The History of Lumsden's Horse. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ he first realises the social inferiority that it implies. Let us have done with cant and confess at once that a man who puts on the common soldier’s uniform for active service, whether he be Volunteer or Regular, thereby renounces all claims to the rights and privileges of a gentleman. The gay haunts of a city are not for him then, if he cherishes his self-respect, and the troopers of Lumsden’s Horse had that truth impressed upon them long before their week of rest at Cape Town came to an end. They were no more squeamish than others, and their experiences in this direction have been shared by every Yeomanry corps and Volunteer detachment, after the first burst of enthusiasm on their account exhausted itself. Cheerful endurance of these things may be counted not least among the merits of men who gave up much to serve their country in her hour of need, and to ignore them would be to misunderstand the nature of many sacrifices made by the rank-and-file of a regiment like Lumsden’s Horse. In times more propitious they would have appreciated fully all the charms that Cape Town can offer; but, as it was, the parting had no great pang for them, and A Company hailed with unalloyed delight the order for an advance northward into the land of infinite possibilities. There was to be no route marching for that detachment, the Cape Colony lines being comparatively clear of troop traffic; so that the prospect of reaching Bloemfontein by rail without serious interruption seemed almost a certainty. It was on Friday, March 30, that Colonel Lumsden received, direct from headquarters, the welcome intimation that he and his two companies were wanted at the front. Colonel Lumsden naturally felt himself very fortunate in receiving orders by which his corps was chosen for active service while Regular regiments and Yeomanry companies waited impatiently at the base in Cape Town; but Lord Roberts needed mounted troops more than infantry just then. Everybody accepted this as the first real step of the great march on which their hearts were set, and its crowning triumph at Pretoria. They were not to be out of it after all. And we may be sure that they wanted no second call when the warning came for them to get their kits packed and be ready for a start by train the next morning. This was glad news for all except four unfortunate troopers who, much to their sorrow, had to be left in hospital at Cape Town. These were James Lee-Stewart, of whose case Colonel Lumsden wrote a week or so earlier; Knyvitt Boileau, of Tyrhoot; Hubert Noel Shaw, of Palumpur; and John Canute Doyle, of the Transport Detachment. Of others, who were invalids on the voyage, Howard Hickley had quite recovered, and Clayton-Daubeny, pleading hard that he was quite fit to ride and shoot, in spite of a broken collar-bone, got permission to rejoin his section for duty. So keen were the men to be near the fighting line that they have hardly recorded their impressions of the strange country through which they passed; and but for an incidental note here and there, like the opening paragraph of the following letter, we might almost imagine that profound peace reigned throughout the country. Yet the letter was dated only three days after our troops had suffered so heavily at Sanna’s Post. Writing on the morning of April 3, a trooper whose letters were sent to the ‘Englishman’ said:—

      It is wonderful to think that this very afternoon we shall be in Bloemfontein, and may see the great old man whose masterly tactics have so completely turned the tide of war.

      On Friday we heard the line was clear, and this news was quickly followed by a warning to hold ourselves in readiness. Immediately on top came the order to be at the railway station the following day by 1 o’clock. A mighty packing up of kit and piling up of supplies resulted in a successful transference of our goods and chattels to the station by the appointed time, and at 6 o’clock we steamed out of Cape Town in two trains, one following the other. When we left camp ammunition was served out, fifty rounds a man, and the weight of it has not added to our comfort.

      The railway journey has proved very pleasant so far. However, some slight description of how we are packed aboard may be interesting. We heard, with no little misgiving, that we were to be eight in a compartment, for we expected nothing but the ordinary straight-backed wooden carriage, and no chance of lying down at all during the three days to be occupied in journeying to the Free State capital. So it was a pleasant surprise to find first-class corridor carriages comfortably upholstered in leather, with sleeping accommodation in each compartment for four men at a time. There were one or two second-class carriages equally comfortable, with the additional advantage of an extra tier of berths, accommodating six sleepers, one on the floor and one in the passage, and the whole boiling of us slept the sleep of the just the whole night through. Rations consisted of tinned corned beef and biscuits, suspiciously like dog biscuits, but good to eat nevertheless—for people with sharks’ teeth and stomachs of brass. But nearly everywhere we stopped there were coffee-shops, where you paid sixpence for everything, and an ordinary chota hazri sort of meal ran up to about half-a-crown. As we travel up country we find everything very dear, and we wonder Government does not make some effort to arrange that the troops should be supplied with tinned goods at reasonable prices. If private contractors can get stuff up, certainly Government, which has first call on the railways, can too.

      The horses—poor devils!—are packed ten, eleven, and twelve in a cattle-truck, and the way they kick at times is a caution. All along the train the trucks are broken and splintered. Oh! for the luxury of our Indian horseboxes. However, three times a day we manage to feed and water the poor brutes, and though their meals are somewhat scratch they don’t do so badly. Forage is of the best—splendid compressed hay, and English oats and bran.

      De Aar was the first place of real interest we came to, and there we beheld a battered armoured train, covered with bullet marks. Then we touched at Naauwpoort, which was crowded with soldiers. The train stopped just opposite Rensburg, so we got out and had a game of football, with an empty tin for ball and broken saddles for goal-posts, right on the place where the battle of Rensburg had been fought a few months previously. From there we could see the flat-topped broken cone of Cole’s Kop rising from a rock-roughened plain like a huge step-pyramid, with sheer escarpments, up which the Naval Brigade hauled two fifteen-pounders by means of a wire rope, and struck terror into the Boers at Colesberg when those guns opened fire from that apparently inaccessible height. Afterwards came Norval’s Pont, where we prepared to cross the Orange River. Unluckily, we crossed at 1 in the morning, when very little could be seen. It is wonderful how the Sappers have repaired the bridge. We spun across in pontoons with the water swirling within two feet of us. Shortly after crossing the river we were halted and ordered to draw another fifty rounds of ammunition per man, and to post two sentries to each carriage; every man to wear his bandolier, have his rifle handy, and be ready to turn out at a moment’s notice. Firing had been heard that evening, and there was no doubt Boers were in the vicinity. Later, some thirty miles south of Bloemfontein, we heard that the troops stationed to protect the railway line had been out in the surrounding kopjes during the night, and that a Boer commando, 600 strong, had been seen travelling south. So we are bang in the thick of it now, and ere many more hours have passed we shall be within sound of the firing, for we hear fighting is going on steadily to the north of Bloemfontein. The men are in splendid spirits and health, and wild to get a turn at the enemy. Altogether we have every reason to congratulate ourselves on the comfortable and speedy journey we have made to the front.

      The man who could regard De Aar—sun-scorched, arid, dust-stifled De Aar—as the first place of interest on that long railway journey, simply because an armoured train ‘covered with bullet marks’ was standing in the station, must have been in a very warlike frame of mind indeed. But perhaps the comfortable railway travelling, so conducive to the ‘sleep of the just,’ may account for much. Probably the slumberous heat of afternoon had caused him to doze before the train slowed down at Stellenbosch, which was a place of much notoriety at the time; and picturesque, too, with its great oak avenues, dating from a day when Commandant Van der Stel, the planter of them, was there with his young wife in the very foreposts of Dutch civilisation, not much more than thirty miles from Cape Town; and more picturesque still because of its quaint thatched houses as old as the oaks. Stellenbosch is a great centre of education, and, according to the guide-books, it has a home for the training of a limited number of poor whites. We know the ‘poor whites’ for whose training a home was provided at Stellenbosch about the time when A Company of Lumsden’s Horse passed that way and afterwards. They were mostly officers of high rank who had not distinguished themselves, and for whom a refuge had to be found where they could do no greater mischief than send useless remounts from that depôt СКАЧАТЬ