Ten Months In The Field With The Boers Part 21

A captain of the Irish Brigade told me that his company consisted of seventy-eight men, completed by yeomanry, and he called his adjutant to verify the figures he had given me.

At 11.20 a battery of the Royal Field Artillery went off in the same direction at a trot. A fraction of about fifty returned at a walk.

About 100 metres from my point of observation--an old waggon--the Irish Brigade and the Borderers stood at ease. At 11.30 a battalion was moved forward. Five minutes later a second battery, a great naval 10-centimetre gun, drawn by twenty oxen, joined the fighting line with the rest of the Irish.

Everything had been done very rapidly. One could see that the men had been trained to sudden alarms by six months of warfare. Thirty-five minutes before the men were busy in camp, and the beasts were grazing.

Now more than half the men were engaged, and all were ready awaiting orders to advance.

The skirmishers came back at a gallop, and a man arrived to hasten the advance of the naval gun, the oxen of which were almost trotting already.

At 11.55 two other naval guns, also drawn by twenty oxen each, went forward to join the others. A large ambulance-waggon followed.

In the camp a dog was howling dismally. The cannonade slackened a little.

At noon an ammunition-waggon, drawn by ten mules, went off to supply the line of combatants.

It is lamentable that the Burghers, clinging obstinately to their defensive tactics, know nothing of rear or flank movements.

There are no sentries either right or left. All the troops have gone off in the direction of the cannon--that is to say, towards the east--and in that immense camp, containing some hundreds of waggons, there are only a platoon of Mounted Rifles and a half-battalion of infantry. A handful of men could carry the camp and sack it.

In addition to the material result, what a moral effect would be produced on the troops engaged a mile and a half off, if they knew that an enemy, however feeble, was in possession of the road of retreat, and engaged in plundering the stores and ammunition!

It is true that the Boers did not know the state of the camp, but if they had they would have done nothing. This circ.u.mstance, confirming many other instances, would have convinced me more firmly than ever, if that were possible, that the great secret of warfare is to _dare_!

This, I think, was the sole science of Murat, La.s.salle and many another famous _sabreur_. And the Emperor himself, was not he, too, a type of audacity in the conception of his most brilliant campaigns, in the conduct of his most glorious victories?

About 12.30 the firing ceased. It recommenced again about 3 and 4.30.

At three o'clock another great ammunition waggon was despatched. No losses were announced that evening.

The staff was at work till one o'clock in the morning, and a long telegram in cipher was sent off to Pretoria. In the evening rather late I heard the movements of troops, which recommenced the next morning at dawn.

July 9.--From 7 a.m. to 7.30 a battery and several detachments of the Mounted Rifles, ten or fifteen, moved off to the east-south-east, strongly flanked on the right (south) by other Mounted Rifles and by a battery.

In the early morning there were two centimetres of ice on the artillery buckets, and towards noon we were glad to be in our s.h.i.+rtsleeves. This great variation, more than 37 degrees in twenty hours, is very trying.

We were now in mid-winter, and the sun set at five o'clock. At eight the firing, which was very brisk, seemed nearer than the day before. The Boer sh.e.l.ls, carrying too far, burst between the camp and the line of the English artillery, which we could see perfectly. The infantry was posted towards the east-south-east.

The staff-officer told me that the English were engaged with General Botha's 5,000 men. I offered no opinion, but I was sure he was wrong, and information I received later justified this belief. I was rather inclined to think that it was the worthy Derksen, who had collected some 500 or 600 men, and who, by rapid and unexpected movements, was trying to make the enemy believe in the presence of a very considerable force.

My staff-officer further told me that General Hutton was in command of 6,000 men, three batteries, and four naval guns. This, to judge by what I saw, may very probably have been correct. At any rate, a formidable convoy was on the spot. The guns were still booming.

An old sergeant with four stripes was introduced to me. He was the senior member of Battery 66, which had been kept in reserve. He had been serving under Lieutenant Roberts, who was killed at Colenso.

During the day four ambulance-waggons were sent out to the lines. It was at first intended that I should be taken to Pretoria, but as the route of the convoy had been changed, I was conveyed to Springs. I was one of fifteen prisoners, not counting the wounded.

At 4.30 the firing was much closer, but we had to start; the convoy was ready. It consisted of fifty bullock-waggons, eight or ten of them filled with wounded men. We, the prisoners, were at the head of the convoy, strongly guarded by infantry and mounted men. A few mounted irregulars preceded us as scouts. These men, recruited chiefly among the Afrikanders, sometimes even among the Boers, know the country very well.

Our guide was a native of Boksburg, and knew all the men with Derksen, the leader of the Boksburg commando. I made no attempt to conceal the disgust I felt for this renegade. But nothing distracted him from his duties, for he had a holy horror of falling into the hands of the Boers.

During the night fires in the bush reddened the horizon on every side.

They came to ask us several times if these were signals. I really had no idea, but I was inclined to think not.

On account of the meagre fuel afforded by the short dry gra.s.s of the veldt, the fires we saw in these regions had none of the grandeur of the bush-fires in the Soudan, where the high gra.s.s is from 6 to 10 feet high. In those whirlwinds of fire the flames seem to lick the sky, and the tallest trees are twisted and calcined like straws. Numerous as the fires were, they did not warm the atmosphere, and the cold was terrible.

At last we arrived, supperless, at Springs, at 1.30 in the morning, so frozen that we were obliged to look and see if our feet and hands were still in place. We slept huddled in the guard-room at the railway-station.

Early on the morning of the 10th, Major Pelletier, of the Royal Canadian Regiment, came to fetch me to breakfast at mess. But Captain Ogilvie, the commandant of the station, would not let me leave his jurisdiction till I had been to his quarters to make my toilet.

After this process I went off with the Major. He was a charming fellow, a French Canadian, as his name indicates, and a native of a little village in Normandy. I spent the day with him. He told me the most interesting things about Canadian life, spoke enthusiastically of the fine sport there, and invited me to come and pay him a visit later on.

At the same time he confided to me that both he and his men were suffering terribly from the heat. I then, being almost frozen, make up my mind never to accept his kind invitation.

I met a young doctor, too, whose name I forget, also a French Canadian.

All the French Canadians, who form the majority of the contingent, speak excellent French, interlarded with old-fas.h.i.+oned expressions and marked by a strong Norman accent. Many of them do not know a word of English.

At six o'clock I start for Johannesburg, in the carriage reserved for officers. My pockets are full of French Canadian papers, which, though some two months old, are full of news fresh to me.

On my arrival, I presented myself to Major Davies, the commandant of the military police. He speaks French very correctly, was very agreeable, and gave me leave to go about the town on parole. I had only to leave my address with him, and to report myself at his office every morning at eleven o'clock.

On the 13th a plot was discovered to seize the town. About 500 arrests took place during the evening. As I had taken the oath of neutrality, I was not among the conspirators, and while hostilities last I can say no more on this subject.

On the 14th I received a permit to return to France, and I started by the two o'clock train that very day.

All along the line the railway-stations had been converted into entrenched camps. We continually pa.s.sed trains loaded with horses, guns, and men--some twenty in all, perhaps. We arrived at Kroonstad at eleven in the morning on the 15th. Nothing remained of the sheds and the goods-station which we had burnt on May 12, with all the stores.

Involuntarily I took out my pocket-book, and read the names of the men who then composed the French corps. We were not forty altogether.

Three had been killed, five had disappeared, the others were dispersed.

I tried to go out of the station to revisit all those places in the town where we spent a fortnight, gay, full of hope, almost complete in numbers. But the station was surrounded by sentries, and no one was allowed to pa.s.s.

From a distance the prospect was dismal enough. The streets were deserted, and, as if to emphasize the fact that everywhere there is suffering, the Red Cross flag floated sadly over the town. In the foreground, close to us, on the line, and in the sidings, were deserted railway-carriages, half burnt, overturned, and broken.

All round the town were field hospitals and vast camps. There were about 11,000 men in all, I was told. A feverish activity reigned at the station, a continuous bustle and movement. Convoys of provisions and arms followed each other in rapid succession. We counted sixteen during the day on the 16th.

Horses and mules were entrained in some, others brought back the worn-out horses. Many of these poor beasts had died on the road; most of them could hardly stand. They were dragged along a few steps, and a non-commissioned officer put a bullet through their heads inside the station. Thirty or forty thus executed lay heaped one on another in a pool of blood, which ran in a little stream towards the line.

On the platform stood cases of ammunition and arms. Several placed together contained Lee-Enfield cavalry carbines, and were marked 'Very Urgent.'

On the 16th we were still at Kroonstad, and a trainful of prisoners pa.s.sed going to East London. It became one of the daily exercises of the garrison to walk to the station and see the travellers.

Two questions were to be heard perpetually:

'Do you think it is nearly over?' 'Have you any Kruger pennies?'

And Tommy is quite happy when they tell him that, as to being nearly over, it's not quite that; but that as to going on much longer, it won't go on much longer--at least, it depends on what you mean by much longer; or when someone gives him one or two Kruger pennies.

At last we left Kroonstad at ten o'clock in the evening, pa.s.sing through Brandfort, that village to which, feted and acclaimed, we had come with _Long Tom_ in January. All along the route the railway had been destroyed, and we travelled on rails laid on unballasted sleepers by the Royal Engineers.

Trenches had been dug to enable the train to pa.s.s over the shallow, dried-up streams without any very artistic labour, and sometimes the little half-destroyed bridges had been repaired with logs and made to do duty again.

It seemed wonderful that it could all hold. But it appeared--I heard this at the camp at Springs--that one of the chief engineers of the railway service was a civilian, a French Canadian, who had already distinguished himself in America by the construction of very daring railways.