However, I bought the pipe, and refunded the kindly little Jew his bob. Leaving the bar, I passed a little bunch of Boers who had rather enjoyed my rebuff at the hands of the barman.
I gravely congratulated the Boers on their brother behind the bar, and asked if they had many other Boers as good looking. Discretion may sometimes be a branch of valour, but there was very little valour about the discretion I exercised when I left that refreshment-bar.
The rest of the night in the train was tedious and uncomfortable to a degree, and cold beyond words. At 3 or 4 in the morning we landed at Pretoria, and our guards, all South African Republic Police—the hated Z.A.R.P.—belonging to Pretoria, instead of leaving us in the train until daylight, hauled us out and marched us off. After a mile or so we came to a building. We entered by a gate, and found ourselves in a courtyard with high walls. We were there delivered over to another lot of ruffians, the first lot clearing off to their homes in high jubilation at the prospect of rejoining wives and families after many months in the field. They had not been unkind to us on the whole, and we found them simple enough, but imbued with considerable contempt of the Britisher and an unchangeable belief in the ultimate success of their own cause.
Sitting on the cold stone pavement of the courtyard, chewing the cud of our misfortunes, we waited for the only friend we’d got—the sun. Meanwhile strange sounds came from the high walls surrounding us—heavy sighs, deep gruntings, weird moanings, harsh cries, and loud beatings. We wondered what manner of place we were in. Daylight revealed the truth. We were in the Pretoria Gaol, and all around us were the drunks and incapables, the vagrants and vagabonds, black and white, that had been scraped out of the gutter the night before. Mostly they were Kaffir women—huge, unwieldy, hideously ugly creatures, reminding one of those depicted by Hogarth in his scenes of low life in London nearly two centuries ago. When the sun rose the doors of the cells were opened and we saw strange sights. The gaoler prodded the sulky ones with a long stick and made them come out.
Standing about in the fresh morning light, dirty, frowzled, altogether abominable to look at, they seemed a blot on creation, and the knowledge of their mere existence hung heavily on one’s mind. It was not a pleasant awakening to the splendours of the Boer capital.
For about the tenth time we gave in our full names, and all we could think of in the way of description, down to red hair, for which the Boer has a peculiar regard. A Boer with red hair can be a Mormon a dozen times. Nearly all their clergymen have red hair. In among the drunks and incapables we found one cell containing representatives of the British Army, lately free fighting men, but now confined against their own wishes. One of these, to my astonishment—for his appearance did not suggest the soldier in the very least—addressed me by name, and I recognised in him a saddler sergeant who had built me a very excellent saddle some years before, when his regiment, the 18th Hussars, was in India. He and a pal had been taken prisoners at the very beginning of the war in Natal, and so had done six months in durance vile. They had been so bored with their experiences that they had escaped and endeavoured to get to Portuguese territory, but unluckily the ubiquitous Boer had been too many for them, and they were now being restored to their status quo ante, as political paragraphists describe it. Another was a Yeoman lad from county Notts, with a very much worn pair of boots to his feet, and it showed fine public spirit in him that he seemed to deplore this fact more than his being made prisoner.
In the corner of the courtyard was a tap, and we all did a bit of washing. The absence of silver-topped scent-bottles, ebony hair-brushes, Pears’ soap, &c., was rather a drawback, but it did not prevent us creating at least a zone of cleanliness. We were then paraded, and in as martial array as was possible, without guns or swords and incommoded with blankets and empty sacks, we marched forth with a loud cheer. To be a prisoner of war was a fate that might overcome the best soldier that ever stepped, but to be herded with police mud-scrapings injured the dignity of every one of us.
Half-an-hour’s walk past cottages, bakers’ shops, where smiling lassies stood at doorways, and all the signs of a little country town at home, we came to a great enclosed space at one corner of which was inscribed the legend ‘Polo Ground.’ We immediately began arguing about who was to play in the first chukker, and whether we’d have a ten-minute chukker, with a change of pony half-time, or chukkers of six minutes straight away. Two known cracks were agreed upon, and they, to save unseemly fighting, picked up sides. Then each side began backing itself for large sums (on the nod), while the unselected ones scoffed and offered 5 to 4 against either team. Needless to say, while diverting ourselves in this manner we were girt about by armed horsemen, who conducted themselves with much dignity and secret spurrings, especially when passing where comely lassies stood at the doors. In this respect I have observed the Boer does not differ from the Briton, nor has he any scruples about endeavouring to attract the admiration of another Boer’s girl as well as his own. Marching along one side of the enclosure, we came to a great entrance, and realised of a sudden that we had arrived at the racecourse, rendered classic by the experiences of our imprisoned troops within its gates. We entered and found all the offices so familiar to racegoers—grand stand, paddock, weighing-room, jockeys’ room, horse-boxes—but no equine wonders. It filled our hearts with sorrow to see such waste—not even a booky to trill forth the odds.
But there was a desolation over the scene very different from the stir and bustle of a racecourse. Our troops had been penned up in a barbed-wire enclosure that included the paddock, stands, and a bit of the course itself. Most of the buildings had been utilised as hospitals, and where or how the poor devils who hadn’t enteric or dysentery or pleurisy or rheumatic fever existed, Heaven alone knows. The N.C.O.s had the privilege of sleeping on the steps of the grand stand, and I suppose the others had to be content with the ground. Very quickly the accommodation at the racecourse had become inadequate, and the camp at Waterval was established, leaving only a hospital and a staff of orderlies. The result was a most woebegone place, littered with empty tins, rags, paper, and refuse of all sorts. We elected to occupy a row of horse-boxes facing the paddock. I’m sure no owner of racehorses would have allowed any of his string to enter these boxes, but we were only too glad to find a place wherein to lay our heads. After a long delay they brought us rations of sorts—the potatoes, I remember well, being little round things about the size of marbles and everyone gaily sprouting. For the rest we had ½ lb. of meat and a loaf of bread apiece, plenty of cold water, and the consolation of being told we had a great deal to be thankful for. While our troops had been confined at the racecourse some of the residents of Pretoria had been exceedingly kind in supplying them with what, to them, were great luxuries to help out the meagre fare allowed by the Boer Government. A much-appreciated but sticky delicacy was a considerable supply of golden syrup. In one little hut occupied by a mess of sergeants, twelve men used to sleep every night, packed as close as herrings. The morning following the day on which they had received their share of the golden syrup they found themselves all stuck together, and had to rise up in one piece like a row of toy soldiers.
Lieutenant Crane was taken off to the newly formed camp for prisoners on a barren hillside north of Pretoria, where nearly all officers had been confined within triple fences of barbed wire since their removal from the Model School. Non-commissioned officers and troopers of Lumsden’s Horse had to share the fate of other captive soldiers at Waterval on the high veldt outside the Magaliesberg, but luckily they were not among the number hurried away by retreating Boer commandos to distant Nooitgedacht when our troops entered Pretoria. At Waterval the daily rations were scanty enough, though luxurious by comparison with the meagre fare served out at a later date to prisoners in that place away eastwards with a name that bespeaks desolation. And by the kindness of the American Consul, Sergeant D.S. Fraser was able to obtain funds from India for himself and his fellow-sufferers. This enabled them to supplement the rough rations issued to them during their imprisonment at Waterval. To cover the advances made for this purpose Colonel Lumsden authorised a grant of 5l. each to the prisoners, being at the rate of 1l. per man per week for the period of their captivity. Thus the value of such a fund as had been raised in Calcutta before the corps left was demonstrated in an unforeseen way. By means of it Colonel Lumsden had been able to start with a treasure-chest of 1,000l. and a sufficient credit in the Standard Bank of South Africa to meet all emergencies.