The Relief of Mafeking Part 3

The occupation of Jacobsdaal was, of course, only an incident in the great whirl of operations which began on the 3rd of February, when General Macdonald with the Highland Brigade moved westward from Modder River and seized Koodoesberg. Hitherto we had been waging a very straightforward kind of war, and Lord Roberts's masterly tactics between Modder River and Paardeberg were the first hint we had given our enemy that we also could be cunning. When I arrived at Modder River the wheels of this great operation were spinning, but Modder itself was in an eddy, where there was no movement and little news of any. French was racing to head Cronje off on the north of the Modder River, and the main body of the army was advancing in his rear, but we at Modder River knew next to nothing of these movements.

It is worth while to recall the princ.i.p.al events in Lord Roberts's operations near Modder River. The seizing of Koodoesberg was, of course, intended to divert the attention of the Boers from the points at which the real movement was taking place. On the 8th of the month General Macdonald was recalled to Modder River; on the 9th Lord Roberts arrived there and a.s.sumed command; on the 12th General French marched from Ramdam, where he had been collecting a big cavalry force, seized Dekiel's Drift and Klip Drift on the Modder, and the next day occupied a commanding position on the north of the river, capturing three of the enemy's laagers. On the 15th, having traversed Cronje's communications, French reached Kimberley and dislodged the enemy from the southern side of the town; they evacuated Magersfontein and Spytfontein, and retreated to Koodoesrand, contriving in their turn to slip through our containing lines. Jacobsdaal was captured on the same day, and on the 16th of February began the fighting at Paardeberg, which was only brought to an end by Cronje's surrender on the 27th.

However, one was only (as I have said) in the stagnant middle of things at Jacobsdaal, and the outer currents did not reach us. From our point of view Jacobsdaal was not an important station on the war-path to Bloemfontein; it was simply a place of insufficient food, bad smells, choking dust, and many hospitals. The Red Cross flag flew from all the churches and every available house; furniture was piled in verandahs, and pews were stacked in churchyards.

Enteric was rife there; but could a man, officer or private, who had been out for twelve hours on foraging or convoy duty, sit down and boil his water and then wait for a drink until it cooled? Because the water looked clear and innocent they drank it by the quart, and therefore the hospitals were full. Jacobsdaal is responsible for many of the inglorious deaths of "active service."

Early one morning, while the air was yet fresh and cool, General Wavell took me round with him on his hospital inspection. He is one of the small, keen, kind-eyed men who emerge in the senior ranks of the army.

One never meets them as subalterns, and they represent the army's best workmanship in the matter of moulding and finishing. We were still talking about the "pretty" little action when we entered the first hospital--a small Dutch church. I should have said that besides our own field hospitals at Jacobsdaal there was a Boer hospital and one of the German Red Cross Society.

This first was the Boer hospital, and even at this early hour the air was pungent with the reek of strong tobacco. The General spoke to all the patients, and had a kind word for everyone, and they all greeted him with grat.i.tude and cordiality. Their one cry was, "We've had as much as we want. If we could only get back to our farms!" Most of those to whom I spoke said that they had never wanted to fight us, never hoped to beat us, and were heartily sick of the whole affair. "I wish I could send you back to your homes, men," said the General; "but I must obey orders."

They chatted away to us, and said they hoped the General would come in often. It was much the same in the German and English houses, only here Boers and Englishmen lay side by side, sharing pipes and papers and talk with each other. Truly, animosity ceases at the hospital door; and the att.i.tude of these men who had been menacing each other's lives and now lay stricken together was not unlike the shame-faced amity of children who have been caught fighting, and are made to share a punishment.

And no one was more concerned and depressed by the whole business than the brisk little General, who had been speaking almost caressingly of his sh.e.l.ls and shrapnel. He is surely a good soldier who fights at as small a cost as possible, disregards that cost while he fights, and afterwards so behaves that his enemies like to take him by the hand.

Hospitals, where so many virtues too tender for the airs of the outside world have time to bloom, are generally attractive rather than repulsive places, and I was on that account the more surprised to find myself repelled by these field-hospitals. To see men lying about distorted, impotent, disfigured by all kinds of fantastic deformities, their wounds still new, themselves lying near the spot where they fell; and to remember the cause of it all, and how vague that cause really was to the men who were suffering for it; the grossness and brutality of mutilation--here a man with lead in his bowels, there a man with his face obliterated, one man groaning and spitting from bleeding lungs, another, struck by a great piece of flying iron, silent under the shock of news that his sight was gone for ever; the feeling that these men were suffering on our account, and the realisation that every one of us has had his share in the responsibility for the whole, makes a load that one cannot, or should not, slough away in a moment.

VII

MAGERSFONTEIN AND KIMBERLEY

There was a train going to Kimberley with cattle and forage on the afternoon of Thursday, February 22nd, and the stagnation of everything except dust at Modder being complete, I jumped on the twenty-ninth truck as the engine was taking up the slack of the couplings and was immediately jerked forward on the newly-mended road to the north. I had nothing with me except what I stood in and a waterproof; but as the journey of twenty-four miles occupied four hours, and as the heavens poured down a deluge during three hours and twenty-five minutes of the time I was glad to have even that. The line pa.s.ses beside Magersfontein and through gaps in six ridges behind it, affording an excellent view of the whole position. That position seemed to me practically impregnable.

To have won a way to Kimberley upon this road would probably have meant six b.l.o.o.d.y battles, always with the likelihood of a reverse after each for the attacking army. Imagine a wide and perfectly level plain with a ridge standing straight across it like a great railway embankment, but with arms at each end curving towards the front as the arms of a trench are curved; behind the ridge, and higher, two or three kopjes which command it; behind the kopjes another ridge like the first, with more kopjes to command it; the same thing repeated half a dozen times, without another eminence within fifteen miles. Imagine this, and you see the country between Modder River and Kimberley. And throughout the position every piece of open ground was slashed and seamed by trenches and works, constructed as though for the inspection of an examiner in engineering--beautiful, artistic, formidable work that filled the mind of every British officer who saw it with envy and admiration. Behind the hills were little huts and hiding-places contrived within the shadow of the low, thick trees that grow there, so that not a soul lived out of cover. Captain Austin, R.A., who shared the humidity of my truck, and who had been in charge of a 6-inch field-gun trained on Magersfontein at eight thousand yards, told me that he could see through his gla.s.ses the whole working of the enemy's admirable system. They had a look-out man sitting at the far end of a long tunnel of rock and stone; when we fired he gave the signal, and the Boers got into cover; and twenty seconds afterwards, when our sh.e.l.l, beautifully aimed and timed, arrived on the hill, it spent itself upon the flinty rock. Then the Boers showed their heads and fired; and their sh.e.l.l swept through its arc and exploded, generally finding its mark.

The battle of Magersfontein has been the subject of more prolonged discussion than any other single event in the war. Coming on the day after our reverse at Stormberg, it completed the momentary demoralisation of a great ma.s.s of people at home who had expected the campaign to resolve itself into a sweeping march on Pretoria. Like the affair of Majuba, it has been sentimentally magnified out of all proportion to its military importance. On the strength of the emotions roused by our disaster, thousands graduated as military critics and cried aloud for the recall of Lord Methuen. Private soldiers with shattered nerves wrote home hysterical narratives and criticisms which were published and commented upon, and treated as valuable evidence. We lost our heads for the moment; there is no doubt of that; but people who are thus betrayed into panic will not be appeased until they have made a scapegoat of someone. Lord Methuen was, of course, the obvious sacrifice. Why did he make a frontal attack? Why did he fail?

It is well to remember that Lord Methuen was being pressed to relieve Kimberley, which represented its case as extreme. He must do something.

Naturally he designed the kind of attack which the forces at his disposal were best suited to deliver. A long turning movement was out of the question since he had not the mounted men for it. As for the "frontal attack" at Magersfontein, of which we have heard so much, Lord Methuen never designed and did not deliver a direct frontal attack. His plan was to surprise the extreme left of Cronje's position, and at the same time contain the whole of his front with a strong force. And no competent critic has ventured to suggest any better disposal of the forces then available for the purposes of attack. No, Lord Methuen has not been criticised and abused because he used his force in one way rather than in another, but simply because he failed.

There is very often more to be learned from a failure than a success, and this particular failure is worthy of a little study. Everyone knows that the reason why the attack on Magersfontein failed was, first, because the Highland Brigade lost its way and came unexpectedly into contact with the enemy's position, and, secondly, because they failed to rally after the first confusion, when (in the opinion of many experts who were present) a little confidence would probably have saved the day.

If any single precaution was neglected, if any pains were spared in the reconnoitring of the position or in securing the proper conduct of the troops towards the place from which their attack was to be delivered, then Lord Methuen was absolutely to blame. But the more that is known about this unfortunate affair the more clearly it will be seen that Lord Methuen neglected no precaution and spared no pains. The rain and pitch darkness were the act of G.o.d, and no general in the world can prevail when Nature is so completely in league with the enemy as she was on the night of Magersfontein.

I do not care to dwell on the malice and cruel unfairness of many of the attacks on Lord Methuen, because, for my country's sake, I hope they will soon be forgotten; but if anyone should still suppose that these great hysterical waves of public feeling select their victims impartially, I would ask him to compare the battle of Magersfontein with the fruitless attack delivered by Lord Kitchener on the Paardeberg laager on February 18th. In one case time was working against Lord Methuen, and threatening to exhaust the endurance of Kimberley; in the other case time was working with Lord Kitchener, limiting the resistance of Cronje to a calculable number of days and hours. In one case there was a small force which, owing to the nature of its composition, could only be used in one way; in the other case there was a large and splendidly-a.s.sorted force, which gave opportunity for an infinite variety of combinations. In one case the attack was turned by circ.u.mstances which no human being could have prevented into a frontal contact; in the other case that form of attack was deliberately chosen.

In one case the casualties were about nine hundred; in the other, about sixteen hundred. And in one case the general officer commanding has been insulted and attacked and defamed, while the officer responsible for the second affair is still regarded by the ma.s.ses as a consummate master of field operations.

This is a long digression; I have made it here because the subject of it is inseparable from my memory of the dark and stony ranges which I saw closely for the first time through the pitiless rain of that February day. Miserable as the journey was, its pa.s.sage through the country occupied so lately by the enemy made it interesting. The way in which our sappers had toiled to repair the line was beyond praise. Every telegraph post had been blasted in two pieces by dynamite; every culvert had been blown up; nearly every insulator smashed; the wires (about seven in number) had been cut every few hundred yards; yet within four days from the relief of Kimberley trains had begun to go up the whole distance and telegraphic communication had been restored. I saw the work that had been done, and the difficulty of it, and was proud of the way in which it was accomplished. Not that there is little to be proud of in the work of the army. On the contrary, one is amazed to see what is accomplished in spite of the system, amazed to find what can be done by able men against the most determined opposition from their own side; but the great fact that was brought out by the earlier part of this campaign is that the man of intelligence and initiative and ability and energy was fast in the clutches of the Red Tape spider, which fussed round him until he was enveloped in the scarlet web and impotent to use brains or energy. Engineering is one of the few things of which corporate bodies admit their ignorance; therefore the sappers got through much admirable work quietly and quickly.

The approach to Kimberley with its mine shafts and hills of blue dust reminded me of the Black Country. What one noticed first with regard to the town was the number of holes and shelters and warrens into which people had crept for safety. Hundreds of them, like human anthills; and one thought, What strange place is this, where men fear to walk upright?

The menu at the princ.i.p.al hotel, where I dined, would (if it had been printed) have consisted of one item--horseflesh. I noticed that the residents ate it eagerly, and even talked about it; but most of us strangers arose hungry and went quickly into the fresh air.

That night and the next morning I walked through the town and talked to people who had been living there; and it was when I talked to the people that I began to realise what had been happening. The few ruined buildings and riddled walls conveyed little to me. But when one found man after man thin, listless, and (in spite of the joy of salvation) dispirited; talking with a tired voice and hopeless air, and with a queer, shifty, nervous, scared look in the eye, one began to understand.

The thing was scarcely human, scarcely of this world. These men were not like oneself. If you threaten an inexperienced boxer with a quick play of fists on every side of his head, even though you never touch him, you may completely demoralise him; he shies at every feint and every movement. And these people had been in a situation comparable with that of the poor boxer. Think of it. The signal from the conning tower, the clamour of bells and whistles, the sudden silence amongst the people, the rush for shelter, and then the hum and roar, like wind in a chimney, of the huge iron cylinder flying through the air, potent for death. And then, perhaps, the noise of a falling building, or the scream of some human creature who is nothing but a ma.s.s of offence when you come up five seconds later. Think of this repeated six or seven--sometimes sixty or seventy--times during the daylight hours, and can you wonder that men should lose their placid manners and scuttle like rats into their holes at the dreaded sound? And all this fear and horror to be borne upon an empty stomach, for the horrors of partial starvation were added to the constant fear of a violent death. Mothers had to see their babies die because there was no milk or other suitable nourishment; a baby cannot live on horse and mule flesh. There was hardly a coloured baby left alive; and that one statement accounts for whole lifetimes of misery and suffering.

It was not until the Boers had mounted their 6-inch gun on the 8th of February that the panic began. People had got used to the smaller sh.e.l.ls, which could often be dodged; besides, the enemy did not fire so many of them. But when the big gun began its seventy rounds a day people lost their self-command and began to dig and scratch in the earth for shelter. Thousands went down the mines and sat all day in the bowels of the earth. Men walking in the streets jumped if a mule kicked an iron plate; they screamed when the signal was given; they broke and ran and burrowed into shelter. Yet so fast do some men anchor themselves to routine that many kept their offices open and did business--all the while, however, with one eye on the paper and the other glancing through the door or window; ever with one ear turned to the speaker and the other noting the rustle of paper stirred by the breeze and the hum of wind under the door.

That only twenty people were killed is no fact at all in connection with the panic; what really matters is that seventy times a day something happened which might have killed a dozen people.

I have only to add, in case I am accused of exaggerating the state of terror, that the people who went through this ordeal have not necessarily the clearest conception of it. I came out of the safe outer world and saw their faces and eyes, and, if I had not heard a word, I should have known.

One other thing. A despatch sent by me to _The Manchester Guardian_ contained this sentence complimentary to the De Beers Company: "The condition of the town would have been deplorable but for the relief administration of the De Beers Company."

That sentence was not made, but suggested by my good friend the censor; and it will serve to indicate how great was the bowing down before the house of De Beers. I wish to disavow any compliment I may have appeared to pay that company in my telegram, for I think they did their bare duty. What they did was to provide a ration of soup for the inhabitants as long as some bullock meat which they possessed lasted; to organise relief works by making roads and fences in a town which belongs chiefly to themselves; and to allow people to shelter in their mines. Perhaps they could do no more. Considering everything, and remembering some facts in connection with this and other political troubles, I ask, Could they well have done less?

VIII

PAARDEBERG

From Modder River to Paardeberg the road rolls over a bare yet beautiful plain, brown and dry before the rain, but after a heavy rain bursting into endless stretches of purple and scarlet flowers of the karoo. I went by Jacobsdaal. Early on Wednesday morning, February 28th, I rode out from the little town with General Wavell, who put me a couple of miles on the road. You are to understand that this was something of an adventure. I had nothing but a Cape cart and a couple of horses to draw it--a thing that holds, with one's kit, about three hundred pounds of forage. I was going to a camp where I could get no forage and hardly any food; there was not a despatch-rider to be had at Modder; my telegrams must be ridden back from the front, now thirty and soon to be ninety miles away. Sickness had tethered me to Modder River camp throughout the exciting week that had ended with Cronje's surrender; and now on February 28th I was following the army, feeling like one who should enter a theatre as the curtain was falling on the first act.

The thirty-mile ride through the lonely country would have been delightful but for the dismal trail left by the war--carcases of horses and oxen lining the road, a carcase every few hundred yards surrounded by a gorged flock of aasvogels, the foulest of the vulture tribe. With a nervous horse the pa.s.sage of these pestilential spots was made difficult as well as revolting, and it was with a feeling of relief that one saw the tents and waggons of the Paardeberg camp by the river trees.

Along the road, I should have said, the trail was one of devastation. In the midst of the dry veldt one sometimes came upon a farmhouse with its grove of trees, and spring, and pleasant fields; but always the farm was derelict, windows broken, rooms gutted, stock destroyed, with often some poor abandoned creature tethered to a tree, and waiting, in the midst of the dead silence of the empty country, to be fed and watered.

At Paardeberg I found the headquarters camp situated on the river bank, a place pretty to look at but horrible to be near. The only water to drink was that from a well by the river--water of a dark and strange colour; and even while one drank it one sat and watched the carcases of horses floating down the brown stream from the deserted Boer laager a mile above. For Cronje and his men had surrendered, not only because of losses or lack of ammunition, but chiefly, it was said, because the same conditions that made our camp almost unbearable made his laager in the river-bed impossible for human accommodation. So he surrendered, after a resistance that will live in history as one of the bravest pieces of human endurance.

On my way down I had met a great company of men moving over the plain surrounded by mounted infantry. These were our prisoners--a n.o.ble bag of more than four thousand. But now that they had gone there was no reason why the camp should be maintained at Paardeberg, and at noon we proceeded to thread our way eastward--a long procession of men and horses and waggons--to the farm of Osfontein, where the force was being concentrated for the final advance. The delay was fortunate for the correspondents, for those of us who had only a scanty stock of provisions and forage could send our carts back once more to Modder for a supply. In the meantime nothing was likely to happen until a fortnight's stock of provisions and forage for the army had been collected.

Before leaving Paardeberg, and in the intervals of arranging the mere details of living--which on this line of advance were hara.s.sing and formidable--I rode over to the deserted Boer laager, or as near to it as was safe. The scene was strange and significant. Imagine the river, deep down between steep terraced banks, flowing through the level plain. On the left side our position, well entrenched, with a few kopjes about two thousand yards from the bank. On the right was the enemy's position, which extended further down the banks of the river and up to the very edge of our side. On the far bank I saw a line of hundreds of transport waggons and carts, all empty, many of them smashed and broken by our sh.e.l.l fire. But it was the river-bed itself that was most interesting.

The water was very low, and there was any amount of cover on the steep banks, and this was increased by a number of small pits or trenches--not long trenches like ours, but simple little holes or graves dug in the banks, with room enough for a couple of men. Graves they proved to be in many cases, for where the Boers were shot in them the trenches were simply filled in and the bodies thus rudely buried. But how independent they were! No bulky commissariat department, no army of cooks and butchers--every man with his own kettle and biltong or canned beef, his own rug or sleeping bag, his own water-bottle; so that when he came into such a position as this he could remain in it for days together. One saw many pathetic things in these trenches--garments and personal belongings evidently made by hands that did not work for hire.

In two trenches I found Dutch Bibles; in one a diary of the last few weeks; in almost all some sign that human beings and not machines had been at work there; and on all sides spent sh.e.l.ls and shrapnel cases and cartridges, to remind one of the nature of their work. When one followed, as I had followed so far, in the shadow of the war and not in the midst of it, in the track of the Red Cross and the wayside cemetery instead of within sound and sight of the thing itself, one saw a very dark and unrelieved side of it--the shadow without the substance, the effect without the cause.

PART III

LORD ROBERTS'S ADVANCE TO BLOEMFONTEIN

IX

THE BOER PANIC AT OSFONTEIN

The carefully prepared attack of Lord Roberts on the Boer position at Osfontein was delivered on Wednesday, March 7th, with the result that the enemy fled without attempting to defend his extremely strong position. To understand the gravity of the attack you must have been there during the last few days of preparation, when hills and ridges, subsequently abandoned in a moment, were being strengthened and armed with trenches and guns. On Sunday and Monday, the 4th and 5th of March, I rode round the whole position, and, like everyone else, was led to expect a very severe struggle. The position was roughly this. The great plain through which the river winds is broken five miles east of Osfontein by a long range of kopjes extending about fourteen miles north and south. All these kopjes were until the day of our attack occupied by a force of 7,000 Boers, but to the west of them were a few lower hills and ridges which we held. We did not know exactly how far to the east the Boer kopjes extended; that is to say, we did not know how broad might be the line of their defences; all we knew was that there were other kopjes to the eastward, and that the enemy probably held them. Our force, 30,000 strong, was disposed over a square of perhaps eight miles; yet if you had ridden all day in circles round the farm of Osfontein, which was Lord Roberts's headquarters, you might have wondered whether there were even 5,000 men, so scattered were our camps. The whole air of the place was that of almost pastoral quietness, and the only sound to be heard was the lowing of oxen.