Blue Shirt and Khaki: A Comparison

by James F. J. Archibald

A British transport train on the veldt.

No features of the campaign are more interesting than the attempts to cut the lines of communication or to blow up a bridge or a culvert, and one of the most daring deeds of the South African War was done by Major Burnham, the Californian who acted as chief scout on Lord Roberts’s staff.

Major Burnham received his training in the Apache country in the Southwest from those Indians who are masters of the world in following a trail or informing themselves as to the whereabouts of their enemies. Twice was Burnham captured by the Boers and twice he made his escape. In both cases he was wounded, the last time seriously. He worked night and day for the army with which he had cast his lot, and when he was ready to leave for home, he came away with a letter from the field marshal, written with his own hand, in which he stated that Major Burnham had done him greater service than any other one man in South Africa.

When the advance of the British forces came within striking distance of Pretoria, Lord Roberts found it necessary to have the line cut just east of the town in order to prevent the retreat towards Middleburg by rail. Burnham started to do it, taking with him a small patrol of men for assistance. They made a wide detour to avoid meeting any of the commandoes, which were now moving in the same direction. All went well with him until he had gone half way around and was about to turn to the north to find the culvert which he intended to destroy, when he suddenly met a large commando coming directly towards his party. A running fight followed, in which his horse was hit, throwing him heavily, and he was seriously injured. The rest of the party escaped, but he was made a prisoner, and not being able to walk, he was put into a wagon under a guard of four men, two riding in front and two behind. The vehicle was one of the large trek-wagons, drawn by a span of sixteen oxen and driven by a Kaffir boy, who divided his time between the front seat of the wagon and walking beside the span. Major Burnham had made up his mind to escape at all hazards, and so until night he lay in the wagon making plans. The moon was almost full, and the night was so bright that the difficulties of an attempt to escape were greatly increased. During the early part of the night the Kaffir driver kept his position on the front seat, thus preventing any experiments by the captive. He was just considering an attack on the black boy when something went wrong with one of the leaders, and the boy jumped down to remedy it. Seizing the opportunity thus afforded, Major Burnham climbed out over the seat, down on the disselboom or tongue of the wagon, on which he stretched himself flat between the oxen of the first span, swung himself under the disselboom, dropped into the road, and allowed the wagon to pass over his body. As soon as it had passed he rolled quickly over and over into the ditch, and lay perfectly quiet while the rear guard passed by, wholly unconscious that their prisoner had escaped. The khaki uniform which Major Burnham wore made this little bit of strategy possible, for had he been in dark clothes his body would probably have been seen by the guard, who rode along within twenty-five feet of him.

As soon as the two Boer soldiers had passed to a distance which allowed no chance of discovery, the Californian picked his way up through the rocks to the side of an adjacent kopje, where he remained hidden for some hours. For a well man to have accomplished this feat would perhaps have been a simple matter, although it took a daring mind to conceive it; but for a man in Major Burnham’s condition to go through the mental strain and physical torture of such an escape was a remarkable performance, and it received its proper praise from both Briton and Boer. There is no man living who so admires true courage and pluck, or who so despises a coward, as does this hardy farmer-fighter; nor does he bear resentment towards a man who, like Major Burnham, fought only for the love of war.

After spending several hours among the rocks, without food or water, and in the bitterly cold night air of an African winter, the scout began to drag himself towards the railroad to accomplish the task he had first set out to do. Strangely enough, when he was captured he was not searched, and he still carried in his tunic a dynamite cartridge ready for use. During the entire campaign Major Burnham never carried arms of any sort, and when he was taken, his captors, not seeing any weapons about him, probably thought that he had nothing about him of a dangerous character. For more than two miles he dragged himself over the rocky veldt until he finally reached the railroad, along which he crawled until he found a culvert. Upon this he placed the cartridge, with a fuse of a sufficient length to allow him to crawl to a place of safety. He destroyed the line, and accomplished the task he undertook, although it nearly cost him his life. He was picked up by a British patrol late that afternoon, almost dead from exposure and the effects of his wound, and was taken to the hospital, where he was confined for a fortnight before he could even walk.

Canadian transport at a difficult drift.

This achievement is one of many performed by this same brave American during the war. Major Burnham is without doubt an exceedingly clever man on the trail; he does not know fear, and his one idea is to accomplish his end. But that does not entirely indicate the reason for his high place in the confidence of Lord Roberts; it rather comes from the fact that Englishmen know nothing of the wonderful arts of the men of the plains; and when a man is able to tell them the number of cattle in a herd, and the number of men guarding it, or the number of men in a commando, and the condition of their horses, merely by examining the ground over which they have passed, they consider it little short of a miracle. Neither the officer nor the private soldier has had any of the training of the latent faculties which is so thorough among the officers and men of our army.

The value of a stick of dynamite is sometimes more precious than that of gold in war. As the Transvaal is a mining country, great quantities of this explosive were easily obtained, and, accordingly, despite the heavy guard, the line of communication was often broken; in fact, so frequently was the railroad destroyed that Lord Roberts was heavily embarrassed during his first month in Pretoria for provision and forage for his troops. Hardly a day passed without the line being cut at some point. Finally, in the hope of preventing further interruption of his railroad line, Lord Roberts issued the following proclamation, the terms of which were about as cruel as could be devised: