Ernest Nathaniel Bennett

“ The hail of bullets comes whistling along—ispt, ispt, ispt—and everywhere little jets of sand are spurting up. Can we wonder if now and then a stretcher-bearer is struck down? To put the case frankly—he is doing a brave work, but he has no business to be where he is. It is easy to see why the usages of war do not permit the presence of ambulance men in the firing line. Quite apart from the serious losses incurred by so valuable a corps, advantage might be taken by an unscrupulous enemy to bring up ammunition under cover of the Red Cross. ”

“ A sergeant in the Black Watch, when all the officers had apparently been struck down, cried out to the Highlanders near him: "Charge, men, and prepare to meet your God!" He rushed forward at the head of a few comrades and fell dead with a bullet through his brain within a yard or two of the trenches. There is something truly sublime in this man's devotion to his duty. Many and many an individual act of heroism was displayed during those awful moments in the semi-darkness when the enemy opened fire on our crowded battalions. ”

“ The booming of our artillery and the rush of our shells upon the Boer trenches put fresh heart into our temporarily disheartened troops, and rallying lines were formed in various directions. Occasional rushes were made towards the almost invisible enemy over the slope already thickly dotted with the bodies of our dead and wounded, and at the close of the disastrous day several gallant Highlanders were found lying dead across the wire entanglements within 150 yards of the Boers, riddled with bullets. ”

“ Train after train lumbered by with stores and guns and ammunition for the front, the whole of this enormous traffic being run on a single line of rails. Amongst the most troublesome items to deal with were the mules. Sometimes a mule would suddenly produce a violent uproar in a waggon by beginning to kick, his hoof against every mule and every mule's hoof against him. Even if these beasties were taken out of the waggon to be watered their behaviour was unseemly. A soldier would with infinite patience marshal the mules in line with himself, their halters all tied together. ”

“ But in almost every engagement of the present campaign our stretcher-bearers with their officers have gallantly advanced during the progress of the fighting and attended to the wounded under fire. Such plucky conduct as this merits the warmest praise. In the non-combatant, who has none of the excitement bred of actual fighting to sustain him, it requires a high decree of courage to kneel or stoop when every one else is lying down, and in this exposed position first to find the tiny bullet puncture, and then bandage the wound satisfactorily. ”

“ Moreover, some of the more elaborate Boer trenches are so cleverly constructed in a waving line like a succession of S's, that even if a shell does succeed in pitching into one bit of the curve it makes things uncomfortable only for the two or three men who occupy that portion of the earthwork. No, the real value of artillery in attack is to shake the enemy and keep down his rifle fire. ”

“ No praise can be too high for our artillery. It was their excellent shooting that helped our men to rally after the first shock, and which ultimately succeeded in driving the Boers from their first line of trenches. These trenches were admirably constructed in long deep parallel lines connected at the ends so that a force could advance or withdraw from any point without being noticed by ourselves. Shell fire could do little against troops so splendidly entrenched. ”

“ Yes! to mix with the rank and file of an army as one of themselves is a great privilege. One understands them in this way far better than through the medium of books. Many little acts of unostentatious heroism are casually spoken of—noble deeds done by humble soldiers who live without a history and often perish without a memorial—as, for instance, the devotion of a private at Modder River who applied digital pressure to the severed artery of a comrade for hours under fire and so saved his life. ”

“ We train people, of course, read and slumbered in one of the wards, while our comrades under canvas lay with eight heads meeting in the centre of a tent and sixteen legs projecting from it like the spokes of a wheel. Mercifully enough scorpions were few and far between at De Aar, so one could feel fairly secure from these pests. How different it was in the Sudan campaign, especially at some camps like Um Teref, where batches of soldiers black and white came to be treated for scorpion stings, which in one case were fatal. ”

“ Right in front the Hex River Mountains extend like a vast barrier across the line and seem to defy the approaching train. But engineering skill has here contrived to surmount all the obstacles set up by Nature. The train goes waltzing round the most striking curves, some of them almost elliptical. Tremendous gradients lead through tunnels and over bridges, and the swerving carriages run often in alarming proximity to the edge of precipitous ravines. ”

“ I have been in many dreary and uninteresting spots in the world, e.g., Aden or Atbara Camp, but I have never disliked a place as much as I did De Aar. The whole plain has been cut up by the incessant movement of guns, transport waggons and troops, and the result is that one is nearly choked and blinded by the dense clouds of dust. Huge spiral columns of sand tear across the plain over the tops of the kopjes, carrying with them scraps of paper and rubbish of all sorts. ”

“ The Boers took away their rifles but forgot their side-arms, whereupon one of the Highlanders drew his bayonet, leapt to his feet and stabbed the sentry who was guarding them in the neck. The whole eight then jumped over the earthwork and decamped, escaping unhurt through the bullets which followed them from the enraged burghers.
Many of our wounded lay on the ground from early morning till seven or eight in the evening, exposed all day to the scorching rays of an almost tropical sun. ”

“ Another unpleasant feature of life in Capetown is the misfortune, not the fault, of the inhabitants in being frequently exposed to the full fury of the south-east wind. Sometimes for whole days together the Cape is swept by tremendous blasts, which tear up the sea into white foam and raise clouds of blinding dust along the streets of the town. ”

“ If journalists in England wish to criticise the behaviour of our Generals, let them do so over their own signature when the war is over and these servants of the Government can defend themselves fairly. During the progress of a campaign a General has practically no opportunity of defending himself against newspaper attacks. Military success amid the surroundings of a South African campaign is often so difficult: criticism in Fleet Street is so easy! ”

“ Any detailed account of Lord Methuen's battles lies outside the scope of this little volume, and the British public know already practically all that can be known about the general plan of such engagements as Belmont, Graspan and Modder River.
Belmont is an insignificant railway station lying in the middle of as dreary a bit of veldt as can well be imagined. A clump of low kopjes run almost parallel to the railway on the right, and to ascend these hills our men had to advance over an absolutely level plain devoid of any cover save an occasional big stone or an anthill (precarious rampart!) ”

“ How the Boers must have laughed when they read of this cordial invitation! During the few days which elapsed before our ambulance train started for the front we paid a visit to the theatre, but we found the stage tenanted by a "Lilliputian Company," and it is always tiresome and distressing to watch precocious children of twelve aping their elders. One feels all the time that the whole performance scarcely rises above an exhibition of highly-trained cats or monkeys, and that the poor mites ought all to be in bed long ago. ”

“ Military success does not depend entirely on the devotion or capacity of a commander. How cruel were those of the paragraphs which we read directed against our own General, Lord Methuen—the only British commander who had, if we except Elandslaagte, won any successes up to the present. Let the public wait before they so freely condemn a General who drove back the enemy in three successive engagements. That Magersfontein was a bad reverse is patent to everybody, but the causes of that defeat are not nearly so apparent. ”

“ When the femoral artery is shot through one does not waste time by thinking of the integrity of a pair of trousers—a few rips of the knife and away goes a yard or two of khaki. If the cases had not been so sad we should often have laughed at the extraordinary appearance of some of the men. One soldier, for example, was brought into our train with absolutely nothing on him except one sleeve, which he seemed to treasure for the sake of comparative respectability! ”

“ The Dutch are not an artistic race, and the fact that natives here live not in "locations" but anywhere they choose has covered some portions of the town's area with ugly and squalid houses. Nor, as a matter of fact, does the general tone of thought and feeling in Cape Colony naturally lend itself to aesthetic considerations. Even the churches fail to escape the influence of a spirit which subordinates everything else to practical and utilitarian considerations. Can two uglier buildings of their kind be found in the civilised world than the English and Dutch cathedrals at Capetown? ”

“ Many of the poor fellows lay in the open for hours—some of them from 4 A.M. to 8 P.M.—and the back of their legs was, almost without exception, covered with blisters and large burns from the scorching sun. Very many of those who had escaped bullet wounds could not, I should think, have marched ten miles to save their lives. The Highland Light Infantry wore trousers and their legs were all right. How much longer are we going to clothe our Highland regiments in kilts on active service? Every man I spoke to was dead against their use in a subtropical campaign like the present one. ”

“ The Dutch farmers of South Africa are as a rule very poor. They rise up early and take late rest, and eat the bread of carefulness, but their life is one of constant poverty. If we talk of "improvements" we must remember that irrigation in such a country is sometimes difficult and costly, and light railways demand considerable capital. Who is to provide the money for these? I doubt very much if many Englishmen or Australians or New Zealanders who have seen South Africa will exchange their present homes for the dreary and unproductive routine of an African farm. ”

“ Most of them were already in the saddle, galloping off to Graspan, their next position. The unwounded Boers who did remain remained—nearly all of them—for good; rifle bullets and shrapnel and shell splinters are deadly enough, but deadliest of all is the bayonet thrust. So much tissue is severed by the broad blade of the Lee-Metford bayonet that the chances of recovery are often very slight. As volunteer recruits know sometimes to their cost, the mere mishandling of a bayonet at the end of a heavy rifle may, even amid the peaceful evolutions of squad drill, inflict a painful wound. ”

“ There are no respectable fish in either the Modder or the Orange River; even if the fish could see a fly on the top of the liquid mud, they haven't the spirit to rise at it. Some of our officers, it was said, had managed to land a few specimens of a coarse fish like a barbel which haunts these streams, but I should not think any one, even amid the monotony of camp rations, was very keen about eating his catch, for a good many dead Boers had been dragged out of the river. ”

“ The chocolate rations consist of three cubes and can be eaten in the dry state; once, however, I came across a spare emergency tin, and found that with boiling water a single cube made enough liquid chocolate for ten men, a cup each. People make a great fuss in England if they don't get three or four meals a day, but a healthy man can easily fight with much less nourishment than this. I have seen Turkish troops during the Cretan insurrection live on practically nothing else than a few beans and a little bread, and on this meagre and precarious diet they fought like heroes. ”

“ In the Modder River fight a new factor is noticeable. For the first time in the campaign the Boers fought on level ground. Hitherto their bullets had come from the summits of the hills, and for this reason had not proved nearly so effective as a sustained fire from rifles raised, say, about four and a half feet from the ground. It is of course very much harder to hit a moving enemy when you aim from above at a considerable angle than when you merely hold your rifle steadily at the level of his chest and fire off Mauser cartridges at the rate of twenty a minute. ”

“ In one of our southward journeys with a load of wounded men we passed, a little below Graspan, through the midst of a swarm of locusts. We pulled up the windows and so kept the wards free from these clumsy insects. At one period they seemed to almost shut out the daylight, and it was easy to realise how unpleasant it would be to meet a flight of locusts when walking or even riding on horseback. Some odd stories are told about these creatures. I have heard it gravely stated that occasionally a train is stopped by the accumulated masses which fall on the metals. ”

“ The run from De Aar to Belmont is about 100 miles. The ambulance train arrived there on the evening of the battle, and the staff on board found plenty of work ready for them. The wounded men were all placed together in a large goods' shed at the station. They lay as they were taken from the field by the stretcher-bearers. Lint and bandages had been applied, but, of course, uniforms, bodies and even the floor were saturated with blood. Such spectacles are not pleasing, but nobody ever thinks about the unaesthetic side of the picture when busily engaged in helping the wounded. ”

“ Then at the moment when the artillery fire was compelled to cease, owing to the near approach of our infantry, the crafty sharp-shooters crawled out of their nooks and crannies and used their rifles with deadly precision and rapidity.
On this point—the general ineffectiveness of artillery fire when the enemy possesses good cover—the history of modern warfare repeats itself. The Russian bombardments of Plevna were quite futile, and General Todleben acknowledged that it sometimes required a whole day's shell fire to kill a single Turkish soldier. ”

“ What a stupid and brutal thing war is! Certainly the alleged "bringing out of our nobler qualities" is dearly purchased! If a superior national type is the outcome of all this death and pain and misery, War, like Nature, seems at any rate utterly "careless of the single life"!
The battle of Magersfontein has been frequently described in the Press and the main outlines of the fight are already well known to the public. The Highland Brigade, consisting of the Black Watch, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Seaforths and Highland Light Infantry, had dinner on Sunday at 12. ”