"At seven, breakfast--porridge, coffee, and bread, and sometimes jam.
Our tent has a mess-subscription, and adds any extras required from the canteen. But we always fare well enough without this, for the Captain thinks as much of the men as of the horses, and is often to be seen tasting and criticizing at the cooks" fire.
"At 7.30 "boot and saddle" sounds, and in half an hour your horses have to be ready-harnessed and yourself dressed in "marching order,"
that is to say, wearing helmet, gaiters, belt, revolver, haversack, water-bottle, and leg-guard.
"At eight "hook in" is ordered; teams are hooked together and into the guns and waggons. "Mount the detachment" and gunners take their seats.
"Prepare to mount" (to the drivers) followed by "Mount," "Walk March,"
and you are off. We always go first to the watering-place, a sandy pool in the river, unhook and water the horses. Then we either march away, and drill and exercise over the veldt, or go for a route-march to some distance. The weather is always hot, and often there is a dust-storm raging, filling eyes, ears, and mouth, and trying the temper sorely.
"We are back at camp about 1.30, form our lines again, between the guns and waggons, unharness, rub down horses, and then have dinner.
There is fresh beef generally (that unlovely soldiers" stew), and either rice, duff, or, now and then, stewed quinces, which are very common in the country. We can buy beer at a canteen, or, better still, draught ginger-beer, which is a grand drink. At three "stables"
sounds, with grooming first, and then (I am choosing a full day) harness cleaning; that is to say, soaping all leather-work, and scouring steel-work. Harness-cleaning is irksome work, and, as far as appearances go, is a heart-breaking task, for the eternal dust is always obliterating every trace of one"s labour. I have none of my own to look after yet, but help the others.
"At 4.30 or five "Prepare for water" sounds. You put a bridoon on one horse, and, if you are luxurious, a blanket and surcingle to sit on, lead the other, and form up in a line; then "file right" is the order, and you march off to the watering place, wearing any sort of costume you please. And very slight and _neglige_ some of them are. In the cool of the evening, this is a very pleasant three quarters of an hour. After watering comes the evening feed, followed by tea at six o"clock, and then the day"s work is done."
The evenings in that climate are delicious; we could sit in our shirt-sleeves until any hour, without any perceptible chill in the air, playing cards, or smoking and talking, or reading by a lantern.
Williams and I found picket a great resource; and many a good game of whist have I had sitting in a crowded quartette in our ramshackle battery Cape-cart, with an inch of candle guttering among the cards.
Most of us slept in the tents, but I preferred the open, even in dust-storms, when choosing a site required some skill. The composition of a bed was a question of sacks. There was one very large variety of chaff-sack, which was a sleeping-bag in itself; with this and your blanket and cloak, and under the lee of some forage or scrub, you could defy anything. The only peril was that of a loose horse walking on you.
On some afternoons we were quite free till the stable-hour at four.
Till then we could bask in camp, or go for a bathe in the river, where there was one splendid deep-water pool, whence you could hear the baboons barking on the hill-sides, and see the supply trains for the front grinding heavily up the pa.s.s.
Rumours of a move never lost their charm. At first we used to take them seriously, but gradually the sense of permanence began to pervade our camp. Solid tin shelters rose for the guard and the sergeants; a substantial tin canteen was erected close to the lines by cynical provision-dealers. Those visionary rebels declined to show themselves; n.o.body attacked our precious pa.s.s; and, in short, we had to concentrate our minds upon the narrow circle of our daily life.
A recurring duty for drivers was that of "stableman." There were two of these for each sub-division, who were on duty for the whole day in the lines. Their function, in addition to the usual duties, was to draw forage, watch the horses, and prepare all the feeds in the nose-bags, ready for the drivers. The post was no sinecure, for in addition to the three standard oat feeds, there was oat straw to be put down after dinner, and, at eight o"clock at night, a final supper of chaff, except for invalids, who got special feeds. A list of these was given you generally at the last moment, and it was a test for your temper to go round the lines on a windy night, lighting many futile matches, in order to see the number on the off fore hoof, so as to hit off the right ones. There was generally a nose-bag missing at this stage, which was ultimately found on a C horse (my sub-division was D), and then there was a lively five minutes of polite recrimination.
At 8.30 the nose-bags had to be taken off, and muzzles put on--canvas affairs with a leather bottom, strapped on by the head collar--as a preventive against disease from the chill morning air. Every man, after evening stables, was supposed to leave his muzzles on the jowl-piece of his horses, but a stableman was quite sure to find two missing, and then he would have to scour the tents, and drive the offender to the lines to repair his neglect; then he could go to bed.
Another extra duty was that of picket at night, which came round to gunners and drivers alike, about every ten days. "Two hours on and four hours off" was the rule, as on all sentry-duty. I rarely found the night watches long. There was plenty to do in watching the horses, which are marvellously ingenious at untying knots, and in patrolling the camp on the look-out for imaginary rebels. By the way, the only live rebel I ever saw was the owner of a farm, near which we halted during one sultry dusty route-march. He refused to allow us to water our horses and ourselves at his pond, defying us with Lord Kitchener"s proclamation enjoining "kind treatment" of the Dutch!
As the days pa.s.sed without orders for the front, impatience and disappointment grew. We were fit and well, and were not long in reaching the standard of efficiency which carried us successfully through our campaigning later. We used to "grouse" vigorously over our bad luck, with what justice I do not pretend to say; but no one who has not experienced it, can understand the bitterness of inaction, while the stream of reinforcements is pouring to the front. Sc.r.a.ps of news used to come in of the victorious march of the army northward, and of the gallant behaviour of the C.I.V. Infantry. Companies of Yeomanry used to arrive, and leave for destinations with enticing names that smelt of war, and night after night rollicking s.n.a.t.c.hes of "Soldiers of the Queen" would float across the valley from the troop-trains, as they climbed the pa.s.s northward.
As early as April 15th, the word went round that we were under orders to go to Bloemfontein--"as soon as transport could be ready for us."
"_April 15._--Amid great delight the Captain to-day read a telegram saying we are to go to Bloemfontein as soon as the railway can take us. We had just come in from the ride to water in drenching rain and ankle deep in mud, but a great cheer went up. The railway limitation is a rather serious one, as I believe the line is in a hopeless state of block; but we"ll hope for the best. The rainy season has begun in the most unmistakable fashion. It has poured so far in buckets for twenty-four hours; I slept out last night, but daren"t to-night; outlying parts of me got wet, in spite of the waterproof over me.
Thank goodness, we have good boots, gaiters, and cloaks. We rode to water at eleven in various queer costumes, and mostly bare legs, and afterwards dug trenches through the lines. The rest of the day we have been huddled in a heap in our tent, a merry crowd, taking our meals in horrible discomfort, but uproarious spirits.
"I still have the roan, but have lost the Argentine and got a bay mare instead; it"s not a bad animal. There was a false alarm of glanders the other day. One of the gun-team had a swollen throat, but it turns out to be something else. I was told off to help foment him with hot water the night it was discovered. He kicked us all, and completely floored me with a kick in the chest, which didn"t hurt happily.
Yesterday I had to take him down to the station and foment him from the kitchen boiler of the station-master"s wife. I enjoyed it, as I had plenty of rests, and the station-master"s wife made me delicious tea, served to me by a sweet little white-frocked girl. By the way, on the road to water the other day a caravan full of people stopped us, and small maidens went down the line, giving us apples and cigarettes and cakes."
Little we understood that ironical "railway" proviso of a hara.s.sed general staff. We had been reviewed the day before, and the good practice of our guns had been praised by the inspecting officer. Now was our chance, we thought. Nevertheless, we had to live on that guarded "order" for another month.
But in spite of our disappointment I believe all of us will look back with real pleasure to that time. There was no monotony in the life, thanks to our officers, who continually introduced variety into our work. "Marching order" days were the commonest; but there were others of a lighter sort. On one day we would go for a long expedition in drill-order with the guns, taking cooks and our dinner with us, and have what we used to call a picnic by some pleasant river-side. On another the guns would be left at home, and we would ride out for exercise, often through the pa.s.s, which led through a lovely ravine to a pretty little place called Tulbagh, where there was another small camp of troops. Sometimes "bazing" was the order, a portmanteau-word describing a morning spent in grazing the horses, and bathing ourselves. My diary of April 8th says, "Yesterday about twenty of us went out to practice swimming with horses. We rode about seven miles to a deepish river, stripped, off-saddled, and swam them across. Some wouldn"t do it at all, but most of them swam across and back. You buckle the rein up short and leave him alone. It"s a very queer motion at first. One of those I took declined to go in, in spite of half a dozen chaps goading him on in various ways, and finally bolted away over the veldt, carrying me naked. He soon came back though. The horses have got the habit now of sticking together, and if they get loose in camp never leave the lines. It is a nuisance sometimes, if you have to act as a single mount, and ride away on some errand. My Argentine greatly resents such a move, and tries to circle like a clockwork mouse. She has grown as fat as a pig, though some horses are doing poorly. The oats are of a very bad quality."
That brings me to my horses and my own work. We all of us changed horses a good deal in those days, and I and the roan had several partings and re-unitings. As a spare driver, my own work was very varied, now of driving in a team, now of riding spare horses, and occasionally of acting as a mounted gunner. Williams was a regular mounted gunner, his mount being a wicked, disreputable-looking little Argentine (called "p.u.s.s.y" (with a lisp) for her qualities), to whom he owed three days in hospital at one time from a bad kick, but whom he ended by transforming into as smart and peaceable a little mount as you could find. My own chance came at last; and when about the end of April one of our drivers was sent home sick, I took his place as centre driver of an ammunition waggon, and kept it permanently. I said good-bye to the roan and Argentine, and took over a fine pair of bays.
My chief impression of the weather is that of heat and dust, but there were times when we thought the dreaded rainy season had begun; when the camp was a running mora.s.s, and we crouched in our tents, watching pools of water soaking under our harness sheets, and counting the labour over rusted steel. But it used to pa.s.s off, leaving a wonderful effect; every waste oat seed about the camp sprouted; little green lawns sprang up in a single night round the places where the forage was heaped, and the whole veldt put on a delicate pink dress, a powder of tiny pink flowers.
By the middle of May we began to think we had been forgotten altogether, but at last, on the morning of the 17th of May, as we were marching out to drill, an orderly galloped up, and put a long blue letter into the Captain"s hand. We had seen this happen before, and our discussions of the circ.u.mstance, as we rode along, were sceptical, but this time we were wrong.
CHAPTER IV.
BLOEMFONTEIN.
The railway north--Yesterday"s start--Travelling made easy--Feeding horses--A menu--De Aar--A new climate--Naauwport--Over the frontier-- Bloemfontein--A fiasco--To camp again--The right section--Diary days-- Riding exercise--A bit of history--Longman"s Hospital--The watering-place--Artillery at drill--A review--A camp rumour--A taste of freedom--A tent scene.
From my diary:--
"_May 20._--_Sunday._--I write this on the train, on the way up north, somewhere near Beaufort West; for the long-wished day has come at last, and we are being sent to Kroonstadt, which anyway is pretty near to, if not actually at, the front. Our only fear is now that it will be too late. All day the train has been traversing the Karoo, a desert seamed by bare rocky mountains, and without a sign of life on it, only vast stretches of pebbly soil, dotted spa.r.s.ely with dusty-green dwarf scrub. But to go back. We started yesterday. All went smoothly and simply. At eight, kit was inspected; in the morning, bareback exercise; at twelve, tents struck; at 12.30 dinner; at one, "boot and saddle." When we were hooked in and mounted, the Captain made a splendid little speech in the incisive forcible voice we had learned to know so well, saying we had had for long the most trying experience that can befall a soldier, that of standing fast, while he sees his comrades pa.s.sing him up to the front. He congratulated us on the way we had met that experience. There had been no complaining or slackness in our work on that account. He hoped we would have the luck to go into action, and his last advice to us was "to keep our stomachs full and our bellies warm!"
"Then we marched to the station, unharnessed, packed harness, boxed the horses, put the guns and waggons on the trucks, and were ready.
But the train didn"t start till about eight o"clock in the evening.
One box was reserved for kickers, and you should have seen their disgust when they found nothing to bully! We had, and have, a vague idea that the journey was to last about a week, so Williams and I bought a large box of provisions and a small paraffin stove.
Accustomed to delays, we quite expected no engine to turn up or something like that, but finally a whistle blew and we were off, and a delirious shout went up, and then we all sighed with relief, and then got doubly merry, shouting vain things over a long untasted beverage, whisky and water. One hears so much about the horrors of war that I scarcely dare to describe the men"s accommodation on board this train.
It is strange, but true, that I have never travelled more comfortably in my life, and probably never shall. Most compartments have only four men to them, and by great good luck, and a little diplomacy, Williams and I have one to ourselves, though we form our mess with the four chaps in the next one. Now the beauty of it is that no one can get into our train, so, if you get out at a station, you need have no fear of finding a nurse with twins in your special corner seat. You live without these terrors, and have room to stretch, and sleep, and read, and have meals, with no one to ask you to show your ticket. In fact, things are reversed; we are not herded and led, and snubbed by porters and officials, but the train belongs to us, and we ignore them.
"We sat up late last night, and then Williams and I slept in great comfort, though it felt quite odd to have something between one and the stars. It"s true there was a slight break, caused by the door being flung open, and sacks of bread being hustled in from the outside. But a soldier"s training takes no account of these things, and you instinctively jump out half-dressed, and help to shovel more sacks in, you don"t know why, or what they are. Being woken up, we got on to the platform over an intervening train, and sent cables home from an office standing invitingly open. Then to bed again. Later, in my dreams, I was aware of a sergeant and an irascible little station-master coming into the carriage with lanterns and throwing most of the sacks out again, which it seemed had been annexed feloniously by our Captain, at the last station, in his zeal to keep our "stomachs full." I was glad to get rid of the sacks, as they filled our carriage up completely. The train has to stop for about three-quarters of an hour or less, three times a day, for feeding and watering the horses. The first stop to-day was about 6.30 A.M. We tumbled out in the delicious fresh air, and formed into pre-arranged feeding and watering parties. I am on the feed party of our subdivision, and we climbed like beetles up the sides of the trucks, which are open, and strap on the nose-bags. Then we washed at a friendly tap, and had our own breakfast which the cooks had cooked--coffee and porridge. Then we climbed back and took off nose-bags, and then the train went on. At this station we "commandeered" a splendid table in the shape of a large square tin advertis.e.m.e.nt of a certain Scotch whisky, and played whist on it after breakfast. The train wound slowly through a barren stretch of brown plain and rocky wild. Stations happened now and then, little silent spots in the wilderness, their _raison d"etre_ a mystery, no houses, roads, or living things near, except a white tent or two, and some sunburnt men in khaki looking curiously at us. There are troops in small bodies all up the line in this "loyal" colony. At one station the Kimberley mail caught us up, and the people threw us magazines and biscuits from the windows. All engines and stations were decorated with flags in honour of the relief of Mafeking, the news of which came through yesterday. A hospital train bound to Capetown also pa.s.sed, with some pale faces and bandaged limbs in evidence.
"At 1.30 we stopped again for feed and water, and when we went on our mess sat down to the following lunch, which I think does credit to our catering powers.
MENU.
R.B.S.
Emergency Soup.
Cold Roast Fowl, with Stuffing.
Bully Beef, with Mustard.
Whiskied Biscuits.
Desserts Varies. Chocolate. Ginger. Bonbons. Oranges.
German Beer.
Cigars. Cigarettes.
"I wrote the _menu_ out in French first, but it seemed not to suit.
"All the afternoon the same desolation, like pictures one sees of the moon"s surface. About six, water and feed at Beaufort West, and horses led out, trucks mucked out, and tea served out.
"The night was very cold; in fact, the climate is quite different on these high table-lands. I woke up about six, looked out, and saw, just opposite, the legend DE AAR, which for the first time seemed to connect us with the war. We stopped a moment, and then moved on through lines of tents, loaded waggons, mountains of ammunition, etc.
Then I saw a strange sight, in the shape of ice on puddles and white h.o.a.rfrost. Soon out on the broad, brown veldt, far-distant hills showing finely cut in the exquisitely clear air. Such an atmosphere I have never seen for purity. The sun was rising into a cloudless sky from behind a kopje. The flat-topped kopje is now the regular feature.
They are just like miniature Table-mountains, and it is easy to see how hard to capture they must be. Water, feed, and breakfast at a tiny roadside place, with the inevitable couple of tents and khaki men. We were at whist when we steamed up to a big, busy camp-station, the Red Cross flying over a dozen big marquee tents, and a couple of hundred sorry-looking remounts (by the look of them) picketed near. This was Naauwport. We stopped alongside a Red Cross train full of white, unshaven faces--enterics and wounded going back to the base. They were cheerful enough, and we shouted inquiries about one another. They were unanimous in saying we were too late, which was very depressing news, but I don"t suppose they knew much about it. We washed ourselves in big buckets here. As we were steaming out I saw a long unfamiliar sight, in the shape of a wholesome, sunburnt English girl, dressed in short-skirted blue serge, stepping out as only an English girl can.
She was steering for the Red Cross over the tents, and, I daresay, was nursing there. Off again, over the same country, but looking more inhabited; pa.s.sed several ostrich farms, with groups of the big, graceful birds walking delicately about; also some herds of cattle, and a distant farm or two, white against the blue hill-shadows. Soon came the first visible signs of war--graves, and long lines of trenches here and there. At a stop at a shanty (can"t call it a station) a man described a fight for a kopje just by the railway.
Coleskop was in view, a tall, flat-topped mountain, and later we steamed into the oft-taken and retaken Colesberg Junction, and were shown the hill where the Suffolks were cut up. All was now barren veldt again, and the strangeness of the whole thing struck me curiously. Why should men be fighting here? There seemed to be nothing to fight for, and nothing behind to get to when you had fought.
"_May 22._--_Tuesday._--As I write we are standing just outside Bloemfontein; cold, sunny morning; the Kaffir quarter just on our right, a hideous collection of mud houses with tin roofs; camps and stores on the left; boundless breadth of veldt beyond; the town in front under a long, low kopje, a quiet, pretty little place.
"We reached the frontier--Norval"s Pont--at 6 P.M. yesterday, and after a long delay, moved slowly out in the dark, till the shimmer of water between iron girders told us we were crossing the Orange river.
Once off the bridge, a shout went up for our first step on the enemy"s country. Then all went on the same. We made ourselves comfortable, and brewed hot cocoa, for all the world as though we were travelling from Boulogne to Geneva. The only signs of hostility were the shrill execrations of a crowd of infant aborigines.