Through Shot and Flame / The Adventures and Experiences of J. D. Kestell Chaplain to President Steyn and General Christian De Wet

by J. D. Kestell

We heard of this affair with the armoured train while we were chatting in very rainy weather in the tent of Commandant de Villiers. It was dripping wet outside and the laager had been converted into a perfect puddle of mud by hundreds of feet. General J. B. Wessels and Commandant Theunissen of the Winburg Commando were there on a visit. We were talking about the armoured train, and presently General Wessels related that a man had been taken prisoner the day before by the Winburg burghers. This man had been found in a Kaffir hut, and had with him a basket of pigeons, which he had brought from Maritzburg to smuggle into Ladysmith. But as Dapperman said, "He was too late."

It did rain that day! and in the evening a steady downpour set in. I sympathised with the sentries and outposts, who had to take duty on the top and the slopes of the hill. What a cheerless thing it was, I thought, to sit through the livelong dripping night with no shelter, and to gaze into the darkness.

I can give no account of the adventures of the expedition which General Joubert sent to Estcourt, as I did not accompany it. I can only say that the burghers composing it did not remain long south of the Tugela, and were obliged by great numbers of troops to return to Ladysmith. General Joubert, however, said that he had succeeded in his object of preventing all the English troops from massing on the western borders of the Free State.

Shortly before the expedition was sent to Estcourt, the portions of the several commandos which had been left on the Drakensberg were ordered to descend into Natal and join the besiegers of Ladysmith. They arrived in due time, and brought all the waggons with them. We had after that the convenience of a laager. Tents of every shape and size soon sprang up everywhere between the great waggons, and nobody who was not actually on duty needed to have any apprehension with regard to heat, or cold, or wet. There were indeed several who had raised their voices against the bringing down of the waggons, and had said that they would prove to be an encumbrance, in case a hasty retreat became necessary, but the majority of the burghers were bent upon taking it easy—even in the war—and demanded that the waggons should be brought down.

As far as I was concerned, though I did not approve of the presence of the waggons, it was a personal pleasure to have a large square tent with a table in it. Writing on a table was a decided improvement to writing on a book, or a pad, on one's knees, or on the ground.

That tent in which I wrote!—how I remember it, while I am in Cape Town writing my book over again.

The time passed swiftly, though it dragged from moment to moment. This was one of the first things that struck me in the war. I would wake in the morning and feel the duty of the day lying on me, as a burden which could not be lifted. But when the shadows of night had fallen I found that the burden had been borne. It often seemed as if the future lay far beyond my reach, but after an hour, a day, a month was past, the hours seemed to be seconds, the days hours, and the months weeks.

The burghers were terribly bored in the laager? Why? They wanted nothing. The Government provided meat, bread (in the shape of meal), coffee, sugar, potatoes,—sometimes tobacco;—we even lived in luxury, for our wives sent us fruit and vegetables, cake and sweets. Why, then, did the burghers feel bored in the laager?

The reason is that the Africander is not a soldier, who can take kindly to camp or barrack life. The Boer detests a confined life, and whenever he is away from the open plain, and the free breezes of heaven, he is miserable. Thus it was that every burgher now longed to be back on his farm.

How I pitied the Commandant! He was continually besieged by burghers asking leave to go home. They asked for leave on the slightest pretexts, or with no pretext whatever; for they would give as a reason for leave of absence the work which had to be done on the farms. The women looked after that as well as, and in many cases better than, the men themselves had done. No, in the majority of cases there was no sound excuse to justify a request for leave. It was simply because they could not stand the confinement of the life in a laager.