Ambushed
On Sunday (August 5th), while the folks at home were preparing for the Bank Holiday, we Yeomen of Sussex, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Fife, with our friends “The Roughs,” were continuing to advance west in the direction of Rustenburg. This day we passed through some of the best wooded country I have seen out here. The trees being quite large and at a distance very much like small oaks. At about mid-day we halted in front of Olifant’s Nek, and our signallers tried to get into heliographic communication with the great “B.-P.,” who was supposed to be in possession. At last, after several fruitless efforts, a dazzling dot in the pass appeared and commenced twinkling in response to ours.
“Twinkle, twinkle, helio,
What a lot of things you know.”
Soon we received the order to advance. Then we were halted, “files about,” and galloping about a mile to the rear, were drawn up, and informed that a Boer laager had been reported under a small kopje of the Magaliesberg some distance east from the Nek, and we were to go and investigate the matter. The first three groups of our troop were sent out to locate it, I being in the centre one. We had some wretched ground to go over, and finally, without any signs of opposition, reached the small farms lying at the foot of the range of hills. There the left and centre group were stopped for some considerable time by a large barbed wire fence and, as none of us possessed any wire nippers, we finally had to go out of our way some distance in order to avoid it. I mention this trivial incident as illustrative of how some Yeomanry matters of equipment have been neglected. From my own knowledge, based on enquiry, I find that none of the non-commissioned officers or men of our squadron were provided with these very necessary implements—one or two happened to have private ones, and that is all. So much for that grumble. Now to resume. Having overcome the barb-wire difficulty, we continued our progress in the direction where we understood the laager was situated, convinced in our minds that of Boers there were none. En route we called at the few houses in the neighbourhood and made slight investigations, with always the same result. There were women and heaps of children, but of men none. Of course, you know the game. The chivalrous Boer, having deposited his arms in Pretoria and taken the oath of neutrality, has rested himself, and is now out again on the war path, either from choice or through being commandeered. At last one of our scouts rode up and told us that our right-hand group had found the laager which had been evacuated. Riding through the trees, it was rather thickly wooded, we soon came across wandering cows, calves and oxen, and at length the laager at the foot of a small kopje. In it were the four men of our right group, cattle, horses, a few donkeys, and a couple of uneasy-looking niggers, who had evidently been left behind and in charge by the Boers. It was a fine position for a laager, and well hidden away. Several of us dismounted here and lighted our pipes while we watched the fine cattle we had got, and those with bad horses haggled as to who should possess the best of the Boer mounts, which were being held by the uncomfortable-looking Kaffirs. Presently through a donga on the left of the laager came the leading groups of the Fife Light Horse and soon the laager contained the first troop. I remounted my horse and—rap! went a shot and over rolled a horse and rider (a Sussex sergeant) on my right; then into us rapped and cracked the rifles from the near kopje. There was only one thing to do, and that was to clear. Men and horses appeared to be tumbling over on all sides, Bête Noire swerved and I fell off at the commencement of the fusillade. Arising, I doubled after the sergeant whose horse had been knocked over by the first shot. After going about a score of yards, I saw him dash into some bushes and brambles, and following, slipped and rolled down the side of a gully till I found myself scratched and torn sitting in a small rivulet at the bottom with my pipe still in my mouth and my rifle, the barrel of which was half choked with mud, in my hand. Looking round I saw two of our fellows who had led their horses down from the other side. The place could not have been improved on for cover, and the others falling in with my j’y suis, j’y reste remark, we sat down on the moist earth and rocks and awaited developments, while the bullets whistled and buzzed through the trees over our heads. Soon a volley whizzed over us from our fellows who had succeeded in retiring and rallying behind a knoll some distance back. This went on for a time, and at length the firing ceased. A Fife man came up from lower down the gully; he had lost both horse and rifle. However, crawling higher up, he found the latter in some bushes. Presently a strange figure appeared, clad in khaki, with a dark blue handkerchief tied over his head, a stick in his hand and leading a horse. This proved to be another canny Scot. He had assumed this sort of disguise and managed to secure a horse from near the laager. He was rather apprehensive lest our own people should fire on him if they spotted him. As he told us, on our enquiring, that there were two more horses in the laager, though he advised us not to go out for them then, the Fife man and I emerged from the donga and with a wary eye on the treacherous kopjes entered the laager, which was only a score of yards from our place of concealment, and to my great delight, of the two horses quietly eating the forage there I recognised Bête Noire as one. Having now obtained horses, we leisurely proceeded to camp, calling on the way at a few of the farmhouses and an orange grove we had passed on our advance to the laager. The Boers had evidently cleared, or they would have fired on us as we rode to the farms in full view of the kopjes all the way. I cannot say that the simple Boer women seemed pleased to see us when we rode up with smiling faces and helped ourselves (with their permission) to oranges and tangerines, while one good lady gave me a couple of eggs, which I enjoyed later for tea. Then gaily bidding them Auf Wiedersehen we retraced our way and came to where the camp had been established. Arrived there, the stories we heard concerning the affair were, as you can imagine, marvellous. And, after all, what do you think the wily Boer bagged as the result of such a lovely death trap? Not a man. Half-a-dozen horses were shot, and I daresay some cattle. My rolled overcoat also had a rip suspiciously like a bullet mark. Once again Boer wiliness had been rendered ineffectual owing to execrable marksmanship. It seems like ingratitude to thus criticise their shooting, but it cannot go without comment.
On Monday, the August Bank Holiday, we did not shift camp, and had the luxury of a late reveillé (6 a.m.), and opportunities for very necessary washes and shaves, and such domestic duties as repairing rents in our breeches and tunics, and a little laundry work. Some of your “gentlemen rovers abroad” are finding that sewing the tears in one’s tunic is a far different and more difficult matter than sowing one’s wild oats at home. Owing to having baked the back of one of my boots in drying it at a fire, after my fourth immersion in a bog, I have had rather a bad heel, but am easier in that vulnerable part now, having cut out the back of the boot.
On Tuesday, B-P. very unwillingly evacuated Rustenburg, and we marched back in the direction of Pretoria.
I don’t think, in spite of my verbosity, I have made any particular or direct allusion to our friend, the mule, so here I will make slight amends. Alas, he lost the little reputation he possessed at Nicholson’s Nek, but to give the mule his due he is a hard worker—he has to be—he is born in bondage and dies in bondage (there is no room out here for the R.S.P.C.A.), and the golden autumn of a hard-lived life is not for the likes of him. He does not appear to get much to eat, though he will eat anything, as I found to my cost one night when in charge of the stable guard. A friend had lent me two Graphics, which I left on my blanket for a few minutes while I went the rounds. On my return I found a mule contentedly eating one of them—I only just managed to save half of it. When in camp, the Cape Boys, in whose charge they are, usually tie some of them to the wheels of the waggons, ammunition and water carts, the remainder being left to wander tied together in threes and fours, reminding one for all the world of Bank Holiday festivallers arm-in-arm on the so-called joyous razzle dazzle.
Out here we wandering humble builders of the Empire have no idea how the war is progressing, if progressing it is. Our noses are flat against the picture, so to speak, and, consequently, we practically see and know nothing; it is you good folks at home who have the panoramic view. Our cheerful pessimist expressed himself to this effect a few days ago. About forty or fifty years hence, travellers in this part of the world will come across bands of white-haired and silver-bearded men in strange garbs of ox and mule skin patches, and armed with obsolete weapons, wandering about in pursuit of phantasmal beings to be known in future legends as land Flying Dutchmen. Anyhow, give Private Thomas Atkins a good camp fire at night when the Army halts, round which he can comfortably sit and grumble about his rations, while he partakes of a well-cooked looted porker or fowl, and afterwards fills his pipe with the tobacco of the country, which he lights with an ember plucked from the burning, and talks of home, and the prospects, optimistic or pessimistic, of getting there some day, and at least, he is content. Oh, England, what have we not given up for thee this year, Cowes, Henley, the Derby, Ascot, Goodwood, the Royal Academy, the Paris Exhibition, the latest books and plays, all these and more—much more. And if we hadn’t, what would we have done? Kicked ourselves, of course.
“Then here’s to the Sons of the Widow,
Whenever, however they roam;
And all they desire, and if they require,
A speedy return to the home.
Poor beggars, they’ll never see home!”