Up to this point the march had been across monotonous veldt, mostly flat, treeless, and uninteresting. Here and there, where the ground held moisture, little pink flowers of a wood sorrel showed, and nearly every mile one came across some fresh variety of aster or daisy-like flower with composite crown shining brightly in the coarse grass. Occasionally the ridges were rich with clumps of heath, scarlet, yellow, and white, but not enough to relieve the general dreariness of distances across which one often looked in vain for any sign of cultivation. Ant-hills and the burrows of ant-bears were on all the veldt, and we had to wind our way among them, following no well-defined road, but only a track, the general direction of which was marked by a browner thread running across the tawny veldt. Several horses blundered into the bear-holes and brought their riders to grief, much to the general amusement. One trooper who rode ahead waving his hand and warning those who followed by frequent cries of ‘’Ware hole! ’Ware hole!’ suddenly disappeared, and we heard him groan as his horse rolled over on top of him, ‘Here’s one, and I’m into it.’ It was nearly dark then; but dead horses, mules, and dying oxen marked the track by which other convoys had gone. We felt glad that our transport ponies were not to share their fate. They had proved quite useless for drawing the heavy loads in this country, so we left them behind at Sterkstroom, sending all our baggage-carts on by train, while we marched and bivouacked with only the blankets and supplies that could be carried on our own horses. It was at Edenburg, I think, that after a wet march we got leave to go into the town, hoping it might be possible to get something better than the perpetual ‘bully beef’ and biscuits, but the only room we could find in the only decent hotel was wanted for officers. However, a little man of the Derby Militia came and showed us a small Boer ‘Winkel,’ where we got excellent tea, bread, and jam. The Derby man said he knew where he could buy some butter, which was all we wanted to make us happy. C—— gave him 2s. to go and get it. We finished our meal without that butter, and the Derby man didn’t return. So we went back to find everything in camp wet, muddy, and beastly. To add to our misery, a thunderstorm came on, and while we wallowed in slush there were empty houses with roofs to them not half a mile off. From Kaffir River we might easily have done the distance to Bloemfontein in one march, as it was only nineteen miles; but there was apparently no reason for hurrying, so we spent one more night in bivouac at Kaalspruit, and on Easter Sunday, in the afternoon, marched through Bloemfontein to our camp, which was three miles beyond. We only got a glimpse of the town in passing through its central square and along the main street, but, considering it was the capital of the Free State, I don’t think any of us were very much struck with it at first sight. Colonel Lumsden and A Company welcomed us very warmly. Our tents were already pitched and food prepared, so we soon settled down in our new quarters, A Company’s men receiving us as their guests and treating us most hospitably.
There the trooper’s narrative ends, and Colonel Lumsden follows with a well-deserved tribute to Major Showers and the men of B Company, saying:
They made a very plucky march up, the officers and men carrying nothing but their greatcoats and blankets, and sleeping out every night in the rain. It was too much of a trial for the ponies to pull their carts over the hilly and heavy going; and, as I said before, this method of transport had to be abandoned, and their carts and baggage railed up.
Considering the long and trying marches they had undergone, I consider both men and horses looking wonderfully fit. A certain proportion of them, however, were not in condition to resume immediate work. Therefore, to replace these and in lieu of thirteen casualties on board ship and en route, I have procured from Prince Francis of Teck, the remount officer, twenty-six Argentine cobs, which, although not up to the standard of our Indian mounts, are nevertheless a boon to us in the circumstances, in a situation where horseflesh is at a premium. A certain amount of kit and necessaries had been lost by both companies during our journey here; but, it being our first demand on the military authorities for such, we had no difficulty in getting our requirements satisfied.
We are now (April 18) under orders to move to-morrow for Spytfontein, five miles to the east of Karree Siding station, halting for the night at Glen. There has been heavy rain for the past four days, and it will be bad travelling, especially crossing the drift at Modder River. I have been fortunate in being able to retain the whole of our transport, which privilege has not been granted to any other unit, and shall to-morrow be complete in every respect. The men are in keen spirits, as our post is to be an advanced one and within range of the Boer outposts.
I regret to say that Captain Beresford is no better, and will, I fear, have to be invalided home.
CHAPTER VII
IMPRESSIONS OF BLOEMFONTEIN—JOIN THE 8th MOUNTED
INFANTRY REGIMENT ON OUTPOST
Long streets, ill-paved and deep in mud or dust; a low stoep-shaded cottage with vines trailing about its posts here and there between long rows of featureless shops; a large market square where no farm produce is displayed; a club frequented by British officers who have little time to lounge; several churches of the primmest Dutch type, with tall steeples that cut sharply against the clear sky in lines uncompromisingly straight; some public buildings, pretentious without grace or beauty; on one side a steep hill terraced with houses of which little but the corrugated iron roofs can be seen; on the other, roads that straggle off to level outskirts, where villas painfully new stand in the midst of flowerless gardens surrounded by barbed wire. These were the first impressions of Bloemfontein gathered by Lumsden’s Horse, and few troopers had any opportunity to modify these impressions in more favourable circumstances afterwards. The camp to which A Company went originally at Rietfontein was within two miles of the town, and might have been pleasant enough if thousands of hoofs had not cut up its turf, and the ground had not been used as a dumping-place for rubbish which Boer commandos could not turn to any use. Some of them had been there before Lumsden’s Horse, and several British regiments also. So many tens of thousands of soldiers were camped round about the town that they may have interrupted the currents of salubrious air which made Bloemfontein famous in other days as a resort for invalids. There were plenty of invalids to be seen there in the early weeks of April 1900, but they did not regard it as the best type of sanatorium, and men who had to sleep in small tents on the reeking ground of Rietfontein would not willingly go there again in search of health. They had hardly begun to realise how serious was the stoppage of a fresh water supply which the Boers had cut off from the main at Modder River. Hundreds of old wells existed in the town and its outskirts, and by opening these enough water could be drawn for immediate wants. But, alas! the water had been undisturbed since Bloemfontein began to draw its supply from the distant waterworks some six or seven years earlier. What impurities had drained into the wells during all that time nobody knew until hospitals filled rapidly with patients suffering from enteric and dysentery. Rietfontein was showing symptoms of an outbreak, and so, after a week under canvas there, Lumsden’s Horse got the welcome order to strike camp and form a new one some three miles farther north, by Deel’s Farm, where a clear spruit flows over its bed of white gravel between banks that are shaded by tall eucalyptus trees and drooping sallows.
After days on duty, in which they were not allowed to be slack, troopers felt little inclination for walking the four or five miles to Bloemfontein, which did not become more cheerful as the number of troops increased, except for the traders, who were rapidly getting back all they had lost by the war and a great deal more. Officers had always the chance, whenever they could get away from camp for an hour or two, of pleasant social meetings at the Bloemfontein Club, where generals, regimental commanders, and company officers from other brigades came together for a little while at lunch or afternoon tea and exchanged all the rumours that could be told in a few minutes—and they were many. It was a place of strange meetings. Men from the uttermost corners of the earth, who had perhaps not seen each other for years, foregathered there, only to separate a little later and go on their ways with different columns, none knew whither. Troopers had similar experiences in the streets and inns of Bloemfontein, where nearly every regimental badge of the British Army and every distinguishing plume adopted by Irregulars who had come to fight as ‘soldiers of the Queen’ were to be seen in a variety that seemed endless. Brothers whose paths in life had parted when they left school, one going east, another west or south, came face to face in the streets of that little Free State town or rubbed shoulders in a motley crowd of khaki-clad soldiers, sometimes without recognising each other, until accident gave them some clue. A rough word or two of careless greeting, a tight hand-grip, a steadfast look into eyes that remind the boys of father or mother, a light laugh on lips that might otherwise betray too much feeling, a drink together (if it is to be had), for ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and then with a jaunty ‘So long, old chap,’ they part again. It is a superstition, or at any rate a recognised custom, not to say ‘Good-bye’ in such circumstances. But if men only thought of its literal meaning, what better wish could there be? Yet, for all its stir and bustle and dramatic incidents, Bloemfontein was a dull place in those days for any man who entered it and found no intimate friends there to greet him. Comrades they all were, but in a rough-and-ready sort of comradeship that needed the fire of the battlefield to try it and perchance anneal it into something stronger than the ties of mere kinship. But this is a thing which only soldiers understand, and seldom even they. Lumsden’s Horse knew it not then, but for some of them the secret was to be disclosed before many days had passed, and in a form that will never fade from their memory. Meanwhile, they went about their duties methodically enough in camp or took their pleasures sadly in streets where thousands of soldiers wandered daily, finding no entertainment, no place of resort except dingy bars, where liquors of more than alcoholic potency were sold, and very little change from campaign fare except at a price that made even the necessaries of life prohibited luxuries for a man who had no more than his shilling a day to spend. One of Lumsden’s Horse who was sent into Bloemfontein on orderly duty gives a vivid sketch of all this in a few touches that are the more graphic because they only pretend to note passing impressions. Writing a day after B Company’s arrival at Deel’s Farm, he shows how the men had to rub their horses down while standing inches deep in mud. So much rain was out of season, but South Africa is, like other places, occasionally fickle in this respect. To troopers it did not seem an ideal way of spending Easter Monday, and the whistle, of which officers made free use, must have been irritating to nerves already overstrained, for it is never mentioned without a forcible prefix. However, when rain ceased and sunshine appeared for an hour in the afternoon, these men were merry enough at a game of cricket, which, by violating all the higher rules, must have reminded them of similar sports in England when they were boys and welcomed Easter Monday as the day of all others appropriate to cricket. The next morning a great cheer rolled from camp to camp, and Lumsden’s Horse, responding lustily, passed it on to the next without asking what the unusual excitement meant. When they heard afterwards that troops were cheering because ‘Kruger had surrendered,’ a strange depression took hold of them. At that moment all the discomforts and drudgery of a soldier’s life were forgotten in the humiliating thought that the corps would have to go back to India without a chance of proving itself in battle. It turned out, however, to be all mere rumour, though not so baseless as some of which Lumsden’s Horse had after-experience. The Transvaal President’s offer to negotiate for peace on terms all in his own favour must have been known in England then, and in some mysterious way a reflex of it came to camps on the veldt, where troops, who had seen plenty of the fighting that Lumsden’s Horse were eager for, welcomed the illusive tidings with a cheer. In its train, however, came something nearly as good—a post bringing letters from ‘England, home, and beauty,’ and for one non-commissioned officer at least ‘a parcel full of excellent things.’ Before he had time to enjoy these he was under orders for Bloemfontein, and after a ride through pouring rain he got there in time to hear another disconcerting rumour, and to find some of his comrades selling their kit because ‘they had been ordered back.’ Wisely resolving not to act on anything but definite orders, and, taking the advice of a corporal in the City Imperial Volunteers, who persuaded him ‘to sit tight,’ he waited, making the best of circumstances that were by no means bright according to his own brief record, which runs, ‘No dinner to be had at the station. Got tea sixpence a cup, bread and jam sixpence.’ Hungry and dispirited, he turned in and went to bed at the station, which means something very different from the untravelled civilian’s idea of a bed. Then next morning ‘bought a bob’s worth of oat straw for horse—groomed and fed him. Put my wet things out to dry, and sallied forth to the station. Had an excellent breakfast: porridge, haddock, chops, and two cups of coffee, for three shillings. Went to the hospital to try and get my leg dressed, but couldn’t find anybody to speak to. Thence to a most pleasant chemist—a Dutchman. Went to the station for lunch—another three bob.’ Not a profitable day’s work for a corporal on Cavalry pay without ‘colonial allowances.’ After that came tea and dinner, so that he was evidently doing his best to prove the wisdom of Mark Tapley’s philosophy. Having found circumstances in which it was a credit to be jolly, he made the most of them. It is not every soldier, however, who, having indulged in a little extravagance of that kind, could write, ‘Afterwards to the bank, and had an agreeable interview with the manager’; nor every man, with a balance to his credit, who would have turned cheerfully again towards the rough life of a camp and the unknown hardships that were to follow. When orders came next day for all Lumsden’s Horse to rejoin their corps in readiness for an immediate advance, this non-commissioned officer paid another visit to his friend the chemist and asked how much he owed. ‘The chemist refused to take anything. Pretty good that for a Dutchman and evidently a pro-Boer.’ With that pleasant experience blotting out all unfavourable impressions of Bloemfontein, the corporal rode back to camp at Deel’s Farm to find all the tents being struck.
So they had to spend a miserable night by the bivouac fire and get what amusement they could out of good stories. One, suggested perhaps by talk of chemists and surgical operations, is worthy to be preserved. To appreciate the point of the joke you must know that a lieutenant-general’s badges of rank are a sword and bâton crossed, with the crown above them. A man of the —— Yeomanry, then quartered in Bloemfontein, was suffering agonies from toothache, and, like our friend the corporal, had searched every hospital in vain for a surgeon who might have leisure to extract it. As he crossed the Market Square, a general of division whose kindness of heart is as notorious as his strength of language, was coming out of the Club. To him the yeoman advanced, and, after a hesitating preface, asked the General whether he would mind drawing a tooth. For a moment the General was dumbfounded, but then his powers of expression came back to him. ‘What the devil do you mean?’ he roared, thinking the yeoman was unpardonably familiar. The man’s face fell. ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but our doctor’s on leave, and——’ ‘But,’ said the officer, smiling at the man’s mistake, ‘I’m not a doctor; I’m General ——’ The yeoman stammered, ‘But—but—your badge, sir!’ The General good-humouredly turned his shoulder to the abashed trooper. ‘Here you are, my lad; what’s the matter with the badge? “Crossed swords, bâton, and crown.”’ ‘Good heavens!’ said the man, ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, sir. I thought it was the skull and cross-bones!’