"I did not actually bury Captain Selous, but I was present at his funeral. I think I had better give you his doings from about the end of August. He came out for the second time about the end of August, 1916, and landed at Mombasa (via the Cape) with a draft of about 400 new men for the 25th R. Fusiliers. He took these up the Uganda Railway to a small detail camp called Korogwe, in the Usambara Valley. After waiting there for a week or two, he brought the draft to Tanga, when to his intense disgust he was held up for nearly eight weeks. In the meantime the original part of the regiment was trekking down the centre of the country towards the German Central Railway. Whilst at Tanga, he lived in a house with Captain MacMillan, whom you probably know. It was here that he heard he had been awarded the D.S.O. Whilst we were waiting here, he frequently gave the men lectures on his early life in South Africa, to their intense delight. Here I first met him. He was literally adored by the men. From a boy he had always been a hero of mine, and to my great joy I actually met him. He wore a double Terai grey slouch hat, slightly on the back of his head. Khaki knickerbockers, with no puttees, bare legs, except for his socks, and shirt open at the neck, with a knotted handkerchief round the neck to keep the sun off, with a long native stick in his hand. He had a rooted objection to wearing a cork helmet. It is impossible to forget the impression he made. He was as straight as a guardsman, with a broad deep chest, with a beautiful healthy look in his face.
"We left Tanga, on board an armed merchantman, at the end of November, and after calling in at Zanzibar for a few hours, arrived at Dar-es-Salaam. At Zanzibar I went ashore with him and had breakfast at the English club. We were landed at Dar-es-Salaam at about 10.30 at night and went into the local detail camp. He remained there about a week and was then sent up to take up the draft he had brought out to Kissaki, which is about 100 miles south of the German Central Railway, where the rest of the regiment was waiting.
(Here I went down with fever, and so had to stay behind for two weeks.)
"He went by train to Mikessi, about 150 miles up the Central Railway, and from there started with his draft of 400 men to reach the regiment. He reached Kissaki in a fortnight. This is practically the last point where any life exists, except game, in this part of the country. In many ways it is terrible country; there are no names, save such names as we gave it, no roads. It is covered with thick elephant-grass, six to eight feet high, and very thick thorn-bush and swamp. Although I was one of them, I honestly think that the sufferings of the troops in this horrible trek have hardly been exceeded by any in the war. There was only filthy water, we marched on half-rations, with no bread at all, only flour being issued and occasionally biscuit. The whole country was poisonous with fever and 'blackwater'; hardly any natives live here, as it is too poisonous. Most of the men went sick and died like flies. It was just south of Kissaki he caught the regiment up. He was just as cheerful as a schoolboy.
"The day he was killed, I passed him in the morning with his company, I was driving an armoured machine-gun, as the driver was ill. As I passed him, I shouted out, 'I shall be back and have tea with you to-day, sir,' for we used to joke him about his habit of drinking tea with every meal.
"That was the last I saw of him. There was some fighting in the bush during the day, and when I came back in the afternoon I was greeted with the news of his death. I was just in time to see him buried. He was sewn up in a blanket, and buried with five other men of the R. Fusiliers. I was told he was first wounded in the right arm, which was broken, but was bandaged up, and he remained with his company.[83]
"A little later he was again hit in the mouth and was killed instantaneously and apparently painlessly.
"A little space was cleared in the bush and he was buried, at one of the most impressive services I have ever attended, the same day in the afternoon. I intended to photograph the spot, but next day I went down with a bad attack of blackwater fever, and the next few weeks are a complete blank to me. My memory is still somewhat out of gear. My diary and camera were missing when I came round, and so all my exact records are going to some scamp. He is buried about 60 miles south of Kissaki, in a nameless spot, but if you will wait a month or two I may yet be able to get you some photographs and further details.
"As I said before, he was always my hero as a boy in books, and he remains so now. He had all that simplicity and modesty of great men. He was the easiest of all men to cheat, but yet no one ever dared to do it. He was a moral antiseptic in a country where men are not saints. Anything mean or sordid literally shrivelled up in his presence.
"Although I am a young man, my fate has led me to travel in all our white colonies, and I can honestly say that of all the men I have met, good or bad (and they have been mostly good), no one has ever left me with the impression of being a 'whiter' man, or who was a more perfect English gentleman.