The office department has been rather upset by the loss of Sergeant Fraser, of the Bank of Bengal, who was Paymaster and Secretary, but I have replaced him by Graves, of the same bank, who is working up arrears as quickly as possible. He is a very willing and intelligent young fellow, and will soon have things straight again when he gets a few days’ halt, but it is impossible to do much on the line of march.
The troops were not all so punctilious as Lumsden’s Horse in the matter of prompt payment for things commandeered, and a good story was told of one brigade at Kroonstad, whose commander, in despair of being able to check irregularities, issued an order that loot was ‘not to be carried openly on the saddle.’ Our soldiers, however, had not then been reduced by hardships and scant fare to the necessity of providing for themselves at all costs. Some pitiful cases of unauthorised commandeering were reported in connection with later operations, when columns moving rapidly through several districts had to draw supplies from Boer farms and give receipts for them in lieu of cash payments. Detached parties driven to straits for want of food did not hesitate to adopt the means they had seen employed by responsible officers, but took care to leave no trace by which they could be identified. An officer who had to investigate these cases told me of one receipt given to a Boer widow. It ran thus: ‘Being without rations and hungry, we have taken all this poor woman had of live-stock and food. She asks for a receipt. I give it. God help her!—Ally Sloper.’ To the credit of British military administration, it must be said that this document, though irregular, was accepted as genuine, and duly honoured by payment in full.
Lumsden’s Horse had their share of the privations that made commandeering a necessity, and even looting pardonable; and it is not to be wondered at if some among them regarded campaigning in anything but the roseate light that imagination had shed upon it before they left India. Yet, even at this time, their conduct in circumstances that tried the character of men individually and collectively won approval from such a soldier as Colonel Ward, C.B. (now Sir Edward Ward, K.C.B., Permanent Under-Secretary of State for War). Singling them out on the line of march, he asked what regiment they were, and seemed astonished to learn that they were Volunteers. In a letter to the Editor he says: ‘I was much struck with Lumsden’s Horse. They were very keen and excellent soldiers.’ After an exceptionally hard day one of them wrote:
We were in the saddle at 5 A.M., and did not bivouac till 8 P.M., and were under shell fire the greater portion of the day. We had two men and several horses wounded; and two or three horses killed. It seemed to me that our task always was to find where the enemy’s guns were posted, as we invariably drew their fire on us. It was a fearfully long day, and after fighting for ten hours we had to march for five, and when we bivouacked we had nothing but a few dry biscuits and a little jam to eat, but we were making coffee till midnight. We were up again at 6 A.M., and did an easy march to Kroonstad, where we commandeered two fowls, and, having been served out with fresh mutton, we did ourselves very well indeed. Some potatoes had been left in the farmhouse garden, and these fried in dripping made a feast for epicures. Next day we marched again, and, after skirmishing about the hills above Kroonstad, camped outside the town. It had been evacuated by Boer commandos the day before, and surrendered without a shot being fired.
Lord Roberts received quite an ovation as he marched in, but we only heard the cheers, as our corps was not in the town, but above it. We have now marched right across the Orange State from Bethulie to Kroonstad, and are wondering how much farther we shall go. There are all sorts of rumours about camp—some say Lumsden’s Horse are to garrison Kroonstad, others that we go on east to Harrismith, and others, again, that we accompany Lord Roberts to Pretoria. There have been days when but two men were left in the lines; all the rest have been on fatigue or duty of some sort. Our horses, it is true, have been overworked and underfed, but you will be able to form some idea of the effects of ‘pink-eye’ and other African diseases when I tell you that of the thirty men in our section alone who were well mounted when we started from India there are about five of us riding our own horses now, all the others have remounts; and our section is not the worst in this respect. My horse is doing me splendidly; except for a sore back for a few days, he has never been sick or sorry.
We have learnt to cook now, and can serve up chops, steaks, stews, and curries as well as any cook—when we can get the meat. We have been lucky lately in bivouacking near farmhouses, as we can commandeer chickens and sheep, paying for them when we are caught! We have, for the last few days, been getting to our camps after sundown, and by the time the fires are lighted and the meat ready to cook it is quite 9 o’clock. It takes an hour or so to cook, and the eating lasts longer, as the meat stands a deal of masticating. We seldom get to bed before 12, and are always ready by 5 o’clock, so you can imagine how invigorating the climate of this place is. It is bitterly cold at night and hot in the day, yet very few of our men are down with fever. It is a fine climate, but a fearful country. For miles and miles you see nothing but immense, undulating, treeless, waterless tracts of poor pasture-land. Here and there you find small ponds of dirty water, but whether it is rain-water dammed up or whether these are springs I have not yet been able to ascertain. The farmers here make their living by breeding cattle, and not by cultivation at all. We have marched from one end of the Orange State to the other, and I don’t suppose all the cultivation I have seen would cover ten acres. A year of drought or disease, I should think, would tell very heavily on farmers here.
Queen’s Town is the only town in Africa that I can really say I have seen; we either camped outside the other towns or merely passed through without having time to see them. We rode through Bloemfontein, and from what I could see of it it seems to be a large town built on the slopes of two or three converging hills, and fairly dirty.
Several of the towns we have passed consisted of half-a-dozen zinc houses, two at least of which are bound to be churches; of the remaining four, one will be a store and the rest dwelling-houses. But each dwelling-house is a township in itself. Even the ‘mild Hindu’ marvels at the number of people who live in one house, no matter how small it may be. There was a farmhouse near our camp at Bloemfontein, where we used to go sometimes to get a cup of coffee. This house had two rooms, each one about twenty-five feet square. It contained the following permanent residents—they said, they had visitors sometimes too—one old woman and three young ones and three young men and six children of sorts and sizes. One of the rooms was used as a kitchen and larder, so there was only one for general use. Needless to say, these people were Boers!
One trooper of A Company, writing to friends in Calcutta, has nothing but expressions of admiration for the behaviour of British Bluejackets, to whom he pays appreciative tribute in the following extract:
At Zand River, on the 10th, I was with the naval guns in action. It was simply grand to see the sailors work them. They were drawn up a drift in the Zand River by teams of thirty bullocks per gun, and opened fire from the top of the left bank on the enemy’s position at 7,200 yards range, and in five shots had blown up one Boer gun and knocked the whole shoot down about their ears. When the first gun was fired I happened to be quite near, although at one side of it, and the force of the explosion made me stagger as if a man were in a strong north-wester trying to make headway.