With Rimington

by L. March Phillipps

PRETORIA

PRETORIA, June 6, 1900.

It is generally considered rather a coup in war, I believe, to take the enemy's capital, isn't it? like taking a queen at chess. We keep on taking capitals, but I can't say it seems to make much difference. The Boers set no store by them apparently; neither Bloemfontein nor Pretoria have been seriously defended, and they go on fighting after their loss just as if nothing had happened.

For months Pretoria has been our beacon, and at first it seemed quite an impossibly long way off. Looked at from Bloemfontein, across 300 miles of dreary veldt and rugged kopjes and steep-banked rivers, and allowing for the machinations and devilments of ten or fifteen thousand Boers, our arrival here did seem a vague, indefinite, and far-off prospect. And yet in a day or two over the month here we are. Lord Roberts has brought us up in the most masterly way. He has moved with a big central column on the railway, while at the same time other columns, stretched far to right and left, moved parallel and threatened to outflank and enclose the enemy at every stand. So with wings beating and body steadily advancing, like some great kite or bird of prey, we have flapped our way northward.

Even here no stand was made. The town is strongly defended with several new forts, armed, we were told, with 10-inch guns, with a range of about twelve miles, which we supposed would put the noses of our poor cow-guns completely out of joint. The Boers had burnt the grass on all the hills to the south of the town, so that the blackened surface might show up the khaki uniform of our men, and offer a satisfactory mark, and things generally, as we slowly approached the tall black rampart of mountain south of Pretoria, seemed to point to a big engagement. But here, as so often elsewhere, it was borne in upon them that if they finally stayed and defended their capital, they would assuredly be surrounded and cut off; and so, though only at the last moment, we hear, they decided to leave. They put up an afternoon fight on the hills near the town, but this was only the work of a handful of men, probably intended to stave us off for a while while they finished their packing in Pretoria and got away. Lord Roberts got a battery up to the crest of a great big ridge, and we got a pompon up a still steeper one, and a vigorous cannonade was kept up and a good deal of rifle-fire indulged in till nearly dark. But this is often very deceptive. No doubt if it was the first battle you had been at, you would have put down the casualties, judging from the noise made, at several hundred. As a matter of fact, the peculiar thing about all this shooting is that, like the cursing in the Jackdaw of Rheims, "nobody seems one penny the worse." Loading is now so easy that it is not the slightest trouble to fire. The consequence is that a glimpse of a Boer's head on the sky-line a couple of miles off will find work for a battery of guns and a few score of rifles for the rest of the afternoon. About sunset time, when it begins to get cold, they will limber up and come away, and the report will go in that our shelling was very accurate, but that the enemy's loss could not be positively ascertained.

The day after the fight we made a triumphal procession through Pretoria, and marched past Lord Roberts and his staff, and all his generals and their staffs, assembled in the big square facing the Parliament House. We came along a long, straight street, with verandahed houses standing back in gardens, and trees partly shading the road, a ceaseless, slow, living river of khaki; solid blocks of infantry, with measured, even tread, the rifle barrels lightly rising and falling with the elastic, easy motion that sways them altogether as the men keep time; cavalry, regular and irregular, and, two by two, the rumbling guns. Mile after mile of this steady, deliberate, muddy tide that has crept so far, creeps on now through the Dutch capital. Look at the men! Through long exposure and the weeding out of the weak ones, they are now all picked men. The campaign has sorted them out, and every battalion is so much solid gristle and sinew. They show their condition in their lean, darkly-tanned faces; in the sinewy, blackened hands that grasp the rifle butts; in the way they carry themselves, with shoulders well back and heads erect, and in the easy, vigorous swing of their step.

I should like, while I am about it, to speak to you rather more at length about the British soldier. I should think my time spent on service, especially the five months in the ranks, time well spent, if only for the acquaintanceship it has brought with soldiers. In the field, on the march, in bivouac, I have met and associated and talked with them on equal terms. Under fire and in action I have watched them, have sat with them, long afternoons by rivers and under trees, and yarned with them on tramps in the blazing sun. Their language, habits, and character have to some extent grown familiar to me.

They are not, to begin with, a bit like the description I sometimes read of them in newspapers. In one of Kipling's books there is a description of a painting of a soldier in action; realistic and true to life; dirty and grimed and foul, with an assegai wound across the ankle, and the terror of death in his face. The dealer who took the picture made the artist alter it; had the uniform cleaned and the straps pipe-clayed, and the face smoothed and composed, and the ferocity and despair toned down to a plump and well-fed complacency, and made, in fact, all those alterations which were supposed to suit it to the public taste.

The newspapers describe the British soldier, I suppose, to suit the public too, much on the same lines. He is the most simpering, mild-mannered, and perfect gentleman. If you asked him to loot a farm, he would stare at you in shocked amazement. He is, of course, "as brave as a lion," his courage being always at that dead level of perfect heroism which makes the term quite meaningless. Except, however, when they are shining with the light of battle, his eyes regard all people, friends and foes alike, with an expression of kindness and brotherly love. He never uses a strong word, and under all circumstances the gentleness and sweet decorum of his manner is such as you would never expect to meet outside the Y.M.C.A.

This is about as much like our dear, old, real Tommy Atkins as Kipling's portrait was. Such a likeness does no honour to the man. It is simply lifeless. Whatever Tommy is, he is a man; not a round-eyed, pink-cheeked waxwork stuffed with bran. The truth is coarse and strong, but he can stand having the truth told about him.