A third class Chaplain who proved a first-rate Chaplain.
It was at Waterval Boven I first met my assistant-chaplain, the Rev. T. H. Wainman, and found him all that eulogising reports had proclaimed him to be. Seventeen years ago he accompanied the Bechuanaland Expedition under Sir Charles Warren, and then acquitted himself so worthily that the Wesleyan Army and Navy Committee at once turned to him in this new hour of need, resting assured that in him they had a workman that maketh not ashamed. At the time he received the cable calling him to this task he was a refugee minister from Johannesburg, residing for a while near Durban. There he left his family and at once hurried to report himself in Chieveley Camp, where a singular incident befell him.
A few hours before his arrival an official notice was issued that a Boer spy in khaki was known to be lurking in the camp, and all concerned were requested to keep a sharp look-out with a view to speedy arrest. Mr Wainman's appearance singularly tallied with the published portraiture of the aforesaid spy, and all the more because after his long journey he by no means appeared parson-like. He was just then as rough looking as any prowling Boer might be supposed to be. When, therefore, he was challenged by the sentinel as he approached the camp, and to the sentinel's surprise gave the right password, he was nevertheless told that he must consider himself a prisoner, and was accordingly marched off to the guard-room for safe keeping and further enquiry. It was a strange commencement for his new chaplaincy. More than one of our chaplains has been taken prisoner by the Boers, but he alone could claim the distinction of being made a prisoner of war, even for an hour, by his own people, till a yet more painful experience of the same type befell Mr Burgess; nor did ill-fortune fail to follow him for some time to come. He was attached to a battalion where chaplains were by no means beloved for their own sake; and though one of the most winsome of men, he was made to feel in many ways that his presence was unwelcome.
A Wainman who was a real waggoner.
Presently, however, there came an opportunity which he so skilfully used as to become the hero of the hour, and in the end one of the most popular men in the whole Brigade. When on the trek one of the transport waggons stuck fast hopelessly in an ugly drift, and no amount of whip-leather or lung-power sufficed to move it. One waggon thus made a fixture blocks the whole cavalcade, and is, therefore, a most serious obstruction. But Mr Wainman had not become an old colonist without learning a few things characteristic of colonial life, including the handling of an ox team. He therefore volunteered to end the deadlock, and in sheer desperation the Padré's offer was, however dubiously, accepted. So off came his tunic; this small thing was straightened, that small thing cleared out of the way, then next he cleared his throat, and instead of hurling at those staggering oxen English oaths or Kaffir curses, spoke to them in tones soothing and familiar as their own mother tongue. Some one at last had appeared upon the scene that understood them, or that they could understand. Then followed a long pull, a strong pull, a pull altogether, and lo as by magic the impossible came to pass. The waggon was out of the drift! "Brave padré," everybody cried. His name means "waggoner," and a right good waggoner he that day proved to be. This skilful compliance with one of the requirements of the Mosaic laws helped him immensely in the preaching of the Gospel. He became all the more powerful as a minister because so popular as a man. In many ways his mature local knowledge enabled him to become so exceptionally useful that he received promotion from a fourth to a third class acting chaplaincy, and the very officers who at first deemed his presence an infliction combined to present him with a handsome cigarette case in token of uttermost goodwill. You can't tell what even a chaplain is capable of till you give him a chance.
Three bedfellows in a barn.
When Mr Wainman first reached his appointed quarters, the wounded were being brought in by hundreds from the Colenso fight; later on he climbed to the summit of Spion Kop, "The Spying Mountain," to search for the wounded, and to bury the dead that fell victims to the fatal mischance that having captured, then surrendered that ever famous hill; and at night he slept in a barn with a Catholic priest lying on one side of him and an Anglican chaplain on the other—a delightful forecasting that of the time when the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The Christian Catholicity to which this campaign has given rise is one of its redeeming features.
While the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, the Wesleyan chaplain from Crete remained shut up in Ladysmith, Mr Wainman remained with the relieving force, ultimately accompanied General Buller into the Transvaal, where I frequently met him, and finally, on the approaching conclusion of the war, resumed charge, like Mr Crewdson, of his civilian church in Johannesburg. No man learns to be a soldier by merely watching the troops march past at a royal review; neither did Mr Wainman acquire his rare gifts for such rough yet heroic service while sitting in an easy chair. He endured hardness, as every man must who would serve his generation well according to the will of God.
A fourth-class Chaplain that was also a first-rate Chaplain.