Another spoke. ‘The worst thing that ever I went through was in the ⸺ valley. Will you ever forget it, Mike? We were going into action along one of those awful winding elephant tracks through grass above our heads—sort of maze, and you don’t know where you’ll find yourself next minute, perhaps back where you came from, or perhaps in a clearing, looking into the muzzle of a machine gun—can’t see a foot ahead. Suddenly the Boches opened fire, and at the very same moment we were attacked by a swarm of bees. Sounds funny, but I can tell you it wasn’t. There were millions of ’em, going for us all they were worth. The horses and pack-mules went near mad and there were we, blind and dazed, stumbling along trying to keep the brutes from our faces and the enemy’s fire dropping around. Pretty sights we were when they’d finished with us—my two eyes were bunged up so I’d just a slit to see through, and hands so stiff and swollen I could scarce bend my fingers.’
‘My worst day,’ and another took up the tale, ‘was just when we were at our worst off for food—fair starved we were, and just at daybreak a family of rhinos came charging through our camp—Pa and Ma and a lot of rum little coves scooting after them. Well, thinks I, a slice of Pa would come in very handy grilled, so off I treks with two or three chaps after me, and there, far below the rise, was a vlei and a whole lot of rhinos standing round. Worse luck, as we got down, we found it just chock-a-block with crocodiles. You hardly see them at first, but just look close and you see a mud-bank sort of heave and here and there you’ll get the glimpse of a great wide jaw, the colour of the mud and as still, never moving an inch, but with eyes watching the rhinos all the time. I tell you we didn’t go any too close, but we were mortal hungry, so we tried to edge round to the rhinos, keeping well clear of the mud and slime. One huge awkward-looking brute was a bit away from the others and the swamp, so we let fly and brought him down, staggering and falling not very far from us—but by God, if these crocs hadn’t ripped out and got him before we had a show, and so we didn’t get dinner that day. As nasty brutes as you’d care to see, those crocs. A chap of ours shot one of ’em one day and cut it open, and inside he found an anklet ornament and a ring. How’s that for an ugly story? At another camp a horse went down to the river to drink all serene, no sign of another living thing—when sudden up comes a grinning jaw, and like a flash of light, it snaps on the poor beast’s nose and pulls him in, and there was an end of him.’
In the more open country grows the giant grass, waving over a man’s head, dense and resistant as sugar-cane, and once a source of deathly peril. The regiment had dug itself in some 300 yards from the enemy trenches, when the wind, blowing in their faces, brought to the men a smell of burning, and with a sudden roar a sea of flames came sweeping down upon them—the enemy had set fire to the tall grass. There was not a second to spare. The men leaped up and, weak and exhausted as they were, forced their failing strength into clearing the ground and cutting a fire belt. It was done with the speed of demons, for a fiercer demon was upon them; the men with their tattered garments that would have flared up so easily, put half a life into those few seconds.
The heat of the fire was on their faces, blinding their eyes, the flames reached out tongues towards their store of ammunition. Under cover of the fire and smoke the enemy came out and attacked heavily. Our men leaped back, turned the full strength of their fire on the enemy through the blinding smoke, and suddenly, miraculously—the wind changed! It is gratifying to know that in a few moments the enemy survivors were hurried back to their trenches before the flames, to find their grass shelters on fire, and under a withering storm from every rifle, maxim, and gun a grim silence fell upon their trenches.
And so Nature, whose gigantic forces have joined our enemy’s in this war against us, for once played him false; but the Hun is always quick to turn her help to his best advantage. He sees to it that every post, detached house, village, kraal, &c., has the protection of a ‘boma’—a thick impenetrable fence made of thorn trees, with the huge strong spikes thrust outwards and the smooth butts inside the shelter, made of such height and depth as is necessary to resist the onslaught of elephant and rhinoceros and the cunning of the lion. All around a wide thorn carpet is spread to pierce the feet of the intruder. Imagine such a ‘boma’ flanked by rifle and machine-gun fire from deep trenches concealed by cover and by a ‘false boma’ in rear which makes the boma line apparently continuous—and a frontal attack by infantry becomes a hazardous undertaking.
‘Could not the artillery destroy them?’ I asked, and was told of the difficulties of locating the trenches for this purpose and of the unlimited supply of high-explosive shells that would be required. All approaches to defended posts have lanes cut through the bush, and these are so arranged in irregular shape that every open piece of ground can be covered by machine-gun and cross rifle fire.
Of the hardships of the march, of the hunger and thirst—once a battle was fought for two days before a drop of water could be obtained—of the fever and exhaustion, I could guess from watching the speakers, and from the men’s talk to each other I heard of the skilfully posted machine guns alert for a fleeting glimpse of troops grouped, perhaps, round a wounded man, of the snipers in the trees, of the maxims fired from the backs of animals clothed in grass, of the danger of horrors and mutilation should a wounded man fall into the hands of the Askari. All of this I was told freely; but of the endurance, the magnificent self-oblation, the comradeship and devotion, these came to my ears only from those who had commanded troops and who could barely speak of these things for a catch in the throat.
The actual warfare, the battles, the bayonet charges, the fervour and courage of attack—these are described by newspaper correspondents in cables and despatches; but of the more human side—‘the soul of the war’—few tales reach the outside world. The courage of endurance, the absence of one word of complaint from men so weak, latterly, that five miles a day sometimes had to be the limit of their march—who shall tell of these?
Hear one last story from an outsider.
‘That regiment of yours is very thick with its companion regiment, the Nth,’ he said. ‘A chap who is in the Nth told me the one regiment never loses a chance of doing the other a good turn. Once, he said, the Nth were in the first firing line, only 150 yards from the enemy. There had been no chance of getting water-bottles filled, and the men’s tongues were swollen with thirst. The other chaps were suffering a lot too, but what do you think they did? All the regiment, officers and men, sent up every bottle that had a drain left in it to the fellows of the Nth, and mind you this was done under continuous fire. Pretty fine, wasn’t it?’