The Breaking Up of the Composite Squadron
Friday, October 19th. Yesterday evening the Devons and Dorsets were rejoined by their ex-policemen, over a hundred in number. They looked very fit, and appeared pleased to get on the column again. The Devons have their popular officer, Captain Bolitho, with them again. The Sussex did not turn up. However, they and the Somersets are expected to-morrow. As regards mails, we were not wholly disappointed. I got one batch of letters, bearing the home postmark of September 14th, also some newspapers. In one of the latter was a very florid four-column account by a famous “War Special,” of the doings of Rundle’s Starving Eighth. It included a picturesque description of one of those common occurrences, a veldt fire. “And now the flames roll onward with their beautifully-rounded curves sweeping gracefully into the unknown, like the rich, ripe lips of a wanton woman in the pride of her shameless beauty,” and so on, at much length. I read Nobby portions of this article, but, alas! the hardy Parnassian mountaineer was too much for him. “Wot’s it all about?” he queried, “I can’t rumble to the bloke.” I explained to a certain extent, for Nobby had been with the force in question. “Well, ’e can sling the bat,” observed my Border friend, and we discussed and criticised various officers and the Army in general. The freshly-joined men brought with them nice new iron picketing pegs, which we who had long since lost or broken ours, eyed with covetous optics, and determined to possess later, if possible. Their lines were laid in a mealie field, and pulled-up pegs might well be expected. At midnight a clanking noise near my recumbent form, strongly reminiscent of our ancestral ghost, the dark Sir Jasper, dragging his clanking chain after him at that hour, as is his wont, aroused me. Of course, it was a horse which had pulled up his picketing peg and was searching for fresh fields or fodder new. I quickly grasped the situation and the peg, and now have no trouble when the pleasant words “‘Smount. Pile arms. Off saddle. Picket and feed!” greet my ear.
Saturday, October 20th. Yesterday we returned towards Hekpoort, and the order for the day was “The Force will halt.” Now this is one of the finest of life’s little ironies which the Imperial Yeomen experience out here. “The Force will halt”—every time this cheerful intelligence is conveyed to us, we know we are in for something extra in the way of “moving on.” To-day’s “halt” has been a ten-mile halt, we having been ordered to proceed down the valley and guard a small bridle path across the Magaliesberg Range; Steyn, De Wet, or Delarey, being expected to try and get through at this particular point. The last time the Force halted, our halt was a 20 or 30 mile one to Bethanie. The time before a big patrol; and another halt consisted of a ride out several miles to open sundry graves which were suspected of being Mauser-leums, but were not.