Erskine Childers

“ Williams and I have taken to ending the day by boiling tea (from tablets) over the embers of the cook's fire, or on one of our own if we have any fuel, which is very seldom. How the cooks get their wood is a mystery to me. The Kaffir drivers always have it, too, though there are no visible trees. We always seem to sit up late, short though our nights are. A chilly little group gathers sleepily round the embers, watching mess-tins full of nondescript concoctions balanced cunningly in the hot corners, and gossiping of small camp affairs or large strategical movements of which we know nothing. ”

“ My impressions of the next ten days are of grooming, feeding, and exercising in the cool twilight of dawn, sweltering dusty drills, often in sand-storms, under a blazing mid-day sun, of "fatigues" of all sorts, when we harnessed ourselves in teams to things, or made and un-made mountains of ammunition boxes—a constant round of sultry work, tempered by cool bathes on white sand, grapes from peripatetic baskets, and brief intervals of languid leisure, with al fresco meals of bully-beef and dry bread outside our tents. ”

“ Up we got, harnessed up, hooked in, and groped in the worst of tempers to where the column was collecting, wondering what was up now. We soon started—no moon and very dark—on a road composed of fine, deep dust, which raised a kind of fog all round, through which I could barely see the lead-driver's back. The order was no talking, no smoking, no lights, and we moved silently along under the stars, wrapped in darkness and dust. Happily the road was level, but night marching is always rather trying work for a driver. One's nerves are continually on edge with the constant little checks that occur. ”

“ Days pass. The news spreads, and burghers come in from all sides to deliver up their arms to the Captain. He soon has no fewer than twelve hundred rifles, of which he makes a glorious bonfire, thus disarming at one stroke a number of Boers fifty times greater than his own force. There is no sign of the overwhelming forces of the British, but their early arrival is daily predicted, and the delay explained away. Meanwhile, the twenty-one live in clover, eating and drinking the best of everything, and overwhelmed with offers of marriage from adoring maidens. Luxury threatens to sap their manhood. ”

“ All the time the train rolls through the wilderness, with its myriad ant-hills, its ribbon of empty biscuit tins and dead horses, its broken bridges, its tiny outpost camps, like frail islands in the ocean, its lonely stations of three tin houses, and nothing else beyond, no trees, fields, houses, cattle, signs of human life. ”

“ Nothing is too bad for the Boers. "Boiling oil" is far too good. Deportation to Ceylon is pitiful leniency. Any suggestion that the civilized customs of war should be kept up with such an enemy, is scouted. Making all allowances for the natural resentment of those who have known what it is to be an Uitlander, allowing too for "white flag" episodes and so on, I yet fail to understand this excess of animosity, which goes out of its way even to deny any ability to Boer statesmen and soldiers, regardless of the slur such a denial casts on British arms and statesmanship. ”

“ Chiefly one realizes the enormous importance of food to a soldier. Shortage of sleep, over-marching, severe fighting, sink into insignificance beside an empty stomach. Any infantry soldier will tell you this; and it is on them, who form the bulk of a field force, that the strain really tells. Mounted men are better able to fend for themselves. (I should say, that an artillery driver has in the field the least tiring work of all, physically; at home, probably the heaviest.) It is the foot-soldier who is the measure of all things out here. ”

“ Heavy firing has been going on all day, mostly with lyddite, on our side, by the sound. You can see the shells bursting on the top of a big kopje.
This is a funny little place: pleasant cottages dotted round in desultory fashion, as though the town had been brought up in waggons and just tipped out anyhow. Half the houses are empty and gutted; we are all going to sleep in houses to-night. There has been a row about looting a chemist's shop; our fellows thought he was away with the Boers, but he turned up in the middle. ”

“ We finished with a sing-song on deck, a crooning, desultory performance, with sleepy choruses, and a homely beer-bottle passing from mouth to mouth.
Then came the tropics and the heat, and the steamy doldrums, when the stable-deck was an "Inferno," and exercising the horses like a tread-mill in a Turkish bath, and stall-cleaning an unspeakable business. Yet the hard work kept us in fit condition, and gave zest to the intervals of rest.
At this time many of us used to sling our hammocks on deck, for down in the teeming troop-deck it was suffocating. ”

“ He found the rest in a house near by, and soon we were sitting on the floor of a room, in a dense crowd, drinking hot milk, and in our right minds; sick or wounded men of many regiments talking, sleeping, smoking, sighing, and all waiting passively. A benevolent little Scotch officer, with a shrewd, inscrutable face, and smoking endless cigarettes, moved quietly about, counting us reflectively, as though we were a valuable flock of sheep. We sat here till about 2.30 A.M., when several waggons drove up, into which we crowded, among a jumble of kit and things. ”

“ There is plenty of time to write one's diary when waiting with the teams. One pleasant thing is the change felt in the relaxation of the hard-and-fast regulations of a standing camp. Anything savouring of show or ceremonial, all needless minutiæ of routine, disappear naturally. It is business now, and everything is judged by the standard of common-sense.
The change of life since we left Bloemfontein has been complete; no tents, no washing, no undressing, only biscuit and tinned-meat for food, and not too much of that, very little sleep, etc. ”

“ He often prefers to die, and while he is making up his ponderous mind he may be blocking up a column, miles in length, of other waggons in single file. We talk of the superior mobility of the Boers; but it puzzles me to know how they got it, for oxen and mules are their standards of speed too, I suppose.
At dark, when all had passed, we followed ourselves down an abominably dangerous road, and over the bridge to camp, which looked and sounded like a big busy town, scintillating with fires and resonant with the yells of black drivers packing their waggons. ”

“ Probably we get too small a space allotted, and the horses are all jammed together in the picket-lines, causing a vast loss of temper at unharnessing. After unharnessing and feeding horses, which you have to look sharp about, or you will miss coffee, every one crowds round the cook's fire, and looks with hungry eyes at the pots. Coffee or tea, biscuits and tinned meat, are served out. You are ravenous, as you have lived on chance scraps during the day. Then you make your bed, stretching your blankets behind your harness, standing a saddle on end, and putting a feed-bag behind it for a pillow. ”

“ My waggon is halted, waiting to go up. The sun is just getting strength, warming our numbed feet, and spiriting away the white frost-mantle that the land always wears at dawn.
(3 P.M.) .—Guns, Maxims, and rifles hailed lead into the Boer trenches for a long time, and then the infantry seized them, and the Boers retired. The practice of the 38th and our guns seemed to me to be very good. We have also a five-inch lyddite gun (Clements brought it) , which sent up huge clouds of brown dust where the shell struck. ”

“ Infantry, no doubt, get the lust of battle, but I don't for my part experience anything like it, though gunners tell me they do, which is natural. One feels one is taking part in a game of skill at a dignified distance, and any feeling of hostility is very impersonal and detached, even when concrete signs of an enemy's ill-will are paying us noisy visits. ”

“ Most compartments have only four men to them, and by great good luck, and a little diplomacy, Williams and I have one to ourselves, though we form our mess with the four chaps in the next one. Now the beauty of it is that no one can get into our train, so, if you get out at a station, you need have no fear of finding a nurse with twins in your special corner seat. You live without these terrors, and have room to stretch, and sleep, and read, and have meals, with no one to ask you to show your ticket. ”

“ I was fortunate enough to have your Battery with me, and it is very gratifying to know that everything we attempted has been successful. Owing to the excellent practice made by your guns, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have been the cause of great saving of lives to the Infantry, and at times the Cavalry. I am sorry to lose you, and I shall miss you very much. There is more hard work to be done; and you cannot realize what it is to me to lose a body of men whom I knew I could always rely upon. ”

“ In the middle of this there will be a cry of "D coffee up!" and you drop everything and run with the crowd for your life to get that precious fluid, and the porridge, if there is any. You bolt them in thirty seconds, and run back to strap your mess-tin on your saddle, put the last touches to your harness, and hook in the team. Of course we sleep in our cloaks, and wear them till about eight, when the sun gets strength. Then we seize a chance to roll them at a halt, and strap them in front of the riding saddle. ”

“ No doubt it is inevitable and harmless at home, but in the bloody, toilsome business of war it is apt to have bad results. Of course is only part of the larger question of our general military system, deep-rooted as that is in our whole national life, and now placed, with all its defects and advantages, in vivid contrast with an almost exactly opposite system. ”

“ All trains stop at night now, for the ubiquitous De Wet is a terror on the line. To-day we passed the charred and twisted remains of another train he had burnt; graves, in a row, close to it. Williams and I slept on the ground outside the truck, after feeding and watering horses and having tea. It was an uneasy slumber, on dust and rubble, interrupted once by the train quietly steaming away from beside us. But it came back. We were off again at 4.30 A.M., a merry crowd heaped together under blankets on the floor of the truck. ”

“ However, up we got, not knowing why, tossed on harness, and started straight away back for Lindley, supposing they were being attacked. It was a hard march over those detestable drifts, in pitch dark and freezing cold, with one halt only of ten minutes. The centre driver has a trying time in bad places of the road, for at steep bits on the down grade, if the wheelers get at all out of control, he has the pole bearing down on him, either punching his horses and making them kick, or probing for vulnerable places in his own person. ”

“ Perhaps the best of all is to have given up newspaper reading for a time and have stepped one's self into the region of open-air facts where history is made and the empire is moulded; to have met and mixed with on that ground, where all classes are fused, not only men of our blood from every quarter of the globe, but men of our own regular army who had fought that desperate struggle in the early stages of the war before we were thought of ”

“ The Boers have been shelling the town most days, and fighting goes on outside nearly every day. The day before we relieved it the Boers made an effort to take it, and our Infantry lost heavily. There was a garrison of about a thousand, I think, before we came. There is nothing eatable to be bought at any price, and no communication with the outside world, except by despatch-riders. I was talking yesterday to two Yeomanry fellows who had escaped from one of the Boer commandos. They had lived entirely on fresh meat, and were devouring dog-biscuit by our cook's fire like famished terriers. ”

“ For two more days we were busily employed in unpacking stores, and putting the materiel of battery into shape, while, at the same time, we were receiving our complement of mules and Kaffir drivers for our transport waggons. Then came our first parades and drills. Rough we were no doubt at first. The mobilization of a volunteer battery cannot be carried out in an instant, and presents numberless difficulties from which infantry are free. Our horses were new to the work, and a few of us men, including my humble self, were only recent recruits. ”

“ Their ammunition too was evidently of an inferior quality. I saw no shrapnel fired. It is all very novel, laborious, exciting, hungry work, and perhaps the strangest sensation of all is one's passive ignorance of all that is happening beyond one's own narrow sphere of duty. An odd discovery is that one has so much leisure, as a driver, when in action. ”