Book: Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899 1900)

A >> A. G. Hales >> Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899 1900)




When the scouts are out the laager is fixed for the night--not a very
exhaustive proceeding, as the Boers do not go in for luxuries of any kind.
Here a tarpaulin is stretched over a kind of temporary ridge pole, blankets
are tossed down on the hard earth, saddles are used for pillows, and the
couch is complete. A little way farther down the line a rude canvas screen
is thrown over the wheels of a waggon, and a family, or rather husband and
wife, make themselves at home under the waggon; whilst the single men
simply throw themselves at full length on the ground, wrap their one thin,
small blanket round them, and smoke and jest merrily enough, whilst the
Kaffirs light the fires and make the coffee. There is scarcely any timber
in this part of Africa, and the fuel used is the dried manure of cattle
pressed into slabs about fifteen inches long, eight inches wide, and three
inches thick. The smoke from the fires is very dense, and soon fills the
air with a pungent odour, which is not unpleasant in the open, but would be
simply intolerable in a building. The coffee is soon made, and the simple
meal begins; it consists of "rusks," a kind of bread baked until it becomes
crisp and hard, and plenty of steaming hot coffee. I never saw any people
so fond of this beverage as the Boers are. The Australian bushman and
digger loves tea, and can almost exist upon it; but these Boers cling to
coffee. They live, when out in laager, like Spartans, they dress anyhow,
sleep anyhow, and eat just rusks and precious little else. Talk about
"Tommy" and his hard times, why a private soldier at the front sleeps
better, dresses better, and eats better than a Boer general; yet never once
did I hear a Boer complain of hardships. After tea the Boers sit about and
clean their rifles; the women move from one little group to another,
chatting cheerfully, but I saw nothing in their conduct, or in the conduct
of any man towards one of them, that would cause the most chaste matron in
Great Britain to blush or droop her eyes. There is in the laager an utter
absence of what we term soldierly discipline; men moved about, went and
came in a free and easy fashion, just as I have seen them do a thousand
times in diggers' camps. There was no saluting of officers, no stiffness,
no starch anywhere. The general lounges about with hands in pockets and
pipe in mouth; no one pays him any special deference. He talks to the men,
the striplings, and the women, and they talk back to him in a manner which
seems strange to a Britisher familiar to the ways of military camps. After
the chatting, the pridikant, or parson, if there is one in the laager,
raises his hands, and all listen with reverent faces whilst the man of God
utters a few words in a solemn, earnest tone; then all kneel, and a prayer
floats up towards the skies, and a few moments later the whole camp is
wrapped in sleep, nothing is heard but the neighing of horses, the lowing
of cattle, the bleating of sheep, and the occasional barking of a dog.
There is no clatter of arms, no ringing of bugles, no deep-toned challenge
of sentries, no footfall of changing pickets.

At regular intervals men rise silently from the ranks of the sleepers, pick
up their rifles noiselessly, and silently, like ghosts, slip out into the
deep shadows of the kopjes, and other men, equally silent, glide in from
posts they have been guarding, and stretch themselves out to snatch slumber
whilst they may. At dawn the men toss their blankets aside, and spring up
ready dressed, and move amongst their horses; the Kaffirs attend to the
morning meal, the everlasting rusks and coffee are served up, horses are
saddled, cattle are yoked to waggons, and in the twinkling of an eye the
camp is broken up, and the irregular army is on the march again, with
scouts guarding every pass in front, scouts watching (themselves unseen) on
every height. They travel fast, because they travel light; they use very
little water, because they find it impossible to move it from place to
place. Many critics charge them with habits of personal uncleanliness. It
is true that in their laagers one does not see as much soap and water used
as in our camps, but this is possibly due to want of opportunity as much as
to want of inclination. In sanitary matters they are neglectful. I did not
see a single latrine in any of their laagers, nor do I think they are in
the habit of making them, and to this cause and to no other I attribute the
large amount of fever in their ranks. They do not seem to understand the
first principles of the laws of sanitation, and had this season been a wet,
instead of a peculiarly dry one, I venture to assert that typhoid fever
would have wrought far more havoc amongst them than our rifles.

I saw no literature in laager except Bibles. I witnessed no sports of any
kind, and the only sport I heard them talk about was horse-racing. I saw no
gambling, heard no blasphemy, noticed no quarrelling or bickering, and can
only say, from my slight acquaintance with life in Boer laager in war time,
that it may be rough, it may be irksome, it may not be so fastidiously
clean as a feather-bed soldier might like it, but I have been in many
tougher, rougher places, and never heard anyone cry about it.





THROUGH BOER GLASSES.

BURGHERSDORP.


I had a good many opportunities of chatting with Boers during the time
which elapsed between my capture and liberation, and had a long talk with
the President of the Orange Free State, Mr. Steyn; also with several of his
ministerial colleagues. Their ministers of religion, whom they call
pridikants, also chatted to me freely, as occasion offered. I had more than
one interview with their fighting generals. Medical men in their service I
found very much akin to medical men the world over. They patched up the
wounded and asked no questions concerning nationality, just as our own
medicos do. Personally, I must say that I found the Boers first-class
subjects for Press interviews. They did not know much about journalists and
the ways of journalism. Possibly had they had more experience in regard to
"interviews," I should not have found them quite so easy to manage, but it
never seemed to enter their heads that a man might make good "copy" out of
a quiet chat over pipes and tobacco. One of their stock subjects of
conversation was their great General, the man of Magersfontein--General
Cronje.

"What do you Britishers and Australians think of Cronje?" was a stock
question with them. "Do you think him a good fighter?"

"Well, yes, unquestionably he is a good fighting man."

"Do you think him as good as Lord Roberts?"

"No. We men of British blood don't think there are many men on earth as
good as the hero of Candahar."

"Do you think him as good a man as Lord Kitchener?"

"No. Very many of us consider the conqueror of the Soudan to be one who, if
he lives, will make as great a mark in history as Wellington."

At this a joyous smile would illuminate the face of the Boer. He would
reply, "Yes, yes; Roberts is a great man, a very great man indeed. So is
Kitchener, so is General French, so is General Macdonald, so is General
Methuen. Yet all those five men are attempting to get Cronje into a corner
where they can capture him. They have ten times as many soldiers as Cronje
has, ten times as many guns; therefore, what a really great man Cronje must
be on your own showing."

That was before the fatal 27th of February on which Cronje surrendered.

I often asked them how they, representing a couple of small States, came to
get hold of the idea that they could whip a colossal Power like Great
Britain in a life or death struggle; and almost invariably they informed me
that they had expected that one of the great European Powers would take an
active part in the struggle on their behalf, and, furthermore, they had
been taught to think that Britain's Empire was rotten to the core, so much
so that as soon as war commenced in earnest all her colonies would fall
away from her and hoist the flag of independence, and that India would leap
once again into open and bloody mutiny. They expressed themselves as being
dumbfounded when they heard that Australian troops were rallying under the
Union Jack, and seemed to feel most bitterly that the men from the land of
the Southern Cross were in arms against them. "We fell out with England,
and we thought we had to fight England. Instead we find we have to fight
people from all parts of the world, Colonials like ourselves. Surely
Australia and Canada might have kept out of this fight, and allowed us to
battle it out with the country we had a quarrel with."

"The Canadians and Australians are of British blood."

"Well, what if they are? Ain't plenty of the Cape Volunteers who are
fighting under President Kruger's banner born of Dutch parents? Yet,
because they fight against Englishmen, you call them all rebels, and talk
of punishing them when the war is over, if you win, just because they lived
on your side of the border and not on ours. Would you ask one Boer to fight
against another Boer simply because he lived on one side of a river and his
blood relation lived on the other? You Britishers brag of your pride of
blood, and draw your fighting stock from all parts of the world in war
time, but you have no generosity; you won't allow other people to be proud
of their blood too."

I tried to persuade them that I did not for one moment think that Britain
would be vindictive towards so-called rebels in the hour of victory, and
pointed out that, in my small opinion, such a course would be foreign to
the traditions of the Motherland; and was often met with the retort that if
England did so the shame would be hers, not theirs. Many a time I was told
to remember the Jameson raid and the manner in which the Boers treated not
only the leaders of that band of adventurers, but the men also. "Look
here," said one old fighting man to me, as he leant with negligent grace on
his rifle, "I was one of those who helped to corner Jameson and his men,
and I can tell you that we Boers knew very well that we would have been
acting within our rights if we had shot Jameson and every man he had with
him, because his was not an act of war--it was an act of piracy; and had we
done so, and England had attempted to avenge the deed, half the civilised
world would have ranged themselves on our side; but we did not seek those
men's blood; we gave them quarter as soon as they asked for it, and after
that, though we knew very well they had done all that men could do to
involve us in a war of extermination with a great nation, we sent their
leader home to his own country to be tried by his own countrymen, and the
rank and file we forgave freely. We may be a nation of white savages, but
our past does not prove it, and if Britain wins in the war now going on she
will have to be very generous indeed before we will need to blush for our
conduct."

"Why should not the white population of South Africa be ready to live under
the protection of Britain? The yoke cannot be so heavy when men of all
creeds, colours, and nationalities who have lived under that rule for years
are now ready to volunteer to fight for her, even against you, who have
admittedly done them no direct wrong?"

"Why should we live under any flag but our own?" replied the old fighting
man passionately. "We came here and found the country a wilderness in the
hands of savages; we fought our way into the land step by step, holding our
own with our rifles; we had to live lives of fearful hardships, facing wild
beasts and wilder men; we won with the strong hand the land we live in. Why
should we bow our necks to Britain's yoke, even if it be a yoke of silk?"
And as he spoke a murmur of deep and earnest sympathy ran through the ranks
of the Boers who were standing around him.

"You, of course, blame all the Colonials, Australians and others, for
coming to fight against you?" I asked. "I don't know that I do, or that my
people do, in a sense," the veteran replied. "It all depends upon the
spirit which animated them. If your Australians, who are of British blood,
came here to fight for your Motherland, believing that her cause was a just
and a holy one, and that she needed your aid, you did right, for a son will
help his mother, if he be a son worth having; but if the Australians came
here merely for the sake of adventure, merely for sport, as men come in
time of peace to shoot buck on the veldt, then woe to that land, for though
God may make no sign to-day nor to-morrow, yet, in His own time, He will
surely wring from Australia a full recompense in sweat and blood and tears;
for whether we be right or wrong, our God knows that we are giving our
lives freely for what we in our hearts believe to be a holy cause."

"What do you fellows think of Australians as fighters?"

I asked the question carelessly, but the answer that I got brought me to my
bearings quickly, for then I learnt that more than one gallant Australian
officer dear to me had fallen, never to rise again, since I had been taken
prisoner. The man who spoke was little more than a lad, a pale-faced,
slenderly built son of the veldt. He had tangled curly hair, and big,
pathetic blue eyes, soft as a girl's, and limbs that lacked the rugged
strength of the old Boer stock; but there was that nameless "something,"
that indefinable expression in his face which warranted him a brave man. He
carried one arm in a sling, and the bandage round his neck hid a bullet
wound. "The Australians can fight," he said simply. "They wounded me,
and--they killed my father." Perhaps it was the wind sighing through the
hospital trees that made the Boer lad's voice grow strangely husky;
possibly the same cause filled the blue eyes with unshed tears.

"It was in fair fight, lad," I said gently; "it was the fortune of war."

"Yes," he murmured, "it was in fair fight, an awful fight--I hope I'll
never look upon another like it. Damn the fighting," he broke out fiercely.
"Damn the fighting. I didn't hate your Australians. I didn't want to kill
any of them. My father had no ill-will to them, nor they to him, yet he is
out there--out there between two great kopjes--where the wind always blows
cold and dreary at night-time." The laddie shuddered. "It makes a man doubt
the love of the Christ," he said. "My father was a good man, a kind man,
who never turned the stranger empty-handed from his door, even the Kaffirs
on the farm loved him; and now he is lying where no one can weep over his
grave. We piled great rocks on his grave. My cousin and I buried him. We
had no shovels; we scooped a hole in the hard earth as well as we could, a
long, shallow hole, and we laid him in it. I took his head and Cousin
Gustave carried his feet. We folded his hands on his breast, laid his old
rifle by his side, because he had always loved that gun, and never used any
other when out hunting. Then we pushed the earth in on him gently with our
hands, breaking the hard lumps up and crumbling them in our palms, so that
they should not bruise his poor flesh. He had always been so kind, we could
not hurt him, even though we knew he was dead, for he had been gentle to
all of us in life; even the cows and the oxen at home loved him--and now
who will go back and tell mother and little Yacoba that he is dead, that he
will come to them no more? Oh, damn the war," the lad called again in his
pain. "I don't know--only God knows--which side is right or wrong, but I do
know that the curse of the Christ will rest on the heads of those who have
made this war for ambition's sake or the greed of gold, and the good God
will not let the widow and the orphan child go unavenged; blood will yet
speak for blood, and it must rest either on the heads of Kruger and Steyn,
or Chamberlain and Rhodes."

"Tell me, comrade, of the Australians who fell. They were my countrymen."

"It was a cruel fight," he said. "We had ambushed a lot of the British
troops--the Worcesters, I think, they called them. They could neither
advance nor retire; we had penned them in like sheep, and our field cornet,
Van Leyden, was beseeching them to throw down their rifles to save being
slaughtered, for they had no chance. Just then we saw about a hundred
Australians come bounding over the rocks in the gully behind us. There were
two great big men in front cheering them on. We turned and gave them a
volley, but it did not stop them. They rushed over everything, firing as
they came, not wildly, but as men who know the use of a rifle, with the
quick, sharp, upward jerk to the shoulder, the rapid sight, and then the
shot. They knocked over a lot of our men, but we had a splendid position.
They had to expose themselves to get to us, and we shot them as they came
at us. They were rushing to the rescue of the English. It was splendid, but
it was madness. On they came, and we lay behind the boulders, and our
rifles snapped and snapped again at pistol range, but we did not stop those
wild men until they charged right into a little basin which was fringed
around all its edges by rocks covered with bushes. Our men lay there as
thick as locusts, and the Australians were fairly trapped. They were far
worse off than the Worcesters, up high in the ravine.

"Our field cornet gave the order to cease firing, and called on them to
throw down their rifles or die. Then one of the big officers--a, great,
rough-looking man, with a voice like a bull--roared out, 'Forward
Australia!--no surrender!' Those were the last words he ever uttered, for a
man on my right put a bullet clean between his eyes, and he fell forward
dead. We found later that his name was Major Eddy, of the Victorian Rifles.
He was as brave as a lion, but a Mauser bullet will stop the bravest. His
men dashed at the rocks like wolves; it was awful to see them. They smashed
at our heads with clubbed rifles, or thrust their rifles up against us
through the rocks and fired. One after another their leaders fell. The
second big man went down early, but he was not killed. He was shot through
the groin, but not dangerously. His name was Captain McInnerny. There was
another one, a little man named Lieutenant Roberts; he was shot through the
heart. Some of the others I forget. The men would not throw down their
rifles; they fought like furies. One man I saw climb right on to the rocky
ledge where Big Jan Albrecht was stationed. Just as he got there a bullet
took him, and he staggered and dropped his rifle. Big Jan jumped forward to
catch him before he toppled over the ledge, but the Australian struck Jan
in the mouth with his clenched fist, and fell over into the ravine below
and was killed.

"We killed and wounded an awful lot of them, but some got away; they fought
their way out. I saw a long row of their dead and wounded laid out on the
slope of a farmhouse that evening--they were all young men, fine big
fellows. I could have cried to look at them lying so cold and still. They
had been so brave in the morning, so strong; but in the evening, a few
little hours, they were dead, and we had not hated them, nor they us. Yes,
I could have cried as I thought of the women who would wait for them in
Australia. Yes, I could have shed tears, though they had wounded me, but
then I thought of my father, and of the mother, and little Yacoba on the
farm, who would wait in vain for _him_, and then I could feel sorry
for those, the wives and children of the dead men, no longer."





LIFE IN THE BOER CAMPS.

HEADQUARTERS, ORANGE RIVER COLONY.


It is an article of faith with many people that a Boer commando is a mere
mob, that its leaders exercise no control over men in laager or on the
field, and that punishment for crimes is a thing unknown. But this is far
from being the case. It is quite true that a Boer soldier does not know how
to click his heels together, turn his toes to an acute angle, stiffen his
back, and salute every time an officer runs against him. He could not
properly perform any of the very simplest military evolutions common to all
European soldiers if his immortal welfare depended upon it. That is why he
is such a failure as an attacking agent. Still, in spite of these things,
the Boer on commando has to submit to very rigid laws. The penalty for
outrage, or attempted outrage, on a woman is instant death on conviction,
no matter what the woman's nationality may be. For sleeping on sentry duty
the punishment is unique; it is a punishment born of long dwelling in the
wilderness. It is of such a nature that no man who has once undergone it is
calculated ever to forget. When a clear case is made out against a burgher
by trial before his commandant the whole commando in laager is summoned to
witness the criminal's reward. He is taken out beyond the lines to a spot
where the sun shines in all its unprotected fierceness. He is led to an
ant-hill full of busy, wicked, little crawlers; the top of the ant-hill is
cut off with a spade, leaving a honeycombed surface for the sleepy one to
stand upon (not much fear of him sleeping whilst he is there). He is
ordered to mount the hill and stand with feet close together. His rifle is
placed in his hands, the butt resting between his toes, the muzzle clasped
in both hands. Two men are then told off to watch him. They are picked men,
noted for their stern, unyielding sense of duty and love for the cause they
fight for.

These guards lie down in the veldt twenty-five yards away from the victim.
They have their loaded Mausers with them, and their orders are, if the
prisoner lifts a leg, to put a bullet into it; if he lifts an arm, a bullet
goes into that defaulting member; if he jumps down from his perch
altogether, the leaden messengers sent from both rifles will cancel all his
earthly obligations. The sun shines down in savage mockery; it strikes upon
the bare neck of the quivering wretch, who dare not lift a hand to shift
his hat to cover the blistering skin. It strikes in his eyes and burns his
lips until they swell and feel like bursting. The barrel of his rifle grows
hotter and hotter, until his fingers feel as if glued to a gridiron. The
very clothes upon his body burn the skin beneath. He feels desperate; he
must shift one arm, for the anguish is intolerable. He makes an almost
imperceptible movement of his shoulder, and glances towards his guards. The
man on his right front lays his pipe quickly in the grass, and swiftly
lifts his Mauser to his shoulder. The wretch on the ant-heap closes his
eyes with a groan, and stands as still as a Japanese god carved out of
jute-wood. The guard lays down his rifle and picks up his pipe.

The sun climbs higher and higher, until it gleams down straight into the
ant-heap; the scorching heat penetrates into the unprotected cells, and
enrages the dwellers inside. They swarm out full of fight, like an army
lusting for battle. Their home has been ravished of the protection they had
raised with half a lifetime of labour, and in their puny way they want
vengeance. They find a foe on top, a man ready to their wrath. They crawl
into his scorched boots, over his baked feet, guiltless of stockings; they
charge up the legs, on which the trousers hang loosely, and as they charge
they bite, because they are out for business, not for a picnic. The very
stillness of their victim seems to enrage them. The first legion retires at
full speed down into the ant-heap again. They have gone for recruits. In a
few seconds up they come again, until the very top of the heap is alive
with them. They climb one over another in their eagerness to get in their
individual moiety of revenge. Down into the veldtschoon, up the bare, hairy
legs, over the hips, round the waist, over the lean ribs, along the spine,
under the arms, round the neck, over the whole man they go, as the
Mongolian hordes will some day go over the Western world. And each one digs
his tiny prongs into the smarting, burning, itching poor devil on top of
their homestead. He shifts a leg the hundredth part of an inch. The guard
on the left gives his bandolier a warning twist, and glances along the long
brown barrel that nestles in the hollow of his left hand.

The commandant comes out of the circle of burghers, looks at the victim,
sees that the eyes are bloodshot and protruding far beyond the normal
position. He is not a hard man, but he knows that the culprit has
endangered the lives and liberties of all. "You will remember this," he
says sternly; "you will not again sleep when it is your turn to watch."
"Never, so help me God!" gasps the prisoner. "Stand down, then; you are
free." Quicker than a swallow's flight is the movement of the liberated
man. He drops his rifle with a gasp of relief, tears every stitch of
clothing from his body, throws the garments from him, and pelts his
veldtschoon after them. Some sympathetic veteran, who has possibly, in
earlier wars, been through the ordeal himself, runs up with a drink of
blessed water. He does not drink it; he pours it down his burning throat,
then sits on the grass, drawing his breath in long, sobbing sighs, all the
more terrible because they are tearless. From head to heel he is covered
with tiny red marks, just like a schoolboy who has had the measles; in
three days there will not be a mark on him, but he won't forget them, all
the same, not in thirty-three years, or three hundred and thirty-three, if
he happens to have a memory of any kind at that period.

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