From Aldershot to Pretoria

by William E. Sellers

The Patience of our Soldiers.

Their patience has been wonderful. We have all heard of the patient ox, and away there on the veldt he has patiently toiled at his yoke until he has laid down and died. But the patience of the private soldier has exceeded the patience of the ox. He has undergone some of the severest marches in history. He has endured privations such as we can hardly imagine. He has lain wounded upon the veldt sometimes for three or, at any rate in one case, for four days. He has in his wounded state borne the terrible jolting of the ox-waggon day after day. If you talk to him about it, he will not complain of any one, but will make light of all his dreadful sufferings and merely remark that you cannot expect to be comfortable in time of war!

And how much he has endured! The difficulties of transport have made it impossible for him to receive more than half rations, and sometimes not more than a quarter rations for days together. On the march to Kimberley, for instance, General French's troops for four days had nothing to eat but what they could pick upon the hungry veldt. Stealing has been abolished in South Africa—it is all commandeering now!

'Where did you get that chicken, my lad?' asks the officer in angry tones.

'Commandeered it, sir,' says Tommy, and the officer is appeased.

And there was plenty of commandeering done during that dreadful march, or the men would have died of starvation. A strange spectacle he must have presented as he rode along. His kettle slung across his saddle, a bundle of sticks somewhere else, a packet of Quaker oats fastened to his belt, and a tin of golden syrup dangling from it. These he had provided for himself from the last dry canteen he had visited, and often even these could not be obtained.

What stories are told us of sticks and Quaker oats! They say that when the troops started with Sir Redvers Buller from Colenso each man had his bundle of sticks and a packet of Quaker oats fastened somewhere upon him. His canteen was as black as coal, but that did not matter. And if he had his sticks and his Quaker oats, and could manage to get a little 'water' that was not more than usually khaki-coloured, he was a happy man. So as he marched along he was always on the look-out for sticks and water. The two together furnished him with all things necessary: the sticks soon made the water boil, and the Quaker oats made—tea!

The Men in Khaki.

As regards dress he was a picture! He started khaki-clad, and no one could tell one regiment from another, but he was only allowed to take the suit he wore to the front, and before long, what with marching and sandstorms and fighting, that suit became unrecognisable as a suit. Bit by bit it went. Tailors of the most amateur description plied their needles and thread upon it in vain. It went! and Tommy's distress occasionally knew no bounds. We hear of one man who at last marched into Ladysmith with two coat sleeves but no coat; of another with not a bit of khaki about him, but garments of one sort and another 'commandeered' as he went along. One of the facts that impressed them most as they marched into Ladysmith was that the garrison were clean and neatly dressed in khaki, but that they—bearded, dirty, ragged—looked rather the rescued than the rescuers!