On the Heels of De Wet

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

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There were protestations of inability on the part of the forced
labourers. But the Supply officer soon overcame all these, and in an
hour the staff of the New Cavalry Brigade were able after a full meal
to curl up for the night on the high-scented floor of the _winkel_.

* * * * *

An orderly from the general almost cannoned into the brigadier as he
stood shaving by the light of a candle. There was a brusque rejoinder,
and the man handed in a note. The brigadier read the slip of paper
handed to him while he stropped his razor. The orderly who had brought
the message stood stiffly to attention until the brigadier finished
his apology for a toilet. Having washed and struggled into his tunic,
the officer commanding the Cavalry Brigade was in a position to give
his undivided attention to his correspondence. He strode over to the
four packing-cases, which in their disguise as tables represented the
brigade mess, and called for his Intelligence and acting staff
officer. That officer's toilet took even less time than that of his
chief, for he just rolled out from between two blankets, and appeared
ready made, as it were, for the day's wear and tear.

_Brigadier._ "Here, you lazy scoundrel, read that" (_and he passed the
slip of paper over to his subordinate._)

_I. O._ "These are orders, sir."

_B._ "It was not necessary to send for you to discover that. But how
does it affect the orders you issued last night?"

_I. O._ "It cancels them. Instead of taking us north-east, it will
take us due west toward the Prieska Road as soon as we strike Beer
Vlei."

_B._ "It looks as if Mr Brass Hat over there is going to dry-nurse me.
My orders are to co-operate with him--not to follow him about like a
dog at heel. I'm not sent here to be at the beck and call of every
column commander a day senior to myself. I am here to catch
Bojers[29]--not to tramp about roads in the rear of other people. This
is not co-operation; it is aiding and abetting 'refusal' tactics. Now
look here, Mr Intelligence; just let us examine our information, and
if we are right and Brass Hat is wrong, I'll just send him back a note
which will keep him halted all day wiring to Pretoria for permission
to cast me into irons. Now, what is his information?"

_I. O._ (_reads_) "Information arrived late last night that Pretorius
and Brand have taken the road to Prieska. This is confirmed by the
scouts who went out last night. The enemy retired over Minie Kloof and
halted at a farm on the far side of the pass."

_B._ "Therefore the officer commanding the New Cavalry Brigade, having
covered the whole force over Minie Kloof, will halt and allow the
brave general to pass through his brigade, and then follow him along a
Karoo road into Prieska. So these are this sportsman's ideas on the
co-operation of columns. They are about equal with his conception of
the military methods most adapted for catching the present edition of
'Brother.' What is our private information?"

_I. O._ "That Brand, Hertzog, and Pretorius with four hundred men left
this yesterday afternoon,--the former with the intention of making for
Prieska; the two latter, with the bulk of the force, to fulfil an
order from De Wet to concentrate with him upon Strydenburg."

_B._ "I forget how you came by this information?"

_I. O._ "From the German storekeeper here, sir. He's a good sort of
fellow, and the Supply officer has taken him on as a conductor. The
man was present in the store when the messenger arrived with the
communication from De Wet."

_B._ "'M, yes. But may not he have been told to tip us this yarn on
purpose? Have you any other information confirming this theory?"

_I. O._ "Yes, sir, in two places. One of the old dames in the farm
here dropped a remark which the Tiger pounced upon at once. Her
spring-cart had been sent by Hertzog into Strydenburg to get
ammunition, as the orders were then for Brand to attack Britstown, and
they expected to use up the available supply in so doing. The
ammunition would have arrived with De Wet. That is circumstantial
evidence; but last night about 2 P.M. I got the following from the
cable-cart. It is from our friend the De Wet expert, dated last night
from Orange River Station (_takes out paper and reads_): 'Despatches
captured ordering concentration of all available commandoes at
Strydenburg to meet De Wet on the evening of the 26th'--that is
to-night, sir."

_B._ "Will old Stick-in-the-mud have got that, too?"

_I. O._ "I presume so, sir!"

_B._ "Then this is a clear case of 'bilk' on his part. I will go over
and see him. I will be at Strydenburg, as I intended, by midday
to-morrow, if I have to mutiny in doing so. My orders of last night
stand until I come back."

The brigadier was returned in ten minutes, by which time the crude
mutton chops, fried in bacon fat, which formed the daily staple of the
staff breakfast, were laid upon the packing-case. The Brigadier sat
down on his biscuit-tin and took a deep draught of tea. He then seemed
sufficiently fortified to give expression to his feelings.

_B._ "Well, of all the electroplated figure-heads with which I have
come in contact in a long and varied military career, that man is the
most unmentionable. He is eloquent in his estimation of you, Mr
Intelligence. I told him that I could not agree with him upon any one
point he put forward, and that it would be childish in the extreme to
waste 2500 men in chivvying a mythical 200. He then grew angry, and
told me he had got his orders and had given me mine. Well, if this is
what is meant by co-operation, I'll never get within speaking distance
of a column with which I am told to co-operate again. Issued fresh
orders! Instead of being within striking distance of Strydenburg
to-night, we shall be messing about in the Beer Vlei. Old
Stick-in-the-mud does not mean 'going,' that I full well see. What a
sin it is!"

And we can readily indorse this comment upon the evils of seniority,
which, while giving a cover to impotence at the head, dwarf, handicap,
and crush individual energy in the junior. How much separated these
two men in age? It may have been a couple of years. Even if in the
Army List it had been a single day, the result would have been the
same. The so-called experience of seniority--which too often in this
war has spelled incompetence or unsoldierly timidity--has been able to
subjugate the wiser counsels of the junior, and crush out of his
action that fire and energy of purpose which alone could have brought
success. As in the present case, the senior deliberately ignored the
advice of the man with whom he had been ordered to co-operate, and
taking advantage of the few lines which gave him preference in the
Army List, ordered him to deviate from a scheme which in his heart of
hearts he must have known was the only one which could promise
adequate results,--it might also be said any results at all. Perhaps a
study of developments such as these will furnish some clue to an
explanation of one of the gigantic puzzles of this South African
campaign.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] A gruesome record of successful shooting.

[25] Dutch, swamp.

[26] Team.

[27] Hindustani, arrangement.

[28] Official designation of the field-service regulation overcoat.

[29] Jocular rendering of "Burghers."

VII.

"POTTERING."

"Well, if that place is held, it would take Lord Bobs and the 'Grand
Army' three days to turn it," and the brigadier dropped his glasses to
the full length of their lanyard.

The brigade, doing advance-guard to the whole concentration, had
crossed the great prairie which lies north of Houwater, and the
covering cloud of mounted _eclaireurs_ was already disappearing into
the shade of the mountain fastness in front of us. The giant outcrop
of volcanic rock which is known as Minie Kloof rises, with that
directness peculiar to the vast South African table-land, sheer from a
prairie as level as a billiard-table. A succession of rocky
flat-topped parallelograms, featureless save for the one sealed
pattern of nature's architecture of the veldt. To the nomadic
traveller and man of peace, landmarks as barren and bare as the great
ironstone belts of Northern Africa, which constrain the power of the
unwilling Nile until she surges in angry cataract through such niggard
opening as they will allow her. To the man of war, a veritable
Gibraltar; a maze of possibilities in defence; a stupendous
undertaking in attack, an undertaking which will brook neither error
nor miscalculation, and from which nature has eliminated much of the
element of chance on the one side to place it to the credit of the
other. Of such a kind were our Colenso, Magersfontein, Stormberg, and
Spion Kop heights. You at home at your ease, taking in from the map in
a second a perfunctory impression of the topography, which it would
take a cavalry brigade half a day to verify, talk glibly of turning
this position and out-flanking that. Know ye that the lateral problem,
which in the pink and green of the atlas would appear so simple, may
be for miles a gridiron of parallel and supporting positions. That the
well-considered turning movement put in motion at the first streak of
dawn may be, and probably will have become, a plain and simple
frontal attack by sunrise, through circumstances that no man, not even
Napoleon himself, could foresee or control. Then this being given, why
not deal leniently with such men as have served you well, and who may
be trusted to profit by experience dearly purchased? but the other
class, the man who has prostituted the fighting excellence of the
British soldier in the shock of war by appealing to the chances of
war, without due care and forethought--why, it is your duty to destroy
him: your bitterest strictures even will not meet the punishment such
a one deserves.

"If a life insurance agent were to turn up now, I should take him on!"
And the brigadier had every cause for anxiety, for the under-features
of Minie Kloof could swallow a thousand men, and still leave a mocking
enemy in possession of the salients. Troop after troop of Dragoons
broke into extended order, and spread away to either flank. The front
became wider and wider, and yet no rifle-shot. The main body and the
guns halted and waited, momentarily expecting to hear that intonation
of the double echo, which in a second would change the whole history
of the day. But it never came. The little brown specks, which had
vanished into the shadow of the mountain, commenced to reappear
amongst the stunted vegetation on the crests. At first it needed
strong glasses to distinguish the moving bodies from the clumps of
blurred bush-shadow. Then out twinkled that little star of light which
means so much to the general in the field. Gaily it caught the rising
efforts of the sun, and threw to brigadier and staff the welcome news
that the summit of Minie Kloof was clear.

"Thank Providence for that! we will be in Strydenburg to-night," and
the brigadier cantered on into the pass while the main body of his
command moved leisurely after him towards the natural fastness. It
must have been from places on the great South African tableland such
as this that Rider Haggard drew his inspirations to invent the hidden
kingdoms of Central Africa--charming rock-bound empires familiar to us
all. How many will there be who have trekked through and through the
new British colonies, and not been struck with the many
mountain-locked valleys which abound! Valleys as fertile and pleasant
as any in the legends of fairy tale; or, to be less fanciful in
simile, as bright in being and as difficult of approach as Afridi
Tirah in early autumn. Such a valley we found within the outer barrier
of Minie Kloof. A valley small in its proportions, it is true, but
none the less fertile. A dainty brook of crystal clearness gave life
to the barren hillsides. The silt of a thousand years of summer
torrents had furnished each niche and recess with a mould Goshen-like
in its richness. Here, amongst luxuriant groves of almost tropical
splendour, nestled the inevitable farmstead,--a white residence which
had once possessed some architectural beauty, and an outcrop of barns
and subsidiary mansions unpretentious in design, squalid in
arrangement. The staff of the New Cavalry Brigade dismounted before
the farmer's door and called for refreshment. For the moment one
possessed the mental vision of a pink-cheeked milk-maiden--the
panel-picture of civilised imagination--short of skirt, dainty in
neck and arm, symmetrical and sweet in person and carriage. It is of
such that the thirsty soldier dreams. The vision came. A slovenly hack
from the kitchen obeyed the summons. With dirty hands she thrust a
still dirtier beaker of milk upon us, and spat ostentatiously to
emphasise the spirit of her hospitality. It takes much to stifle the
honest thirst of war, but this was more than human nature could
support, and the uninviting bowl passed round the staff untouched
until it reached the less fastidious signallers. Five minutes at the
crystal brook was worth all the ministrations of Dutch milkmaids.

It then became necessary to seek for information. It was a barren
field of search. The surly men-folk of the sordid dwelling lounged out
and met all inquiry with studied insolence. Even the Tiger could make
no headway. He was met with recriminations. The Dutchmen recognised
him as a neighbour, and ill disguised their disapprobation of his
present circumstances. Information was at a deadlock, though in
reality there was little to be learned. The brigadier halted just
long enough to water the horses, and then it was forward again for the
last climb over Minie Kloof.

It was slow work. The scouting of an outcrop of mountain by cavalry is
always slow work, especially if that cavalry is under an officer who
will have the work done well. But like all things, good or bad, it
came to an end, and as the autumn sun grew vertical, the head of the
column passed down into another great plain which sinks northwards
into the Beer Vlei.

"Thank Providence the 'push' was not stuck up in that place," said the
brigadier as he halted to watch the waggons down the last incline. "If
old man De Wet is to be at Strydenburg to-night, with Britstown as his
objective, we should have had him here to-morrow morning. I have only
seen a worse country in the colony down Calvinia way. That was the
most deceptive playground that I was ever inveigled into. But it was
as deceptive to 'brother' as it was to us. Both sides lost themselves
about twice every half-hour. Hostile pickets and outposts constantly
rode into one another. I remember one night we had just settled down
in camp when in rode three Boers. They came up to the lines of one of
my scallywag corps with utmost unconcern--halted in all good faith
right up against the horse-lines. 'What commando is this?--is it Judge
Hertzog's?' A Natal corporal was the man nearest to them, and he was a
quick-witted fellow. He slipped back the 'cut off' of his rifle as he
answered, 'I guess not--but there is our commandant over there. You
had best go and ask him whose commando it is; but you must just hold
your hands above your head before you speak to him. He is a peculiar
man, our commandant!' The men surrendered to him without a murmur, and
seemed to think it was a good joke. But I daresay three months of a
Bellary sun in the Shiny has caused them to change their opinions."

The column swung out into the great dry Karoo prairie. It was a
comfortless trek. Earth and sky seemed to have forgotten the rain of
preceding days; or it may have been that the storms which had
distressed us had been purely local, for we had struck a great
waterless plain which showed not the slightest sign of moisture. The
shuffling mules and lumbering waggons churned up a pungent dust; a
great spiral pillar of brown cloud mushroomed out above the column; no
breath of air gave relief from the vertical rigour of the sun; the
great snake-like column sweated and panted across the open, reporting
its presence to every keen-sighted Dutchman within a radius of fifteen
miles.

We have seen the beauties of the Karoo; but we cannot blind ourselves
to its defects, for they are the more numerous. At its best it is a
great stagnant desert, studded here and there with some redeeming
oases. Its verdure smacks of the wilderness. Stunted brown and grey,
the heather from which these rolling steppes take their name is
stranger to the more clement tinge of green, which is the sign of a
soil less sapless. Yet a peculiar fascination militates against a
general condemnation of the pitiless Karoo. One cannot altogether
banish from one's mind the memories of a summer night upon those
wastes. Those of you who have laboured in the desert of the Egyptian
Soudan will realise what is meant--can feel as we feel towards the
veldt of the Karoo. There is in that mysterious, almost uncanny,
fascination of those cool nights which succeed a grilling day a
something which you always look back upon with delight. What this
influence is, you can never precisely say; but it is impossible to
forget it....

At midday the New Cavalry Brigade came to a halt at some mud holes,
which furnished sufficient clayey water to allow the sobbing gun-teams
and transport animals to moisten their mouths. Water for the men there
was little, except the pittance which they were allowed to draw from
the regimental water-carts. Neither was there shade from the merciless
sun. The six inches of spare Karoo bush, though it served as a nibble
for the less fastidious of animals, was useless either as bed or
shade; other vegetable growth there was none within sight. Men crawled
under waggons and water-carts if they were fortunate enough to find
themselves near them, or, unrolling their blankets, extended them as
an awning, and burrowed underneath. The oppression of that still heat!
Fifty yards away the atmosphere became a simmering mirage; the
outposts lost all semblance of nature's form, and stood out
exaggerated in the middle distance as great blurs of brown and black.
But it is only a passing inconvenience. In an hour or two the strength
of that great, fiery, pitiless sun will be on the wane: if it were
otherwise, then, indeed, would the Karoo be a desert. So you doze--it
is too hot to sleep--and thank Fortune that you have not to march
during the furnace hours of the day. And as you doze, parched and
sweating, a little blue-grey lizard pops out from beneath the cart
beside you, and, climbing gingerly up the stem of a solitary
karoo-bush, surveys you with great, thoughtful, unblinking eyes. He is
a complacent little beast, of wonderful skin and marking; and if it
were not for the palpitation of his white waistcoat, it had been
difficult to say he lived. You wonder if he too feels the heat. You
think he does; for he opens his pink maw and sways his sprig of
heather, to make for himself that breeze in the still air for which
you are panting. You close your eyes, and smile to think that such a
little thing as a karoo-blended lizard can interest you. A sound
catches your ear: it is the upbraiding note of the bustard. Again and
again you hear it. A covey of these birds must have been raised. As
the clatter of their cry dies away, you distinguish the muffled
strokes of a galloping horse. This is significant. No man in his
senses would gallop in this heat unless his mission was serious.
Nearer and nearer comes the horseman. You hate to move, though you
hear the rapid breathing of the horse and the complaints of chafing
leather.

"Where is headquarters?" demands a voice in authority.

Your dream and rest is over; for are you not the general's flunkey?
You jump to your feet.

"Where have you come from?"

_Orderly_ (_as he hands in a written message_). "From the officer
commanding the advance-guard." The message runs: "Patrol on left front
reports large force of Boers, estimated 500 strong, to be behind the
rise three miles to the right of the solitary flat-topped kopje on our
left front. Patrol has fallen back upon me."

This information is laid before the brigadier, who is half asleep
under the mess-cart.

_Brigadier._ "How far is the flat kopje from us?"

_Intelligence Officer._ "About four miles, sir."

_B._ "Intervening country?"

_I. O._ "Flat as a polo-ground, sir."

_B._ "Oh, send out a troop to get touch with them. I'll bet it's only
a flock of ostriches or a mirage. Tell the troop not to get
compromised if they should find Boers in greater strength than
themselves. Hold another troop and the pom-pom in readiness to
support, if there should be anything. But it's not reasonable that
there should be 500 Boers so near us at this hour. It is too late for
our Houwater friends, and too early for ole man Christian.[30]"

_I. O._ "Very good, sir."...

Almost immediately upon the despatch of the troop, the main body of
the co-operating command marched up to the clay pools. The two
generals met to discuss the situation. The meeting of generals in the
field nearly always lends itself to the picturesque. We know that it
is a favourite theme for the artist's brush. And even in this
utilitarian age, when the genius of man has shorn war of much of the
panoply with which the calling of arms is associated in peace, there
is something attractive in the sight of the communion of great
soldiers in the field. The glory of war is not all cock-feathers and
steel scabbards. In fact, the brilliant colours which blend so well
with the pasture-green and brick-red of Europe would offend the eye if
grouped upon the russet veldt--would seem as incongruous as a flamingo
perching upon a hay-rick. It is an interesting picture. The two
generals standing together a little apart from their staffs, which
mingle in friendly intercourse. The lines of dismounted orderlies
holding the horses from which the officers have just dismounted. The
senior general is a tall spare man, just overlapping the prime of
life. It is more than the powdered dust that makes his moustaches
appear so fair. He is a man careful of his personal appearance. From
head to foot his uniform of modest brown fits him as would a glove--to
borrow from the sayings of a fair cousin across the Atlantic,--the fit
of everything is so perfect that it looks as if he had been melted and
poured molten into a khaki casing. The sombre dirt colour is relieved
by the scarlet and gold upon his peaked cap and collar, and the long
string of kaleidoscopic ribbons on his breast which tells of many
tented fields--and maybe as many "fields of cloth-of-gold," for it
does not take war alone now to decorate the breast, or to bind
spur-straps across the instep of a knight. The brigadier stands in
contrast to his senior. He is as tall a man, more commanding in
carriage, but of very different temperament and gait. It is no studied
negligence which has arranged the careless inconsistency of his dress.
It is but the mind speaking through the person. He wears nothing that
has cost a tailor a minute's thought to shape. His staff cap is set
askew; his badges of staff distinction have obviously been sewn into
position by some unskilled craftsman--probably his soldier servant.
His tunic tells its own story of two years' campaigning in the rough;
while the Mauser pistol strapped to the nut-brown belt which Wilkinson
designed to carry a sword, speaks eloquently of the wearer's
appreciation of the latter weapon as part of a general officer's
service equipment. But as you look at the two--the one dandy and
smart, the other rough and workmanlike--you can feel the personality
of the junior, while the senior means no more to you than a clothier's
model. This may not convey much to the average layman. But
men--illiterate, uncultured, fighting men--see and appreciate all
this, and it means much to them. Know, therefore, that there is no
keener judge of human character and human mind than the cherub of the
gutter. It is from these gutter-snipe, grown into men, that the
fighting ranks of the great British army are filled.

The generals were discussing the situation, as far as their respective
staffs could discern from their speech and attitude, amicably enough,
though the brigadier was pressing some point. In reality he had
renewed his protest against his senior's decision of the morning, and
was endeavouring to influence him into a change of policy and plan.
But the stern usage of the service decrees that the public convenience
should be ordered by the man whose name ranges first upon the Army
List schedule, and that the junior should press his arguments in
deferential rather than aggressive language. But by dint of argument,
and some short reference to the senior members of the staff, a
compromise was arrived at in order to meet the wishes of the
brigadier.

_General._ "I tell you that I don't like it; neither do I see any
object in the move. After the handling which he has had from Plumer,
Prieska can be the only line open to De Wet."

_Brigadier._ "But all my information is in an opposite direction, sir.
It distinctly----"

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