Colonel Lumsden and all of us felt so sorry for the prisoners that we decided to ask them to dinner, which invitation being accepted, in due course we all sat down together in our little mess-house.
During our stay at Irene, as it was bitterly cold, we had run up a small hut: walls of piled-up stones, a tin roof, and a most cunningly contrived fireplace which did not smoke. We decorated the place with flowers, had a tip-top dinner, and drank crème de menthe as our only beverage. The dinner went off in the wonderful way dinners do. None of us could talk German, and none of them English, and yet we conversed freely and had the greatest fun. The show concluded with songs, and the last remembrance I have of it was that the Colonel and the prettiest ‘sister’ were taking down one another’s addresses and betting gloves about something in the quietest corner. Rutherfoord had been hiding as much as possible, as he felt himself to blame for being the cause of all their trouble, but we gave him away at the end, and though they all pretended to be very angry with him, we unanimously allowed that he had beaten all but the Colonel in winning the favours of the fair sex.
At about 2 A.M. we escorted them back to their caravan and said good-night, first of all pointing out that a sentry was posted over them, with orders to shoot at sight if anyone left the waggons during the night. They started for Pretoria at daybreak, but most of the officers were there to see them off, while one met them a few miles up the road. The Colonel was late for breakfast that morning. We heard afterwards that on arrival at Pretoria they were searched, and the result was that the doctors went to gaol, and the dear ladies were sent under supervision out of the country. We all, however, are quite certain that they were innocent victims of Boer duplicity.
Another story is very characteristic of Tommy’s smartness:
At one of the camps—I think Elandsfontein—a party of us got leave to go into the town for dinner. We had come in late, and either had not been given or had forgotten the countersign. Near the town we came upon a sentry, who challenged in the usual way, and who let us through after making certain that we were officers of Lumsden’s Horse. After going a few yards we heard him say to his pal that it was all right, as we were only ‘some of those d——d Volunteers,’ this being meant in all politeness and only Tommy’s patois. One officer of ours, however, half-jokingly threatened to report him if he talked like that again. After a good dinner we were returning to camp and came upon the same sentry. ‘Halt! Who goes there?’ ‘Friend.’ ‘Advance one and give the countersign.’ One officer, advancing, said, ‘D——d Volunteer.’ Tommy shouldered with a slap and roared out, ‘Pass, D——d Volunteer, and all’s well!’ He had the best of us, and we laughed as much as the guard.
About this time the Boers in Pretoria were also making merry over an incident associated with countersigns in which one who played a sentry’s part had the laugh on his side at the expense of British officers. It happened at a crisis when Botha was known to have secret emissaries in the capital warning him of every preparation for a fresh movement, and it illustrates perfectly the aptitude of Boers as spies, and the easy-going inefficiency of our own precaution against traitors. A young Boer, speaking English fluently, came from Botha’s force just after Lord Roberts was supposed to have dispersed it in the neighbourhood of Diamond Hill. He reached our outposts not far from the limits patrolled by Lumsden’s Horse, and, being armed with one of the passes that have been lavishly distributed and frequently abused, he had no difficulty in getting through the British lines. Once inside them, he was free to move about anywhere and ascertain that nearly all available troops, except one division, had been withdrawn from Pretoria for concentration elsewhere. He even loitered about to hear the talk at a club frequented by officers and by ‘friendly’ civilians, whose privileges of membership nobody assumed the right to question. There and in hotel halls or billiard-rooms, where officers, regardless of attentive listeners, incautiously spoke of their own probable movements, this young Boer picked up much entertaining gossip and useful information. But he also learned, to his dismay, that nobody could move about the town or leave it after nightfall without the countersign. His idea was to get out again under cover of darkness, with all the news that he could gather for General Botha, but he heard that provisional police would by that time be patrolling all the streets, alert and zealous in the performance of their new duties, and also that every outlet by which a horseman could pass would have double sentries posted after sunset. A wary Boer never tries rash experiments if he can avoid them, and this young man, having no unpatriotic wish to run his head into a noose, adopted other measures.
Going to a friend’s house, in which some British uniforms were kept as trophies until the police discovered and appropriated them, he dressed in khaki, donned a greatcoat, and armed himself with a Mauser carbine. All this may seem impossible in a town under martial law, but arms and ammunition were found in private houses long after the date of this incident, and nobody ever heard of exemplary punishment being meted out to offenders, who generally got off scot free on a plea of ignorance. At any rate, the young Boer, thus equipped to counterfeit a provisional policeman, sallied forth at night, when a high collar, turned well up for protection against the icy north wind, and a hat slouched over the eyes, would not have attracted any attention. Making use of mental notes previously taken, he placed himself near the corner of a street so much frequented by officers on their way to or from the club that special police seldom troubled to look after it. There he had not long to wait for a chance of challenging, and in response the countersign was given as a matter of course without the least suspicion. Safe in the possession of this password, the ingenious young Boer mounted his horse, and, claiming to be the bearer of despatches, rode past our outlying pickets and off into the darkness on his way to the nearest Boer commando. Some officers of Lumsden’s Horse were in the Pretoria Club that night, but it was not they who gave away the countersign. Occasional visits to Pretoria in the vain hope of finding that some articles of luxury or much-needed outfit could be bought there became great events in the lives of both officers and men during their banishment to lines of communication. Somehow a goodly number of them, for whom sport was an irresistible attraction, managed to assemble on ground a mile outside the racecourse when three score of competitors started for the first military steeplechase ever ridden near Pretoria. After this event Colonel Lumsden wrote with pardonable pride:
Beharis will be pleased to hear that Captain Rutherfoord, of ours, won the first paper-chase in Pretoria. There were sixty starters over a stiff country, with the result that grief was plentiful.
But that view of the result, though entertained by nearly every spectator who was near enough to watch an exciting finish, did not commend itself to the official whose decision none could question. How it all came about may be told by an eye-witness, who was also a competitor until, finding himself hopelessly out of the race, he took to ‘skirting,’ and finally joined a crowd of onlookers at the winning-post.
The German Staff officer who said that English soldiers went into a fight as if it were sport and took their sport seriously as training for battle, must have been thinking of some scene like that in which British officers and Volunteers of all ranks figured on Pretoria Racecourse that last Saturday in June 1900. There we were in the midst of war with an active enemy not many miles off, yet nobody seemed to concern himself much about what the Boers might be doing at that moment. All were intent upon the important business in hand. A paper-chase had to be run, and every man meant to do his best, whether mounted on a Basuto pony that had never jumped any obstacle more formidable than a boggy spruit before, or on a raking Waler or clever English hunter. Lord Roberts had given permission for a paper-chase and theoretically the sport took that form. There were no prizes for winners, no clerk of the scales, no weighing-in, no penalties for infringement of Hunt Club rules. All who cared to start might enjoy that privilege. But practically the thing resolved itself into a steeple-chase under regulations that forbade riding from point to point at discretion; a course being marked by flags round which every starter was compelled to go or lose his chance of distinction. Paper-hunting would have been child’s play in a country like this unless it had led us over rough kopjes and away across the veldt, where there might have been a chance of Boer patrols chipping in. So to add some touch of excitement, and the spice of danger, without which no British sport is worthy of that name, artificial fences were made more difficult to negotiate than torrent-filled spruits or boggy water-courses. Two stone walls enclosing a mealie patch came handy, and suggested themselves as most appropriate for a start where spectators might see some fun at the outset if veldt ponies tried to tumble over, as they generally do, without jumping. A run without hound-music as an accompaniment did not commend itself to the immortal Jorrocks, whose eulogy of ‘’unting, the image of war without its guilt and only 25 per cent. of its danger,’ would have been considerably modified in application to such sport as ours of that day, if that genial M.F.H. could have seen the horses some men chose to risk their necks on. They were of all sizes, shapes, and breeds. As for the fences, an Irish hunter would have larked over every one in his stride; but it is quite another thing with horses that have never been trained to leap.