Angus Buchanan

“ And picture the difficulty of keeping in touch with your own people in such jungle, which, the moment you enter it, swallows you up in its depth of undergrowth as if you were a rabbit taking cover in a field of ripe corn. Not only is it difficult—I might say impossible, sometimes—to know where your own people are, who are advancing on the right or left, but also it is difficult to know the movements of the enemy. ”

“ One moment they may be in front of you; a few moments more, and they may be gone, undetected—all but a few bluffing rifles—to a new position, or may be working round on an open flank.
Truly the enemy chooses his positions well, and it is the country, not he, well though he fights, that robs us again and again of decisive battle. Their positions are, with rare exceptions, chosen where they and their movements cannot be seen, and thus their strength, at the many points of battle, may be either a handful of men or a dozen companies. ”

“ War is as a storm of the clouds—a human storm. Dark frowning clouds, commotion and strife, and outbursts of thunder—and before the threatening disaster we tremble, and hope and fear.
It is the changing of the Universe, this mighty upheaval within nations, and there is the impulse of Destiny in it. As a storm will clear the atmosphere, afterwards there will be sunshine and better things. Not for to-day, and the present, is this warring of nations, but for the future, and the wisdom of those who in generations will follow us. ”

“ It is here, close to their sheltering shade, that the native huts are grouped; huts with a great proportion of steep roof of weather-darkened grass, and with low squat walls of baked reddish mud. Here naked children play around the tree-trunk roots, in the shade, while old shrivelled-up women, or labouring wives, together under the hut-eaves, croon their soft Swahili folk-songs, in tune with the doves in the trees, in tune, indeed, with all that is African. ”

“ On the morning of the eighth day the ship worked slowly into the snug but narrow harbour at Malta, while all along deck deeply interested troops conversed on the unfolding view of this quaint and foreign port, dressed for the business of war and bristling with grim fortifications.
British and French warships lay in harbour, and merchant vessels of all kinds—suggestive of the great activities of war in this quarter of the world, for here routes touched to the war zones of Egypt, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, India, and Africa. ”

“ It is not the enemy in themselves that are the difficult foe to conquer; it is the bush that hampers everything, and hides almost all of the evil planned against us. The unpleasant game, though it is a game on a much larger scale, is like hunting a snake in the long grass. ”

“ After midnight bitter cold set in and chilled our scanty shirt-clad bodies, and when dawn broke the red-hot sun was for once welcomed in Africa, as it warmed us to life again. But still, when the day dawned, the trekking column held onwards, and all through the day we marched, until 4.30 p.m.—and then to battle. I have never seen men more utterly tired and woebegone than our men at the time of their approach on Lukigura River. ”

“ Does not war, this drastic liberation of opposite forces, hold for us a lesson? Are we not passing through the throes of upheaval to change the mind of our race from vanity to wisdom? The world to-day is steeped in blood and sorrow; and all the suffering would be in vain, were there not hope that the world will arise in the end sobered, and humbled, and eager to live anew. ”

“ Is not to enter war to enter an arena of great possibilities, wherein a great game may be played, or a bad game? but, in any case, it is so closely and seriously fraught with terrible issues that it bares the character of men to the very bone. And there are many characters—not one character, but a thousand characters; some great, some small, some active, some dormant, but out of all such elements it is a wise man’s wish to weld a universal organisation of strength; and an ignorant man’s folly to look at no other ambition but his own. ”

“ More keen than ever, we moved on again, the actual sight of game whetting our appetite for a kill. But no! the Fates were unkind. At the end of two miles of careful stalking we halted, and had not fired a shot. Spoor in plenty had been encountered, principally the sharp-pointed sand-print of Mpala hoofs or the untidy scraping and burrowing of a family of wart hog. Many were fresh tracks, and promised the momentary appearance of game, but the shadow of the bush held motionless and lifeless, blank cover from which the treasures we sought had travelled at first suspicion of danger’s footfall. ”

“ IMPULSES OF CHARACTER Some men, like a giant moth in its full beauty of life when it breaks from its chrysalis cell, fail to accomplish anything before they are lured to the bright lights of the lamps of civilisation. Like an unfortunate moth to a lamp, it is their fate to be inevitably drawn towards the attraction, to seek an elusive something, and a possible happiness. Persistently they damage their manhood and their strength in trying to reach a luminous star within the radiant unattainable circle. ”

“ We have now descended into low, unhealthy marsh country, where the atmosphere is close and damp, and fly-ridden. For the remainder of the day and the next two days, swarms of us, like busy ants, laboured to and fro on the construction of the large timber-buttressed bridge being thrown across the high-banked river. At the end of the latter day fever laid hold of me, and left me with just enough energy doggedly to carry on. Toward evening, too, of the latter day the work drew to a close, and we marched out forthwith, at 7 p.m., to camp about midnight at Kwe d’Hombo. ”

“ At dusk they quietly left the noisy, troop-filled camp—the master leading, Saidi following. They were mounted on wiry, donkey-like Somali mules, animals so small that they appeared disproportionately overburdened with their load and their well-filled saddle-bags. But in this they were deceptive. Clifford [45] knew them, from long experience, to have no equal in animal transport in the country. Tireless little animals they were, grit to the back-bone, and strong to endure long, heart-breaking treks. ”

“ For the country will want a race that is fine-grained [228] and sure-rooted, and fit to stand up against the stress of the many storms of a restless world’s brewing.
How little we are, we pawns of a universe: how far-reaching is war in the destruction of our plans! At the beginning of life it has picked us up in its whirlwind, from every stage of life, and left our poor ambitious castles in the air, tiny long-forgotten dust-heaps on the plain. ”

“ It was then that serious fighting began, and all day—while the ships shelled from the lake—we fought in attack against the enemy, who, to begin with, held out amongst the rocks and clumps of trees in the broken hills before us, and who, latterly, defended the commanding hills north-west of the town.
It was real guerilla warfare. From rock to rock one could see men dodge, while puffs of smoke puffed in and out from behind scores of rocks, and from many a tree-clump bottom. ”

“ We learn at the front and at home that nothing else matters, that nothing really counts in the greatness of a nation but clean, unshaken, sacrificing purpose, and ceaseless industry: worthless are all our little deceits and vanities, and greed of personal gain.
That nation will find religion and prosperity which holds on to the deeper lessons of war, long after war is over. To forget those lessons will be to sin against God and conscience, and the great silent grave-yard of our dead, who died that their nation might live. ”

“ And there they laboured, those grim, dirt- and blood-bespattered men of the firing lines while movement became general on all occupations. Ambulances and doctors were being sought on all sides, while many men passed along looking for water, in desperate need of quenching their thirst. In that bush forest, after dark, wandering parties, unfamiliar with the encampment as it lay after battle, seemed to be looking for every regiment, and water-cart, and doctor in creation. ”

“ Men essentially want strength in their leaders. They will go through fire and brimstone for a good leader, and never be at a loss. Is it not a mistake to rely too much on discipline as a factor of strength? May it not be misleading to judgment of fighting strength? Drill and discipline are somewhat automatic and ornamental, and it is just that surface which is rudely swept aside in the first shock of battle. ”

“ It is a trying thing for anyone to wait idly inactive for a shell’s vicious death-dealing on-coming, but it is much more trying to the half-wild senses of a black man than to a white man. We had no artillery with a range sufficient to reach the enemy’s naval guns, so that the only retaliation on our part was accomplished by dropping bombs from our aeroplanes. As soon as the enemy ceased firing, invariably our ’planes went up, and, when over the German positions—cunningly though they were concealed in the bush—bombs were dropped on every likely target. ”

“ Like unto axe-men felling trees in a forest is the destructive hand of warfare. The land is depopulated of its finest timber, and that which will take a lifetime to replace.
Wholesale destruction reaches far beyond the actual crime of killing. It breaks the evolution of growth, retards or destroys the life-history of a species, and leaves, through the age it occurs in, an irreplaceable blank in the population and wealth of a country. ”

“ At your post there are some days when mists are in your eyes, and you cannot clearly see; there are days when mountains must be climbed with aching limbs and burdened back; and there are days when you are humbled in wretchedness, and glad of the kindliness of natives. Those days we all experience, but, thank God, there are days when the sky is blue and sunshine is in everything, and it is good to be alive. ”

“ General Smuts’s operations around Kilimanjaro saw them. Right to the fore were they in the long and tiring treks, varied by frequent and fierce rear-guard actions, which took place down the Pangani and southward through the bush and forests to the capture of Morogoro; and onwards again right down to the Rufiji. They bore that cruelly hard period through the rains of 1916, when they held the Mgeta line against a numerically superior foe, living literally in a swamp for months, riddled through and through with fever. ”

“ Rhinoceros were perhaps most plentiful on the frontier, and were often encountered when patrolling the thick bush, or bush-covered hill-country. During the many times I have met those animals at close quarters—and I have stumbled across as many as four separate animals in a single night when on particular reconnaissance—I have never known them to charge seriously when not wounded. I have experienced them rush straight on to the sound of a stick crackling underfoot, but, when they drew close and got my wind, they veered off instantly to one side, and escaped in the bush rapidly and fearfully. ”

“ Routine in the early days of war, in the camps on the frontier of British East Africa in 1915, was like unto a watch-dog’s duties.
The Uganda Railway, running parallel to the boundary from Mombasa, on the East Coast, to Kisumu, on Lake Victoria Nyanza, had to be vigorously protected from raiding parties; and a force larger than our own had to be held at bay until a sufficient army could be sent out to take the field and the offensive. ”

“ I have often been asked, “What were the difficulties of the campaign?”—for the uninitiated have sensed that there were difficulties—and I have answered, “Our greatest enemy to overcome was the ever-blinding, ever-foiling bush and jungle growth; our second enemy was the intensely hot climate, and subsequent disease; the third enemy was the shortage of adequate rations; and the fourth enemy was the grim tenacity of a stubborn and worthy foe.” There you have the four essential conditions that made the East African Campaign a long one. ”

“ For him the war has held more than loyalty to his country, for it held for him, in its own time, and in its own way, the finding of himself.
A boy changed to a man, and the man seeing a world that is not as he built it. He has sighed and fretted for lost dreams, but he [233] knows the battle-ground of Life’s conflict must be in the arena before him, and, headstrong and vigorous, he accepts the challenge against strange weapons and foes, and is of the stuff to prove that he has grown to be a worthy defender of his race. ”

“ We are still free of bush country. To-day we march through forsaken desert, sparsely grass-grown, and of a surface nature of metallic lava crustings. A small party of enemy was engaged, on our left front, about noon. The enemy fired on our mounted advance scouts from a low kopje which they occupied. But our scouts had previously sighted the enemy, and had sent back word to the column. Mountain Battery guns, already trained on the target, opened fire the instant the enemy showed his hand, and with deadly shooting put the enemy to flight in no time, followed by rounds of vicious shrapnel. ”

“ If one who has not experienced it can think of a hard mountain [98] climb, or of a long march at the end of twenty miles, or of stiff canoe-going up-river, one may realise something of the stress of endurance. For the rest—the scratching, patience-trying obstacles—if you would picture the worst of them—the thorn-tree Mgoonga—imagine half a dozen groups of Stewart tackle clutching along your arm or leg or helmet, while another lot threatens to tear your shirt back to rags. When you are hooked, you cannot free yourself by forcing forward ”

“ During the early morning, on to-day’s march, an astonishing incident occurred. Some of us, on the transport line, were suddenly startled by the rush of an animal from the bush, and were amazed to witness a buck jump clean across the road, over the top of a double line of mules. Half a dozen white men and some [90] natives saw this almost unbelievable feat. The buck landed on the far side of the road only two yards away from me, and I think it was a hartebeeste, but in the half-light I was unable to be quite certain of the species. ”

“ Here, as at Gibraltar, the boat hawking tobacco vendors arrived alongside from shore in their small craft, plying clamorous trade with the good-natured troops, until the arrival of the coal barges put them to flight.
The ship coaled all day and late into night; a process conducted by swarms of gibbering ill-thriven Maltese natives, meagrely garbed in ragged loin-cloths, who filed, endlessly, up plank gangways from the barges to the coal bunkers in the ship’s side, each with his loaded wicker basket hoisted shoulder high.
Coaling is a filthy business. ”

“ Sometimes, too, an animal of prey would betray its presence and its prowling: the deep blood-curdling howl of the hyena and the dog-like bark of the jackal at times awoke the silence, for one or two brief moments, ere, phantom-like, they were swallowed in the dark, fathomless pit of night, and lost on their onward trail.
At daybreak, white morning mists came down [32] over the bush-land and obscured everything; soon they rose again and cleared.
Back from the roadside, in the bush, we made a small fire and warmed and cheered ourselves with a hot cup of tea. ”