December 12th, 1899.
The importance of the resistance which Mafeking has made to the attacks of the Boers should be viewed in the light of its relationship to the two Protectorates, Bechuanaland and Matabeleland, since had this place fallen, its position as a depôt for the Northern trade would have made it a comparatively easy task for the victorious Boers to have secured the control of the intermediate areas. They would have at once seized the rolling stock of the railway whose headquarters are temporarily invested in Mafeking, and could, by that means, have mobilised their forces in a fashion and with a degree of acceleration which would have brought them in a completely equipped and efficient condition to the borders of Rhodesia. Indeed, from what one can learn now, it is not at all improbable that the plan of the northern operations of the Boer forces from their base at Mafeking provided for the seizure of Mafeking with its stores and rolling stock, with their subsequent enlistment of this material in the work of occupying Bechuanaland and assisting our enemy in the concentration of their forces upon Rhodesia. With the railway in their hands small forces would have been stationed at the important points such as are afforded by the natural drifts, and while they maintained by this system of custodianship an open line of communication, they would, at the same time, have been free to utilise, in a combined and united mass, all of these scattered parties of Boers who were engaged upon marauding expeditions between here and Middle Drift. The history of Mafeking then would have been but the story of Vryburg, where, once its sympathy to the Boer cause was proclaimed and the place effectually occupied, the Boer commandant withdrew the greater portion of his men to fresh spheres of activity. With Mafeking in the hands of the enemy, our chief stand would have been around Buluwayo, where Colonel Baden-Powell and Colonel Plumer would have united their commands, thereby presenting to the enemy greater resistance than would have been possible had the forces been engaged upon their own initiative. In a way, therefore, Mafeking has forged an important link in the chain of outposts, by which the safety of the Protectorates has been guaranteed and the independence of the country still preserved to Imperial rule. It must not be forgotten, however, that the success which Plumer's column has enjoyed at Rhodes' Drift and at Middle Drift gave to Southern Rhodesia a certain immunity from hostile invasion, while in any estimate of the economy of the victories which Colonel Plumer's men and our own here have scored against the Boers, it should be borne in mind that had they vanquished our forces at Middle Drift or Rhodes' Drift, further Imperial territory would have been invaded, and the road upon which they might have marched to besiege Buluwayo would have been open to them. Colonel Baden-Powell has, of course, been chiefly instrumental in preventing the investment of Buluwayo, since the determined stand which he made caused General Cronje to hold an aggregate number of Boers, amounting to 8,000 men, and by far the larger portion of the Western Division of the S.A.R. forces, under his control for Mafeking; but without in any way disparaging this work, so important in its achievements, so vital in its issues, nothing perhaps has proved so integral a factor in the work of maintaining our occupation and dominion over these important adjuncts of our Empire in Africa, as the defence which Colonel Plumer so successfully and gallantly accomplished. However we here may have assisted in the preservation of those Protectorates as Imperial dominions, there can be no doubt we should have lost, for the time being, all claim to their moral and practical possession had Colonel Plumer's force retired. With 8,000 men investing Mafeking, and various minor bodies scattered up and down the border between here and Fort Tuli, the enemy could have spared 6,000 men for co-operation with these subsidiary bodies, and still have maintained the siege and bombardment of this town. It did not need, then, its downfall to give the Boers important belligerent rights throughout the Protectorate and Southern Rhodesia, and although our surrender might have materially facilitated their progress, our successful opposition did not necessarily, nor altogether, impede it. The strategical value of the drifts made their safe custody a matter of momentous importance, since through them, as much as from Mafeking, might entry have been made and territorial supremacy for the moment acquired. Indeed, it is very much to be doubted whether the chief value of the stand by which Mafeking has distinguished itself is not found in the lesson which it has read to the Colony itself. Had we gone the way of Vryburg, or had we surrendered after some slight stand, it is almost certain that our fall would have been the signal for the general uprising of the Dutch in the northern areas of the Colony as well as in British Bechuanaland. How near we are to a mare's nest in Mafeking is uncertain, but after much inquiry amongst the chief people (business) in the town, there is no doubt that had the inhabitants of Mafeking been able to conceive the difficulties and trials which were about to beset them, the losses in business at the moment, and the temporary stagnation which will follow the war, they would have preferred to have worshipped the Golden Calf, and to see Colonel Baden-Powell and Colonel Hore remove their headquarters to some spot in the Protectorate, while the sleek and prosperous merchants of Mafeking were thus enabled to follow their occupation and to turn over their money while they lived amid the baneful protection of a temporary and purely commercial allegiance to the Transvaal Republic. It is not, it would seem, that individually Mafeking is disloyal, but that it is essentially a commercial centre, governed, impressed, and inherited by commercial instinct, and reflecting, in its inhabitants, a gathering of the peoples of the world in more or less confused proportion. There is a small German community, there is an American colony, there are French, and Jews of every nation. They have made money in Mafeking; they own much property; they are even friendly to the Transvaal since they have large trade interests among Dutch towns which are near the border. They came here in the days when this part of Africa was unknown to white man; they trekked from Kimberley, from the Transvaal, even across the African desert from the coast, and if they have lived beneath the protection of our standard, they have amassed their wealth by trading with the flags of all nations. They care very little indeed for the Uitlander in the Transvaal, for his wrongs or for his rights, but they would respect him much if he came with his cattle and his sheep, with his waggons and his chattels, and some superfluity of money, for then they could add still further to their hoard of shekels and trade with him for his cattle. It is a weird and motley crowd that constitutes Mafeking: disgusted with Imperial government, wishing to have vengeance upon the Colonial Government, and boasting to Heaven at one moment about their gallant resistance, crying out against the ill-wind that has brought them the siege. They move with the current of the Colony, and can be as easily disturbed to patriotism as they can rouse themselves to a passionate criticism of the follies of the Imperial protection under which they exist. When they are moved to sympathy with the Dutch, it is difficult to believe that they are the self-same loyal inhabitants of Mafeking who are now beleaguered, since by daily contact, by union of marriage, by personal friendship, they have consciously or unconsciously assimilated the cause of the Boer, and reveal the profundity of their sympathies in these times of distress.
An interesting side issue to the siege of Mafeking has been the chain of events relating to the departure of Lady Sarah Wilson from Mafeking upon the night of the day during which war was declared, her temporary sojourn at Setlagoli, from where she supplied the garrison with news, and acted as the chief medium by which Baden-Powell managed to get his dispatches through to the Government in Cape Town; her retirement from Setlagoli, when her work was discovered, to General Snyman's laager before Mafeking to request from that gentleman a safe permit into Mafeking; her eventual arrival in the town in exchange for the prisoner Viljoen. Lady Sarah Wilson experienced no very extraordinary adventures and was treated with that consideration which is due to her sex by the Boers, despite the fact that they might have made her position somewhat unpleasant, since she had quite voluntarily taken up active participation in the siege by endeavouring to keep the garrison supplied with news.
CHAPTER XVIII
A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL
December 12th, 1899.
The week has been a dull one, which in relation to the siege implies that the passing days have not borne what we have now come to regard as their full quota of shells and bullets. We here are somewhat sceptical of the lapses of the bombardment since tactics which the Boers have already adopted have led us to believe that intervals of some hours' duration be planned deliberately so that when shelling should be renewed, it may please Providence, ever on the side of the Boers, to have the streets thronged with people. Upon one or two occasions we have been lulled into a fancied security by the cessation of shell fire; but with the lamentable occurrences of last week, we are disinclined to be again caught napping. Accordingly, although there has been a week of extraordinary desistence upon the part of the enemy, those who were about were careful enough to take their airing within a short distance of their bomb-proof shelters. In a fashion, this gave to the environments of the town and the town itself, the appearance of a rabbit warren, where at sunset the little animals may be seen bunched about the entrance to their retreats. A few ladies enjoyed the novelty of tea al fresco, with possibly, a keener appreciation for their propinquity to some bomb-proof, than for the light refreshment in which they were indulging.
Thus it came that I was visiting the hospital, chatting with the physicians upon the stoep of the building. Beneath the shelter of the verandah lay the forms of many who had been wounded, and who now were sufficiently recovered to sit outside; here and there a man limped painfully with the aid of crutches, to talk to a comrade who, with his arm in a sling, was not altogether inappreciative of the fact that he had been wounded in a recent sniping affray against the enemy's position in the brickfields. As we sat upon the stoep with our legs dangling to the ground, behind us in the building there was the complement of battle: the wounded, the nurses, and the doctors; but in front of us there was the expansion of the veldt, green and peaceful. The heat haze lay upon it, simmering in an endless stretch of floating vapour. There was every appearance of the provincial and rural simplicity which goes to make up the daily life of those who live upon the veldt. There were homesteads which, but a few months ago, had been the centre of some small and flourishing agrestic community, but were now charred and blackened, epitomising the destruction which the Boers deal out to unoffending people; in the place of the herds which formerly had grazed upon the scene, there were the white covers of the Boer laagers; there were the lines of the Boer horses, there were the mobs of cattle, of sheep, of goats, which, raided from the countryside, had been collected in the rear of the enemy's encampments. Upon the skyline, from the steps of the hospital, the emplacement of "Big Ben" could be seen outlined quite distinctly in the bright sunlight. The position of the gun was known by the glint of the sun as it played upon the burnished metal.
Presently, as we talked, there came the boom of cannon, and the enemy had turned upon the stadt their quick-firing Krupps. Instinctively, since the habits which rule the enemy are well known to us, a wounded man called out to us that was the five o'clock gun, and for the moment we were uncertain as to whether the peace of the afternoon would be further disturbed. But in a little a column of smoke, white and heavy, hung over the position of "Big Ben," and we at once settled down for further shelling during the remainder of the time that daylight lasted. In the distance, out on the furthest limits of the Stadt, there came echoes, echoing back the noise of the explosion when the hundred-pound shell burst amid a collection of native huts. It is so seldom that these greater projectiles miss their victims, that preparations were at once made for any casualties that might have been sent to the hospital. With these measures taken, we waited while the firing grew heavier. It was just one of those moments which we had been anticipating from the fashion which our friend the Boer had already set, and in a little it was proved that whatever had been our expectations they would be fully realised. When the firing began, the scene upon the stoep of the hospital gradually changed; the wounded were carried back to their wards, Surgeon-Major Anderson, the Imperial officer who has been sent out here; Dr. Hayes, who in the virtue of the rank of P.M.O. conferred by Colonel Baden-Powell, has charge of the hospital, and his brother, both local practitioners, waited the course of events upon the steps of the building. For the time firing seemed confined to the artillery and rifles from the Boer trenches in the brickfields, the south-eastern front of the town and the eastern facing of the native location receiving the brunt. By degrees the entire position of the enemy upon that side dropped into line, giving cause and effect to the wisps of smoke which broke into the air about the advanced trenches of the foe. In about half an hour from the time the first shell exploded over the stadt, a stretcher-party appeared coming from the town and began to descend into the trench which led to the hospital. As they crossed the recreation ground, a large white flag which was carried in advance of the party, heralding to the Boers the passing of wounded, attracted the attention of the enemy and was promptly fired upon. It is these wilful acts which make it difficult to consider the Boer in any way removed from a savage combatant, and although the flag-bearer waved repeatedly to the enemy's trenches, the fire from that direction did not diminish. With no little heroism the stretcher-party, which was under Sergeant-Major Dowling, a resident physician in Cape Town, who volunteered his services for the campaign, and who has charge of the subsidiary hospital in the native location, made their way across the zone of fire to the doors of the hospital. Then in a moment all that had been peaceful and serene before, became impressed with the horrible effects and the fearful injuries which are derived from war.
The stretcher was taken to the operating-room, where nurses had already begun to arrange the table, to prepare the carbolic lotion, to lay out the lint and bandages, the dressing dishes, sponges, and a fine array of instruments; then when the stretcher had been placed beside the table, willing and gentle hands lifted the inanimate form by the corners of the brown and blood-stained mackintosh sheet in which the body had been enshrouded. Dr. Hayes snicked the strings which had caught the ends of the sheet about the injured, and as he threw back the flaps Surgeon-Major Anderson gently separated the clothing where, matted with blood, it had congealed into a sticky mass about the injuries. The doctors and the surgeon, bending with callous diffidence about the inert and prostrate form, then proceeded rapidly with their examination. Through the western windows of the room there came the ruddy rays of the sun as it sank to its rest. The light caught the bottles on the shelves, flickered for a moment upon the silvery brightness of the instruments, and played about the hair of the nurses, who, passing to and fro across the window, were as much interested in their work as in the nature of the patient's injuries. In a corner of the room Sergeant-Major Dr. Dowling explained to Surgeon-Major Anderson that the patient, who was a native woman of some repute, had been washing clothes upon the banks of the Molopo, when a flight of one-pound steel-pointed Maxim shells burst about her. The pelvis and the femur had been shattered completely, besides internal wounds of a most fatal character in the abdominal regions. The left foot was also pulverised, the extraordinary part being that any one, after suffering such severe injuries and sustaining so great a shock to the system, should yet be living. The examination completed, Dr. Hayes, turning to the head nurse, said that it was impossible to do anything which would save the woman's life, inquiring, as Surgeon-Major Anderson dissolved a grain of morphia in a wine-glass, if any one knew the name of the native. As the nurse was about to reply, the patient, moaning feebly, expressed in excellent English, that her name was Martha. Then it appeared that she was recognised as being the wife of a Fingo in the location, one who before marriage had been a member of the oldest profession which the world has ever known, but since lawful wedlock had consummated her union, she had passed, after the manner of her tribe, a life of great austerity. The air of the operating-room was becoming oppressive, the moaning of the patient merging with the heavy scent of the iodoform and the lighter evaporation of the carbolic liniment began gradually to dominate the nerves. To the casual observer such as myself, the scene was striking. The insensitiveness of those assembled in the operating-room, in reality the outcome of great experience in a particular profession, enforced a calmness of feature and of feeling with which I was far from being actually animated. The mechanical industry of the surgeons, the automatic regularity with which the hospital orderly waved his fly whisk above the head of the dying woman, imparted a coldness to the scene which one could not help observing. In a fashion, all that human skill could do had been accomplished, since had the foot been amputated at the ankle, or the thigh removed at the hip, the labour would have been unnecessary, the extra shock to the system serving only to accelerate the end. Very gently they sponged the mouth and nose of the woman and cooled her brow, very gently they administered morphia and sips of brandy, but one by one the doctors, rinsing their hands and lowering their shirt-sleeves, put on their jackets. At the door of the operating-room Dr. Hayes and Surgeon-Major Anderson paused to impart a few brief instructions to the nurses. They were not to forget, said the P.M.O., to remove the tourniquet from the pelvis when the end had come; Surgeon-Major Anderson adding to this an order to continue waving the fly whisk so long as there existed the necessity.
And the incident had closed.