II The Matabele Campaign, 1896
On the afternoon of Friday, April 24th, 1896, Baden-Powell was in Belfast, attending the funeral of one of the men of his squadron who had been killed by a fall from his horse. During the ceremony a telegram from General Sir Frederick Carrington was put into his hands, warning him that he might be summoned to take part in the operations against the rebellious Matabele. Close upon this came the official notification from Sir Evelyn Wood, Quartermaster-General, directing him to proceed to Southampton and to embark on the s.s. Tantallon Castle on May 2nd. By May 6th he was at Madeira, well on his way to the beginning of the most important military affair he had yet engaged in. At 4 a.m. on May 19th he woke to find the screw stopped, the ship motionless, and to see “looming dark against the stars, the long, flat top of grand old Table Mountain.” He was once more in South Africa—little dreaming, perhaps, of what lay before him in the immediate future, or of what he was to do there ere another five years had gone by.
SKETCH MAP of The Theatre of operations
He found Cape Town “just the same as ever.” A brief stay there, a hearty God-speed from a crowd of well-remembered faces at the station, and he was off for Mafeking. One wonders if he knew, if he had any premonitions that almost exactly three years later he would be bound for Mafeking again, charged to fight a much superior enemy to the savage Matabele. He says nothing of that—all he records in his journal of the first night in the train is that the beds were hard and the night cold. He reached Mafeking on May 22nd. It then consisted of a little corrugated tin house and goods shed, serving as railway station, hundreds of waggons and mounds of stores, and a street and market square also composed of tin houses. He found Sir Frederick Carrington—to whom he was to act as Chief Staff Officer—here, and with the other officers of his Staff took up his quarters in a railway carriage. This, however, was to be but a short stay in Mafeking; on May 23rd, he, General Carrington, Captain Vyvyan, and Lieutenant Ferguson set off for Buluwayo by coach—“a regular Buffalo-Bill-Wild-West-Deadwood affair, hung by huge leather springs on a heavy, strongly-built under-carriage, drawn by ten mules.” They were ten days and nights in this vehicle, which laboured along at a slow rate through the heavy sand, and rocked and pitched until Baden-Powell described its motion as “exactly like being in the cabin of a small yacht in bad weather,” but at last they came to Buluwayo, and found themselves in sight of war.
Mafeking to Buluwayo. Ten days and nights by coach.
For some days Baden-Powell was busily engaged in office-work. Buluwayo had been cleared of the rebellious Matabele, but the impis were still hanging about in the neighbourhood, and in order to clear them away Sir F. Carrington decided to despatch three strong columns simultaneously to the north, north-east, and north-west, for distances of sixty to eighty miles. On June 5th Colonel Plumer with 460 men went off to the north-west; Macfarlane’s column, 400 strong, set out for the north. A third column, under Spreckley, was to set forth next day, but at ten o’clock in the evening, as Baden-Powell was finishing his office-work, the American scout Burnham rode in to announce the near presence of a large impi of the Matabele. Baden-Powell went out to reconnoitre, and ere morning had sent a request to Buluwayo for troops from Spreckley’s column. With a force of 250 men and two guns he moved upon the waiting Matabele, who were about 1200 strong. He thus describes the fight in his journal:—
“They did not seem very excited at our advance, but all stood looking as we crossed the Umgusa stream, but as we began to breast the slope on their side of it, and on which their camp lay, they became exceedingly lively, and were soon running like ants to take post in good positions at the edge of a long belt of thicker bush. We afterwards found that their apathy at first was due to a message from the M’limo, who had instructed them to approach and to draw out the garrison, and to get us to cross the Umgusa, because he (the M’limo) would then cause the stream to open and swallow up every man of us. After which the impi would have nothing to do but walk into Buluwayo and cut up the women and children at their leisure. But something had gone wrong with the M’limo’s machinery, and we crossed the stream without any contretemps. So, as we got nearer to the swarm of black heads among the grass and bushes, their rifles began to pop and their bullets to flit past with a weird little ‘phit,’ ‘phit,’ or a jet of dust and a shrill ‘wh-e-e-e-w’ where they ricocheted off the ground. Some of our men, accustomed to mounted infantry work, were now for jumping off to return the fire, but the order was given: ‘No; make a cavalry fight of it. Forward! Gallop!’
“Then, as we came up close, the niggers let us have an irregular, rackety volley, and in another moment we were among them. They did not wait, but one and all they turned to fly, dodging in among the bushes, loading as they ran. And we were close upon their heels, zigzagging through the thorns, jumping off now and then, or pulling up, to fire a shot (we had not a sword among us, worse luck!), and on again.
“The men that I was with—Grey’s Scouts—never seemed to miss a shot.
“The Matabele as they ran kept stopping behind bushes to fire. Now and again they tried to rally, but whenever a clump of them began to form or tried to stand, we went at them with a whoop and a yell, and both spurs in, and sent them flying. Of course, besides their guns they had their assegais. Several of our horses got some wounds, and one man got a horrid stab straight into his stomach. I saw another of our men fling himself on to a Kafir who was stabbing at him; together they rolled on the ground, and in a twinkling the white man had twisted the spear from its owner’s hand, and after a short, sharp tussle, he drove it through the other’s heart.
“In one place one of the men got somewhat detached from the rest, and came on a bunch of eight of the enemy. These fired on him and killed his horse, but he himself was up in trice, and, using magazine fire, he let them have it with such effect that before they could close on him with their clubs and assegais, he had floored half their number, and the rest just turned and fled. And farther on a horse was shot, and, in the fall, his rider stunned. The niggers came looping up, grinning at the anticipated bloodshed, but Sergeant Farley, of Grey’s Scouts, was there before them, and, hoisting up his comrade on to his horse, got him safe away.
“Everywhere one found the Kafirs creeping into bushes, where they lay low till some of us came by, and then they loosed off their guns at us after we had passed.
“I had my Colt’s repeater with me—with only six cartridges in the magazine, and soon I found I had finished these—so, throwing it under a peculiar tree, where I might find it again, I went on with my revolver. Presently I came on an open stretch of ground, and about eighty yards before me was a Kafir with a Martini-Henry. He saw me and dropped on one knee and drew a steady bead on me. I felt so indignant at this that I rode at him as hard as I could go, calling him every name under the sun; he aimed,—for an hour, it seemed to me,—and it was quite a relief when at last he fired, at about ten yards distance, and still more of a relief when I realized he had clean missed me. Then he jumped up and turned to run, but he had not gone two paces when he cringed as if some one had slapped him hard on the back, then his head dropped and his heels flew up, and he fell smack on his face, shot by one of our men behind me.
“At last I called a halt. Our horses were done, the niggers were all scattered, and there were almost as many left behind us hiding in bushes as there were running on in front.
“A few minutes spent in breathing the horses, and a vast amount of jabber and chaff, and then we re-formed the line and returned at a walk, clearing the bush as we went.
“I had one shave. I went to help two men who were fighting a Kafir at the foot of a tree, but they killed him just as I got there. I was under the tree when something moving over my head caught my attention. It was a gun-barrel taking aim down at me, the firer jammed so close to the tree-stem as to look like part of it. Before I could move he fired, and just ploughed into the ground at my feet. He did not remain much longer in the tree. I have his knobkerrie and his photo now as mementoes.
“At length we mustered again at our starting-point, where the guns and ambulance had been left. We found that, apart from small scratches and contusions, we had only four men badly wounded. One poor fellow had his thigh smashed by a ball from an elephant gun, from which he afterwards died. Another had two bullets in his back. Four horses had been killed.
“And the blow dealt to the enemy was a most important one. A prisoner told us that the impi was composed of picked men from all the chief regiments of the rebel forces, and that a great number of the chiefs were present at the fight.”
Baden-Powell contrived to vary the monotony of office-work by a little scouting. He made friends with Burnham and arranged to go scouting with him, and was much disappointed that the agreement could not be carried out. In his journal, under date June 26th, he mentions that having been closely confined to the office for four days, he set out after dinner for a ten-mile ride, roused up some other congenial spirits, and spent the night out-o’-doors, feeling all the better for the change. However, as the days sped on, opportunities for indulging in scouting came, and Baden-Powell—to whom at this time the Matabele gave the nickname of Impeesa—the Wolf that never Sleeps—made a great many useful observations of the Matopos country. Then came his release from town and office life. As he knew the country intimately, he was sent to act as guide to Colonel Plumer, whose force was about to engage in a campaign in the Matopos, and on the evening of July 19th he went off alone in front of the column (preferring that “for fear of having my attention distracted if any one were with me, and of thereby losing my bearings”) across the moonlit country. They advanced close to the enemy and then lay down to sleep—“jolly cold” it was, he says in his journal—rising at dawn to enter a hollow, bushy valley where he “jumped for joy” at finding some traces of the enemy’s presence. The following extract from Baden-Powell’s journal affords a graphic picture of what followed:—
“My telescope soon showed that there was a large camp with numerous fires, and crowds of natives moving among them. These presently formed into one dense brown mass, with their assegai blades glinting sharply in the rays of the morning sun. We soon got the guns up to the front from the main body, and in a few minutes they were banging their shells with beautiful accuracy over the startled rebel camp.
“While they were at this game, I stole onwards with a few native scouts into the bottom of the valley, and soon saw another thin wisp of smoke not far from me in the bush; we crept cautiously down, and there found a small outpost of the enemy just leaving the spot where they had been camped for the night. At this point two valleys ran off from the main valley in which we were; one, running to the south, was merely a long narrow gorge, along which flowed the Tuli River; the other, on the opposite side of the river from us, ran to the eastward and formed a small open plateau surrounded by a circle of intricate koppies. While we were yet watching at this point, strings of natives suddenly appeared streaming across this open valley, retiring from the camp on the mountain above, which was being shelled by our guns. They were going very leisurely, and, thinking themselves unobserved, proceeded to take up their position among the encircling koppies. I sent back word of their movements, and calling together the Native Levy, proceeded at once to attack them. To do this more effectually, we worked round to the end of the main valley and got into some vast rock strongholds on the edge of the Tuli gorge. These, though recently occupied by hundreds of men, were now vacated, and one had an opportunity of seeing what a rebel stronghold was like from the inside; all the paths were blocked and barricaded with rocks and small trees; the whole place was honeycombed with caves to which all entrances, save one or two, were blocked with stones; among these loopholes were left, such as to enable the occupants to fire in almost any direction. Looking from these loopholes to the opposite side of the gorge, we could see the enemy close on us in large numbers, taking up their position in a similar stronghold. Now and again two or three of them would come out of a cave on to a flat rock and dance a war-dance at our troops, which they could see in the distance, being quite unsuspicious of our near presence. They were evidently rehearsing what they would do when they caught the white man among their rocks, and they were shouting all sorts of insults to the troops, more with a spirit of bravado than with any idea of their reaching their ears at that distance. Interesting as the performance was, we did not sit it out for long, but put an abrupt end to it by suddenly loosing a volley at them at short range and from this unexpected quarter.
“Then, clambering down among the rocks, we crossed the Tuli River and commenced the ascent of the towering crags in which the enemy were located. Of course this had to be done on foot, and I left my horse tied to a tree, with my coat and all spare kit hung in the branches.
“Our friendlies went very gaily at the work at first, with any amount of firing, but very little result; the enemy had now entirely disappeared into their caves and holes among the rocks, merely looking out to fire and then popping in again. Our own niggers climbed about, firing among the rocks, but presently did more firing than climbing, and began to take cover and to stick to it; finally, two of them were bowled over, and the rest of them got behind the rocks and there remained, and no efforts could get them to budge. I then called up the Cape Boys and the Maxims (in which Lord Grey assisted where it was difficult to move owing to the very bad ground); these reinforcements came up with no loss of time and went to work with a will. It was delightful to watch the cool, business-like way in which Robertson brought his Boys along. They floundered through the boggy stream and crawled up the smooth, dome-shaped rocks beyond, and soon were clambering up among the koppies, banging and cheering. Llewellyn, too, brought his guns along at equal speed, and soon had them in equal position on apparently inaccessible crags, where they came into action with full effect at every chance the enemy gave them.
“The fight gradually moved along the eastern valley, in the centre of which was a convenient rock from which I was able to see all that was going on, and it formed a good centre for directing the attacks, as the enemy were in the rocks on every side of us. The Cape Boys, after making a long circle round through part of the stronghold, reassembled at this spot, and from it directed their further attacks on the different parts requiring them, and it became the most convenient position for the machine guns, as they were able to play in every direction in turn from this point. For the systematic attack on the stronghold a portion of it is assigned to each company, and it is a pleasing sight to see the calm and ready way in which they set to work. They crowd into the narrow, bushy paths between the koppies, and then swarm out over the rocks from whence the firing comes, and very soon the row begins. A scattered shot here and there, and then a rattling volley; the boom of the elephant gun roaring dully from inside a cave is answered by the sharp crack of a Martini-Henry; the firing gradually wakes up on every side of us, the weird whisk of a bullet overhead is varied by the hum of a leaden-coated stone or the shriek of a pot-leg fired from a Matabele big-bore gun; and when these noises threaten to become monotonous, they are suddenly enlivened up by the hurried energetic “tap, tap, tap” of the Maxims or the deafening “pong” of the Hotchkiss. As you approach the koppies, excitement seems to be in the air; they stand so still and harmless-looking, and yet you know that from several at least of those holes and crannies the enemy are watching you, with finger on trigger, waiting for a fair chance. But it is from the least expected quarter that a roar comes forth and a cloud of smoke, and the dust flies up at your feet.”
The campaign in the Matopos continued until nearly the middle of August, and Baden-Powell was actively engaged during the whole of it, chiefly in reconnaissance and scouting. Once, at any rate, he met with an amusing adventure in giving chase to a young Matabele lady, who proved herself quite equal to him in agility and cunning.
“... I still wanted to catch a prisoner—though I did not at first see my way to doing it. However, in the course of our prowl we presently came on fresh well-beaten tracks, evidently of women and children going to and from the outlying country, probably bringing in supplies. This seemed to offer us a chance of catching some of them coming in, although, as the sun was up, we had little hope of being very successful.
“But luck was with us again, and we had hardly settled ourselves near the path when I saw a couple of women coming along with loads on their heads. The moment they saw us, they dropped their loads and ran, but Richardson and I galloped for them, and one, an elderly lady, gave herself up without any fuss; but the other, a lithe and active young person, dived away at a tremendous pace into the long grass, and completely disappeared from view. We searched about, and kept a bright look-out for her, but in vain.
“Then Richardson questioned the old lady, who proved to be very communicative; she was apparently superintending the supply department of Umlugulu’s impi, and was now returning from a four days’ visit of inspection to the supply base in some of his villages in the district. She was a lady of rank too, being a niece of Umzilikatze, and we should not have caught her, so she said, had her escort not been a pack of lazy dogs. She had four Matabele warriors with her, but they had dropped behind on the path, and should not now be far off. This was good news to us, and, calling up our Boys, we laid an ambush ready to catch the escort.
The Peace Indaba with the Matopo Rebels.
Mr. Cecil Rhodes carried out the peace negotiations with the Matabele chiefs. He was assisted by Dr. Sauer (on his left) and Capt. Colenbrander (on his right), and accompanied by Mr. Stent (war correspondent of the Cape Times).
“While this was being done, I happened to catch sight of our young lady stealing away in the distance. She was getting away at a great pace, her body bent double to the ground, taking advantage of every bit of cover, more like an animal than a human being. Away I went after her as hard as I could go, and I had a grand gallop. When she found that concealment was no longer any use, she straightened herself and just started off like a deer, and at a pace equal to my own; it was a grand race through long grass and bush, the ground gradually getting more rough and broken as it approached the hills, and this told in her favour, for as her pace slackened for want of breath, my horse also was going slower owing to the bad ground. So she ran me right up to the stronghold, and just got away into the rocks ahead of me. I had, of course, then to haul off, as to go farther was to walk into the hands of the impi. The bad part of it was, that she had now got in there, and would spread the news of our being about, and they would probably come out and upset our little plan of catching the party on the road.”
But sometimes there were incidents which had nothing but the darker colours of life in them. In the fight of August 5th, two of the little band of officers under Colonel Plumer were killed, and Baden-Powell thus comments upon their loss in his journal, under date August 6th:—
“It is a sad shock to sit in one’s little mess of half a dozen comrades once more, and to find two of them are missing from the meal. Poor Kershaw and Hervey! Now and then one is on the point of calling to the usual sleeping-place of one or other of them to bid him come and eat, when suddenly the grim, cold recollection strikes you—‘He is yonder—dead.’
“Poor Hervey took his mortal wound as though it were but a cut finger, yet knowing that he was fast passing away. Now and then he sent for those he knew to come and see him and to say good-bye. He was perfectly possessed and cheery to the last, and happily without much pain.
“Poor chap, this was his first fight. He had been the paymaster to the forces, and had asked me to get him some appointment in the field. When he joined us in camp, I could not for the moment find a billet for him, till it occurred to me that there was a small company of men who had come up from Kimberley without an officer. They were so deficient in belts and bayonet scabbards that they always went with bayonets ‘fixed,’ and had thus gained for themselves the nickname of ‘The Forlorn Hope.’
“On suggesting ‘The Forlorn Hope’ to Hervey, he was delighted, and it was at their head he so gallantly met his death.
: The Battle of August 5th.
The sketch above will explain the nature of the operation which led to Colonel Plumer’s victory on August 5th.
“His death is to me like the snatching away of a pleasing book half read.
“And Kershaw was the very type of a cool, brave, energetic officer. His loss to our little force is irreparable.”
On the night of August 10th, Baden-Powell rode thirty miles into Buluwayo to report to General Carrington that the enemy in the Matopos were completely broken up and probably willing to surrender. From thence onward to September 6th he was on the sick-list—fever and dysentery—but he was pulled up on the 7th by “a better tonic than any which the combined medical faculty of Buluwayo could devise,” in the shape of orders from the General to take charge of a column then under Ridley in the Somabula Forest. Next day he took three of Plumer’s men as escort, and set off, in his shirt-sleeves as usual, for a hundred miles ride through a wild country. They had various small adventures on the way—amongst them being a meeting with a nigger who told Baden-Powell a beautifully conceived and executed lie about a great battle which had not taken place. There are some interesting and significant entries in his journal about this time. Here is one as to the making of bread under difficulties:—
“I lay up during the heat of the day with a waterproof sheet spread over a thorn-bush as a shelter from the sun. The men dug water in the sand, washed, and baked bread. To bake bread, lay your coat on the ground, inside upwards, mix the flour and water in it (it doesn’t show when you put the coat on again); for yeast or baking powder use the juice of the toddy palm or Eno’s Fruit Salt to make a light dough; scrape a circle in the ashes of the fire, flop your lump of dough, spread fine sand all round and all over it, then heap the embers of the fire on to it; in half an hour an excellent flat loaf of bread results. It requires scrubbing with a horse-brush before you eat it.”
Under date 11th occurs a passage often quoted by those who have written about Baden-Powell—a passage which, I think, is more indicative of the true character of the man than anything he has done, said, or written.
“September 11th.—My anniversary of joining Her Majesty’s Service, 1876-1896—twenty years. I always think more of this anniversary than of that of my birth, and I could not picture a more enjoyable way of spending it. I am here, out in the wilds, with three troopers. They are all Afrikanders, that is, Colonial born, one an ex-policeman, another a mining engineer (went to England with me in 1889 on board the Mexican), the third an electrical engineer from Johannesburg,—all of them good men on the veldt, and good fighting men. We are nearly eighty miles from Buluwayo and thirty from the nearest troops. I have rigged up a shelter from the sun with my blanket, a rock, and a thorn-bush; thirteen thousand flies are unfortunately staying with me, and are awfully attentive. One of us is always on the look-out by night and by day. Our stock of food, crockery, cooking utensils, and bedding does not amount to anything much, as we carry it all on our saddles.
“Once, not very long ago, at an afternoon ‘At Home,’ I was handing a cup of tea to an old dowager, who bridled up in a mantle with bugles and beads, and some one noticed that in doing so my face wore an absent look, and I was afterwards asked where my thoughts were at that time. I could only reply that ‘My mind was a blank, with a single vision in it, lower half yellow, upper half blue,’ in other words, the yellow veldt of South Africa, topped with the blue South African sky. Possibly the scent of the tea had touched some memory chord which connected it with my black tin billy, steaming among the embers of a wood fire; but whatever it was then, my vision is to-day a reality. I am looking out on the yellow veldt and the blue sky; the veldt with its grey, hazy clumps of thorn-bush is shimmering in the heat, and its vast expanse is only broken by the gleaming white sand of the river-bed and the green reeds and bushes which fringe its banks. (Interruption: Stand to the tent! a ‘Devil,’ with its roaring pillar of dust and leaves, comes tearing by.) I used to think that the novelty of the thing would wear off, that these visions of the veldt would fade away as civilized life grew upon me. But they didn’t. They came again at most inopportune moments: just when I ought to be talking The World, or Truth, or Modern Society (with the cover removed), and making my reputation as a ‘sensible, well-informed man, my dear,’ with the lady in the mantle, somebody in the next room has mentioned the word saddle, or rifle, or billy, or some other attribute of camp life, and off goes my mind at a tangent to play with its toys. Old Oliver Wendell Holmes is only too true when he says that most of us are ‘boys all our lives’; we have our toys, and will play with them with as much zest at eighty as at eight, that in their company we can never grow old. I can’t help it if my toys take the form of all that has to do with veldt life, and if they remain my toys till I drop—
“‘Then here’s to our boyhood, its gold and its grey,
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May;
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of Thy children, the boys.’
May it not be that our toys are the various media adapted to individual tastes through which men may know their God? As Ramakrishna Paramahansa writes: ‘Many are the names of God and infinite the forms that lead us to know of Him. In whatsoever name or form you desire to know Him, in that very name and form you will know Him.’”
Arrived in camp on September 12th, Baden-Powell, on taking over the command from Ridley, found himself confronted by a problem which he rapidly solved in a fashion that afterwards led him into a certain amount of trouble. The leading chief of that part of the country, Uwini, had been captured, and was a prisoner in hospital, and the question was what to do with him. He was one of the four great chiefs of the Matabele, was supposed to be sacred, infallible, and invulnerable, and had been one of the principal instigators of the rebellion. Baden-Powell knew that an exemplary punishment inflicted upon him would act as a deterrent upon the rebels, who were rapidly massing in great force close by, and he accordingly ordered Uwini’s immediate trial by Field General Court-martial. How the thing was done Baden-Powell records in characteristically brief fashion in his journal:—
“September 13th.—The court-martial assembled on Uwini this morning, and tried him on charges of armed rebellion, for ordering his people to murder whites, and for instigating rebellion in this part of the country. The court-martial gave him a long hearing, in which he practically confessed to what was charged against him, and they found him guilty, and sentenced him to be shot. I was sorry for him—he was a fine old savage; but I signed his warrant, directing that he should be shot at sundown.
“At sunset all the natives in camp, both friendlies, refugees and prisoners, were paraded to witness the execution of Uwini. He was taken out to an open place in the centre of his stronghold, where all his people who were still holding out could see what was being done, and he was there shot by a firing party from the troops.”
Later on there was some red-tape business over this episode, and some talk of court-martialling Baden-Powell, but it came to nothing—he had done the only thing that could be done.
The Shangani column, under Baden-Powell’s command, made a complete examination of the thickly-wooded country about the Gwelo without finding much trace of the enemy. By September 20th their rations began to run out, and on that day Baden-Powell was obliged to order one of the horses to be shot, cut up, and served out to the men—a foretaste of what was to happen in Mafeking a few years later. He gives the menu of his mid-day meal that day:—
“... Weak tea (can’t afford it strong), no sugar (we are out of it), a little bread (we have half a pound a day), Irish stew (consisting of slab of horse boiled in muddy water with a pinch of rice and half a pinch of pea-flour), salt, none. For a plate I use one of my gaiters; it is marked ‘Tautz & Sons, No. 3031’; it is a far cry from veldt and horseflesh to Tautz and Oxford Street.”
They were now to meet with a new and dreadful enemy in the shape of Thirst. They travelled for a long distance without finding any signs of water; then Baden-Powell and Gielgud, an old American scout, set out on ponies in the endeavour to find river, or pool, or spring. After travelling nine miles without success, they decided to turn back and retreat with the patrol upon the Gwelo River, but when dawn broke on September 21st they found to their horror that the patrol had followed them, and was close at hand. Then Gielgud and Baden-Powell set out again, casting about in the dry, baked valleys and sunburnt vleys for hours without success, until at last, when the American scout was asleep on his horse for very weariness, Baden-Powell noticed that a buck had been scratching in the sand, and that two pigeons flew away from behind a rock. There was water of a sort there, priceless to thirsty men, and there the patrol was quickly brought. That night, luckily, they came to the Shangani, and it being a “great occasion,” Baden-Powell supped off his last spoonful of cocoa, a nugget of rock-like bread, and a fid of horse, and went to bed without his boots. What luxuriousness!
From the Shangani River Baden-Powell moved on to Ingati, and thence into Balingwe district, having with him a column consisting of half a squadron of the 7th Hussars and the York and Lancaster Mounted Infantry, and a seven-pounder and a machine gun manned by police—a handful of 160 men altogether, with an ambulance and wagons carrying three weeks’ supplies. He advanced across country to the stronghold in which Wedza, one of the rebel chiefs, had entrenched himself, and demanded that gentleman’s surrender. What sort of strong place it was in which Wedza had gathered his forces may be guessed at from Baden-Powell’s description of it:—
“The stronghold itself is a long mountain, consisting of six peaks of about 800 feet high, its total length being about two and a half miles, and its width about a mile and a half. On the extreme top of five of the peaks are perched strong kraals, and in addition to these there are three small kraals on the side of the mountain; underneath each of the kraals are labyrinths of caves. The mountain itself has steep, boulder-strewn, bush-grown sides, generally inaccessible, except where the narrow, difficult paths lead up to the various strongholds, and these paths have been fortified by the rebels with stockades and with stone breastworks, and in many places they pass between huge rocks, where only one man could squeeze through at a time. The paths are commanded by loopholes for musketry from the caves. The kraals are collections of circular mud huts with thatched roofs, built on crags near the tops of the hills, and on the most inaccessible rocks among them are perched the corn-bins; these grain stores are little circular pillars exactly like pillar letter-boxes at home, but made of wattle and daub, with a small thatched roof; a little hole is left near the top of the bin, just as a hole for letters in the letter-box, and through this hole the corn is poured into the bin. When full, the hole is sealed up with a flat stone and mortar. When one loots a kraal, the first thing to do is to knock out this stone, look in, and if there is corn there of the kind that you require, make a hole in the bottom of the wall and apply the mouth of your sack to it, and the corn will run in.”
He had already expressed his conviction that it would take every man of Paget’s column and of his own combined to reduce this stronghold, but on October 14th Paget sent runners to say that he could not join him, so Baden-Powell determined to tackle Wedza with such forces as he had at his own disposal. It was something of a daring feat. Wedza’s mountain was tenanted by about 1600 people, of whom 600 or 700 were fighting men entrenched in an almost impregnable position; Baden-Powell had 120 men all told. He felt sure that a direct attack would result in nothing but loss, and therefore decided that the only thing possible was to try and bluff the enemy out of his position. His idea was as follows:—
“Wedza’s mountain is a kind of promontory standing out from a range of smaller mountains, so I ordered the mounted infantry (York and Lancaster Regiment), under Lieutenant Thurnall, to leave their horses in the open valley at the foot of the mountain, and to gain the neck which joined the mountain to the range of mountains northward. From this position the mounted infantry would command a large part of the stronghold with their fire, and would cut off the enemy’s line of retreat to the mountains. This party was ordered to take up with them their great-coats, water, and two days’ rations, for they would have to stay there the whole day and night, and possibly part of the following day; there were only about twenty-five of them, but they were ordered to act as if there were 250, and right well they played their part. My idea was, that, so soon as this party should have established themselves in their position on the neck, I would bombard the central part of the position systematically with artillery and machine-gun fire, and, at the same time, threaten the left (southern) flank, and the rear of the position with parties of 7th Hussars.
“I intended to keep up this demonstration during the day and to-night, hoping that such action, combined with the moral effect already afforded by the object lesson at Matzetetza’s yesterday, would so work on the feelings of the defenders, that they would take my previous advice and surrender; or if they did not do that, that, at least, they would be so demoralized that an assault could be carried out with some chance of success on the morrow. For these natives will stand your coming at their position so long as you do so from the expected direction, but if you come at them some other way, or look as if you were likely to cut off their line of retreat, they are very liable to become frightened, and therefore, in dealing with them, it sometimes becomes necessary to disregard the teachings of books on tactics, and, instead of concentrating your force, to spread it about in a way that would invite disaster were you acting against civilized troops. In order to gain our positions to carry out this plan, I took the mounted infantry by one route, and sent the Hussars and guns by another more southerly path—under Major Ridley—to take up their places as ordered.”
During the course of the engagement which followed Baden-Powell had a very narrow escape from death. He had worked round into a labyrinth of small valleys at the back of Wedza’s mountain, and, leaving his horse concealed there, had clambered up on to the ridge in order to reconnoitre the stronghold from the rear. After he and his companions had been there until sundown they turned to make their way back, and here came the narrow shave:—
“Owing to the broken nature of the country at this point, we were forced to carry out what I always consider a most dangerous practice, and that is, to return by the same path which you used in coming, and the danger of it was practically demonstrated on this occasion. Riding quietly along in the dusk, we had just got out of the bad part, thinking all danger was over, when there was suddenly a flash and a crash of musketry from a ridge of rocks close to us, dust spurted up all around, and a swish of bullets whizzed past our heads. My hat was violently struck from my head as if with a stick, and in an instant we were galloping across the thirty yards of open which separated us from a similar parallel ridge; dismounting here, we were very soon busy replying to the firing of the enemy, whose forms we could now and again see silhouetted against the evening sky. We had had a marvellous escape; Jackson himself had been grazed on the shoulder, his horse had a bullet-hole in its temple, the bullet had lodged in its head, and, beyond possibly a slight headache, the gallant little horse appeared to be none the worse. Our position here was not too good a one: the enemy were evidently a fairly strong party, and would merely have to work among the rocks, a little to the right, to cut us off from rejoining our main body. Moreover, they had practically possession, or, at least, command of fire over my hat, which I badly wanted. But it looked as though we ought at once to be making good our retreat, if we meant to go away at all. We were just mounting to carry this out, when out of the gathering darkness behind, there trotted up a strong party of hussars, under Prince Teck, who, hearing the firing, had at once hurried to the spot; his coming was most opportune, and reversed the aspect of affairs. After a few minutes of sharp firing, the rocks in front of us were cleared and occupied by our men, and my hat came back to me.”
This escape, however, was not so wonderful or so thrilling as that of one of the Cape Boys, who gravely informed Baden-Powell that a bullet had passed between the top of his ear and his head. It was an escape, though, and a lucky one, for it enabled Baden-Powell to see his well-laid plans crowned with success. Arrived at camp on the night of October 22nd, he received news of Wedza’s willingness to submit, and orders to combine with Paget.
From October 25th to November 15th he was occupied in clearing the Mashona frontier. Those folk who stay at home and never see a soldier in anything but the spick-and-span-ishness of the parade-ground or the park may be interested in Baden-Powell’s description of himself and his life at this time:—
“We are a wonderfully dirty and ragged-looking crew now—especially me, because I left Buluwayo six weeks ago to join this column only with such things as I could carry on a led pony (including bedding and food). My breeches and shirts are in tatters, my socks have nearly disappeared in shreds. Umtini, my Matabele boy, has made sandals for me to wear over—or at least outside—my soleless shoes. And everywhere the veldt has been burnt by grass fires—every breeze carries about the fine black dust, and five minutes after washing, your hands and arms and face are as grimy and black as ever—as if you were in London again. Bathing ‘the altogether’ too often is apt to result in fever. Too much washing of hands is apt to help veldt sores to originate—so we don’t trouble to keep clean.
“Veldt sores bother nearly every one of us. Every scratch you get (and you get a good number from thorns, &c.) at once becomes a small sore, gradually grows, and lasts sometimes for weeks. It is partly the effect of hot sun and dry air too rapidly drying up the wound, and also probably the blood is not in too good a state from living on unchanging diet of tinned half-salt beef and tinned vegetables. We have very little variety, except when we loot some sheep or kill a buck. No vegetables, and we are out of sugar, tea, cocoa, and rice. Matches are at a premium, pipes are manufactured out of mealie corncobs and small reeds. Tobacco is very scarce—tea-leaves were in use till tea came to an end.”
Dolce far Niente.
General Sir F. Carrington and Mr. Cecil Rhodes on the homeward journey.
However, the end was drawing near. “Wedza’s may be said to have been the final blow,” he remarks in his journal. On October 29th his patrol was over, and the mounted infantry went off for their march down country, prior to embarkation for India, and Baden-Powell himself went to Gwelo, to give a little explanation as to his summary dealings with Uwini. He was in a little brush with the stragglers of the rebel Matabele at Magnuze Poort; then met Sir Frederick Carrington and went on with him to Salisbury, where he rejoined civilization, dined out, made calls, rode a bicycle, and went fox-hunting. He also joined in the pleasures of paying a hotel bill which appears to have been one of the most interesting documents ever heard of. It amounted to £258, and covered the expenses of five persons for twelve days, exclusive of liquid refreshment, the cost of which may be gathered from the fact that a whisky and soda meant the expenditure of three shillings! Thence onward to Umtali, and in company with Cecil Rhodes and other great folk to Port Elizabeth, the Liverpool of South Africa, and to Cape Town once more. And then the swift, steady home-going on the Dunvegan Castle, with the sense of duty done for empire and right, and at last, on January 27th, 1897, Baden-Powell found himself at home once more, and thought, no doubt, of the wild life of the previous ten months, with a strong hope that something like it would quickly come again.
THE STORY OF THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING
October, 1899—May, 1900