The day was chiefly marked by Colonel Stoneman's visit to Intombi Camp to inquire into the reported scandals. He thinks that the worst of the corruption and swindling is already over, being killed by the very scandal. But he found a general want of organisation in the distribution of food and other stores. There are now 2,557 inhabitants of the camp, of whom 1,015 are sick and wounded soldiers. Of late the numbers have been increasing by forty or fifty a day, allowing for those who return or die. The graves to-day number eighty-three, and a gang of forty Kaffirs is always digging. Outside the military, the majority of the refugees are Kaffirs and coolies, the white civilians only numbering 600 or 700. Colonel Stoneman had all, except the sick, paraded in groups, and assigned separate tasks to each—nursing for the whites, digging and sanitation for the Kaffirs, cooking and skilled labour for the coolies. One important condition he made—every one required to work is also required to take his day's wage. The medical authority has objected to certain improvements on the ground of expense, but, as Colonel Stoneman says, what will England care about a few thousands at such a crisis in her history? Or what would she say if we allowed her sick and wounded to die in discomfort for the want of a little money? By to-morrow all the sick will have beds and even sheets, food will be distributed on a better organised plan, and civilians will be raised from a two-months' slough of feeding, sleeping, grumbling, and general swinishness unredeemed even by shells.
At night the British flashlight from Colenso was throwing signals upon the cloudy sky, and it was amusing to watch the Boers trying to confuse the signals by flashing their two searchlights upon the same cloud. They have one light west of us near Bester's Station, and to-night they showed a very brilliant electric light on the top of Bulwan. When our signalling stopped, they turned it on the town, and very courteously lighted me home. It was like the clearest moonlight, the shadows long and black, but all else distinct in colourless brilliance. The top of Bulwan is four miles from our main street. To make up for yesterday the shells were particularly lively to-day. Before breakfast one fell on the railway behind our house, one into the verandah next door, and two into our little garden. Unhappily, the last killed one of our few remaining fowls—shivered it into air so that nothing but a little cloud of feathers was seen again. In the middle of the afternoon old "Puffing Billy" again opened fire with energy. I was at the tailor's on the main street, and the shells were falling just round his shop. "Thirty-eight, thirty-four," said the little Scot measuring. "There's the Dutch church gone. Forty-two, sixteen. There's the bank. Just hold the tape, mon, while I go and look. Oh, it's only the Town Hall!" Among other shells one came in painted with the Free State colours, and engraved "With the compliments of the season." It is the second thus adorned, but whereas the first had been empty, this was charged with plum-pudding. Can it be a Dutchman who has such a pleasant wit? The condition of the horses becomes daily more pitiful. Some fall in the street and cannot get up again for weakness. Most have given up speed. The 5th Lancers have orders never to move quicker than a walk. The horses are just kept alive by grass which Hindoos grub up by the roots. A small ration of ground mealies and bran is also issued. Heavy rain came on and fell all night, during which we heard two far-off explosions.
December 30, 1899.
Going up to Leicester Post in the early morning, I found the K.R. Rifles drying themselves in the African sun, which blazed in gleams between the clouds. Without the sun we should fare badly. As it is, the rain, exposure, and bad food are reducing our numbers fast. Passing the 11th Field Hospital on my way up, I saw stretcher after stretcher moving slowly along with the sick in their blankets. "Dysentery, enteric; enteric, dysentery," were the invariable answers. All the thousands of shells thrown at us in the last two months count for nothing beside the sickness.
On the top of the hill I found the two guns of Major Wing's battery trained on Surprise Hill as usual. In accordance with my customary good fortune all the enemy's guns opened fire at once. But only the howitzer, the automatic, and the Bluebank were actually aimed our way. The Bluebank was most effective.
It was amusing to see the men of the 60th when a shell pitched among them to-day. How they regarded it as a busy man regards the intrusion of the housemaid—just a harmless necessary nuisance, and no more. The cattle took the little automatic shells in much the same spirit, but with an addition of wonder—staring at them and snuffing with bovine astonishment. The Kaffir herdsmen first ran yelling in every direction, and then rushed back to dig the shell up, amid inextinguishable laughter. The Hindoo grass-cutter neither ran nor laughed, but awaited destiny with resignation. By the way, there is a Hindoo servant in the 19th Hussar lines, who at the approach of a "Long Tom" shell always falls reverently on his face and prays to it.
At sundown, in hopes of adding to our starvation rations, I went out among the thorns at the foot of Cæsar's Camp to shoot birds and hares. But the thorns are fast disappearing as firewood, and the appalling rain almost drowned me in the rush of the spruits. So we dined as usual on lumps of trek-ox thinly disguised. Talking of rain, I forgot to mention that the deluge on Friday night drowned six horses of the Leicester Mounted Infantry, carried away twenty-seven of their saddles, broke down the grand shelter-caves of the Imperial Light Horse, carried their bridge away to the blue, and flooded out half the poor homes of natives and civilians dug in the sand of the river banks.
Sunday, December 31, 1899.
Most of my day was wasted in an attempt to get leave to visit Intombi. Colonel Exham (P.M.O.) and Major Bateson had asked me to go down and give a fair account of what I saw. General Hunter took my application to the Chief, but Sir George thought it contrary to his original agreement with Joubert, that none but medical and commissariat officers should enter the camp. So Intombi remains unvisited—a vision of my own. In high quarters I gather that, considering the great difficulties of the case, the camp is thought a successful piece of work, very creditable to the officers in charge. Otherwise the day was chiefly remarkable for the unusual amount of firing at the outposts, and the arrival by runner of a Natal newspaper with the news that Lord Roberts was coming out. As it was New Year's eve, we expected a midnight greeting from the Boer guns, and sure enough, between twelve and one, all the smaller guns in turn took one shot into vacancy and then were still.