The History of Lumsden's Horse. Various

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      Having inspected our transport, the Army Service Corps officers at Cape Town approved of our carts, and reported favourably on them to Lord Roberts; but at the same time stated that they considered a team of two ponies inadequate to draw the load we had designed through sandy tracts, and suggested two leaders to each cart, an increase of 200 lb. in the load, and a decrease in the number of carts. The Chief of the Staff having approved of this suggestion, we handed over to the military authorities twenty ponies (not our best) and ten carts, and harness complete, receiving in exchange seventy-six mules, with harness, and twelve Cape boys to assist as drivers, so that when B Company arrives our united transport establishment will consist of thirty-six carts and two water-carts, with two mules as wheelers and two ponies as leaders to each cart, and there is little doubt that we are as well provided with transport as any troops in the field—indeed, much better than most. The Remount Department in Cape Town were very good to us, and replaced not only our losses on the voyage, but a number of horses which on landing appeared unfit for service, giving us in all twenty-four chargers. The animals cast in Cape Town were old and unlikely to get into condition for a long time, if ever they did so. Our Calcutta purchases and horses brought by troopers themselves are nearly all doing well. In place of those we had lost on the voyage—six or seven altogether—Government gave us thirteen fine Australian cobs, which were told off as remounts for the Ceylon Contingent. But, the latter having been mounted in the meantime by the military authorities and sent to the front, their horses were very properly handed over to us. In Cape Town we found it necessary to make several purchases to supplement equipment and replace losses. These consisted of grass nets and picketing pegs for the horses, and vel-schoen and canvas water-bags for the men; besides stores amounting in all to about 150l. worth.

      Unfortunately, we have to leave four men in hospital. Sergeant Lee Stewart, whose illness was mentioned in the last letter, is much better, but greatly debilitated from the trying time he has had. He has hopes of joining us later. Another bad case is that of K. Boileau, from Behar, who was attacked with pneumonia and was very ill indeed at one time. However, we have good reports of him, and hope to hear in a few days that he is all right again. Shaw, of the Assam Contingent, and Doyle, of the Transport, are also in hospital from trifling ailments, and they ought soon to be able to join us. Many of the men are suffering from cuts and sores on hands and feet, which do not seem to heal up as fast as they ought. Hickley, who was pretty bad when the last letter went, is now all right again, but Daubney has still to be careful of his broken collar-bone. When we arrived at Cape Town we at once heard we were to proceed to Bloemfontein, to join Lord Roberts, as speedily as possible. But the movement of large bodies of troops with supplies caused a block on the railway, and we were delayed eight days. The wait, however, did the horses good, and they picked up hand over fist at Maitland Camp.

      All these details, when looked at in the long perspective where more recent events show up sharply and perhaps a little out of focus, may seem insignificant as objects seen through the wrong end of a telescope. At the time of occurrence, however, they had an importance that impressed itself on the minds of men to whom nearly every incident of active service was then a novelty. And the historian’s duty in such a case is rather to reproduce impressions than to preserve an exact proportion. Moreover, some incidents that may appear trivial by comparison with great episodes, or with decisive actions on which the fate of an army hung, were potent in shaping the fortunes of Lumsden’s Horse as one small unit of a mighty whole, and in this respect, if for no other reason, they are worthy to be chronicled. It is the story of Voltaire’s miller and the King of Prussia. What a division is to the general in chief of an army corps a company is to the regimental commander, and, for Lumsden’s Horse, the smallest adventures of their own comrades had an interest which the civilian reader may perhaps begin to share when he comes to know more of them.

      At Cape Town Colonel Lumsden got the first news of B Company since leaving Calcutta. They had been ordered to East London to disembark there, and entrain at once for Bethulie, ‘right in the Orange Free State,’ as Colonel Lumsden remarked, adding, ‘So they bade fair to get there before us, despite our week’s start. But our latest news of them is that they have stopped at Queen’s Town, and we know no more of them except that they had a most successful voyage.’

      A corporal of the Surma Valley Light Horse, however, supplies the necessary information. He tells how he went with an ambulance fatigue party, to which, among others, Dr. Woollright had been told off as an orderly, in charge of Trooper Seymour Sladden, who was very bad and had to be taken on shore at East London before the company knew its probable destination. From a little jetty that juts out from the wooded banks of the Buffalo River they drove in an ambulance with the sick man up those steep winding roads past the luxuriant Queen’s Park, with its odorous gum-tree groves, to the hill top. There they carried Sladden ‘into a nice clean hospital and left him in charge of kindly nurses, where everything looked very comfortable.’ Then, somehow, they managed to miss their officer and made inquiries for him in vain at Deel’s Hotel, with the result that when the corporal and his comrades reached the landing-stage they found to their ‘extreme joy the crew gone and no way of getting off to the ship, so returned to the hotel and had dinner. Afterwards very sleepy and went straight to bed, and slept like a hog. First time in bed for many weeks, and found it comfortable indeed.’ Other non-commissioned officers and troopers of B Company carry on the narrative in notes that diverge frequently and wander off to alien topics, so that for the sake of coherence they must be dovetailed together here in proper order, each chronicler in turn taking up the story. When those troopers who had not begun to realise the enormity of breaking leave returned to their ship early in the morning of March 27, they met with quite an ovation, which does not seem to have been disinterested, seeing that they were supposed to have brought off with them fruit, cigarettes, and other delicacies much in request. What they had would not have gone far to satisfy the cravings of a whole company for some change from bare rations. News that orders had come for Lumsden’s Horse to disembark, however, put everybody in high spirits at the prospect of being allowed to go on shore with freedom to forage for himself. But they reckoned without their host—the military commander—whose instructions brooked no delay. Kits had to be packed in a hurry while the ‘Ujina’ was being towed on a flowing tide across the troubled bar into port, where she moored alongside the railway wharf. Horses were then got on shore, but only to exchange cramped stalls for cattle-trucks, where they had still less room for movement. At this task the troopers toiled and sweated all through the fiercest heat of a summer noon, learning another lesson and not liking it much. Unaccustomed to such work, many got their toes trodden on by horses rushing down the steep gangway or narrowly escaped more serious injury before every fretful animal could be coaxed or lifted into the crowded trucks. Then there were saddles, kits, heavy baggage, and ammunition to be landed, and so without leisure for a single meal the troopers worked on far into the night. It was nearly 11 o’clock before the last section took its place in the train. ‘Something attempted, something done, had earned a night’s repose’; but there was little chance of getting that, packed together as they were nine or ten in a carriage. Time must have softened the impressions of these discomforts on the mind of one trooper, who, some days later, wrote:

      We left East London on March 28 by rail en route for Bethulie, where it was intended we should quit the railway, mount our horses, and trek to Bloemfontein.

      East London turned out in force to see us off. Little boys and girls (some of the latter not so very little, after all) were very keen to get hold of our shoulder badges as mementoes, and, needless to say, the susceptible ones of our corps were unable to resist the entreaties of the fair ones, and daylight showed a vacant place on many a shoulder-strap. This badge-collecting seems to be a great hobby out here just now; one boy showed me a belt simply covered with badges, which he had secured from the men of the different regiments that had passed through. We travelled in second- and third-class carriages, ten men in each, but it being quite cool we were not uncomfortable.

      Another correspondent, whose experiences were evidently not so pleasant, takes a less roseate view. He says hard words СКАЧАТЬ