance of this, I heard a man of ours, a shrewd fellow but no soldier, say, in his coarse Colonial way, as we were riding home, that he "was glad we had finished making a b——y exhibition of ourselves." It is to be hoped that after a little we shall get to appreciate these manoeuvres better. Just at first there is a slight suggestion of Gilbert and Sullivan about them.
LETTER VIII
SCOUTING ON THE MODDER
THORNHILL FARM, January 30, 1900.
On the eastern or Jacobsdal side the country is all a plain, dull and monotonous like a huge prairie, with no shade from the heat or shelter from the thunderstorms. On the western side it is very different. Great hills run roughly parallel to the river course, but leave a wide plain between themselves and it. They are clothed with a few scant bushes, out of which their tops rise bare and rocky; but in the shady hollows and gorges the low thorn-trees (mimosas) grow thickly, and over the plain that stretches to the river their grey foliage gathers into thick covers or is sometimes dotted here and there. The smell of the mimosa flowers (little yellow balls of pollen-covered blossom) is the most delicious I know, and the air as we ride through these lonely covers, where a few buck seem the only tenants, is fragrant with it. Far apart there are farms, prettily situated, generally close to the hills, the rocky sides of the kopjes rising behind, the wide plain spread in front. Each has its dam, sometimes more than one, built round with mud embankments, with huge weeping willows overhanging, and rows of tall poplars and blue gums (with shreds of bark rattling), and plenty of other trees. The farmhouses themselves are uninteresting, but the gardens, with their great thicket hedges of prickly pear and quince and brilliant blossoming pomegranate, are delightful, especially at this time, when the fruit is just getting ripe.
It was out on this western side, where we were feeling for the enemy's right flank, some twenty miles from camp, in a niche half way up the mountain, that we spent our last Christmas. We rather expected an attack, as a Kaffir of ours had been taken by them, and might be expected to reveal our movements. After dark we climbed the hill, dragging our ponies over the boulders and scratching our way through the thorns.
The Boer hill was four or five miles distant, north across the plain. All along its purple sides we ranged with our glasses, seeing nothing; but after dark several little points of light showed where their laager was. We sat all night among the rocks (I thought of you and the roast-turkey and holly), occasional heavy drops of rain falling, and a flicker of lightning now and then. Heavy clouds rolled up, and the night set in as dark as pitch. The level plain below us lay flat as a pancake from their hill to ours. So passed our '99 Christmas, picturesque possibly, but not very comfortable. Dark hillside; rain in large warm drops; night dark, with a star or two and struggling moon. In front, a distant hillside, with points of camp-fire twinkling, where the Boers, indifferent to our little party, were carousing and drinking their dop. Now and then a yawn or groan as a man stretches his cramped limbs. Down below under us an expanse of dark plain, like a murky sea, reaching to our feet, which we peer across, but can make out nothing. Peep-of-day time is the Boer's favourite hour for a call, and we were all very much on the qui vive when the white line showed along the east. No doubt, however, they all had such heads after their Christmas drink that they were in no humour for such a diversion. At any rate, they let us alone. Very stiff and weary and wet, we crept down the hill soon after daybreak and started on our twenty-mile homeward march. It was 5 P.M. before we reached camp, and we had had nothing to eat all day. I don't know if we were most tired or hungry. Take that three days as a sample of work. We start at 6 A.M. on Sunday; do a full day's riding and scouting, and get three hours' sleep that night at Enslin. Then we saddle up and pass the rest of the night and all the next day riding, except when we are climbing hills on foot to look out. The second night we sit among the hills expecting an attack, and next day till one o'clock are in the saddle again. À la guerre comme à la guerre. Three days and two nights' hard work on three hours' sleep. And all this time you are drinking champagne (well, most of it, anyway), and sleeping in soft beds with delicious white sheets, and smoking Egyptian cigarettes, and wearing clean clothes, with nice stiff collars and shirt cuffs, and having a bath in the morning, warm, with sweet-smelling soap (Oh, my God!), and sitting side by side at table, first a man and then a woman; the same old arrangement, I suppose, knives to the right and forks to the left as usual. Ho! ho! There are times I could laugh. No doubt we shall all get redigested as soon as we get back, but meantime, as a set-off to the hardship, one knows what it is to feel free. We eat what we can pick up, and we lie down to sleep on the bare ground. We wash seldom, and our clothes wear to pieces on our bodies. We find we can do without many things, and though we sometimes miss them, there comes a keen sense of pleasure from being entire master of oneself and all one's possessions. Your water-bottle hangs on your shoulder; your haversack, with your blanket, is strapped to your saddle; rifle, bandolier, and a pair of good glasses are your only other possessions. As you stand at your pony's side ready to mount, you may be starting for the day or you may be away a fortnight, but your preparations are the same.
Above all others does this scouting life develop your faculties, sharpen your senses of hearing and of seeing, and, in practical ways, of thinking too; of noting signs and little portents and drawing conclusions from them; of observing things. You feel more alive than you ever felt before. Every day you are more or less dependent on your own faculties. Not only for food and drink for yourself and your pony, but for your life itself. And your faculties respond to the call. Your glance, as it scans the rocks and the plain, is more wary and more vigilant; your ears, as you lie in the scrub, prick themselves at a sound like a Red Indian's, and the least movement among cattle or game or Kaffirs, or the least sign that occurs within range of your glasses, is noticed and questioned in an instant.
This you get in return for all you give up—in return for the sweet-smelling soap and the footman who calls you in the morning. Oh, that pale-faced footman! It is dawn when, relieved on look-out, I clamber down the rocks to our bivouac. A few small fires burn, and my pal points to a tin coffee cup and baked biscuit by one of them. It is the hour at home for the pale-faced footman. I see him now, entering the room noiselessly with cautious tread as if it were a sick-room, softly drawing a curtain to let a little light into the darkened apartment, and approaching with a cup of tea that the poor invalid has barely to reach out his hand to. Round our little camp I look, noting trifles with a keen enjoyment. Shall I ever submit to that varlet again? No, never! I will leap from my bed and wrestle with him on the floor. I will anoint him with my shaving soap and duck him in the bath he meant for me. Do you know the emancipated feeling yourself? Do you know the sensation when your glance is like a sword-thrust and your health like a devil's; when just to touch things with your fingers gives a thrill, and to look at and see common objects, sticks and trees, is like drinking wine? Don't you? Oh, be called by twenty footmen and be hanged to you!
This Christmas patrol of ours was of use in touching the southernmost and westernmost limits of the Boer position. It has shown that the enveloping movement of which so much has been said, and which has been pressed now and then on the east side, has not made much progress on the west.
The big mountain range, running east and west, comes to an end some thirty miles west of Modder Camp, where it breaks up into a few detached masses and peaks. The extreme one of these, a sugar-loaf cone, is called the Pintberg, and on this lonely eerie a picket of ours is generally placed; crouched among the few crags and long grass tufts that form its point, the horses tethered in the hollow behind; listening by night and watching by day. When we come out thus far, we sometimes stay out a week or more at a time. The enemy's position is along the hills north of the plain by the river—chiefly north of it, but in places south.
I am turning over my diary with the idea of giving you a notion of the sort of life we lead, but find nothing remarkable.
"Last night, Vice, Dunkley, and I were on lookout on the kopje. There had been a heavy storm in the afternoon and another broke as we reached the hill. We crouched in our cloaks waiting for it to pass before climbing up, as the ironstone boulders are supposed to attract the lightning (I have heard it strike them; it makes a crack like a pistol-shot, and Colonials don't like staying on the hill tops during a storm). We passed all night on our airy perch among the rocks, half wet and the wind blowing strong. It was a darkish and cloudy night, rather cold. Watched the light die out of the stormy sky; the lightning flickering away to leeward; wet gleams from the plain where the water shone here and there; moaning and sighing of wind through rock and branch. We were relieved by Lancers in the morning and jogged back to Thornhill, where our little camp is, and I am writing this in the shade of a big mimosa close to the garden wall.
"I have seen prints in shop windows of farms and soldiers, bits of country life and war mixed, a party of Lancers or Uhlans calling at some old homestead, watering their horses or bivouacking in the garden. Often what I see now makes me think of these subjects. A large camp is hideous and depressing; dirty and worn, the ground trampled deep in dust; filth and refuse lying about; the entrails and skins of animals, flies, beastly smells, and no excitement or animation. But these outlying scenes, scouts, pickets, &c., have a peculiar interest. This garden, for instance, is itself pretty and wild, with its tangle of figs, its avenue of quinces (great golden fruit hanging), its aloes all down the side, with heavy, blue spikes and dead stems sticking thirty feet in air, branching and blackened like fire-scorched fir-trees, and its dark green oranges and other fruit and flower-trees all mixed in a kind of wilderness; and behind this the steep kopjes, with black boulders heaped to the sky, and soft grey mimosas in between. It is a pretty spot in itself, but what a different, strange interest is brought in by the two or three carbines leaning against the wall, the ponies, ready saddled, tethered at the corner, the hint of camp-fire smoke climbing up through a clump of trees, and now and then a khaki-clad figure or two passing between the trunks or lying under them asleep."
Here is another little extract, a bit of a night-spy by three of us on the west side, where we had heard that the Douglas commando was establishing a laager near a drift some thirteen miles below camp; a move forward of their right arm, if true.
"The night was dark as pitch, and very windy, just what we wanted. After missing our way several times, whispering, consulting, and feeling about in the dark, we came on the wattle fence and beehive huts of a Kaffir kraal. Up to this we crept, and Vice dived into the hole of an entrance, and after some underground rumblings emerged with an old nigger as you draw a badger from his earth. The old man was soon persuaded by a moderate bribe to be our guide to the spot we wished to reconnoitre. He told us that parties of Boers were pretty often round that way, and that one had passed the previous night at the kraal. Dunkley agreed to stay with the horses, and Vice and I went on with the Kaffir. The country was grassy, with plentiful belts and clumps of silvery bush. After a while the moon shone out and the clouds dispersed, which made us feel disagreeably conspicuous in the white patches between the bush."
Exmoor, as far as the contour of the ground is concerned, is a little like the more up-and-down parts of the veldt, and scouting there would be very much like scouting here. For instance, suppose your camp was at Minehead, the Boers being in strength at Winsford, and a report comes in that they have pushed on a strong picket to Simonsbath. This rumour it is your business to test. With two friends on a dark, windy night you set out. You leave the road and take to the moor. You ride slowly, listening, watching intently, keeping off the high ground, and as much as possible avoiding sky-lines. At some cottage or moorland farm you leave the horses and creep forward on foot, working along the hollows and studying every outline. If they are at Simonsbath, they will have a lookout on the hill this side. A British picket would show its helmets at a mile, but the Boers don't affect sky-lines. They will be on this side, with the hill for a background, and very likely right down on the flat; for though by day the higher you are the better for seeing, yet at night, when your only chance is to see people against the sky, the lower you are the better. These points and others you discuss in whispers, crouched in the dark hollows, and then creep forward again.
"Vice and I crawled to the top of our ridge at last just as morning was breaking. There were bushes and rocks to hide among, and the clouds had all gone, and day broke clear. The deep river ravine lay right below us, and as the light penetrated, the first thing we saw was a small shelter tent with a cart or waggon by the side of it. We grinned and nudged each other and wagged our heads at the discovery, but kept them carefully hidden. Farther west was a detached kopje, the site of a permanent Boer picket, according to the Kaffir; but there was no regular laager. There were no horses grazing about, no cattle, no smoke, none of the usual and inevitable signs. A picket! Yes. Pushed out from Koodoosberg, the big hill which rises abruptly from the plain three or four miles off, but no real occupation. After studying the country yard by yard with our glasses, and making a few notes about the lie of the land and the names and positions of farms, we creep off and get back to camp by mid-day."
The results of these exciting little prowls, when worth while, are sent in to the General, and from the mass of evidence thus placed before him he is supposed to be able to define the enemy's position and movements.
Chester Master and our little body were paid a pretty compliment by the General the other day; for the Major having written to ask if we might join him, Methuen replied that he was sorry to have to refuse, but that we were doing invaluable work, and he really couldn't spare us.
Well, fare you well. We hear of heavy reinforcements arriving. They will be very welcome. Magersfontein, Colenso, Stormberg; we could do with a change. But what a revelation, is it not? Are these the prisoners that we played at dice for? One thing in it all pleases me, and that is the temper and attitude of England. I like the gravity, the quiet, dogged rolling up of the shirt-sleeves much better than the blustering, wipe-something-off-a-slate style which the papers made so familiar to us at the beginning.
LETTER IX
THE ADVANCE
MODDER RIVER CAMP,
February 13, 1900.
We are back in the old camp, but only for a few hours. This afternoon we march. Yesterday, crossing the line, we had a glimpse of Rimington and the rest of the corps. They have come up with French, and are off eastward on the flank march. We shall be after them hotfoot before dark. Things begin to shape themselves. We are going to bring our right arm round, leaving Magersfontein untouched, and relieve Kimberley by a flank march in force. Methuen stays here. Poor fellow! I wish him joy of it. Bobs and Kitchener direct the advance; French heads it. They say we shall march 50,000 strong. The line is choked with troop trains, batteries, siege guns, naval guns, and endless truckloads of stores and provisions. At last! is every one's feelings. The long waited for moment has come. You know a hawk's hover? Body steady, wings beating, and then the rushing swoop. So with the army. We have hovered steady here these two months with our wings stretched. Now we swoop.
Far out on the left flank our little body of fifteen has been in a great state of suspense for several weeks. We knew the great tide of advance was setting up from Orange River to the Modder, and as no orders came for us, we began to think we should be out of it. Then one evening, as I was sitting on some boulders above camp looking out over the country, I saw Chester Master riding in from headquarters with a smile on his face, and the sort of look that a man has who brings good news. Down I clambered. Yes, it had come. We were to move that night. The advance had begun, and we were off on an all-night march to catch up French. What a change came over the men! Instead of bored, sulky faces, and growlings and grumblings, all were now keen and alert. When the moon rose we started. Our very ponies seemed to know they were "in the movement," and stepped out cheerily. The night was clear as silver, and each man's shadow moved by his side, clean cut on the ground like the shadows thrown by the electric light outside the Criterion. Song and joke passed once more, and soon up went the favourite cavalry march, the most stirring tune of any, "Coming thro' the Rye." It was very jolly. Not often has one ridden on such a quest, on such a night, to such a tune as that.
So, old Modder, fare you well! Farewell the huge plain that one grew so fond of, with its blue and yellow bars of light, morning and evening; the shaggy kopjes heaped with black rocks, the secluded, lonely farms nestling beneath, old Cook's, where the figs were ripe in the garden, and Mrs. Dugmore, who gave us fresh bread and butter and stewed peaches. Not soon shall I forget those morning patrols. The sea of veldt, the pure air, the carelessness, the comradeship, and the freedom. Old Gordon has a good verse that I find sometimes running in my head—
Among the gleaming grass,
To wander as we've wandered many a mile,
And blow the cool tobacco cloud
And watch the white wreaths pass,
Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while."
And then the secret bivouacs and lurking-places along the river or in among the deserted hills. The lookout from the tall pyramid, where I have kept watch so many hours day and night, in heat of sun or with stars glittering overhead.
It was from this kopje that we got notice to quit, by the way. Our notice taking the shape of several little brown-backed Boers galloping about and spying at us from a hill one and a half miles to the north. That night we drew out in the plain after dark and camped (no fires) among the bushes, and at grey dawn stole back to have another look. Back dashes one of our advance scouts to tell us that a big force of Boers was just rounding the point. Next minute we were swinging out into the plain, through the low scrub and thorn bush, and as we did so the Boers came through the Nek. They must have known exactly where our usual camp was, and crept up overnight to cut us off. It wasn't by much that they missed. Three or four loiterers, as it was, had a warm minute or two. The first single shots grew to a sudden fierce crackle, like the crackle of a dry thorn branch on the fire, as they came through the bush. But they came on nevertheless, one horse hit only, and joined us, and we formed up and started at a steady gallop for the hills beyond the plain, six miles off; where there was a quite strong camp, established a few days before, for which we have lately been scouting. The Boers chased us some way, but we had got a long start, as they came through the rough ground, and they were never on terms with us. Still it was near enough. Five minutes earlier and what a slating we should have got!
We were told afterwards that the plan on this side was to draw the Boers south of the hills, so as to give the cavalry, which was to move westward just north of the range, a chance of cutting them off. The cavalry, however, didn't turn up. No one seemed to know what had become of them, and I daresay they were saying the same of us. The advice not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing is sometimes rather too literally followed in these manoeuvres, I think. Meantime the Boers have driven off all old Cook's cattle and all Mrs. Dugmore's too; and as we were sent out with the express object of "reassuring the farmers," the result is not entirely satisfactory.
No matter; this was all a side issue; now for a larger stage and more important operations. Blow trumpets and sound drums. Enter Lord Roberts and the main army.
LETTER X
RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY
KIMBERLEY CLUB, February 18.
It is with feelings of the deepest satisfaction that I look at the address at the head of this notepaper. Indeed for the last five minutes I have been staring at it dreamily without putting pen to paper, repeating "Kimberley Club, Kimberley," to myself, vaguely thinking of all it portends; the varied fortunes of the last three months; the cheery setting out; the first battles, that already seem so long ago; the repulse, and long, dreary wait by Modder; the gradual reconstruction of the whole plan of attack, and now the final achievement. Christian and I have been sharing a pint of champagne in the club bar. It was not till I heard the bottle pop that I realised, as by a sudden inspiration, that the British army had really attained its object at last. Very gravely we gave each other luck, and gravely drank our wine. Both of us, I am glad to be able to tell you, rose to the occasion, and as we looked across the bubbles, no foolish chaff or laughter marred the moment.
I wrote you my last letter from old Modder just as we were leaving to catch French. Marching light and fast, we got up with him on the night of the 15th at the Klip Drift on the Modder, northeast of Jacobsdal. From there we were sent back to guide on Kitchener, which we did, bringing him to French's camp on the river by 6 A.M. next morning (16th). We met on the way our little ambulance cart bobbing home with the adjutant languidly reclining. He had had one of those escapes that now and then come off. There was a high hill to the north, and up this the previous morning, R., an active walker, had climbed to have a view of the country. He reached the top, which is like a gable, slanting both sides to a thin edge, and precisely as he did so, ten or a dozen great hairy Boers reached it from the other side, and, at ten yards' distance across the rock edge, their eyes met. Can you conceive a more disgusting termination to a morning stroll? Without a word said, R. took to his heels and the Boers to their Mausers. Down the hill went R., bounding like a buck, and all round him whipped and whined the bullets among the rocks. Twice he went headlong, twisting his ankle badly once as the stones turned underfoot; but he reached the bottom untouched and the shelter of the bluff where he had left his pony, jumped on and dashed out into the plain and under the Boer fire again, and got clean away without a scratch, him and his pony. Was ever such luck?
French started on his final relief march about an hour later, and we were not able to accompany him as our horses were absolutely done up. It was very disappointing at the time to see him ride off on this last stage with a large party of our comrades, led by Rimington himself (he was first into Kimberley, we heard afterwards) at the head. However, as things turned out, it did not much matter, for the next day we had an interesting time, and saw a big job put in train, which is not finished yet, and which we shall probably see more of if we start, as they say, to-morrow.
The thing began at grey dawn. Chester Master and two or three Guides were sent forward to reconnoitre a kopje where the Boers the day before had had a gun. We found the gun gone. Some marks of blood, a half-dug grave, and two dead horses, showed that the fire of our long naval gun had been more or less effective. We then rode on, the column we were guiding getting gradually into formation, and we were just mounting the next ridge, when down in the valley beneath we saw a long line of waggons, stretching away eastward for miles, dragged by huge bullock teams. They were making the best of their way forward, each with a party of mounted men riding at the side, and at the first glance, so close to our army and camp were they, I almost fancied it must be a convoy of our own. However, we realised what was up pretty quickly. The Boers, hearing of French's flank march, and fearing they would be cut off if they remained, were abandoning their position in the hills about Magersfontein, which they had intrenched so strongly, and were quietly and promptly moving off towards Bloemfontein. The rearguard of their line was at that moment just opposite to us.
Chester Master immediately sent back an orderly as hard as he could go to tell our fellows what was in front and hurry them up, every moment being now of the utmost importance if we wanted to intercept the enemy. The Boers themselves took their measures instantly and with their usual coolness. A long line of kopjes ran eastward across the plain, flanking the line of their march, and directly they saw they were discovered, their horsemen dashed forward and began to occupy these, thus guarding the right flank of their retreat from our attack. Seeing this, Chester Master galloped back himself to urge on our Mounted Infantry, who were now mustering rapidly to the attack.
From the kopje on the extreme left front, where we were, we could now see extended at our feet the whole plan of the approaching battle, while as yet the two sides were invisible to each other. In the valley on the north side of the kopjes the Boers were urging on their convoy and rapidly despatching their sharpshooters to hold the hills along their right. On the south side were the masses of our columns, with the squadrons of Mounted Infantry now detaching themselves from the main body, and beginning to stream across the level plain towards the same hills; all with heads bent one way, horses prancing and pulling, and with all the signs of eager excitement, as though they divined, though as yet they could not see, the presence of the enemy. Over the dusty plain they canter, but they are too late by a few minutes. The Boers are there already, and as the Mounted Infantry come along, passing close beneath us, an outbreak of rifle-fire occurs, and the dry plain, which is of perfectly bare earth, is dotted with little white puffs of dust as the bullets strike along it. The fire is a bit short, but schooled by this time in "kopje tactics," and realising what is coming, our squadrons very prudently pull up and wait for the guns. They haven't long to wait. I always love to see the guns come up. Over stones and rocks and bushes, six strong horses at the gallop, the drivers lashing the off horses, the guns jumping and rumbling and swinging; then the yell, "Action front," and round come the teams with a splendid sweep; next instant they are cast off and jingle to the rear, and the little venomous guns are left crouching like toads, looking towards the enemy; the gunners are upon them before they are at a standstill (everything happens simultaneously); there is an instant's pause while the barrel rises, and then comes the naked spurt of fire, no smoke, and the officer steps clear of the dust and glues his glasses to his eyes as the shell screams on its way. Within ten minutes of our first viewing the enemy, half a battery had got into action near our kopje, and was bombarding the first hill along the enemy's flank.
Two or three of the Boer waggons, the last of the line, had been abandoned when their retreat was first discovered. These we took possession of, and with them two Dutchmen and some coloured boys, one of whom had been driver to a field-cornet of Cronjé's. From him we learnt that Cronjé had definitely abandoned the whole Magersfontein position, that this was the tail of his force going through, and that consequently there was nothing to be feared from a rear attack. Chester Master wrote a hasty despatch to this effect to Kitchener and gave it to me, after which I had a most amusing ride through our lines from the extreme left to the extreme right, where Kitchener was. First by our batteries, thundering and smoking (the enemy only had one gun in action that I saw, but I must say it did very well, feeling for the range with two short shots, and after that getting well into our guns every time), and then on through the Mounted Infantry, who kept on charging and retiring, until finally after three miles' ride I came to the far right, where Kitchener and the big naval gun sat together in state on the top of a small kopje strewn with black shining rocks. Here I gave in my despatch, "From Captain Chester Master, left front, sir," and the best military salute I have yet mastered (inclined to go into fits of laughter at the absurdity of the whole thing all the time), and the great man, with his sullen eye, sitting among his black rocks all alone, reads it and asks me a question or two, and vouchsafes to tell me that the information is "very important," which I suppose meant that he had not been certain whether he was in contact with the middle or extreme tail of the enemy's force. Various officers of the staff come up and I tell them all I know. I am very hungry and parched with thirst, but I know I shall get nothing out of these fellows. However, my luck holds. Under some thorn-trees below I spy the flat hats of the sailors, and under the lee of an ammunition waggon hard by a group of officers. All is well. Five minutes later I am pledging them in a whisky and sparklet, and sitting down to such a breakfast as I have not tasted for weeks. God bless all sailors, say I!
Orders meantime come thick and fast from the grim watcher on the rocks above, and troop after troop of Mounted Infantry go scouring away to the attack. It is a running fight. Kopje after kopje, as the Boers push on, breaks into fire and is left extinct behind. But still they keep their flank unbroken and their convoy intact. For the hundredth time I admire their dogged courage under these, the most trying of all circumstances, the protection of a slow retreat.
So it goes on through the day, and I have great fun galloping about on my own account, looking into things here and there, and watching the general progress of events. I meet Chester Master again about 5 P.M., and he asks me to ride forthwith to Kimberley with him if Flops can stand it. All the Boer force has cleared from Magersfontein (our information was all right) and is in retreat on Bloemfontein, and Kitchener is sending word by Chester Master to French, bidding him right turn and march to head off the Boer retreat, while he (Kitchener) hangs on their tail.
An hour later we start; four of us. Chester Master, myself, May, and a black boy. It is a twenty-three mile ride. A full moon is in the sky but clouds obscure it, which is a good thing, as the country is being traversed by stragglers of theirs, leaving the hills and in retreat eastward. We hear of several such fugitive bodies from our pickets for the first few miles. Then we are in absolute solitude. The plain lies bare and blanched around us. A thorn bush or two sticks up on it, or, now and then, the ghastly shape of a dead horse lying in puffed up relief with legs sticking out stiff and straight and an awful stench blowing from it. Kimberley's search-light at stated intervals still swings its spoke over our head.
Six or seven miles out from Kimberley my pony gives out, and Chester Master and May on fresh horses ride on, leaving me the boy. We plod on, an interesting, delicious ride. I get off and walk. A little wind rustles over the dry earth and bushes, but otherwise there is not a whisper of sound. The landscape at one moment lies white before us as if it had been washed in milk, and the next is blotted out with clouds. Now and again we pause to listen, and the boy stands like a bronze image of Attention with bent head and held breath, the whites only of his eyes moving as he rolls them from one object to another. At last from a low kopje top by the path comes the first loud and welcome "Halt! Who goes there?" of an English picket. Another two or three miles brings me to an outpost of the town, and there, dead tired and Flops the same, I fling myself on the ground, after hearty greetings and a word or two of talk with the guard, and do a three hours' sleep till the dawn of the 17th.
In a grey light I rouse myself to look out across the wet misty flat, hearing some one say, "Who's that? What force is that?" followed immediately by "Call out the guard; stand to your arms, men." But then, as light increases, we see by the regular files and intervals that the force is British, and I know that Chester Master has got in all right and delivered his message, and French already, at a few hours' notice, is casting back with that terrible cavalry of his after Cronjé and the retreating Boers.
Kimberley does not in the least give one the idea of a beleaguered and relieved town. There are a few marks of shells, but so few and far between as not to attract attention, and you might walk all about the town without being struck by anything out of the common. I have sampled the roast-horse and roast-mule which the garrison seems to have been chiefly living on for the past five or six weeks, and find both pretty good, quite equal, if not superior, to the old trek-ox. Some people tell us pathetic stories of the hardships to women and young children and babies, owing to the difficulty of getting proper food, especially milk. On the other hand, many seem to have actually enjoyed the siege, and two or three young ladies have assured me that they found it infinitely diverting and enjoyed an excellent time, making up afternoon tea-parties among their friends. The relief was not the occasion of any excitement or rejoicing whatever. People walked about the streets and went about their business and served in their shops without showing in their appearance or manner any trace of having passed through a bad time or having been just delivered from it. They seemed, on the whole, glad to see us, but there was no enthusiasm. This was partly due, I think, to the absence of drink. The Colonial's idea of gratitude and good-fellowship is always expressed in drink, and cannot be separated from it, or even exist without it. Many felt this. Several said to me, "We are awfully glad to see you, old chap, but the fact is there's no whisky." On the whole, except the last week, during which the Boers had a hundred-pounder gun turned on, one doesn't gather that the siege of Kimberley was noteworthy, as sieges go, either for the fighting done or the hardships endured. But that is not to reflect on the defenders, who showed a most plucky spirit all through, and would have resisted a much severer strain if it had been brought to bear upon them.
LETTER XI
PAARDEBERG—THE BOMBARDMENT
February 24, 1900.
We are once more upon the Modder. I should think the amount of blood, Dutch and English, this river has drunk in the last few months will give it a bad name for ever. There is something deadly about that word Modder. Say it over to yourself. Pah! It leaves a taste of blood in the mouth.
We have been fighting in a desultory kind of way for the last week here. Coming from Kimberley, where we had gone to holloa back French (you could follow him by scent all the way from the dead horses), we made a forced march and rejoined him here by the river, where he is busily engaged, with Kitchener at the other end, in bombarding old Cronjé in the middle. They have fairly got the old man. Kitchener had stuck to him pretty tight, it seems, after we left them that evening at Klip Drift. French has nicked in ahead. Macdonald has arrived, I believe, or is arriving, and there are various other brigades and divisions casting up from different quarters, all concentrating on unhappy Cronjé. Lord Roberts, I suppose, will get the credit, but part of it, one would think, belongs to Kitchener, who planned the movement and put it in train before Lord Roberts arrived.
Cronjé, by all accounts, has about 4000 men with him. He has dug himself into the river banks, which are steep and afford good cover. You would never guess, sweeping the scene with your glasses, that an army could be hiding there. The river curves and winds, its course marked by the tops of the willows that grow along its banks. The land on both sides stretches bare and almost level, but there are a few rises and knolls from which our artillery smashes down its fire on the Boer laager. At one point you can make out a ragged congregation of waggons, broken and shattered, some of them burning or smouldering. That is where the laager is, but not a soul can one see move. The place looks an utter solitude, bare and lifeless in the glare of the sun. There is no reply to our busy guns. The little shrapnel clouds, stabbed with fire, burst now here now there, sometimes three or four together, over the spot, and the blue haze floats away, mingling with the darker, thicker vapour from the less frequent lyddite. "What are they shooting at?" a stranger would say; "there is nobody there." Isn't there? Only 4000 crafty, vigilant Boers, crowding in their holes and cuddling their Mausers. Ask the Highlanders.
You will have heard all about that by this time. The desperate attempt last Sunday to take the position by storm. It was another of those fiendish "frontal attacks." Have we been through Belmont and Graspan and Modder River and Magersfontein for nothing? Or must we teach every general in turn who comes to take charge of us what the army has learnt long ago, that a frontal attack against Mausers is leading up to your enemy's strong suit. For Methuen there were reasons. Methuen could not outflank, could not go round, was not strong enough to leave his lines of communication, and had practically no cavalry. He had to go straight on. Belmont, Graspan, and Modder were turnpike gates. The toll was heavy, but there was no choice but to pay. But what was the reason of this latest? We had them here safely bottled up. We have them still. It is only a question of days. The attack could have gained nothing by success; has lost little by its failure. The casualties were 1500. I know all about eggs and omelettes, but these were simply thrown in the gutter.
Never tell me these Boers aren't brave. What manner of life, think you, is in yonder ditch? Our artillery rains down its cross fire of shells perpetually. The great ox-waggons are almost totally destroyed or burnt. The ammunition in the carts keeps blowing up as the fire reaches it. The beasts, horses and oxen, are strewn about, dead and putrid, and deserters say that the stench from their rotting carcasses is unbearable. Night and day they have to be prepared for infantry attacks, and yet, to the amazement of all of us, they still hold out.
Old Cronjé's apparent object is to try and save Bloemfontein by delaying us till reinforcements come up from the south and east. This is really what we want, because the more of the enemy we get in front of this great army of ours, the harder we shall be able to hit them. But evidently Cronjé is ignorant of our strength.
Meantime we can make out in our break-of-day scoutings up the river that bodies of men are approaching from the east. They have made a laager about ten miles up, and evidently mean to dispute our passage to the capital. The longer old Cronjé holds out, the more men from Colesberg and Natal will come up, the more entrenchments will be cut, and the harder will be our way to Bloemfontein. 'Tis the only way he sees to save the town, for we should march straight in else. Perhaps, too, he cherishes some hope of being relieved himself; of a determined attack from without, which might enable him, by a sudden sally, to break through; though, for dismounted men (and their horses are all dead by this time), the chances of ultimate escape in a country like this must be very small, one would think. Anyhow, he sticks to his work like a glutton. The shells burst over them. The lyddite blows them up in smoke and dust, the sun grills, the dead bodies reek, our infantry creep on them day and night; foul food, putrid water, death above and around, they grin and bear it day after day to gain the precious hours. And all the time we on our side know perfectly well that no relief they could possibly bring up would serve our army for rations for a day.
LETTER XII
PAARDEBERG—THE SURRENDER
March 5, 1900.
Well, that is over, and I hope you are satisfied. We have got Cronjé. His victories are o'er. We have also got Mrs. Cronjé, which was a bit more than we bargained for. They cut her an extra deep hole, I hear, to be out of shell-fire, and she sat at the bottom all day long, receiving occasional visits from Cronjé, and having her meals handed down to her. One can fancy her blinking up at her "Man," whom she always, I am told, accompanies on his campaigns, and shaking her head sorrowfully over the situation. There is nothing very spirit-stirring about a mud hole and an old woman sitting at the bottom of it, but the danger and the terrible hardships were real enough. That is always the way with these Dutch. They have all the harsh realities and none of the glamour and romance. Athens, with their history and record, would have made the whole world ring for ever. But they are dumb. It seems such a waste.
Albrecht too is among the prisoners, the famous German "expert," who designs their works for them and manages their artillery; and we have taken 4000 prisoners, and several guns and one detested "pompon." Come, now, here is a little bit of all right at last.
I was one of a party that rode down with the Major on the morning of the surrender to the laager and saw the prisoners marched in. They seemed quite cheery and pleased with themselves. They were dressed in all sorts of ragged, motley-looking clothes; trousers of cheap tweed, such as you see hung up in an East End slop-shop; jackets once black, now rusted, torn and stained, and battered hats. They reminded me more of a mob of Kent hop-pickers than anything else, and it was a matter of some surprise, not to say disgust, to some of us to think that such a sorry crowd should be able to withstand disciplined troops in the way they did.
I talked to several of them. They all agreed in saying that they had been through the most ghastly time in the last ten days and were heartily glad it was over. They exchanged nods and good-days with us and the soldiers who were standing about, and altogether seemed in a very friendly and conciliatory mood. All this, however, it struck me, was rather put on, a bit of acting which was now and then a trifle overdone. Boers are past-masters at hiding their real feelings and affecting any that they think will be acceptable. It is a trait which has become a national characteristic, and the craft, dissimulation, the slimness, as it is called, of the Boers is a by-word. I suppose it comes from the political situation, the close neighbourhood of a rival race, stronger and more energetic, which fosters in the stolid Dutchman, by way of buckler, this instinctive reticence and cunning. His one idea is to make what he can out of the situation without troubling his head for a moment about his own candour and sincerity. It is Oriental, the trait you expect to find in a John Chinaman, but which surprises you in a burly old Dutchman. Still there it is. At any farm you go to, men, women, and children will put on a semblance of friendship, and set to work to lie with a calmness which is really almost dignified. No one in this country ever believes a thing a bit the more because a Dutchman says it.
We went on into the captured laager. It was an extraordinary, interesting, and loathsome sight. Dead bodies of horses and men lay in all directions in various stages of decomposition, and the reeking smell was something quite indescribable. I fancied, even after leaving the place, that I carried the smell about with me, and that it had got into my clothes. The steep river banks were honeycombed with little holes and tunnels, and deep, narrow pits, like graves; narrow at the top, and hollowed out below to allow less entrance for shells. Evidently each man had cut his own little den. Some were done carelessly, mere pits scooped out. Others were deep, with blankets or old shawls spread at the bottom, and poles with screens of branches laid across the top to keep off the sun. I saw one or two which were quite works of art; very narrow tunnels cut into the side of the river-cliff, and turning round after you entered, making a quite secure retreat, unless perhaps an extra heavy old lyditte might happen to burst the whole bank up. This actually happened, they told us, with the very last shot fired the night before; a bit of the bank having been blown up with eight men in it, of whom five were killed and three wounded. The whole river channel looks as if a big colony of otters or beavers had settled here, honeycombing the bank with their burrows, and padding the earth bare and hard with their feet. It was all worn like a highroad. On the other side, the waggons were a sight; shattered, and torn, and wrecked with shot; many of them burnt; several, huge as they are, flung upside down by the force of a shell bursting beneath them. All their contents were littered and strewn about in every direction; blankets, clothes, carpenters' and blacksmiths' tools, cooking utensils, furniture. You would have thought the Boers were settlers moving to a new country with all their effects, instead of an army on the march. This is how they do things, however, in the homely, ponderous fashion. They often take their women and children with them. There were many in the crowd we captured.
I wandered about alone a long time, looking at the dismal, curious scene where so much had been endured. White flags, tied to poles or stripped branches, fluttered from waggon tops. Our ambulance carts came along, and the Tommies, stripping to the waist, proceeded to carry, one by one, the Dutch wounded through the ford on stretchers.
We are bivouacked ourselves far up the river, in a secluded nook among mimosas and kopjes with the thick current of the lately unknown, but now too celebrated, Modder rolling in front of us. The weather has changed of late. It is now autumn. We have occasional heavy rains, and you wake up at night sometimes to find yourself adrift in a pool of water. It gets chilly too.
The enemy are all about the place, and we interview them every morning at daybreak, sometimes exchanging shots, sometimes not. We lay little traps for each other, and vary our manoeuvres with intent to deceive. This advance guard business (we are dealing here with the relief parties of Boers that have come up between us and Bloemfontein) always reminds me of two boxers sparring for an opening. A feint, a tap, a leap back, both sides desperately on the alert and wary.
We lost poor Christian yesterday in one of these little encounters. He was mortally wounded in stopping at short range to pick up a friend whose horse had been shot. I have mentioned him, I think, to you in my letters. There was no one in the corps more popular. "Tell the old dad I died game," was what he said when the Major, coming up with supports, knelt down to speak to him.
Nothing very noteworthy has occurred since the surrender. The army has been quietly resting, taking stock of the prisoners, and sending them to the railway, and we are expecting every day now the order to advance. The enemy, meanwhile, have been collecting in some force, and are evidently prepared to dispute our march east. Yesterday we had a duel with a gun which they have managed, goodness knows how, to drag up to the top of a commanding hill some miles up the river. However, it was too strongly placed. We lost several men. The enemy's fire was very accurate, and they ended up by sending three shots deliberately one after the other right into our ambulance waggons.
We shall be able to post letters to-day, and the reason this one is so extremely dirty is that I am finishing it in a drizzling rain, being on picket guard a couple of miles up the river, not far from the scene of yesterday's shooting. The Boers are on the bustle this morning. One can see them cantering about on the plain just across the river, where thousands of their cattle are grazing. In front the big-gun hill glimmers blue in the mist. Two or three of the enemy have crept up the woody river-course and tried a shot at us; some close; the bullets making a low, quick whistle as they flit overhead. My two companions—there are three of us—are still blazing an indignant reply at the distant bushes. By the amount of fire tap, tap, tapping like an old woodpecker all round the horizon, it seems that there is a sudden wish for a closer acquaintanceship among the pickets generally this morning. Those fellows in the river are at it again!