The Covenant Part 64

'The army! What's the army? The important thing is that men like Buller be protected. He is England, not some d.a.m.n-fool lieutenant who got his legs blown off.'

'In Germany he wouldn't last a week.'

'In England he'll last forever.'

'You speak as if you love the old fool.'

'I do,' the young man confessed. 'He's a doddering a.s.s, and I love him. Because most of the people at home I love are just like him, and somehow they always do the right thing. You watch, when the decisive battle of this war is fought, Buller will be there, pushing his way ahead, just as he did with the Egyptians.'

'I wish to G.o.d he were forty years younger,' the German said.

'Why?'

'Because when our war against England comes, and it will, I would like him to be in command.'

'He will be,' the young man said. 'Under a different name. And beware of him.'

As he spoke, he tacked onto the bulletin board a notice from Lord Roberts on the other front; it referred to some of his a.s.sociate officers in the South African war: Douglas Haig, John French, Julian Byng, Edmund Allenby, Ian Hamilton. They would be the General Bullers whom the Germans would have to face.

With these confused judgments rattling in his head, Major Saltwood watched with pride as General Buller finally figured a way to cross the Tugela, and that night he wrote to Maud, who was busy organizing charities for the wives of Cape men serving with the English forces: It was d.a.m.ned brilliant, really. Old Buller moved his heavy guns, we get them from the navy, you know, put them on his flank and laid down a h.e.l.lish barrage, right ahead of our advancing troops. Like a fiery broom he swept away the Boers. So at least we're across this d.a.m.ned river, but I cannot bring my pen to say, 'We'll lift the siege of Ladysmith in five days.' We've said that too many times before. But soon we shall be there.

On 28 February 1900, ninety-five days after he a.s.signed himself the task of relieving Ladysmith, the siege was lifted. Three memorable incidents marked the stirring occasion.

Lord Dundonald, always eager for acclaim, dispatched a unit of his cavalry to be first into town. He followed, and in his company was Winston Churchill, almost a full day ahead of General Buller.

Later, when the general's more pompous entrance was made, he got his maps mixed up and marched to the wrong gate; the heroic defenders, military and civil, were waiting on the opposite side of town, and when it was pointed out to him that since he and his men were fresh, and on well-rested horses, it might be gracious if he rode to the other side, he said, 'I enter here,' and the mult.i.tude had to hurry across town to greet him.

And finally, when the defeated Boers were in retreat, some of the cavalrymen saw a chance to chase and destroy. When they started from the town, some of the men who had withstood the siege wanted to join, but could not: 'We have no horses. We ate them.'

'Where are those cavalrymen going?' Buller asked Saltwood.

'Pursuing the enemy.'

'Pursue an enemy who's been honorably defeated? Good G.o.d, call our men back. Give the poor devils decent time to lick their wounds.'

'Sir, we've been chasing those d.a.m.ned Boers for months. This is our chance to eliminate them.'

From beneath his tight little hat General Buller stared at his South African aide. 'Sir, you have none of the instincts of a gentleman.' When Frank tried to protest, Buller put his heavy arm about his shoulder. 'Son, if we lose honor in warfare, we lose everything.' And he canceled the pursuit.

General de Groot was bewildered. For more than four months his commando had been abused and misused, and he could do nothing about it. Instead of riding hard and fast in a strike-and-hide tactic, at which his hors.e.m.e.n would have excelled, he had been held in rein and used in a.s.sault efforts. It occurred to him, as he sat with Sybilla after the defeat at Ladysmith, that almost never in these four months had his pony been at a gallop, and rarely a trot.

'You know, Sybilla, we're losing men all the time. Our burghers won't tolerate this sort of thing.'

'They'll come back, when your kind of fighting begins.'

'You can't have a commando with nine men.'

Then shocking news from the western front reminded them of the harsh possibilities of this war: General Cronje, an obstinate man who believed that the best defense against English arms was a laager, had surrendered.

'What could he have been thinking of?' De Groot asked Jakob. 'With four thousand men, you and I could take Durban.'

'It's a different war over there. General Roberts is in a hurry. He's no Buller.'

This doleful news, coinciding with Ladysmith, generated a vast depression among the retreating Boers, so that the Venloo Commando was reduced to one hundred and twenty, and when the time came to hand out a.s.signments, those in charge looked at De Groot with pained tolerance: 'What can you do, Paulus, with so few?'

'We can attack the cavalry installation,' he replied with that bitter animosity he held for the English lancers.

'They'd slaughter you!'

'We wouldn't take them head-on.' He was so persuasive that permission was granted for what could only be a suicide attempt, except that he had no intention of allowing it to become so.

He would take his men, including, of course, Van Doorn, and they would move quietly across the Orange Free State to where Generals Roberts and Kitchener held their troops after their big victory over Cronje, and they would ride daringly close to the cavalry cantonment, trusting the natural confusion of a large a.s.sembly of horses to mask their approach. They would then dismount, wait till three in the morning, when attention was always at a minimum, sweep in, disrupt the horses, and fight any personnel that might be afoot. In the confusion they would run to their ponies and be off due north, in a direction which the English would not antic.i.p.ate, because such a move would carry them directly into English lines. De Groot had a plan for what would follow.

'Sounds possible,' Van Doorn said.

'You wouldn't want a force much bigger than ours,' De Groot said enthusiastically.

'We'll need expert scouting.'

'I've thought of that. We've got to know exactly where the English troops are. That's where Micah comes in.'

Micah proved himself a good scout, always moving with caution. One morning he haltered his pony far beyond English lines while he slipped around sentries, entering boldly the small town upon which the British were centered. Moving freely, he estimated the size and character of the forces, making shrewd guesses as to the length of time they expected to remain in this favorable location.

He stayed in town two days, losing himself within the black population, several of whom guessed his ident.i.ty; they did not betray him because they were indifferent as to which side won, and if he was to be well rewarded for his mission, they were pleased.

When he regained his pony, satisfied that he knew fairly well the disposition of the army men, he rode south and toward the west to where the cavalry were billeted, and now he faced a much more difficult problem. Again tying his pony at a distant spot, he set out on foot to approach the camp, but this time there was no small town into which he could infiltrate, masking himself among the blacks. He had to move from hillock to hillock, running always the risk that a sortie from the barracks would sweep out across the veld on some practice mission and find him spying upon them.

So he moved with extreme caution until he came within some two hundred yards of the lines where the mounts, big Argentinian horses, were tied. There were more than he had ever seen before, a ma.s.sive command. The Boers are in trouble, he thought as he studied the fall of the ground, but General de Groot knows what he's doing.

He had doubts about his own wisdom when a contingent of young men left their tents, sauntered over to their horses, and casually mounted. After tightening straps, they waited for the arrival of their officer, who came at last on a striking red horse much larger than the others. What a fine animal, Micah thought as he watched what had to be a development of considerable danger.

'Heh!' he heard the young officer cry, and the forty-six troops lined up behind him. Using his bare right hand instead of the saber which he kept at his side, he indicated the direction his sortie was to make, and Micah saw with dismay that it would be headed in his general direction. He flattened himself between two rocks that provided some cover.

A bugle sounded and the men came forth. They rode to within thirty yards of where he hid, not one of them looking right or left; since this was a practice session, they felt no need to stay alert, but suddenly they stopped, looked in his direction, and burst into laughter. For one awful moment he thought they were preparing to lance him as a fixed target, but then he heard at some distance a slight scratching sound. Three little meerkats had come out of their burrows to look at the hors.e.m.e.n, and when one of the men made a lunge at them, they scampered. One of the men shouted, 'Bravo, Simmons. Stick three little Boers like that and there'll be a medal in it for you.'

When they continued their canter they headed right into the area where Micah had left his pony, and he expected at any moment to hear a 'Halloo!' There was no cry, and after a long while they galloped back to their camp. He breathed deeply when he saw that they had no pony with them.

Because of his careful scouting he was able to inform General de Groot precisely as to the nature of the two bodies of men: 'The soldiers will be there for many days. The cavalry horses stand at the edge of the veld, the men's tents behind them. They expect an attack from the other side, where the Boers are supposed to be.'

The Venloo Commando did not form a line as they set out on their mission; they straggled over the veld in positions from which each man could dash forward or retreat according to his own judgment. They were engaged in a perilous effort and knew that maximum mobility would be essential. Slowly they covered the neutral ground, then tensed as they approached the land that held the two English contingents. Finally they reached a spot some six hundred yards from the cavalry camp, and here they dismounted.

'Guard the horses,' General de Groot told his blacks, and they were left behind; that is, all stayed with the horses except Micah Nxumalo, who crept forward with the commando to guide his general to where the enemy horses rested.

It was now dusk. Keeping low, they stooped and scurried from rock to rock across the veld, zigzagging their way till they were close upon the English encampment. They would hold these positions for at least six hours during this fine summer night, during which they must not talk or smoke. Insects attacked and there was a good deal of scratching, but in general the men remained silent.

Stars appeared, and the moon, and in the distance a hyena grumbled, then laughed. Familiar constellations climbed to their apex and began their leisurely descent, and over the camp silence reigned. At midnight some cavalrymen came out of a mess tent, stood talking for a while, and bade each other a good rest as they separated.

'Sssst,' De Groot signaled, and his six followers crept forward. They were on a mission which disturbed some of them, for the butchery they contemplated went against the grain of farmers, but a chain of recent defeats had impressed upon them that they were engaged in a struggle which would not end in truce; one side or the other was going to be totally defeated, and it had better not be the Boers, for the penalties they would pay in lost freedom and even the loss of their republics would be terrifying. They must do what had to be done.

So as they approached the encampment, De Groot touched those nearest him, saying nothing but indicating that he expected them to perform their tasks. Some of the men brushed his hand with theirs; others simply nodded in the darkness. When they were within ten yards of the horse corral, he leaped forward boldly and his men followed.

Three of them knocked down barriers and turned hundreds of horses loose. Others grabbed the bridles of seven big horses saddled for emergencies and led them outside. General de Groot and Jakob moved methodically to the line where the officers' choice mounts were kept and shot them methodically, one after another, killing them in most cases, immobilizing them permanently in others.

There was no panic, no hurry when bugles began to sound, only the piling of inflammables and the striking of matches. Before any English cavalryman could get to the stores, they were ablaze and dark figures were riding away. What infuriated the Englishmen as they rushed onto the scene, powerless to retaliate, for their horses were gone, was that in the light from leaping flames they could see Boers on horseback, galloping among the free horses and shooting them down.

'M' G.o.d!' one young officer cried. 'They're shooting the horses!' In rage he began firing at the retreating Boers, and although everyone knew that the invaders could not be reached, the entire cavalry contingent blazed away at them, firing and cursing as they watched their great steeds go down. When dawn came, both the Englishmen and the Boers realized that the remainder of this war was going to be excessively ugly.

'An inhuman act,' General Kitchener cried when he saw the dead horses. 'No civilized man would do such a thing.'

He had no right to be sensitive about what civilized men would do or not do; in the fiery battle that had led to the surrender of General Cronje and his four thousand Boers, a critical moment had come when the English line seemed to be wavering. It could be stabilized only by some drastic action which would command the attention and respect of all. Kitchener had seen the solution.

'Cavalry, charge up the center, and even if you do not reach the Boer laager, blaze away at them.'

'Sir,' the Scottish commander of the hors.e.m.e.n protested, 'that would be suicidal.'

Kitchener stiffened. He knew that by ordinary standards the order was insane, but this vast battle was not ordinary. 'I command you to charge the laager.'

The Scotsman saluted briskly. 'Very well, sir.' He realized that if he disobeyed, he would be court-martialed and perhaps shot, but he also knew that if he obeyed, two hundred of his best men would be slain. He solved the problem in a heroic way. Turning to the brigade, he said, 'Retire twenty paces and regroup.' To his four officers he said, 'Return to camp and fetch us more ammunition.' When all were safely behind him, he turned to face the distant enemy and started riding slowly toward the laager, as ordered.

On and on he came, far ahead of his men, riding on a tall white horse that stepped forward with stately caution. Suddenly he spurred his horse and ranged forward, closing upon the enemy guns, well hidden behind bulwarks, and it became apparent to both the English and the Boers what he was doing. He was obeying orders. He had been told to charge, and he was about to charge, but his obedience did not mean that he had to carry his men to their death. There was a hush, and then he whipped out his sword, tilting it at the proper angle, and as his handsome animal leaped forward he bellowed, 'Charge!'

Boers, watching him gallop into the muzzle of their guns, could not bring themselves to fire, but one burgher who had read Sir Walter Scott understood the traditions of chivalry and knew that from such a charge there would be no retreat, nor any place in English life after such insubordination. 'Fire!' this man shouted, but no one responded. 'Fire,' he cried again, 'we must help him,' but once more there was awed silence. But when the rider was almost to the guns, the burghers opened fire at him, and he fell dead.

For General Kitchener to order a Scottish officer and his men to certain death was warfare, and as a consequence of such discipline, he had been enabled to destroy General Cronje; but for Paulus de Groot to kill two hundred Argentine horses was, in Kitchener's words: 'A show of barbarism, an inhuman act of madness outside the rules of civilized warfare.'

From now on, the war would be marked by many inhuman acts, but it would depend upon which side was speaking as to where the inhumanity lay. The English att.i.tude was well summarized by General Kitchener: 'd.a.m.nit all, stands to reason, what I mean. Why don't they dress in khaki, like a proper army, so you can see them, and get down off those d.a.m.ned ponies and fight like men? What's all this. .h.i.tting a man and then running awayare they cowards, or what? The d.a.m.ned Wogs fought better than these fellows. The lot of them need a proper hiding.'

General Roberts, a more temperate man, objected to three things about the Boers: 'They don't obey their commanders, so it's impossible to make a truce with them. They lack discipline, so you never know what they're apt to do next. And I don't like to bring this up, but they are careless, very careless indeed about the use of the white flag.' When asked by a correspondent from a Paris newspaper what he meant by this, he sought to avoid controversy and remained silent, but when others pressed him, with their pencils ready, he said bluntly, 'They approach you with the flag. Lull you. Then drop it and are back in the battle.'

'Certainly not, sir.'

'I saw it with my own eyes. I've had various reports. Couldn't believe them. After all, these are decent human beings. But at the Battle of Driefon-tein, I watched as they did it.'

What Kitchener objected to, and most strenuously, was the Boer habit of ransacking the bodies of dead English soldiers and appropriating articles of needed clothing: 'The ghouls appear in our khaki. At fifty paces can't tell they're enemy. That's breaking the rules of civilized warfare.'

The English leaders made a great fuss over these rules of civilized warfare; they felt that an enemy should behave much like the barefoot Indians and Egyptians: stand in line with their rusty guns; wait as the phalanx of red-coated battalions marched at them; fire; run when the cavalry charged; surrender and go back to their land when the war was declared over. It was disturbing to think that men of European heritage would fight the way the Boers did, with trickery, speed, and the nasty habit of dissolving back into the landscape instead of surrendering. And the fact that these Boers were well supplied with the best German Mausers and French Martini-Henri rifles was distressing.

But the Boers, too, had their grievances. Like General de Groot, they felt it to be inhuman and far beyond the principles of civilized warfare for men to sit astride big horseslike those from the farms of America and the Argentineand to ride them in among the commandos, cutting and slashing as they came. Hundreds of Boers, who started with no more than sullen resentment against the English, grew to detest them because of the cavalry charges, and when De Groot and his men destroyed the Argentine horses they applauded.

Even worse they deplored the English habit of firing their guns at two hundred yards, and then a hundred, and then fifty, and finally charging in with bayonets, a weapon the Boers never used. 'To come at a man with cold steel,' De Groot said, 'that's inhuman.' Many an Englishman who should have been captured and led away to safe imprisonment lost his life because he fought with a bayonet, for Christian men did not do that.

Between the combatants a kind of chivalry did exist, based on real respect: the English were redoubtable foes, willing to absorb tremendous losses; the Boers were often willing to go up against unbelievable odds, and many of the most unusual gestures of courtesy were extended by these rude farmers. But on two points of difference they were adamant, and when the English refused to concede on these, a deep bitterness was engendered, with each side actually flogging and shooting prisoners captured from the other.

The deepest difference, perhaps, concerned black troops; each side used African scouts, but increasingly those with the English turned up with arms, whereupon word would flash through the countryside: 'The English are arming the Kaffirs.' This was intolerable, for no matter how desperately the two white armies fought each other, in the backs of their minds the real enemy was the black man watching from the side.

English commanders were aware of Boer feelings on this point, but that did not prevent them from enlisting and arming Coloured units from the Cape, and for this the Boers would never forgive them.

Besides, for the English to use these Coloureds only deepened the Boers' resentment of the fact that so few Afrikaners from the Cape volunteered to help. Many still hoped for a ma.s.sive rebellion against the English in the two colonies, Cape and Natal, but no more than thirteen thousand crossed over. What was especially galling, thousands of Cape citizens of Dutch ancestry joined men of English descent in colonial regiments which fought in British armies against the Boers. Many in the north would die hating their brothers in the south for this treachery.

The other Boer grievance was less complex. Because of their stern religiosity, they tried to avoid any activity on Sundays, and once during a protracted engagement, when General de Groot had his men at Sunday prayer, their guns silent, one of the Venloo men rushed into the service, shouting, 'They're playing cricket!'

De Groot stalked to a vantage point and looked through his gla.s.s at the green field upon which the English officers were having a merry game. He was appalled at this sacrilege and ordered a heliographer to send a message commanding the game to halt, this being the Sabbath. When the English signaled back the score, 'Eighty-seven for three wickets,' he fell into a dark fury and ran breathlessly to a large gun.

'Fire on them!' When the Creusot monster was loaded and aimed he cautioned: 'But not too close.' The sh.e.l.l landed well off the cricket field and killed no one. Phlegmatically the officers continued their game, so a second sh.e.l.l had to be launched, and this came so close that the young men flew helter-skelter. When white-flagged emissaries came to protest the breaking of a tacit truce, De Groot replied, 'On Sundays you are to pray like us, not play at cricket like heathens.'

This matter of religion always perplexed De Groot and Van Doorn. They knew they were men dedicated to G.o.d and were convinced that He looked after them with special regard; they also knew that since the English were indifferent to the Bible, G.o.d must despise them, yet there were contradictions, as De Groot pointed out in a report to the council: I cannot understand it. The English have what they call a chaplain attached to every unit, and braver men I have never seen. To aid a fallen comrade or give last prayers to a dying man, they will cross open areas of gunfire with such fort.i.tude that our men sometimes cheer them in admiration. But we Boers, who live and die under a special covenant with G.o.d, have some predikants who jump if even a pistol shot goes off. Our spiritual welfare was being looked after by Predikants Nel and Maartins, but not for long. As soon as the first gun fired, both these dominees quickly found that commando life was not for them. No member of my commando felt their loss, as we provide our own prayers.

One bitter point was never discussed in public; it appeared in no news dispatches from the front, but it caused the harshest animosities, as General de Groot learned one morning when his commando captured six Englishmen. The young officer, a blond lad from Oriel College with his first commission, protested grievously: 'Sir, why do you Boers stoop so low as to use dumdum bullets?'

De Groot did not change his expression. 'Did we use them?'

'Yes! Yes!' the young man cried in near-hysteria. 'Chalmers was struck in the jaw. Should have been merely a nasty wound. Dumdum expands, makes a mess of his head. Atkins. .h.i.t in the abdomen. Normally might pull through. Dumdum opens up his whole belly.' When De Groot made no response, the young fellow shouted, 'It's monstrous, Meneer.'

Quietly De Groot nodded to Van Doorn: 'Hand him three.' And from a special pouch Jakob produced three dumdum bullets, tossing them into the young man's lap. The Englishman studied them and blanched. In consternation he looked at De Groot and asked, 'Is this correct, Meneer? Our own Woolwich a.r.s.enal?'

'Tell him where we got them,' De Groot said, and Van Doorn said, 'You heard about our raid against the cavalry? The seven big horses we kept? Those bullets you hold came from this pouch, found attached to one of the saddles.'

The young man apologized: 'They were intended for the Afghan frontier. Not for civilized warfare.'

In the autumn of 1900 such incidents receded in importance, for the ma.s.sive strength of the English began to tell. They now had about two hundred fifty thousand men in the field against a maximum of sixty-three thousand Boers, and there was no way that the few, however gallant, could continue to hold off the many. With bold yet carefully prepared strikes, Generals Roberts and Kitchener rolled their choicest troops across the veld to Johannesburg and Pretoria. Town after town fell to the Tommies, and on the seventeenth of May even the tiny settlement at Mafeking was relieved at the end of a siege which had lasted interminably. General Robert Baden-Powell, who had used his scouting tactics to keep the town alive, was hailed throughout the world as a proper hero, and his manly deportment gave the English troops added courage as they headed for Johannesburg, which they captured on 31 May 1900.

Now came that most popular of all war songs, and in many ways the best, 'We're Marching to Pretoria.' Thousands of men chanted this as they closed in upon the Boer capital, and their triumphant voices could be heard as a last railway train left Pretoria on its solemn way down the line that led to Lourenco Marques in Mozambique. This was the only line the Boers still controlled, and in Car 17 that gloomy day rode Oom Paul Kruger in desperate flight.

It took the English only five days to capture Pretoria; it fell on 5 June 1900, and the great Anglo-Boer War was almost over. There was such joy in England that the police feared rioting, and families which still had sons in Africaand there were many of themwept openly to know that their boys would now be coming home.

There was a little mopping up to be done. General Roberts did not want to leave for London until the last railway line was in his hands, for that would mean that any further resistance, even from guerilla units like Paulus de Groot's dwindling commando, would be impossible. Like the good soldier he was, the little one-eyed genius refrained from announcing victory until President Kruger was driven completely out of South Africa, and to achieve this, he proposed that he and Kitchener march east along the railway while General Buller came up from the south to close the final pincers.

There are in existence some fifty telegrams in which Roberts from the north begged Buller in the south to speed up his approach, and to each the Ferryman of the Tugela replied with faultless logic, explaining why he could not move a whit faster. When Roberts sent an English colonel to find out what in the world was restraining this warrior, it fell to Major Saltwood to escort him, and as the two officers inspected General Buller's operations, Frank became even more aware of the considerable change that had taken place in his estimate of Buller.

For example, the visitor exploded at the number of wagons in the train, saying, 'My G.o.d! We're in the closing stages of a war. He ought to abandon four-fifths of these and gallop north to help us.'

'Now wait!' Saltwood replied defensively. 'Buller moves slowly, but I've observed that he accomplishes his missions with minimal losses of men. No general protects his troops the way this old man does.'

'But at what cost? He refuses to take chances.'

'I used to think so, too. But watching him in action'

'What action? Know what they're calling him at headquarters? Sitting Bull.' The colonel laughed heartily at the mess-room joke.

Saltwood stiffened. 'Sir, we have a dozen funny names for the old fellow. But do you know what his men call him? John Bull.'

The colonel was not impressed, but when he challenged Buller about his excessive wagons, all he got was a harrumph: 'd.a.m.n me, man, troops can't march forward with empty bellies.'

'General Roberts says you think too much about your men.'

'No general ever lost a battle because he defended his men.'

'When you began this campaign,' the colonel pointed out ungraciously, 'you promised it would be over by Christmas. That was last Christmas, sir.'