In fact, whatever the enemy obviously wishes us to do, must not be done, lest we be drawn into a trap; and above all nothing must ever be taken for granted. I am fully aware that these axioms are as old as the hills, and that every soldier is supposed to absorb them with his military milk in his infancy as a recruit; but I am afraid that he does not assimilate enough of this particular kind of diet.
Many are the instances, some of them microscopic, some of them serious, which I have seen of the neglect of the golden rule—take nothing for granted; and I might also add to this rule another, namely—never despise your enemy—to which the attention of all amateur soldiers might be drawn when they next race off in the direction of any campaign which may be threatening.
This queer Meyer's Kop made an excellent helio station from which signalling communication was easily maintained to the north and south; and it was also a first-rate observation post, from which the surrounding country for miles round could be seen. One of the officers was usually on watch up there from daylight to dark, and it was really a very pleasant way of spending three or four hours on a fine day. Sometimes we could see what we thought were Boers riding about on the sky line, and we used to especially watch the entrance to Slabbert's Nek, in the hopes of seeing some of the enemy moving about. Once or twice we went out with a few men and some wagons to procure forage from the farm of an Englishman named Passmore, a horsebreeder and trainer, and a jockey well known at Johannesburg, who had a run near us, but who had had to bolt when the Boers arrived in the neighbourhood. This man had opened a small store on his property, but when we arrived we found that it had been carefully looted. I never saw such confusion as there was; nearly everything had been torn down or off the shelves and thrown promiscuously on to the floor; things looked as though a whole troop of monkeys had been allowed a free hand for half an hour or so. Only once have I seen anything approaching such a state of matters, and that was years ago, when Captain Farrell's pet monkey was accidentally shut up in his master's quarters for a couple of hours; and the havoc that monkey, who was of an enquiring turn of mind, played with writing table, dressing table, chest of drawers, and tin uniform cases may be better imagined than described.
Passmore's store however had been visited, it was suspected, by Kaffirs and not by Boers. It was a curious circumstance, noticed by one of our officers with a Sherlock Holmes disposition, that all the tins, of which there were a number containing mustard, medicines, pepper, linseed, ginger and other things, had a small opening, roughly made, evidently to enable the contents to be examined. Now, no white man would have gone to the trouble of doing this, even if he couldn't have read the label, which was plain enough in every case.
G and H Companies were sent in with wagons, on the 20th of July, to Bethlehem, to draw another supply of rations and to get the mails, sixty-three bags of which were waiting for us. They returned the next day in the afternoon, together with the Bedfordshire regiment, who camped alongside of us, but left the next evening to join Paget's Brigade, which was only a few miles away.
The Bedfords, who had been equipped earlier in the campaign than we had, when things were more plentiful, were very well provided as regards transport. They had plenty of wagons, Scotch carts, ammunition carts and water carts, while we were still limited to the one water cart with which we originally started, and the two old Scotch carts, procured at a farm, which we utilised to carry some of our reserve ammunition. The four ammunition and other carts we had brought from home had been left at Glen for want of mules to draw them.
CHAPTER XIII. RETIEF'S NEK.
A bad night—Start for Relief's Nek—Description of ground—Orders to attack—Leading companies take wrong direction—Remaining companies advance against Nek—They close up to the Boer position—Further advance impossible—Death of Sir Walter Barttelot—Orders to retire at dusk—Difficulty of bringing in wounded—A good Samaritan.