On the Heels of De Wet

T >> The Intelligence Officer >> On the Heels of De Wet

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

As we stood gasping for some breath of air to relieve the burden of
oppressive heat, it seemed that the valley was some great stew-pot of
the _inferno_, and that Hopetown was simmering at its bottom.

The brigadier cantered up to the advance-guard, and throwing his reins
to his orderly, made a brief survey of the topographical approaches
to Hopetown.

_Brigadier._ "Well, there is not much of De Wet left in this corner of
the world. All the commandoes[35] of the Hunt seem to have forgathered
here and to be having a day off. What a hole of a place--ideal, no
doubt, from the Dutchman's point of view. Why, the smell of it reaches
up here. But here comes a robber in a pink 'beaver'; we shall soon
know all about it."

A diminutive boy in staff kit cantered up and demanded information
about the column.

_Staff Officer._ "What column is this?"

_B._ "The New Cavalry Brigade."

_S. O._ "Never heard of you. Who told you to come in here? Who
commands you?"

_B._ "Steady, my fledgling, one question at a time. You are given to
heaping matters, I see, which is a bad habit in one so young. I will
answer one of your questions, the last one. I command this column: and
now you will answer me. What columns are in Hopetown?"

_S. O._ "Sorry, sir, but----"

_B._ "Don't apologise. I know I don't look like a general, but it
doesn't help you out of your difficulties to say so. You only slip
into it worse every time; now, then, to the columns?"

_S. O._ "Knox's, Pilcher's, Plumer's, and Paris's."

_B._ "Good; and what is the latest news about De Wet?"

_S. O._ "He has broken out east across the railway; half his force
went up north and half crossed by Paauwpan or Potfontein."

_B._ "Who are on him?"

_S. O._ "I am not quite sure; but I hear that Haig, Thorneycroft,
Crabbe and Henniker are either following him or trying to cut him
off."

_B._ "And what are four columns doing halted here in this _dorp_?"[36]

_S. O._ "They are all stone cold."

_B._ "The price of losing De Wet. Now, young feller, just you hie back
to _your_ general, Charles Knox, I suppose, and tell him that the New
Cavalry Brigade is coming right in here, but will not worry him long,
as it has orders to be off to-night. (_The youth salutes and goes to
the right-about, while the brigadier continues to his staff_) Just as
well to let Knox know that I am on my own. I must invent a special
mission from Pretoria, otherwise he may seize me like the last fellow,
and the future state of this column might then be worse than the
first."

In the meantime the brigade led down into the noisome basin which
holds Hopetown, and took up temporary quarters on the first patch
against the water into which it could squeeze its long line of
transport. It wedged in between two columns, and the bad condition of
both gave evidence of the severity of the work in which they had
recently been engaged. As columns, when they had first entered upon
the chase after De Wet, they had each been five or six hundred strong;
now, perhaps, between them they could count five hundred mounted men,
while of this number not more than a third were fit to do a
twenty-mile trek at a better pace than a walk. Yet each, three weeks
earlier, had started from the railway newly equipped with remounts.

If any are sufficiently interested to cast about for a reason for the
hopeless state of the columns in the Colony at this period, they may
possibly find in the experiences of the brigade a solution of the
remount question which has so puzzled the more intelligent students of
the war. The column newly equipped at the railway was generally worse
off for horse-flesh and less mobile than the force which had not been
within reach of the Remount Department for months. The procedure was
in this wise. The column commander struggled gasping into the haven of
relief afforded by the railway. He had barely issued to his men and
horses a full ration when the telegraph began to talk. Down came the
brief little order from Pretoria, "You will entrain for Cypher Ghat
without delay. Trains will reach you by three this afternoon." In vain
would the column commander plead for rest for man and beast. The fiat
had gone forth. All protest was met with a single reiteration of the
original order, with perhaps the adjunct, "Remounts will be awaiting
you to replace casualties." What chance had the horses which had been
overridden and under-fed for the last twelve days? Those which could
hobble were thrust into close, dung-blocked trucks, and whirled away
any distance from fifty miles to a thousand. Water they got when the
railway officials saw fit to arrange the necessary halt in the
necessary place, rest for them there was none. But the column
commander who was new at the job could plume himself that he would be
restocked and start with a new lease of life at his destination. Vain
thought! He found awaiting him at the end of his journey either the
sweepings of the country-side--such animals as had been rejected as
unfitted for military service by marauding Boer and pushing column
leader in turn, and finally collected by the zealous "crawler" and
duly reported in the "weekly bag" as captured from the enemy. Or if
sweepings were not available, he would find waiting for him absolutely
soft and raw importations, which had cost the taxpayers L40 apiece a
few weeks previously,--the one as useless for the purpose required as
the other. Rejection by a not over-fastidious enemy disposes of the
one; of the other it was as mad a proceeding as taking a horse
straight off grass and backing him to win you a stake at even weights
with trained horses. The millions of the public money which lie
wantonly strewed over the South African veldt would appal even the
most phlegmatic of financiers. The waste in horse-flesh is
inconceivable; and the man with the stiff upper lip who refused to
realise that it takes gentle breaking to bring the troop-horses to the
perfection which enables them to cover for six consecutive days thirty
miles a-day with 20 stone on their backs, has added pence to the
present burden of the income-tax. The taxpayer is naturally upset. He
has cause. He seeks mental relief in philippics against the cavalry
officer,--the man to whom he owes so much. He damns his intelligence
and damns his breeding, and then, having railed sufficiently, pays
cheerfully, with heavy self-satisfaction that some one has at least
been put in his proper place, and that a lesson so necessary has not
really been so dearly purchased at the price. Poor innocent fools! the
British taxpayer brings to mind that dear fat smiling millionaire,
denizen of a West End club, to whom every day impecunious
fellow-members would propose a game of _picquet_ or _ecarte_, well
knowing that it was the quickest way in London to earn a certain L200.
Your Commissions may sit upon the educational standard of your
officers, upon the sequel to your own folly in remount purchase: but
will your inquiry ever reach the foundations of this edifice that you
have condemned? I think not. One or two scapegoats will satisfy the
British public upon those few occasions when it rises up in a thirst
for blood. Willingness to pay rather than interfere will do the rest.
And the spirit of apathy which is characteristic of the nation, in
spite of the occasional outbursts of interested indignation, will
prevent a true disclosure of the horrid facts as long as the war is
unfinished. Once a peace is ratified the national interest in both the
present, past, and future state of its army will be as abruptly and
effectually severed as the magazine charge in the Lee-Enfield rifle
when the cut-off is snapped home, forgetful of the fact that our next
enemy may not be as merciful as the Boer; that he will not stand by
and reap no benefit from our failures; that in a few brief hours a
situation may arise in which no wealth of bullion can save us. It
will take just one disaster such as this--a disaster which will carry
annihilation with it--to cause the British nation too late to take
just stock of its limitations. Then in grief it will remember that he
whom it treated as a mad _fakir_ was indeed a true prophet.

The state of the New Cavalry Brigade, as it wedged itself in between
the two ghosts of mounted columns, was in itself an object-lesson.
Those who have followed the interests of this little command through
the foregoing chapters will have seen that it had not been called upon
to make any exceptional effort to sap it of its reserve forces. In
fact, it had simply been marched and countermarched along dusty tracks
at the whim of a superior officer. Yet under this mild usage the
column had arrived back at a base with 25 per cent of its animals
useless and an equal proportion whose days of usefulness were
numbered. The sole reason for this was the fact that the animals had
never been trained to long distances in a trying climate with 20 stone
on their backs. The care of the brigadier or the watchfulness of the
squadron officers availed nothing when the green remount was put to
the twenty-mile test. But you will say, How, if this is really the
case, was it to be avoided? An intelligent anticipation of events
should have told those who started their campaign with the advantage
of the three months' failure of their predecessors what would be the
approximate remount requirements. The British nation would have backed
the demands of this intelligent anticipation, not in thousands, but in
millions, and by so doing would have saved not thousands but millions.
If the original remount depots had been other than "Siberias" for
incompetent officers from the outpost line, or if the recommendations
of the senior cavalry and remount officers had been listened to, we
should have had less of the saddling of raw horses straight from the
train and ship,--less of the stupidity which expected them to do the
work which can only be done by a system of gradual and careful
training and acclimatisation. It is as suicidal and expensive to put
green horses into the field as it is to put untrained men. Yet at this
period of the war we were practising both these expedients, and
wondering why the Burgher was not subjugated, and why the income-tax
steadily increased.

The stories of sinful waste and incompetent groping for a means out of
the tangle do not connect themselves intimately with this history. But
no doubt remains that the system which was at this period in practice
was vicious in the extreme. In a word, the whole of the British mobile
strength in South Africa was directly based on the railway
communication. This gave a column at the utmost a twelve days' lease
of life, which meant that the troops must keep within a six days'
march of the permanent way or starve. This limited the area of
effective operation; and while we were wasting our energy and
horse-flesh against the enemy's raiders, the bulk of their resistance
was calmly ploughing beyond the reach of castigation. The convoy may
be slow and may be vulnerable, the fortified post may be isolated and
invite attack; but as military expedients in a large country both are
superior to the base-bound column.[37]

The brigadier left the brigade-major to settle the column into its
quarters, and taking the Intelligence officer with him, made straight
for the hub of Hopetown's universe. The hotel and the telegraph-office
stood close together. Outside the former a little scarlet flaglet
fluttered, its double point showing that the general officer who
sported it claimed divisional rank,--a quaint claim at this period of
the war, when lieutenant-generals were parading the theatre at the
head of little _paarde kommandos_[38] three to four hundred strong.
The brigadier spotted the flag, and then edged off to the
telegraph-office. "We will first make things straight with K. Then we
will consult this new horror with the oriflamme that we have stumbled
into!" Three tired clerks, two soldiers and a civilian, were trying to
cope with the telegraphic efforts of five columns. The brigadier
dictated his message to the Intelligence officer. It was a bare
announcement of arrival, duplicated to Pretoria and De Aar.

_Telegraph Operator._ "There is no chance of any private wires going
through for at least forty-eight hours; post would be quicker!"

_Brigadier._ "Then you will just have to clear the line."

_T. O._ "Can only do that for general officers."

_B._ "That is all I ask you to do,--so here you are!"

_T. O._ "Beg pardon, sir; but are you a general,--you are not like
most generals. Yes, sir, it's nice and short. I can get this off in
about five minutes. They clear the line, of course, at De Aar; we are
only working to De Aar. I have quite a lot of messages for you, sir;
they have been coming all last night." (The operator handed out the
bundle of telegraphic jetsam.)

The telegrams contained the usual proportion of hysterical nonsense
from the De Wet expert and various intelligence and departmental
centres; also a direct order from the general at De Aar to proceed
without delay to Orange River Station and there entrain for
Jagersfontein Road in the Orange River Colony. This at least was
satisfactory, as it meant without fail good-bye to the hated Karoo.
The news telegram was interesting reading, though a little indefinite
in its wording. In the light of subsequent knowledge the information
which it conveyed was much as the brigadier had anticipated. De Wet,
after the sack of Strydenburg, had doubled north,--in fact, had almost
retraced his original line. He had thrown a feint up in the direction
of Mark's Drift, and thus drawn the pursuit temporarily off the true
line, but had as suddenly swung to the east. Here he had again been
struck by the indefatigable Plumer, temporarily renovated and with
sufficient steam up to take him a short spurt. That spurt was
sufficient to rob De Wet of his last impedimenta, to cause him to
bifurcate in his flight. Part of the pursued rabble went north, half
hurled itself across the Cape Government Railway in the vicinity of
Paauwpan. Plumer's spurt was just too short to bring about the
definite result required, and he crawled into Hopetown to further
revive his energy. In the meantime it was learned from prisoners and
other sources that the group of fugitives trying to cross the Orange
River north of Hopetown was Judge Hertzog's and Pretorius's party.
Brand had made the passage at Mark's Drift, while De Wet, with the
ex-President, was still in the Colony heading for Philipstown. Then
hope ran high. The Orange River was in flood, while stops were in
front of and south of the harried guerilla. Thorneycroft and Henry in
the vicinity of Colesburg; Crabbe and Henniker on his tail; Grenfell,
Murray, and others strung out in an ever-decreasing circle! Swollen
river in front, desperate Englishmen behind, what chance had the
residue of the invaders now! But the brigadier shook his head as he
pricked out the positions on the map. "There is no mention of troops
moving down from the north. What does Napoleon say about rivers as
barriers in war?--he classes them as negotiable obstacles, after
deserts and mountains, right low down on the scale. Flood or no flood,
ole man De Wet will cross that river just wherever and whenever he
pleases; and if we have no one north of it either to pick him up or to
head him while crossing, he will get clear away, and we shall have let
slip another opportunity, by crass stupidity and failure to make use
of the very signal advantages which circumstances have placed in our
way. Plumer and my brigands get to Orange River Station to-night. Even
if they have truckage waiting for us, we shall not march clear of
Jagersfontein Road until the day after to-morrow. That will give ole
man De Wet twenty-four hours' clear lead. I must say that I cannot see
the hand of genius in the fitting of this plan to the map. This is the
line that both Plumer and I should take--Orange River Station, Ramah,
Luckhoff, Fauresmith. One of us halt at Luckhoff; Kimberley send a
column to Koffyfontein; Bloemfontein another to Petrusburg and
Abramskraal; while Fauresmith and Jagersfontein form bases for
columns sent to them from Springfontein; and then with a consistent
and strong line of outposts we might have stopped his main road north,
although we should be too late to man the river. But, anyhow, I'll
have a try at convincing them at headquarters that I am a better man
outside than inside a cattle-truck. So here goes. Mr Intelligence,
paper and ink and take it down, and mind it is to go in cipher!" The
brigadier then roughly drew a comparison in the saving of time
involved by a direct march upon Fauresmith from Orange River Station
and transport by rail, closing the message with a promise to be in
Fauresmith the second day after leaving the railway.

It then became a question of a square meal at the caravanserai. The
concentration of five columns had taxed the capabilities of the little
hostel beyond endurance. All that they could furnish was milk and
butter. But they were prepared to cook any food that was brought, so
with an effort it was possible to arrive at a meal. There was no lack
of entertainment, however. One of the columns had sent out 300 men and
a pompom in pursuit of Hertzog's fugitives, and the force had just
returned with quite a haul of prisoners. They had come across the
rearmost of them as they were in the act of crossing the river in a
rickety punt, which vessel had been scientifically rendered
unseaworthy by a well-directed belt of pompom-shells. Examination of
the bushes on the near bank of the river showed that dozens of Boers
had literally gone to earth. The river approach was full of
rain-fissures and water-cracks, and the men spent the whole morning
actually bolting burghers from cover, much in the same manner as a
pack of beagles is well used to aid sportsmen to shoot a
rabbit-covert.

It was not until you found opportunity to see these prisoners that you
realised what this war meant to these farmer guerillas, and the
influence which the failure of De Wet's invasion must have made on the
subsequent operations. Amongst the whole 200 prisoners that were
brought in that day, there was only one man--a man who called himself
Hertzog's secretary--who was completely dressed. The majority had
neither coats nor boots; and their remaining costume was in the last
stage of decay. Nor had the inner man been nurtured any better than
the outer. They were emaciated and drawn with hunger and hardship.
They rose out of their holes with their hands above their heads like
great gaunt ghosts with saucer eyes. They were in such a state that
surrender brought to them no pangs of remorse. They welcomed it as a
means to live, and their ravenous supplication for food was not the
least pathetic setting to the scene. They are a strange paradox these
people. One could not help admiring the patriotism--or is it magnetic
power of their leaders?--which kept in the field, in spite of all its
dismal horrors of death and suffering, men who had but to surrender to
return to their share of the comfort of living. If it is true
patriotism, then you feel inclined to raise your hat. But if it is
only fear of the knout, then hanging is the best end you could wish
the leaders, who are able to control such suffering, and who, in the
hope of personal advancement, refuse to alleviate it. But what is more
humiliating than anything else, is the realisation that these
miserable creatures are an enemy able to keep the flower of England's
army in check, to levy a tax of six millions a-month upon this
country, and render abortive a military reputation built upon
unparalleled traditions. This is indeed a bitter reflection, a painful
reminder that the advance of science has placed the athlete and the
cripple almost upon an equality in armed encounter.

It was an interesting gathering that partook of dinner in the quaintly
boarded little dining-room of the Hopetown tavern. Four column
commanders and their staffs filled the tables, which betimes were the
mess-boards of the bank clerks and shop-walkers of the village. The
soldiers, however, had some right to be in temporary possession, since
the viands were their own. The two little serving-maids, daughters of
a Dutch proprietress, were alive to the unusual importance of their
duties, and had carefully prepared for the part. Print dresses were
dispensed with, and they stood arrayed in their Sabbath frocks,
covered with the becoming apron-pinafore which the country affects,
and with carefully braided hair. Quaint little maids--why should we
quiz them?--they were there dressed and determined to do their best.
At the first table sat a middle-aged major-general, a man of kindly
face and habit. As a soldier--a fierce, intrepid leader--can you not
remember the day when he lay amongst the scrub of the Modder bank with
his chest laid bare by a raking bullet, and refused to be carried to
hospital,--even entreated the doctors to let him carry out the mad
effort, worthy of a Marshal Ney, which had been intrusted to him, and
which all but cost him his life. Yet, so strange is the complex nature
of the Englishman, this man, whom the breath of war could rouse to a
courage almost superhuman, spent his leisure in the toils of artistic
photography, and evinced more demonstrative pleasure over a successful
plate than in a battlement of arms made sweet in victory.

At the next table sat a leader of another kind, or rather a different
development of the same type of quiet unassuming English
gentleman,--the gallant, thrusting, never-tiring Plumer. Small spare
man of dainty gait and finish, yet moulded in a clay which hitherto
has shown no flaw in the rougher elements of the soldier. It is no
inconsiderable tribute to his sterling qualities as a leader that he
gained both the confidence and devotion of the rough Bushboys from the
Antipodes, with whom he was associated. But however dainty and
unassuming the shell, it is the spirit which fashions the man, and he
who would continue in the shade of Plumer's banner must ride with all
the cunning he may possess to prove himself worthy of the lead he
follows. At another table sits Pilcher, the man on wires. Hot-headed
he may be, yet withal crafty in war: worthy representative of the race
of young soldiers which the Nile has bred. Then there was our own
brigadier, as buoyant in spirit and as light of heart as any of his
ancestors who played the gallant in the Court of Versailles, yet
possessing beneath the veneer of gaiety a steadfast tenacity of
purpose, which favoured the quartering added from the north of the
Tweed. The room was full of men--men who for eighteen solid months had
been engaging in the stern realities of war. The leaders who had
exercised the balance of life and death, the juniors who had looked a
thousand dangers squarely in the face. If success in war was only made
up in the excellence of fighting men, then England could stand out
pre-eminent. Unfortunately, success lies in business-soldiers _plus_
fighting men. It is in her business-soldiers that England's weakness
lies.

It is only when the intention is to do something desperate that one is
able to appreciate the obstructive temperament of military
officialdom. The whole system teems with "wait-a-bit" thorns; and in
such rare cases when difficulties do not exist, some jack-in-office is
certain to arrive with the sole object and intention of inventing
them. Now, the brigadier had put forward a simple and rational
plan,--so simple and rational that the lieutenant-general at De Aar
had willingly acquiesced, for this general was at least a man to whom
his juniors might look and be certain of support. But after the
general there arose a pack of snarling juniors, whose only energy
seemed to be expended in an endeavour to frustrate the plans of
others. The brigade had orders to march by night the six miles which
separate Hopetown from Orange River Station, but long before it took
the road the departmental spirit of opposition had commenced to make
itself felt.

First came a "clear-the-line" message from the transport officer,
ordering the brigadier to hand over his mule-transport to another
column commander. It is true that he promised to re-equip him with
mule-transport at the destination of his railway journey; but the
brigadier had had experience of the director of transport's promises.
This was an impediment which it was possible to ignore; but it was
followed by another more serious. The supply people appeared to have
been hurt on the score of the short notice which had been given to
them, and raised a host of difficulties. But the climax was reached
when the Intelligence Department volunteered the information that it
would be useless for the brigade to apply for maps, as they had none
in stock; but they added, "As a substitute we are sending the best
local guide procurable."

The brigadier had met the first of these hindrances with equanimity,
but the last burden upset the camel's load. "Did you ever see such
fellows? they are bent on thwarting me every time. I shall ignore them
right through; the only attention the man who has the audacity to
offer me a low horse-thieving local expert as the substitute for a
gross of maps deserves is to be court-martialled and stamped out of
existence on sight. You need not telegraph all that, Mr Intelligence;
but you may send a message to the general in De Aar to inform him
that, having received his orders, I shall leave no stone unturned to
carry out the scheme he has sanctioned, in spite of local obstruction.
That is to be the sense of the message, and it ought to cover any
subsequent act of disobedience which we undertake. Don't make answers
to any of these subordinate fry; we will just march at nine o'clock
to-night to Orange River Station, raid the place of such rations as we
can lay hands on, and then, maps or no maps, take off our caps to Cape
Colony for ever."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15