On land the whole aspect of the streets was changed. Every few yards one met men in khaki and putties. This cloth looks fairly smart when it is new and the buttons and badges are burnished; but, after a very few weeks at the front, khaki uniforms become as shabby as possible. No one who is going into the firing line has any wish to draw the enemy's fire by the glint of his buttons or his shoulder-badges, and so these are either removed or left to tarnish. Nor does khaki—at any rate the "drill" variety—improve its beauty by being washed. When one has bargained with a Kaffir lady to wash one's suit for ninepence it comes back with all the glory of its russet brown departed and a sort of limp, anæmic look about it. And when the wearer has lain upon the veldt at full length for long hours together in rain and sun and dust-storm his kit assumes an inexpressible dowdiness, and preserves only its one superlative merit of so far resembling mother earth that even the keen eyes behind the Mauser barrels fail to spot Mr. Atkins as he lies prone behind his stone or anthill.
As our lumbering cab drove up Adderley Street to the hotel a squadron of the newly raised South African Light Horse rode past. The men looked very jaunty and well set up with their neat uniforms, bandoliers and "smasher" hats with black cocks' feathers. There has never been the slightest difficulty in raising these irregular bodies of mounted infantry. The doors of their office in Atkinson's Buildings were besieged by a crowd of applicants—very many of them young men who had arrived from England for the purpose of joining. A certain amount of perfectly good-humoured banter was levelled against these brand-new soldiers by their friends, and some fun poked at them about their riding. Occasionally, for instance, a few troopers were unhorsed during parade and the riderless steeds trotted along the public road at Rosebank. But certainly the tests of horsemanship were severe. Many of the horses supplied by Government were very wild and sometimes behaved like professional buckjumpers; and it is no easy task to control the eccentric and unexpected gyrations of such a beast when the rider is encumbered with the management of a heavy Lee-Metford rifle. Since the day on which I first saw the squadron in question it has passed through its baptism of fire at Colenso. The Light Horse advanced on the right of Colonel Long's ill-fated batteries, and was cruelly cut up by a murderous fire from Hlangwane Hill.
Capetown is not well furnished with places of amusement. There is, it is true, a roomy theatre, whose manager, Mr. de Jong, sent an invitation to the staff of the "Pink 'Un" to dine with him and his friends at Pretoria on New Year's Day! How the Boers must have laughed when they read of this cordial invitation! During the few days which elapsed before our ambulance train started for the front we paid a visit to the theatre, but we found the stage tenanted by a "Lilliputian Company," and it is always tiresome and distressing to watch precocious children of twelve aping their elders. One feels all the time that the whole performance scarcely rises above an exhibition of highly-trained cats or monkeys, and that the poor mites ought all to be in bed long ago. Nevertheless, this dreary theatre was, in default of anything better, visited again and again by British officers and others. A friend of mine in the Guards told me with a sigh that he had actually watched the performances of these accomplished infants for no less than seven nights.
There are several music halls in Capetown. I have visited similar entertainments in Constantinople, Cairo, Beyrout and other towns of the East, but I never saw anything to match some of these Capetown haunts for out-and-out vulgarity. There was, it is true, a general air of "patriotism" pervading them—but it was frequently the sort of patriotism which consists in getting drunk and singing "Soldiers of the Queen". On one occasion I remember a curious and typical incident at one of these music halls. Standing among a crowd of drunken and half-drunken men was a quiet and respectable-looking man drinking his glass of beer from the counter. One of the habitués of the place suddenly addressed him, and demanded with an oath whether he had ever heard so good a song as the low ditty which had just been screamed out by a painted woman on the stage. The stranger remarked quietly that it "wasn't a bad song, but he had certainly heard better ones," when the bully in front without any warning struck him a violent blow in the face, felling him to the ground. A comrade of mine, a Welshman, who was standing near the victim, protested against such cowardly behaviour, and was immediately set upon by some dozen of the audience, who savagely knocked him down and then drove him into the street with kicks and blows. These valiant individuals then returned and were soon busy with a hiccuping chorus of "Rule, Britannia". How forcibly the whole scene recalled Dr. Johnson's words: "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of a scoundrel".
The Uitlander refugees were numerous in Capetown, and the principal hotels were full of them. Those whom I happened to meet did not seem at all overwhelmed by their recent oppression, and some of them contrived out of their shattered fortunes to drink champagne for dinner at a guinea a bottle. I do not think that the average Johannesburg Uitlander impresses the Englishman very favourably. Mining camps are not the best nurseries for good breeding or nobility of character, and one could not help feeling sorry that gallant Englishmen were dying by hundreds while some of these German Jews wallowed in security and luxury. Quite recently an officer overheard a "Jew-boy" loudly declaring in a shop that "after all, British soldiers were paid to go out and get shot," etc., and in a fit of righteous indignation the Englishman seized the Semite and threw him out of the door.
English visitors to the Cape who, like myself, wished to contribute our humble share towards the work of the campaign had several directions in which to utilise their energies. The Prince Alfred's Field Artillery was raising recruits, and on the point of leaving for the front for the defence of De Aar. The Duke of Edinburgh's Rifle Volunteers enlisted men on Thursday, drilled them day and night, and sent them off on the Tuesday. This fine corps has, much to its vexation, been almost continuously employed in guarding lines of communication and protecting bridges and culverts from any violence at the hands of colonial rebels. The South African Light Horse has already been mentioned. For those of us who found it impossible to pledge ourselves for the whole period of the war, owing to duties at home which could not be left indefinitely, and who possessed some knowledge of ambulance work, an excellent opening was found in one of the ambulance corps originated by the Red Cross Society under Colonel Young's able and energetic management.
Having volunteered for service on one of the ambulance trains and been accepted, I set off with a corporal to Woodstock Hospital to secure my uniform and kit. The quartermaster who supplied me was justly annoyed because some mistake had been made about the hour for my appearance, and when he rather savagely demanded what sized boots I wore, I couldn't for the life of me remember and blurted out "nines," whereas my normal "wear" is "sevens". Instantly a pair of enormous boots and a correspondingly colossal pair of shoes were hurled at me, while, from various large pigeon-holes in a rack, bootlaces, socks, putties and other things were rained upon me. I couldn't help laughing as I picked them up. Here I was equipped from head to foot with two uniform suits of khaki—which mercifully fitted well—shirts, boots, shoes, helmet, field-service cap and other minutiae, and the entire equipment occupied some four minutes all told. What a contrast to the considerable periods of time often consumed at home over the colour of a tie or the shape of a collar!
Shouldering the waterproof kit-bag containing my brand-new garments, and saluting the irritated officer, I marched off to ambulance train No. 2, where I speedily exchanged my civilian habiliments for her Majesty's uniform. The "fall" of my nether garments was not perfect, but on the whole I was rather pleased with the fit of the khaki, relieved on the arm with a red Geneva Cross.
One of the two ambulance trains on the western side is manned entirely by regulars, the other (No. 2) is in charge of an R.A.M.C. officer, but the staff under him is composed almost wholly of volunteers. This staff consists of a civilian doctor from a London hospital attached to the South African Field Force, two Red Cross nurses from England, a staff sergeant, two corporals, a couple of cooks and ten "orderlies" in charge of the five wards.
Introductions to my comrades followed. We were certainly one of the oddest collection of human beings I have ever come across. Our pursuits when not in active service were extremely varied—one of our number was an accountant, another a chemist, a third brewed beer in Johannesburg, a fourth was an ex-baker, and so on. We were, on the whole, a very harmonious little society, and it was with real regret that I left my comrades when I returned to England. At least four of our number were refugees from Johannesburg, and very anxious to return. These unfortunates retailed at intervals doleful news about well-furnished houses being rifled, Boer children smashing up porcelain ornaments and playfully cutting out the figures from costly paintings with a pair of scissors, and grand pianos being annexed to adorn the cottages of Kaffir labourers. Another member of our little society had a very fair voice and good knowledge of music, for in the days of his boyhood he had sung in the choir of a Welsh cathedral; since that time he had practised as a medical man and driven a tramcar. The weather was very trying sometimes and J——, our Welsh singer, had acquired an almost supernatural skill in leaping from the train when it stopped for a couple of minutes, securing a bottle of Bass and then boarding the guard's van when the train was moving off. On one of these successful forays I saw J—— send three respectable people sprawling on their backs as he violently collided with them in his desperate efforts to overtake the receding train. The victims slowly got up and some nasty remarks about J—— were wafted to us over the veldt. We had a couple of cooks. One of them was an American who had served in the Cuban war, the other a big Irishman called Ben. The American chef, being the only man out of uniform on the train, had access to alcoholic refreshments at the stations, which were very properly denied to the troops, and he rejoiced exceedingly to exercise his privilege. He could sleep in almost any position, and generally lay down on the kitchen dresser without any form of pillow, or slept serenely in a sitting posture with his feet elevated far above his head.