I must have been stunned for a moment, but soon recovered my senses and realised that I had broken nothing nor been hit by a bullet. Saunders lay very still within ten feet of me, and I feared he was dead. But cautious inquiry elicited a reply. He was all right, but complained of being unable to move one arm, and we assumed it was broken. All this time the firing continued, evidently directed at our retreating section. Judge of my astonishment, on looking up to see why it should suddenly have increased in our immediate neighbourhood, to observe Parkes riding back to us. He had pulled up as quickly as he could when he noticed our disaster. Seeing Saunders lying quiet, he offered to take me on his horse, but I shouted to him to clear off, as he was endangering his own life as well as drawing the fire on us. I could not have left Saunders after his having stopped to take me up, and for Parkes and myself to have helped him away in the midst of such a murderous fire would have been folly. Very reluctantly Parkes galloped off. His horse shortly afterwards was shot under him, but he managed to get away by running. As for myself, I was so shaken I could not have gone far on foot, besides which I was already exhausted by running. In any case, to have got up and attempted escape with the enemy in such force and at such close range would have been madness. I accordingly lay very still and called to Saunders to do likewise. Immediately afterwards a party of Boers some 300 strong swept past us on horseback, evidently in pursuit of our retiring troops, and then began a very trying part of our experience. The Boers were some hundreds of yards in front lying on the face of a slope, and we got the full benefit of a very hot fire directed against them. Three shells from our own guns burst all around, and the fire of a pom-pom sighted a little too high tore up the ground close on our left. Bullets fell all around us and between us; so embarrassing was the situation that I began to look about for cover. But turning round I saw a Boer some hundred yards away steadily looking at us from under the lee of a rock. Whenever he saw me turn he dropped on to his knee and levelled his rifle. Quickly I lay like one dead, and whispered hoarsely to Saunders not to move for his life. It was an anxious wait. No bullet came, and the Boer, seeing us remain still, stole cautiously up to where he could see our faces. Realising we were helpless, he dropped his rifle and came up, assuring us he would not harm us. He rolled Saunders round, took a valuable set of glasses from him, as well as belt, purse, knife, water-bottle, and everything worth having. He was about to commence operations on me, and I was wondering if it would be worth while to make a dash for his rifle, when he got up and cleared off. The cause was the approach of a Boer doctor, who came up and most kindly inquired if we were wounded. Finding nothing seriously the matter with us, he explained that he must move on to more dangerous cases, but promised to come back and attend to us later on. Then a large party of Boers suddenly surrounded us. They stripped me of my belt, to which was attached a fine knife and a good compass; also bandolier, ammunition, and water-bottle, the latter evidently a much appreciated prize. I begged to have my knife back, as it was a present from a dear friend. To my astonishment, it was handed back to me. Then one offered to buy it, but was quashed by the others, who said it was a shame to want from me what I valued so much. Then we were helped up and marched off towards the ambulance, Saunders suffering considerably from his arm, I feeling sound enough but very sick and giddy. Round the ambulance cart was a large crowd of Boers, evidently enjoying the shelter of the Red Cross. They looked curiously at us, and the bolder asked for our spurs and badges. We parted with these, but protested at a request to give up our leathern gaiters. A doctor bound up Saunders’s arm, and we were sent off in charge of three guards to the Boer laager which lay over the hill to the north. After a bit one of the Boers, observing me to move very groggily, put me on his horse. But Saunders, though his arm pained him a good deal, had to walk.

In their first fight, and on many occasions afterwards, Lumsden’s Horse bore testimony to the sportsmanlike qualities and humanity of their enemies, especially towards men who were lying wounded and helpless on the field. Writing many months afterwards, Colonel Lumsden gave some affecting instances by way of illustration, and several of these were connected with the affair at Houtnek, though their interesting sequels were not known in some cases until near the close of the campaign. These may be given in Colonel Lumsden’s words. He writes:

‘One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.’ Many kindly actions on the part of the Boers have gone unrecorded in the present campaign. I cannot, however, allow one or two which came under my special notice to pass without mention.

On April 30, 1900, when we were engaged with that clever General De la Rey, my scouts, while reconnoitring[reconnoitring] under Lieutenant Pugh, far in advance of the main body, came suddenly upon a well-concealed Boer outpost, who opened fire on them, wounding poor Franks severely. Pugh stuck to him gallantly, making for where he considered our leading column would be. Franks, however, got so weak that Lieutenant Pugh and the other two scouts had to dismount him and leave him on the veldt. Later in the day, when the enemy’s fire slackened, some friends of Franks were able to go out and carry him in and place him in the hands of Dr. Powell, who did all that was possible for him in the circumstances. We were holding an untenable position, and when the order came to retire early in the afternoon, poor Franks had to be left until an ambulance might be got to carry him back to our headquarters camp at Spytfontein. Shortly after our retirement from the spot where he lay the Boers occupied the ground we had left, and, finding Franks, treated him with every kindness and attention. It was the last we saw of him. Some five days later, at the fight near Brandfort, a Boer ambulance containing several wounded Boers and with Doctor Everard in charge fell into our hands. On my riding up to interview the latter, he asked if we were not Lumsden’s Horse, and on my replying in the affirmative he said, ‘One of your men, named Franks, fell into our hands on April 30, and was under my care. I did all I could for him, but the poor fellow died.’ Then producing a small note-book from his pocket he said, ‘In this I have noted when and where he was buried. I also found on his person two sovereigns and two rings.’ These the doctor handed to me with a request that I would be good enough to forward them to the boy’s mother. I thanked him most gratefully for what he had done on behalf of my late comrade, and in due course was able to forward, through Trooper Preston, the relics handed to me to Mrs. Franks, of The Chase, Clapham Common, London.

On the same day (April 30), Lieutenant Crane, with a small detachment of my corps, was sent by Colonel Ross, our commanding officer, to occupy a low-lying kopje on our left front. They were attacked by an overwhelming number of the enemy, and nearly the whole of the little lot were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, as they maintained their position to the last. Lieutenant Crane himself, being badly shot in the groin, was lying in an exposed position unseen by us, and under fire of our own Maxim gun, which was playing on the kopje now occupied by the Boers, and in imminent risk of being killed by our own fire. Suddenly one of the Boers came forward amidst a hail of bullets, lifted up Lieutenant Crane, and carried him to a place of safety. Many a V.C. has been gained by doing a similar action. This story was subsequently corroborated by Lieutenant Crane, who told me that the man who behaved so gallantly towards him was named Meyers.

Strange to relate, in the following September when that ideal Cavalry leader, General French, made his brilliant dash on Barberton—a feature of the campaign on which I think too little has been said, and not sufficient credit given to the leadership and pluck of the gallant General—Lumsden’s Horse comprised his rearguard, under the command of General Mahon, of Mafeking fame. As we rode up the heights prior to following General French’s force into the Barberton Valley, we came across several Boer families living in tents and grazing their cattle on the veldt. I rode up to one of the tents and was chatting with a stalwart Boer and his family. He immediately spotted what corps we were and said, ‘Oh, we fought against you at Houtnek.’ I asked his name, and he said Meyers. I then shook hands with him gratefully and said, ‘You are the man who carried my subaltern, Crane, at the risk of your life into a place of safety on that day.’ He brought me a cup of coffee, and while I was chatting pleasantly with his wife and family he said, ‘Have you got a man with you of the name of McGillivray? I remember him well, a big Scotchman. We took him prisoner that day, and on our way to Pretoria I had the pleasure of dividing a couple of bottles of whisky between him and one or two of his comrades also in our hands.’ As this Boer was living quietly on the veldt, and not in the fighting line, I had the pleasure of getting a pass for himself and his family by way of showing some practical gratitude for his kind and plucky treatment of my comrades.

CHAPTER X
PRISONERS OF WAR

To be carried off captive after the first hot skirmish into which one has gone full of confidence and hope is a trying experience for any soldier, and especially for those who are conscious of having done manful deeds deserving a better fate. In these circumstances, however, it implies no humiliation, but only a feeling of rebellious resentment against the fortunes of war that have, at one fell stroke, swept away all hopes of further distinction, dashed every ambitious plan, and severed for a time at least all pleasant associations with comrades whose friendship is never so truly appreciated under other conditions as it is amid the rough campaigning experiences that try the temper and the mettle of all men. The full sense of everything that has been lost comes upon war-prisoners in the first hours of their captivity with the crushing force of a hopeless defeat, so that they cannot even find it in their hearts to be thankful for the lives that have been spared to them. If this is so in the case of men to whom loss of liberty means no reproach and who have the proud consciousness that they did not purchase safety by unfaithfulness to their trust, how much sharper must the sting be to those who by pusillanimous surrender have brought the dark shadow of dishonour on themselves and stained the proud blazonry of regimental distinctions! Happily, British soldiers have not often gone into captivity with that stigma resting on them; and, though critics at home were ungenerously prone to assume that the ‘flag of shame’ had been hoisted too readily in some fights against the Boers, they would have told a different story if it had been their lot to lie on the bare veldt within rifle-range of hidden enemies under whose deadly fire it is even more dangerous to go back than to go forward. The idea of wresting victory by a rush or wriggling up to it through zone after zone of hailing bullets across four or five hundred yards of open ground could only have commended itself to tacticians comfortably ensconced in arm-chairs far from the buzz and boom of war. Hemmed in by a girdle of fire that cannot possibly be broken by a charge across such distances, men must either lie down like sheep to be slaughtered, or walk to their deaths with eyes open, making useless sacrifices, or surrender; and none but a braggart who had never been under fire would dare to hurl the poisoned arrows of reproach at brave men upon whom the last alternative has been forced. Every soldier knows how unjust is that journalistic phrase ‘an easy surrender.’ Nobody could have written it if he had thought for a moment[moment] of the bitterness that is in the hearts of men who have to yield under the white flag; yet it is not necessarily an emblem of shame for all that. Lumsden’s Horse did not hoist it in their direst extremity, but they would be the last to jeer at men who have passed through such an ordeal. If ever captives had the right to hold up their heads in the presence of triumphant enemies, those men were the troopers of Lumsden’s Horse who had sacrificed themselves rather than abandon a wounded comrade. One of them, Corporal Firth, a prisoner in the hands of the Boers, wrote to his parents from Waterval on May 7, 1900:

You will by this time have seen that I am now a prisoner of war from the published lists in the papers. I will just give you an outline of what happened on the 30th ult. An officer, two non-commissioned officers, and eleven men were told off to hold a hill as a guard against an attack on the right of a body advancing from our centre; this centre body had to retire, and we, receiving no orders, held on as long as possible until forced to retire, which we did, having five killed, our officer wounded, and four taken prisoners, leaving only four who escaped to tell the tale. I could have got away, only went back to the assistance of our officer, who was wounded about ten yards behind me. I bound him up under a heavy fire, and Providence must have watched over me that day, as bullets in hundreds were flying all round me. I am in good health and received very kind treatment from the hands of my captors, of which I will write more on another occasion, as I am not yet settled down in my new surroundings.