Entertaining a Guest
Horen’s Nek,
(About 10 miles W. of Pretoria).
Thursday, July 5th, 1900.
Here goes for another letter, so pull yourself together. I am here with twenty others of the 7th I.Y. on outlying picket, and although the affair began rather joylessly, we are getting on very well now. By way of parenthesis, it is more than passing strange that whenever I try to write a letter somebody always starts singing. At present, a man of the Dorsets is lifting his voice in anguish and promising to “Take Kathleen home again.” He has just followed on with that mournful ballad, entitled “The Gipsy’s Warning:”
“Do not ’eed ’im, gentle strynger.”
I cannot help heeding him, but I dare not remonstrate, as he is the cook of our party, and in the Army, as elsewhere, Monsieur le Chef, be he ever so humble, is a power. So I will desist for the present, and resume this to-morrow on the top of a kopje.
(Resumed.)
Every night we do guard on two of the near kopjes, and every other day I have to go up with a guard, to another kopje, used as an observation post, and look with a telescope and the nude optic, Sister Anne like, for “staggerers of humanity.” On Sunday, the 1st, we went to church again. The preparations the young British Yeoman makes for church going out here vary considerably, like most other things, from those he is accustomed to make at home. Having shaved himself with the aid of the only piece of looking-glass possessed by the company, and a razor, which in days gone by would have been a valuable acquisition to the Inquisitorial torture chambers, washed in a bucket and brushed his clothes with an old horse brush, technically known as “a dandy,” he looks like a fairly respectable tramp, and is ready to fall in with his comrades for the two or three miles tramp to Divine service. I had the pleasure of entertaining a guest at breakfast before going to kirk. He rode up to our cook-house fire (one always says cook-house and guard-room) to get a light for his pipe. The broad-brimmed hat with the bronze badge of maple leaves and the word “Canada,” proclaimed whence he hailed. After a few minutes’ conversation, I invited him to partake of our breakfast, and, after no little persuasion—he at first refused on the grounds that he would be depriving us of our full share—he accepted, and came and joined us. He seemed very reluctant to take much at first, and all through the meal, which consisted of mealie porridge and sugar, café sans lait, bread and jam, expressed his appreciation of our scant hospitality. He had joined the Military Police for three months, and was on patrol.
“Where did he hail from?”
“The North-West Frontier.”
“Had he ever been to England?”
“No; but would like to, I guess.”
Here was a man who had never seen England, roughing it and fighting for her out here, side by side with us, the home-born; and he only one of many.
“Hang it, have some more jam, old chap?”
He told us all about the life (cow-boy) he led at home, and wished he could have our company at a “rounding-up,” it was rare fun.
“Now, then, turn out, and get everything packed on the waggons at once, and fall in in marching order!” How would you like to be awakened out of a comfortable sleep at 3 a.m. in the above manner? Still, we are pretty well accustomed to that sort of thing by now. Having fulfilled the above injunctions, we stood to arms for about three hours and were then dismissed. Some of us, I being one, were told off for the outlying picket we are now doing. Just as dinner was served up, we had to fall in and march off, so, despite a ravenous appetite, I had to throw the contents of my pannikin, which I had just filled, away, and with smothered curses on the usual “messing about” which the Imperial Yeoman always has to suffer, fell in and marched away. When we reached this place at about five o’clock, we found that, owing to the usual somebody blundering, sufficient rations had not been put on the waggons for us. The men we relieved seemed very unhappy and were delighted to hear they were to go back. They had had one or two alarms, and had to retire on a fort one night. Almost immediately we were sent off to our kopjes, where we spend our nights. The kopjes round here are really horrible things: to ascend and descend them one requires legs of flexible iron, and the amiability and patience of Job. At night one has to pick and choose a little, before getting a satisfactory “doss.” To arrange your couch you must, of course, remove all the movable stones, and as regards the fixtures it is strange how in a short time one’s body seems instinctively to accommodate itself to the undulations of the chosen sleeping ground. It is strange also how a rock with a few handfuls of grass makes a fairly decent pillow.
Near here there are numerous orange groves lying in the shelter of the kopjes. Yesterday I had charge of a Dutchman who wanted to go through the Nek on business, and on the off chance I went provided with a nosebag. I came across a magnificent orange grove, owned, as it proved, by an Englishman who had been, he told me, out here for twenty-five years. This Englishman sent one of his sons off to fill my bag with the best oranges, and another to fill my red handkerchief with mealie meal to make porridge with. The red-handkerchief-with-white-spots alluded to above is the last “wipe” I have left me out of a large number, and has been invaluable to me on numerous occasions for carrying various articles, usually edible. On the whole, the time I have spent on this outpost has been rather enjoyable. Having only one officer with us, and being a reasonable distance from headquarters, we have been spared a great deal of the “messing about” which seems to be the special fate of the Imperial Yeomen. When you get your British Yeomen home again, many a tale of incompetent officers and needless hardships will be retailed, unless I am much in error. Here is apparently a small fact, which may help to show why the Yeoman has often fared worse than his regular brother. The quartermaster-sergeant of a certain I.Y. company I know of, is, like most others, a man absolutely unaccustomed to and unqualified for the job. Added to this, the disposition of the man is of such a nervous nature that he is afraid to try and work on his own initiative, and consequently when requisitioning for his company’s rations, he not only fails to do what his regular brother non.-com. would do, viz.: get as much as he can for his company, but fails often to requisition or obtain their bare allowance. Once I met and asked this man if he had drawn any jam for his company’s tea, and his sleepily-drawled reply was, “No-o, we were entitled to it, but I forgot to draw it.” He forgot, and a hundred hungry men were dependent on the energy of such a man. Compare this amateur quartermaster-sergeant to the professional one, and you can plainly see one way in which Thomas Atkins scores over his Yeoman brother. Again, the two cooks of the same company were admittedly the slackest and dirtiest men of the lot (the only qualification necessary for a Yeomanry cook is the capability to boil water, and some seldom achieve records even in doing that). Thanks to their dirtiness, the thirsty troopers more often than not, had their tea or coffee spoilt owing to the greasy state of the dixies (cooking pots), which had not been cleaned after boiling the trek ox stew in them.
I am almost baking on the top of this kopje, as I sit with my back against a rock and indite these little records. It seems hard to imagine that early every morning muffled-up, shivering forms wait anxiously for King Sol to stick his dear, red, blushing face above yonder range of kopjes to warm us with his genial presence. Yesterday we had some of Plumer’s men in our little camp. They were rattling good fellows, and had had a very hot time. They assured us that when they entered Mafeking, so tired and gaunt were they, owing to their living on short commons for so long, that any stranger might well have mistaken them for the relieved garrison, and the garrison for the relieving force. They also said the fellows there did not look half so bad as one would have imagined, though they had eaten nearly every horse and mule in the place. The idea which seemed general, that Plumer had a big force with him, was very amusing to them, considering they actually only numbered a few hundreds, and had, I think they said, two old muzzle-loading guns only with them. Having been enlisted a month before the war, they are the oldest Volunteer Force out here.