[[Footnote A:] In this new campaign Paget's Brigade was, in conjunction with the forces of Baden-Powell, Plumer, and Hickman, to scour the district whose backbone is the railway line running due north from Pretoria to Petersberg. He was to occupy strategic points, isolate and round up stray commandos, and generally to engage the attention of the enemy here, while the grand advance under Roberts and Buller was taking place eastward.]
August 16, continued.—We started at 4 P.M., and had a most tedious march for about four miles only, with incessant checks, owing to the badness of the ground, so that we arrived long after dark at the camping-ground in indifferent humour. We had followed a narrow valley in a northerly direction. Most of the transport waggons, including our own, stuck in a drift some way back, so that we had no tea, and the drivers no blankets to sleep in (gunners carry their kit on the gun-carriages and limbers and ammunition-waggons). However, I got up at midnight and found the kit-waggon had arrived, and got mine; also some tea from a friendly cook of the 38th, so I did well.
August 17.—Reveillé at 4.15. Started at five, and to our surprise marched back about a mile and a half. Picked up the rest of our buck waggons on the way, and halted for a hurried breakfast at dawn. Then marched through what I hear is called Wonderboom Port, a narrow nek between two hills, leading due north, to judge by the sun. We forded a girth-deep river on the way. The nek led out on to a long, broad valley, about six miles in width, bordered on the Pretoria side with a line of steep kopjes, and on the north by low brown hills. Long yellow grass, low scrub, and thorny trees, about the size of hawthorns; no road, and the ground very heavy.
(2 P.M.)—We are halted to feed. There is some firing on the left front. Had a good sleep for an hour. Later on we went into action, but never fired, and in the evening marched away behind a hill and camped. The Wilts and Montgomery Yeomanry are with us, and at the common watering-place, a villainous little pool, with a steep, slippery descent to it, I recognized Alexander Lafone, of the latter corps. I walked to their lines after tea, found him sergeant of the guard, and we talked over a fire. We had last seen one another as actors in some amateur theatricals in a country town at home. They had been in action for the first time that day, and had reported 500 Boers close by. A warm night. Quite a change of season has set in.
August 18.—A big gun was booming not far off, during breakfast. A hot, cloudless day. Started about 8.30, and marched till twelve, crossing the valley diagonally, till we reached some kopjes on the other side. A pom-pom of ours is now popping away just ahead, and there is a good deal of rifle-fire.
(3.15.)—The old music has begun, a shell coming screeching overhead and bursting behind us. We and the convoy were at once moved to a position close under a kopje between us and the enemy. Shells are coming over pretty fast, but I don't see how they can reach us here. A most curious one has just come sailing very slowly overhead, and growling and hiccoughing in the strangest way. I believe it was a ricochet, having first hit the top of the kopje. When it fell there was a rush of gunners to pick up the fragments. I secured one, and it turned out to be part of a huge forty-pounder siege-gun shell. Such a gun would far out-range ours, and I believe the scouts have not located it yet, which explains our inactivity.
(3.30.)—Our right section has gone into action, and is firing now. Some wounded Yeomen just brought in. One of them, I'm sorry to say, is Lafone, with a glancing wound under the eye, sight uninjured. We camped at five, and unharnessed. It seems the Yeomanry lost ten men prisoners, but the Boers released them after taking their rifles.
August 19.—Sunday.—Reveillé at four. Some days are very irritating to the soldier, and this was a typical one. We harnessed up and stood about waiting for orders for five hours. At last we moved off, only to return again immediately; again moved off, and after a few minutes halted; finally got more or less started, and marched five or six miles, with incessant short halts, at each of which the order is to unbuckle wither-straps and let horses graze. This sounds simple, but is a horrible nuisance, as the team soon gets all over the place, feet over traces, collars over ears, and so on, if not continually watched and pulled about. When it is very hot and you are tired, it is very trying to the temper. At one halt you think you will lunch. You get out a Maconochie, open it, and take a spoonful, when you find the centres tying themselves up in a knot with the leaders. Up you get, straighten them out, and sit down again. After two more spoonfuls, you find the wheelers playing cat's-cradle with the centres' traces. Perhaps the wheel-driver is asleep, and you get up and put them right. Then the grazing operations of the leaders bring them round in a circle to the wheelers. Up you get, and finally, as the fifth spoonful is comforting a very empty stomach, you hear, "Stand to your horses!" "Mount!" You hurriedly stuff the tin into a muzzle hanging from the saddle, where you have leisure to observe its fragrant juices trickling out, stick the spoon under a wallet-strap, buckle up wither-straps, and mount. At the next halt you begin again, and the same thing happens. It is a positive relief to hear the shriek of a shell, and have something definite to do or interest you. About two the 38th fired a few shots at some Boers on the sky-line, and then we came to Waterval, where we camped and watered. The Petersberg railway runs up here, and this was a station on it, with a few houses besides. Its only interest is the cage in which several thousand English prisoners were kept, till released by Roberts' arrival. I visited it on the way to a delicious bathe in the river after tea. It is a large enclosure, full of the remains of mud huts, and fitted with close rows of tall iron posts for the electric light, which must have turned night into day. It is surrounded by an elaborate barbed-wire entanglement. In one place was a tunnel made by some prisoners to escape by. It began at a hole inside a hut, and ran underground for quite forty yards, to a point about five yards outside the enclosure. Some of our chaps passed through it. In a large tin shed near the enclosure was a fine electric-lighting plant for lighting this strange prison on the open veldt.
This morning the Captain came back, to our great delight. He had been away since Winberg, getting stores for us at Bloemfontein. He brought a waggon full of clothing and tobacco, which was distributed after we had come in. There were thick corduroy uniforms for winter use. If they had reached us in the cold weather they would have been more useful. It is hot weather now; but a light drill tunic was also served out, and a sign of the times was stewed dry fruit for tea. The ration now is five biscuits (the full ration) and a Maconochie, or bully beef. Only extreme hunger can make me stomach Maconochies now. They are quite sound and good, but one gets to taste nothing but the chemical preservative, whatever it is. We have had no fresh meat for a long time back, but one manages with an occasional change of bully beef or a commandeered chicken.
The camp is a big one, for infantry reinforcements have come in, and two cow-guns.