Trooper A.F. Franks, of the same sub-section, the very best of fellows and liked by everyone, was not so lucky, poor fellow. He accompanied Lieutenant H.O. Pugh in advance, but, seeing nothing, Franks suggested that he should go forward to the top of the donga or nullah in which they were standing; but on reaching the top he was confronted by thirty or forty of the enemy about three hundred yards away. They beckoned to him and spoke to him in Dutch, presumably inquiring who he was; without waiting for a reply, however, they opened fire, and Franks then turned and retired. He had not gone far before he was struck, the bullet going through his back and coming out just below the heart. He managed to stick on his saddle till he reached Lieutenant Pugh, who caught his horse by the head and led him towards the kopje above mentioned as occupied by us. Franks was in such pain that he was unable to bear the jolting of the horse, and so he had to be laid down on the plain for the time being. Lieutenant Pugh and other men who had come up in the meantime then retired to the kopje to report the state of affairs to Colonel Lumsden. All this time, of course, the bullets were whistling about, and the wonder is that not more of us were shot. Two men were then sent in search of our doctor, and Colonel Lumsden, as soon as he heard what had happened, immediately ordered his horse and, accompanied by his orderly, Percy Smith, of A Company, and Private H.N. Betts, of B Company, on horseback—Private Chapman, of B Company, having previously gone down on foot on the same errand of mercy—rode forward to the spot. On reaching it our gallant Colonel insisted on dismounting and placing Franks on his horse, saying the animal was a quiet one, and, notwithstanding the urgent requests of the others that he would allow them to give up one of their horses to him, he insisted on walking the whole distance, quite regardless of the hail of bullets round him. Progress was naturally slow, as Franks complained of severe pain, but at last the kopje was reached, none of the party getting a scratch. They had a narrow escape; the Boers had evidently got the range to a nicety. They then started a brisk rifle fire on the kopje we were on, which we returned at every opportunity, but they kept themselves so well under cover that we had very poor chances of doing them any serious damage from our side. They gradually crept up closer and closer, coming down by twos and threes from a kopje about two thousand yards away, and taking up their position eventually behind a slope eight to nine hundred yards distant. A regular artillery duel, several of their shells bursting among the pom-poms and our own Maxim, but not doing much damage. I fancy our guns did a bit of killing, though the Boers afterwards acknowledged to four wounded only; our Maxim gave a very good account of itself. I understand our only casualties in this direction were two or three wounded horses. We were told afterwards that the day’s operations were only intended to be a reconnaissance in force to find out the enemy’s strength and position, after which large forces from the left and right would attempt to surround them. This being the case, at about 12 (we had been under fire for about four hours) a general retirement was ordered from the right. The Boers, seeing us retiring, were evidently emboldened to throw aside their usual cautious tactics, and advanced on us rapidly, very nearly rushing the kopje on which we were before we could get away. The writer’s horse, which had been tied to a tree, got away, and he would have been badly left, as in the hasty retreat we were obliged to make it was impossible to say who had gone on and who was left behind, but fortunately ‘Molly Riley,’ Mrs. Barrow’s well-known paper-chaser, was standing near a bush close by, and Private Were, who was just going off, stopped behind and helped to get hold of ‘Molly Riley.’ We then started to gallop off, but just then another man came running towards us much exhausted with scrambling down the kopje, and Were, saying he was quite fresh, pluckily got off and lent him his horse. Fortunately at that moment Captain Taylor, our Adjutant, galloped up with a spare horse, and, Were getting mounted, we all made away for our lives. We halted at a place some distance off, and it was only then we heard of our long tale of casualties. A Company suffered very heavily on the left flank, where part of them were lying in an exposed position. Besides this, there were several men missing, and it was not till we got into camp in the evening after roll-call was taken that the exact extent of our loss was known. Franks was left on the kopje with an orderly, as it was impossible to move him, and we heard next day that he was taken to the Boer hospital, and died there at 12 o’clock the same night. Among the wounded was Paymaster-Sergeant D.S. Fraser, well known in sporting circles in Calcutta. He had his horse shot under him, and was himself wounded in the thigh and captured by the Boers. Our ambulance went out next day and found that the Boers had buried all the dead, except Major Showers, whose body was brought back to camp and buried there. The service was a very impressive one, and was conducted by the Military Chaplain attached to the regiment camped close by. It was calculated to bring home to us all the stern realities of war.
Yet in a trooper’s diary immediately after the most pathetic entry we find it recorded that when rations were to be distributed by a process of division and subdivision ‘B—— argued at great length that one-fourth of two-thirds could not be the same as two-thirds of one-fourth,’ and the discussion took a heated turn. Such are the trifles that seem important to men who have just come out of a battle in which perhaps they were more than once close to the jaws of death. ‘Linesman,’ in those brilliant impressions of the war in Natal—always truthful in fact, but not invariably just in deduction—has recorded a very similar incident at Vaal Krantz, when, from a fire that was deafening, bewildering in its intensity of concentration on the British front,
some died, some were carried away on dripping stretchers before they could learn the full gamut. And the survivors? The few within the writer’s ken—quarrelled! During a lucid interval in the shelling, the regimental cooks had contrived to make and distribute tea to the men lying prone in their shelters. The distribution was not perhaps impartial. The menace of a 94-lb. shrapnel would make a liquor-measure uncertain with the eyes of a hundred Government inspectors glued upon it! So there arose a bickering. Tom down below must obviously have taken more than his share, else how came it that Mick above had to content himself with less? ‘Peace!’ yelled the monstrous shrapnel at the height of the argument; ‘Shut up!’ snapped the pom-pom shells; ‘Silence!’ boomed the far-off 40-pounder. Not a bit of it. No foreign-made projectile ever fired shall stop a Briton well under way with a grievance. That argument flourished amazingly under the shower, and only died away when the glaring sun overhead began to induce an unforgiving slumber.
Ridiculous, of course, such a scene must seem to civilians who have been fed on the heroics of a melodramatic school, or on the still falser ‘revelations’ of writers who, having never seen a battle, mix their own pusillanimous imaginings with so-called ‘psychological’ studies and ironically brand that mixture with the ‘red badge of courage’; but it is true to the nature of soldiers who are not always thinking great things while they do them, and who have often a laugh or an oath on their lips when their thoughts take a flight too serious for words. Burn-Murdoch has told us how, in the midst of a duel that was practically for life or death between some Boers and Lumsden’s Horse in this fight at Ospruit, men laughed outright at something that seemed to them ‘tearfully funny, coming as it did like the comedian’s joke in the middle of a tragedy.’ A soldier should make the best of valets because he is never a hero to himself. Yet he has a firm and never-to-be-shaken faith in the heroism of others. Lumsden’s Horse, many of them in imminent peril at the moment, watched their Colonel’s action in going out to bring the wounded Trooper Franks from a shot-withered slope to some place of comparative safety, and they afterwards declared it to be a valorous deed well worthy of the Victoria Cross. To that conclusion Sir Patrick Playfair also came when the story was told to him, and he said so. Thereupon Colonel Lumsden was much upset lest somebody might say that he, too, had been trying to win the coveted distinction. So he hastened to write a ‘disclaimer’ in these words:
What Sir Patrick really means, and heard about from some of my men, referred to the death of poor Franks, who was lying wounded on the veldt about 800 yards from the point we held on the extreme right of the fighting line. We could see him plainly through our glasses writhing evidently in great pain; and, as I asked for some volunteers to ride down and bring him in, I did not care to request them to do a thing I would not do myself, so rode down with my galloper, Trooper Percy Smith, now a captain in the Middlesex Regiment and a D.S.O., and Trooper Betts and Trooper Chapman, the latter of whom afterwards obtained a commission in the Johannesburg Police.
On reaching the spot we found Franks lying in great danger and pain. Having a quiet pony, ‘Harry Stuart,’ I dismounted, and we placed the wounded man on my horse, and while he was held by two of his comrades we walked back to camp under a pretty heavy fire from some Boers who were galloping on our left rear and firing at us. It was a foolish thing on my part to have done, but, as I said, we were all new to the game together, and I did not care to ask my men to risk their lives in an action in which I would not chance my own. That is all. There was nothing in it.
Yes, that is all! But let England, mother of nations, thank God for the sons who, doing such a deed, can say and think ‘there was nothing in it’!
Cold reason may bid us approve General Charles Tucker’s words of wise caution, but all the time our hearts will be beating time to a noble refrain, the notes of which have thrilled the nerves of British soldiers in all ages, urging them to risk their own lives rather than forsake a stricken comrade, and to die like gentlemen before they would let the stain of dishonour rest on them or their regiment. People who talk glibly of the necessity for encouraging initiative among junior officers may hold that Lieutenant Crane should have conformed to the general retirement, instead of holding his isolated post with untimely resolution, waiting for the orders that could not reach him, when the Boers began to close in on his front and flanks. Apparently no blame attaches to anybody for neglecting to recall Lieutenant Crane and his party at a time when they might have extricated themselves without serious loss. Colonel Ross says that the orderly whom he sent with the message was either killed or wounded, and so the recall never reached Lieutenant Crane. That it was sent both Colonel Ross and his Staff officer, Captain Williams (who has since been killed), were quite positive. In justice to Lieutenant Crane, it must be remembered that a company officer can know very little of what is going on at other points of a fighting line beyond the immediate limits assigned to him, and the privilege of initiative might be strained to a dangerous extent if every section-leader should consider it discreet to retire directly he found himself pressed sorely or somebody else giving way on either flank. In Colonel Lumsden’s words—so eloquent because of their undemonstrative simplicity—Lieutenant Crane ‘deemed it his duty to hold his position as long as possible.’ How many thousands of times in the course of our ‘rough island story’ has the Empire had cause to be thankful to the men who could thus interpret duty as a thing above all personal considerations, calling for self-sacrifice to the end! It was part of the white man’s burden which Lieutenant Crane and his comrades of No. 2 Section had taken upon them long ago, when they settled as indigo-planters in the wilds of Behar, Mozufferpore, and Saran, where Europeans are few and natives many. In such districts the Sahib’s lot may be to face a riotous multitude of frenzied fanatics at any moment, and he must fight it out single-handed, dying if need be under cruel torture, but never showing fear. That was the training-school from which No. 2 Section of A Company came. They were indigo-planters to a man, self-reliant and imbued with a high sense of the Sahib’s responsibility to the race from which he springs. Knowing this, we cannot wonder that the leader deemed it his duty to fight for the ground he had been ordered to hold rather than give way an inch, no matter what odds were against him; or that, when he fell wounded, with Clayton Daubney, Henry Lumsden, and Upton Case dead beside him, others chose to share his fate instead of leaving him to the tender mercies of their enemies. To such men no thought of surrender could have come. Corporal Firth had a chance of getting away, but he went back to where his wounded officer and some old comrades from Mozufferpore were lying under heavy fire, and elected to stay with them as they held the Boers in check until nearly every cartridge was expended. Not before Daubney, Case, and Lumsden had been killed, Cyril Marsham, Stewart McNamara, Helme Firth, Gwatkin Williams, McGillivray, and Macdonald wounded did the Boers succeed in making any prisoners among the little band of indigo-planters, whom they had by that time practically surrounded within point-blank range. No white flag was hoisted and there were no ‘hands up,’ but rifles dropped from the nerveless grip of men who had fought till they were faint with loss of blood and there was no power in the numb fingers to press a trigger. Others laid down the weapons that were useless when their last cartridge had been fired; and then the Boers, closing in upon them, made prisoners of all who survived. If anybody blundered, the mistake was nobly atoned for. It is a story of which Lumsden’s Horse and the whole Empire may be proud.
An early version of this incident, not quite accurate in some details, furnished a noble theme for the pen of Sir A. Conan Doyle, who, in his history of ‘The Great Boer War,’ writes, with a patriot’s enthusiasm and an enthusiast’s glorious disregard of fettering figures, as follows:
Before entering upon a description of that great and decisive movement (the advance on Pretoria), one small action calls for comment. This was the cutting off of twenty[[6]] men of Lumsden’s Horse in a reconnaissance at Karree. The small post under Lieutenant Crane found themselves by some misunderstanding isolated in the midst of the enemy. Refusing to hoist the flag of shame, they fought their way out, losing half[[7]] their number, while of the other half it is said that there was not one who could not show bullet marks upon his clothes or person. The men of this corps, Volunteer Anglo-Indians, had abandoned the ease and even luxury of Eastern life for the hard fare and rough fighting of this most trying campaign. In coming they had set the whole Empire an object-lesson in spirit, and now on their first field they set the Army an example of military virtue. The proud traditions of Outram’s Volunteers have been upheld by the men of Lumsden’s Horse.