The History of Lumsden's Horse. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ asks me to send you the enclosed telegram from the Viceroy, and to say that he fully agrees with the last sentence of it.—Yours sincerely, H.V. Cowan, Colonel, Military Secretary.’ Lord Curzon’s telegram said: ‘Lord Roberts, Bloemfontein.—We are delighted to hear of your kind reception of our Indian Volunteer contingent, and hope that they may have a chance of going to the front, where we are confident of their ability to distinguish themselves.—Viceroy.’

      Carrying on the narrative from this point, but leaving the lighter incidents of life in Bloemfontein for other pens to chronicle, Colonel Lumsden deals briefly in his diary with the remaining period of A Company’s isolation, and brings it down to the day when the corps was to be reunited under his command. With natural gratification at the position assigned to him, he says:

      General Ian Hamilton is to command a division of 10,000 Mounted Infantry, of which Colonel Ridley’s brigade forms nearly a half, consisting of four corps of about 1,200 strong each. We are embodied with the 8th Mounted Infantry Corps, consisting of Loch’s Horse, ourselves, and various companies of Mounted Infantry from Regular battalions, under the command of Colonel Ross. Both Colonels Ridley and Ross are well known in India, and we are fortunate in being under their command and in having such a dashing divisional commander as General Ian Hamilton. Our first camp in Bloemfontein proved a sickly one, water being scarce owing to the Boers having blown up the waterworks and cut off the main supply. This, no doubt, has been the cause of numerous cases of dysentery, and our camp was shifted yesterday to a healthier locality, with a more plentiful water supply. Strange to say, we have had an attack of mumps among the men, emanating, we believe, from a native servant who developed that disease on board ship. I regret to say that Captain Beresford had to be taken to hospital yesterday, suffering from an acute attack of dysentery; but a few days of careful dieting will enable him to rejoin us, I hope. B Company, owing to the congested state of the railway traffic from Cape Town to Bloemfontein, was landed at East London, to proceed thence by rail to join us. Transport, however, was found to be equally difficult by that route, and in consequence the company had to march the greater part of the way.

      What meanwhile had befallen that force under the command of Major Showers may be told in the words of a trooper whose lively contributions to the ‘Indian Daily News’ do not seem to have been regarded as an infringement of a rule laid down in the mobilisation scheme by which volunteers for Lumsden’s Horse were warned that they would on no account be allowed to act as special correspondents for newspapers. This regulation, like many others, seems to have been more honoured in the breach than the observance. Taking up the broken thread where it was dropped some pages back, he writes:

      At Queen’s Town we had a fairly pleasant time, except on nights when it simply rained cats and dogs and hailed as well. Most of our tents leaked badly, so we were rendered thoroughly uncomfortable. The horses and the unfortunate stable pickets (I was one, and speak from personal experience) were in a wretched plight, without shelter of any kind. When the storms were at their worst, and picketing pegs would not hold in the soft ground, we may have used words that were not endearing to horses that got loose. On April 2 we were told that the company would start on the 4th, marching to Bethulie, waggons for our horses not being available then, but that we should probably entrain a few stations further up. We were informed that all superfluous clothing, &c., would have to be packed up and returned to East London, and each man would only be allowed to take one kit bag, weight not to exceed thirty pounds. We therefore set to work, and cudgelled our brains trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind—no easy task, I can tell you. However, the die was cast at last, and we were ready for kit-bag weighing next morning. Several of the men had evidently rather vague ideas on this point, and, after filling their bags to a weight of forty or fifty pounds each, had to repack them, much to their disgust. We left next day, our destination being Baileytown, a small place about thirteen miles distant. We were all, of course, in full marching order—supplied with water-bottles, haversacks, bandoliers, rifles, and corn-bag. The first three were hung round our shoulders, the rifles in the bucket on the off side of the saddle, and the corn-bag slung to the saddle. I was not accustomed to it; the strain on the shoulders is pretty severe; and we were all glad when Baileytown drew in sight. This march gave us a very good opportunity of examining the country, and as we passed kopje after kopje it was very easy to realise how difficult a task it is to dislodge the Boers from their veritable strongholds. Arriving at Baileytown about 5 p.m., and finding no tents there, we bivouacked, and found the bare veldt no such uncomfortable bed after all. We spent the whole of the next day there, and as very good grass was plentiful on the slope of the hills the opportunity was taken of knee-haltering and grazing the horses. Resumed our march next day; did about twenty-two miles by 3 o’clock in the afternoon, when a halt was made at a place called Sterkstroom. Here, to our delight, orders came for us to be sent off at once by train. We spent a very busy afternoon unloading kits from the transport carts and reloading them into railway waggons, and entraining horses. The animals seem to be getting reconciled to this constant training and detraining, and behaved very well indeed. By 8.30 we were all ready to board the train. No more luxurious second- and third-class carriages for us poor privates now. We were packed like sardines in a box into three covered trucks, about forty or fifty men in each. It was quite dark, and no lanterns were given us, or, rather, there was an apology for a lantern in our truck, but it hardly made darkness visible; kits and men all over the place, and little, if any, room to sleep—a very weary night indeed for most of us. We arrived at Burghersdorp at 11 A.M. next day, and stayed there about two hours. All sorts of rumours were current about the close proximity of the Boers. We were informed that fighting was expected at a station north of Bethulie. At this latter place the troops had slept in the trenches all night in momentary expectation of an attack. There were said to be three or four thousand Boers hovering round in the hills adjacent to these places, having been cut off in an attempt to retreat beyond Bloemfontein. We did not reach Bethulie till 8 o’clock that evening, having to wait at various sidings for down trains, of which there were a good many. Not expecting to detrain till the following morning, we had made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances permitted for the night when orders were issued to get out and encamp close by at once. In a moment all was excitement, orders ringing out constantly, and men hurriedly getting their kit together—an almost hopeless task in the darkness.

      However, it was not long before all the men, horses, and kit were out and on their way to camp. Arrived there, we picketed the animals, and by 2 A.M. had quite settled down for the night. No peace for us, however, as orders went round that we must be ready saddled by 4.30, in case our services should be required. It turned out to be a false alarm, however, so after waiting till 8 o’clock we took the horses out to exercise. Bethulie, straggling along the northern bank of Orange River, is just on the borders of the Free State. The railway bridge, an eight-span one, has been completely destroyed by Boers, and I must say they have done their work very cleanly; five out of the eight spans have been cut right through by charges of dynamite. Fortunately, however, there is a waggon bridge here also, which reinforcements, coming up in time, were enabled to save from destruction, and, lines having been placed across this, one truck at a time is taken over. This important point of communication is now very strongly guarded by regiments of Infantry on each side of the river. Nearly all of us took the opportunity of having a glorious bath in the river, and did a little amateur clothes-washing. Practice will make perfect, no doubt, but at present we don’t take very kindly to it. At 3 in the afternoon we got orders to saddle up in readiness to march as an escort to 600 transport mules for Bloemfontein. The rearguard came on with our own transport, and, as the latter only move very slowly, they marched all night and did not arrive at Spytfontein—the halting-place, nineteen miles distant—till about 3 A.M. Fortunately, there was brilliant light from the new moon; otherwise the slow progress with refractory mules would have been dreary indeed. As it was, we marched along as silently as possible, and had the feeling that we might be attacked at any moment. The Kaffir drivers, however, could not be restrained from shouting in shrillest notes and cracking their long rhinoceros-hide thongs with sounds like rifle-shots as they ran to head off wayward stragglers. All night long the red dust rose from the hoofs of those 600 mules in stifling clouds.

      This is a most desolate-looking country, miles beyond miles without passing a single human СКАЧАТЬ