“The Roughs” Leave Us for Pretoria
Nooitgedacht,
(A little beyond Hekpoort).
Wednesday, October 17th, 1900. Late last night our friends the Roughs (72nd I.Y.) received the order to return to Pretoria at once. So they left us this morning. And here are we, the Silly Sussex, still sticking to it, like flies on treacled paper. As Nobby says, “Grouse all day and you’re happy. That’s the way in the Army.” He is quite right, and I am sure most of us Yeomen, myself unexcepted, have the true military spirit. For we really ought to be very good and contented in this charming valley, where, “if it were not for the kopjes and the snipers in between,” we might lead a perfect Arcadian life. I shall miss our Roughs. Some of them are rare good fellows, and always cheery. To see a Rough come into camp after a good day’s scouting on the farmhouse side of the valley, was a sight never to be forgotten. Across his saddle, à la open scissors, would be two large pieces of wood, usually fence posts; oranges dropping from his nosebag; on one side of his saddle a fowl and a duck on the other; a small porker from his haversack; the ends of onions or such like vegetables would be protruding, and his broad-brimmed hat or bashed-in helmet would be garlanded with peach blossoms, resembling a joyous Bacchanalian, and the unshaven, dirty face underneath wreathed in smiles. We have destroyed a lot more waggons and houses, and lifted several hundred of cattle, besides getting some prisoners. How the women must hate us! Their faces are invariably concealed by the large sunbonnets which they wear, year in and year out. These articles of headgear have huge flapping sides, which their wearers apparently always use for wiping their eyes or noses with. This custom or fashion saves them a deal of time and trouble in fumbling for the usual inaccessible pocket. I daresay you have often read that the veldt is burnt by the Boers, to make our khaki visible on the black ground. More often than not a veldt fire is caused by accident, not design, a carelessly-dropped match doing the trick. As regards showing up our khaki, it is bad for dismounted fellows, but for the mounted men preferable to the sun-dried grass, for as nearly all our horses are bays, roans, chestnuts or blacks, they show up terribly on unburnt stuff and are almost invisible on the burnt.
Thursday, October 18th. We are very up-to-date out here, as the following will show you:
’Twas uttered in vast London city
By lion comiques without pity,
Provincial towns were not belated,
But showed they, too, were educated;
In many a rustic, quiet retreat,
Bucolics, too, would not be beat;
At last It crossed the mighty main,
Did Britain’s latest great inane,
And we out here in deep despair,
Have been informed that There is ’air.
I am pleased to record that the beauty of this epoch-making remark and the evident subtle charm underlying it, has not yet dawned upon any of the troops with which I have come in contact, and so, apart from being aware of its existence, it has molested me in no degree. Even the Transvaal has its compensations. Look at the moral and intellectual damages one escapes—occasionally. Whiteing managed to get some rather good books at an untenanted house a few days ago. Byron’s Complete Works, two Art Journal Christmas numbers (Burne-Jones and Holman Hunt), “Henry Esmond,” and others. He gave me Henry George on “Progress and Poverty,” and two or three works of a devotional nature. The latter I gave Nobby last night in the dark. Our conversations in the ranks are very diversified. A few days back we were arguing as to which is the better—a treacle pudding or a plain suet pudding with treacle. We were interrupted in the middle by a few snipers potting at us. This morning we stopped in the midst of a most interesting discussion on Aubrey Beardsley as a decorative artist and the influence of Burne-Jones and Japanese art on his earlier work, to kill fowls and loot eggs. Our bag was eight cacklers and six eggs—which have just proved to be, as I feared, addled. Lately we have had a really lazy time of it, the poor Infantry scouring the hills and we leisurely riding a few miles along the plain as advance or rearguard, and then camping by about mid-day.