Photo: F. Kapp & Co.
TRANSPORT AND WATER CARTS
Before daybreak in the morning of April 21, Lumsden’s Horse were roused to pack kits and saddle up for their march. Impartial observers said they were very smart about it, but a story went round that the Colonel had expressed himself as much disappointed with B Company, saying that the others would have saddled up and walked round them three times. This was apparently only a playful invention, but it so angered one trooper that he could only express his feelings in choice Hindustani. He was mollified afterwards on learning that A Company had really admired the soldierly way in which B Company got ready, and then he excused his strong language by writing, ‘I understand now the expression “Swear like a trooper.” We hear and do more of it every day.‘ It was a painful confession for one of Lumsden’s Horse to make, but the incident, apparently trivial, shows that a wholesome spirit of emulation in deeds was animating the men, and that would always be regarded by soldiers as ample atonement for unnecessary rivalry in linguistic attainments. The time was close at hand, too, when Lumsden’s Horse would have more serious things to think about than these. Yet nobody knows better than old campaigners how little things occupy the thoughts of men even when they are doing great deeds. No opportunity for achieving greatness came to the corps during its first day’s march through a country where the enemy’s appearance might be looked for at any moment, but in another way the men showed their fitness for a soldier’s work—by helping the transport out of difficulties. It was in crossing a drift at the Little Modder River that carts stuck with wheels jammed tightly in deep holes between slippery boulders, and teams floundered in fruitless attempts to recover their footing. The Editor, having been in one of those holes, horse and all, has reason to remember the place and the swirl of water where it rashes over rocky ledges into a deeper pool. By dint of manful work, Lumsden’s Horse got their carts clear of the drift, only to find them axle deep in the treacherous soil of a neighbouring vlei some minutes later. Then ammunition had to be taken out and carried to firm ground and carts lifted bodily out of the mire. It was an experience by which the transport drivers learned not to trust appearances and to beware of grass that looked unusually green. Still, as Sergeant Stephens, of the Transport, wrote in relating his experiences, ‘If anything ever frightened our drivers it was the word “drift”; you should have seen the worried looks when they heard there was a drift ahead.’ That night the corps bivouacked beyond Glen, where General Tucker’s division had been in touch with the enemy for nearly a month and warding off frequent attempts to interfere with Engineers who were hard at work on a ‘deviation’ near the ruined railway bridge. There they had to bivouac with nothing but blankets to protect them from the bitterly cold wind, and they went to sleep supperless because the transport, delayed by many causes, had not come up. No alarms or excursions disturbed their rest that night, but their march next morning was to the accompaniment of distant pom-poms and heavier guns and the sounds of fighting not far off. They did not know the meaning of it all then. It seemed to them but a local skirmish, and not the penultimate phase of a great movement in which Ian Hamilton, French, and Rundle had been sweeping the Boers before them from Wepener to Thaba ’Nchu and thence eastward and northward, clearing the country for a still greater movement. No shots came near the marching column. The screen of outposts holding inquisitive Boers in check was miles away from the drift where Lumsden’s Horse crossed the main Modder River, and, for all they could see, it might have been still miles off when they marched up a steep track and bivouacked on the pleasant hillside, relieving some New South Wales Mounted Rifles, whose horses had been used up by incessant patrolling. They were, however, in the outpost line there as part of the 8th Mounted Infantry, commanded by Colonel Ross, to whom Colonel Lumsden reported himself that afternoon. Some officers of Regular regiments whose pickets were near at hand came to have a look at these Indian Volunteers, who were quite gratified afterwards to hear that the Colonel of the Norfolks thought them ‘a very fine set of men, but undisciplined.’ It was true enough they had not much discipline of the parade-ground type, but they were held together by bonds stronger than any rules or regulations can weld, and inspired by a sentiment that would have made them ‘play the game’ wherever fortune might place them. And part of that game was for them to be soldiers in deed as well as in spirit, though they might lack the mere outward show of subordination. Spytfontein, which formed the centre of a position held by Lumsden’s Horse, is an outwork of the rugged range that sweeps from east to west in an irregular curve just north of Karree Siding, and from which General Tucker’s division, aided by a turning movement of Cavalry and Mounted Infantry under General French, dislodged the Boers a month earlier. Though they had made several attempts to reoccupy that range in the hope of being able to shell us out of Glen, they lost ground each time, and finally retired to an entrenched position in front of Brandfort, to which Spytfontein was our nearest approach. Trooper Burn-Murdoch in one of his clever letters to the ‘Englishman’ gave an admirable sketch of outpost work when it was a new experience to Lumsden’s Horse:
Spytfontein consists of several kopjes with rocks between and, so far as I could see, only one farmhouse, so you will not find it marked on the map. We took the place of some Australians, as they had been pretty busy and their horses were all knocked up. To the north of us were Loch’s Horse about 500 yards off, and quite close to our southern flank were some companies of East Lancashire Mounted Infantry. What with outlying pickets, guards, horse pickets, and such like, we did not find time hang heavy on our hands. And, as our nearest neighbours over the kopjes were large bodies of Boers with heavy guns and other arms, we had, as the saying is, to sleep with one eye open, and that one well skinned. I have many a time steered my way by Old Crux away down south. But I found that gazing at it over the icy-cold muzzle of a Lee-Metford was, though possibly just as profitable and useful a job, very much less romantic.
One reads in Olive Schreiner and in other African authors’ books of the never-to-be-forgotten pleasure of sleeping out on the great South African veldt, the pale calm moon overhead, and only the shade of the waggon for covering, around which the trek oxen rest after their day’s toil, the monotonous crunch, crunch of their jaws as they chew the cud being the only sound that breaks the awe-inspiring silence. My personal experience was vile—cold winds, little or no moon, wet grass and rocks to lie upon, soaking wet feet and clothes, one wet blanket and ditto coat, the only change to this being two hours’ sentry-go every four hours.
OUTLYING PICKET TAKING UP POSITION
(From a sketch by J.S. Cowen)
We were not allowed to walk about as on ordinary sentry-go, but had to keep quiet and sit or lie down for the most of the time, with our eyes straining out into the dark north, where every piece of scrub or large stone rapidly grew into a slouch-hatted Boer, as our brains became hypnotised with ceaseless gazing. And on our keen sense of hearing and sight depended the lives of all the corps!
One afternoon the alarm was given, and we promptly ‘stood to arms’ in excited expectation of an attack. But it proved to be a false alarm; and I was not surprised that it was so, as our valiant signaller standing on the sky-line of a neighbouring kopje flagged the news down to us, and of course all the Boers between our pickets and Kroonstad at once knew that Lumsden’s Horse were awake and there—so they thought better of it. Some few days afterwards we got orders to parade at 2.30 A.M. to take part in an attack on a Boer force which had been ‘located’ on some hills to the south-west of us and skirting the Modder River. I was horse sentry that night, so got practically no sleep. At 2.30, however, amid a thundercloud of English and Hindustani, Lumsden’s Horse awoke and managed to saddle up in the darkness; and then, by dint of shouting out each other’s names, we managed to wriggle into our proper subsections. As one man put it, ‘the bundabust was shocking.’
From the midst of this noisy dark chaos emerging, away we marched. Bitterly cold and cheerless was that morning, every second man’s teeth chattering like so many castanets, while one’s feet felt en masse with the stirrup irons. In a short time we were joined by Loch’s Horse, the Victorian Mounted Rifles, the Artillery, and Lancashire Mounted Infantry, and silence was the strict order of the march; and silence it was pretty well, until one of Loch’s Horse, with his cut-off open, let bang two shots—phew! phew! went the two nickels over the lot of us, and half of us ‘bowed our heads’ reverently. I believe Mr. Loch got fourteen days’ for that, and served him jolly well right.