News from a far Country.
As the inevitable result of this further fighting, the men who had fondly hoped to be shortly on their way to Hyde Park Corner, suffered just then from a severe attack of heart-sickness, which was none other than a passing spasm of home-sickness! "Home, sweet home" sighed they, "and we never knew how sweet till now"! Meanwhile, however, we were wonderfully well supplied with home news, for within a single fortnight no less than 360 sacks of letters and various postal packets reached the Guards' Brigade, in spite of whole mails being captured by the Boers, and hosts of individual letters or parcels having gone hopelessly astray. Official reports declare that a weekly average of nearly 750,000 postal items were sent from England to the army in South Africa throughout the whole period covered by the war, so that it is quite clear we were not forgotten by loved ones far away, and the knowledge of that fact afforded solace, if not actual healing, even for those whose heart-sickness was most acute.
Further fighting.
Early in July, the commander-in-chief had accumulated sufficient supplies, and secured sufficient remounts, to make a further advance possible. On the 7th, the Boers were pushed back by Hutton to Bronkers Spruit, where as the sequel of the Diamond Hill fight on June 12th, the Australians had surprised and riddled a Boer laager. While however Botha was thus sullenly retreating eastward, he secretly despatched a strong detachment round our left wing to the north-west of Pretoria under the leadership of Delarey, who on the 11th flung himself like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky on a weak post at Nitral's Nek, and there captured two guns with 200 prisoners. On July 16th, Botha himself once more attacked our forces, but was again driven off by Generals Pole Carew and Hutton; and the surrender on the 29th of General Prinsloo, with over 4000 Boers and three guns in the Orange River Colony, secured our remoter lines of communication from a very formidable menace, so clearing the course for another onward move.
Touch not, taste not, handle not.
On Tuesday, July 24th, the Guards' Brigade said good-bye to Donkerhook, where their camp had become a fixture since the fight on Diamond Hill, and where their conduct once more won my warmest admiration. In the very midst of that camp, in which so many thousands of men tarried so long, were sundry farmhouses, and Kaffir homes, the occupants of which were never molested from first to last, nor any of their belongings touched, except as the result of a perfectly voluntary sale and purchase. Indeed, the identic day we left, turkeys, geese, ducks, and other "small deer," were still wandering round their native haunts, none daring to make them afraid. The owners had declined to sell; and our ever hungry men had honourably refrained from laying unpermitted hands on these greatly enjoyable dainties. Such honesty in a hostile land, in relation to the property of a hostile peasantry, made me marvel; and still more when maintained in places where unmistakable treachery had been practised as in this identic neighbourhood.
At Wolmaran's pleasant country house, close beside our camp, the white flag flew, and there our general took up his abode. Some members of this well-known family were still out on commando, but those that remained at home eagerly surrendered all arms, were profuse in professions of friendliness, and were duly pledged to formal neutrality. But a recent Transvaal law had reduced the wages of all Kaffirs from about twenty shillings to a uniform five shillings a week, and Wolmaran's unpaid or ill-paid negroes revenged themselves by revealing their master's secrets. Partly as the result of hints thus obtained, we found hidden in his garden over thirty rifles, the barrel of a Maxim gun, and about £10,000 in gold—presumably Government money; also a splendid supply of provisions was discovered—presumably Government stores; and in the family cemetery there was dug up a quantity of dynamite. The gentleman who thus gave up his arms, and in this fashion kept his oath, at once became our prisoner, but his house and its contents remained untouched. And when we left, some of his barndoor fowls were still there to see us off!
This is a notable but typical illustration of the way in which, with unwise leniency, surrendered burghers were allowed access to our camps, and recompensed our reliance on their honour by revealing our secrets to our foes, and, when they dared, unearthing their buried arms to level them once more at our too confiding troops.
More treachery and still more.
A march of fifteen or eighteen miles brought us to Bronkhorst Spruit, the scene of a dastardly massacre in December 1880, of the men of the Connaught Rangers, who, ere yet there was any declaration of war, were marching with their wives and children from Lydenburg to Pretoria. I stood bareheaded beside one of the mounds that hide their bones, close to the roadside where they fell, and bethought me of the strange Providence through which, nearly twenty years after the event, there was now marching past those very graves a vast avenging army on its way to those same mountain fastnesses whence our murdered comrades of the long ago set out on their fatal journey. Sowing and reaping are often far apart; but there is no sundering them!