Transcriber’s Note:

Errors, when reasonably attributable to the printer, have been corrected. The corrections appear as words underlined with a light gray. The original text will be shown when the mouse is over the word. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details.

The illustrations have been moved to avoid falling within a paragraph. The full page plates were printed with a blank page on its reverse, and both pages were included in the pagination. The page numbers for both are skipped here, since they are not likely to be accurate.

A large map and accompanying legend was bound as a fold-out inside the end cover. The image as printed is given here, in a reduced size. The Reference is given here in text. A larger version of the map itself can be viewed via the link provided below the image.This version of the text does not provide support for an expanded view of the map.

The cover has been fabricated and is placed in the public domain.

LUMSDEN’S HORSE

D.M. Lumsden.

THE HISTORY
OF
LUMSDEN’S HORSE

A COMPLETE RECORD OF THE CORPS FROM ITS

FORMATION TO ITS DISBANDMENT

EDITED BY

HENRY H.S. PEARSE

(WAR CORRESPONDENT)

AUTHOR OF ‘FOUR MONTHS BESIEGED—THE STORY OF LADYSMITH’ ETC.

WITH MANY PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

AND A MAP

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1903

[All rights reserved]

PREFACE

Although this History of Lumsden’s Horse embraces a period in the South African campaign that was crowded with great issues, it makes no pretence to rank among the many able and comprehensive works dealing with those events. Elaborate descriptions and criticisms of operations as a whole have been purposely avoided, except so far as they serve to explain and emphasise actions in which the corps took part.

First of all, the book is intended to be no more than a regimental record, enlivened by the personal experiences of men who helped to make history at a time when the whole British Empire was moved by one impulse. India’s part in that movement is the inspiring theme, and one object has been to show how the idea of organising an Indian Volunteer Contingent for service in South Africa passed from inception to accomplishment, through the efforts of a Committee in Calcutta which made itself responsible for every financial liability in connection with the corps from its formation to its disbandment.

The cost of publication is being defrayed out of a balance of funds remaining in the hands of the Committee, and each member of the corps will receive a copy as a souvenir of his interesting experiences and a proof that his services are still remembered. Publication, however, is not restricted to members of the corps, and the Editor ventures to think that this book will suggest to general readers many points worthy of consideration. It illustrates the facility with which British subjects in India are able to band themselves together, and affords yet another instance of many in which the Indian Government has shown itself capable of utilising instantly its resources for the Empire’s benefit. And, more than this, it will stand as a proof of the cordiality with which the Indian public—British and Native—came forward at a time of Imperial need with offers of personal service or liberal subscriptions, which enabled the Committee to raise and despatch a Mounted Contingent completely equipped in every detail.

Among those who have assisted the Editor with information that has enabled him to produce this History, he has especially to thank the Committee, the Adjutant of the Regiment (Major Neville Taylor, 14th Bengal Lancers), whose sketch-map of the positions at Houtnek was made from personal reconnaissance, and Messrs. D.S. Fraser, Graves, Burn-Murdoch, Kirwan, and Preston. He is also indebted to Major Ross, C.B., Durham Light Infantry, for interesting material. Acknowledgment is due to Messrs. Johnston & Hoffmann, Messrs. F. Kapp & Co., Messrs. Bourne & Shepherd, and Messrs. Harrington & Co., of Calcutta, and others, who have kindly placed photographs at the Editor’s disposal; and to the proprietors of the ‘Englishman,’ ‘Pioneer,’ ‘Indian Daily News,’ ‘Statesman,’ ‘Times of India,’ and ‘Madras Daily Mail,’ for permission to reproduce from their columns the personal narratives that brighten many pages of this book.

H.H.S.P.

Arts Club, London: January 1903.

CONTENTS

APPENDICES

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

From Drawings, and from Photographs by Messrs. Johnston & Hoffmann, Kapp & Co., Bourne & Shepherd, and Harrington & Co., Calcutta; Messrs. Elliott & Fry, London, and others.

OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

MAP

Photo: Elliott & Fry
SIR PATRICK PLAYFAIR, C.I.E.

THE

HISTORY OF LUMSDEN’S HORSE

INTRODUCTION

To Lumsden’s Horse belongs the high honour of having represented all India in a movement the magnitude and far-reaching effects of which we are only beginning to appreciate. While the stubborn struggle for supremacy in South Africa lasted, no true sons of the Empire allowed themselves to count the cost. Some were prepared to pay it in blood, others in treasure, to make success certain, and none allowed himself to harbour even the shadow of a thought that failure, with all its inevitable disasters, could befall us so long as the Mother Country and her offshoots held together. At the outset only those blessed with exceptional foresight could have believed in the completeness of a federation the elements of which were bound together by no other ties than sentiment. Selfish interests were merged in combined efforts for the common weal, and, while the necessity for action lasted, few cared to reckon the price they were paying for an idea.

Even the long-looked-for advent of Peace has hardly brought home to us a knowledge of all that War in South Africa meant, not only in a military sense, but also in its greater imperial significance. The men who fought and bled for the noble sentiment of British brotherhood never dreamed that they were doing more than duty demanded, though they had perhaps given up every chance of success in life to answer the call of patriotism; and among those who stayed at home there are millions untouched by the bitterness of personal bereavement who can have no conception of the sacrifices that were made to keep our Empire whole. Casualty lists, with all their details of killed and wounded, do not tell half the story. To know it all we must dip deep into the private records of every contingent, British and Colonial, that volunteered for active service, and deeper still to fathom the motives of men who, when their country seemed to need them, threw aside all other considerations and rallied to her standard.

Continental critics may sneer at us for making much of this idea, but none know better than they do the difference between loyalty expressed in such a noble form and the mere instinct of self-preservation that too often passes current for patriotism. They tell us that it is every citizen’s duty to be a soldier and every soldier’s duty to die, if necessary, for his country; but when they see self-governing nations from every quarter of the world coming into line by their own free will and all welded together by one sentiment, they have no better name for it than lust of empire. Nevertheless, they know it for what it is, a thing of which they had previously no conception, and they recognise in the impulses that led to this mighty manifestation the secret of Great Britain’s world-wide power. Let envious rivals say what they will. Let them magnify our reverses and minimise our triumphs, if the process pleases them. In spite of everything, the South African War stands a great epoch of an age that will some day come to be reckoned among the greatest in British History, and all who have helped towards the shaping of events at this memorable time can at least claim to have earned the gratitude of posterity.

And India may well be proud of her share in the work. Measured by the mere number of men whom she sent to the war, her contribution seems perhaps comparatively small; but when we remember the sources from which that contingent was drawn, the munificence of gifts from Europeans and natives alike for its equipment and maintenance, and all the sacrifices that war-service involved for every member of the little force, we cannot but admire the spirit that called it into being. A great crisis was not necessary to convince us that British residents in India would fight, if called upon, with all the valour that distinguished Outram’s Volunteers of old. Few, however, would have been bold enough to predict that for any conceivable cause hundreds of men would readily relinquish all that they had struggled for, give up the fruits of half a life’s labour, and calmly face the certainty of irreparable losses, without asking for anything in return, except the opportunity of serving their country on a soldier’s meagre pay. Still less could anybody have imagined that a time might come when Indian natives, debarred from the chance of proving their loyalty by personal service, would give without stint towards a fund for equipping a force to fight in a distant land against the enemies of the British Raj. If Indian princes had been permitted to raise troops for the war in South Africa, our Eastern contingent would have numbered thousands instead of hundreds. What natives were not allowed to give in men they gave in cash and in substance, according to their means, thereby showing that they were with us in a desire to defend the Empire against any assailant. In reality this meant more than an offer of armed forces, and to that extent it was worthy to rank with the self-sacrifice of Anglo-Indians who gave personal service, and thereby took upon themselves a burden the weight of which cannot be readily estimated. It must not be forgotten that raising a corps of Volunteers in India is a very different matter from the enrolment of a similar force at home, or wherever there are dense populations and ‘leisured classes’ to be drawn upon. There are no idle men in India, everyone having gone there to fill an appointment and earn his livelihood. When the call came, therefore, it could only be answered by sacrifices or not at all, and nobody is more conscious of this fact than the man whose laconic appeal for Volunteers brought three or four times more offers than he could possibly accept. In his opinion ‘the men who vacated appointments worth from 300 to 500 rupees a month and went to fight for their country on 1s. 2d. a day have given a much larger contribution to the War Fund than they could afford.’ As an instance he mentions three members of the medical profession, Doctors Charteris, Moorhouse, and Woollright, each of whom threw up a lucrative practice and joined the ranks as a trooper. These are not exceptional but simply typical cases. Scores of other men gave up equally remunerative appointments with the same noble unselfishness to enrol themselves in Lumsden’s Horse.

To Colonel Lumsden alone belongs the honour of having evoked this splendid manifestation of patriotic feeling. The idea of forming a corps of Indian Volunteers was his; and though similar thoughts may have been in many minds at the same moment, nobody had given a practical turn to them until his message—electric in every sense—startled all Anglo-Indians into active and cordial co-operation. How all that came about will be told with fuller circumstances in its proper place, but some reference must be made here to the man whose firm faith in the patriotism and soldierly qualities of Indian Volunteers led him to the inception of a scheme which events have so abundantly justified.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dugald McTavish Lumsden, C.B., needs no introduction to the East, where the best, and perhaps the happiest, years of his life have been spent. Without some details concerning him, however, completeness could not be claimed for any record of the corps which is now identified with his name. The eldest son of the late Mr. James Lumsden, of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, he was born in 1851. At the age of twenty-two he obtained an appointment on the Borelli Tea Estate, in the Tezpur District of Assam, and sailed for India. Consciously or unconsciously, he must have taken with him some military ambitions imbibed through intimate association with leaders of the Volunteer movement in Scotland. At any rate, he soon became known as a keen Volunteer in the land of his adoption, and when in 1887 the Durrung Mounted Rifles was formed, he was given a captaincy. A year later that corps lost its identity, as other local units did, in the territorial title of Assam Valley Light Horse, with Colonel Buckingham, C.I.E., as commandant, while Captain Lumsden got his majority and took command of F Squadron in the Durrung District. Subsequently he commanded the regiment for a time, and, though he left India in 1893, he did not lose touch with his old comrades. Every year he returned to spend the cold weather among his friends in Assam, showing always undiminished interest in the welfare of his old regiment. Thus, when the time came for a call to active service, he had no sort of doubt what the response would be from the hardy, sport-loving planters of Northern Bengal. Himself an enthusiastic shikari and first-rate shot, he knew how to value the qualities that are developed in hunting and stalking wild game. And his experience of Indian Volunteers was not confined to his own district. He knew every corps in Bengal by reputation, and could thus gauge with an approach to accuracy the numbers on which he would be able to draw for the formation of an Indian contingent. Much travel in many lands had also made him a good judge of men, as evidenced by the first thing he did when the idea of calling upon India to take up her share of the Imperial burden came to him.

At that time he was travelling in Australia, and had no means of knowing how deeply the feelings of British residents and natives of the East had been stirred by news of the reverses to our arms in South Africa. The dark days of Stormberg and Magersfontein had thrown their shadow over Australia as over England, chilling the hearts of people who until then had refused to believe that British troops could be baulked by any foes, notwithstanding the stern lesson of Ladysmith’s investment. Through that darkness they were groping sullenly towards the light, and wondering what national sacrifices would have to be made before the humiliation could be wiped out. It is in such moments of emergency that natural leaders come to the front. Among the few in England or the Colonies who realised the military value of Volunteers was Colonel Lumsden. Though thousands of miles away from the scenes of early associations, his thoughts turned at once to the bold riders and skilful marksmen with whom he had so often shared the exciting incidents of the chase. He made up his mind at once that the planters, on whose spirit he could rely, were the very men wanted for South African fighting. On the parade ground they might not be all that soldiers whose minds are fettered by rules and traditions would desire, but he knew how long days of exercise in the open air at their ordinary avocations, varied by polo, pig-sticking, and big-game hunting, had toughened their fibre and hardened their nerves. He could count on every one of them also for keen intelligence, which he rightly regarded as more important than mere obedience to orders, where every man might be called upon to think and act for himself. Colonel Lumsden would be the last to depreciate Regular soldiers, or undervalue their discipline, but experience had taught him that men who can exercise self-restraint and develop powers of endurance for the mere pleasure of excelling in manly sports, adapt themselves readily enough to military duties. To them, at any rate, the prospect of hardships or privations would be no deterrent, the imminence of danger only an additional incentive. On December 15, 1899—a day to be afterwards borne in mournful memory—Colonel Lumsden made up his mind that the time for action had come to every Briton who could see his way to giving the Mother Country a helpful hand. He cabled at once to his friend Sir Patrick Playfair in Calcutta his proposal to raise a corps of European Mounted Infantry for service in South Africa, and backed it with an offer, not only to take the field himself, but to contribute a princely sum in aid of a fund for equipping any force the Government might sanction. Then, without waiting to know whether his services had been accepted, he took passage by the next steamer for India.

CHAPTER I
HOW THE CORPS WAS RAISED AND EQUIPPED

Offer Government fifty thousand rupees and my services any capacity towards raising European Mounted Infantry Contingent, India, service Cape. Wire Melbourne Club, Melbourne.—Leaving nineteenth, due Calcutta January 9. Do not divulge name until my arrival.—Lumsden.

These were the stirring words of Colonel Lumsden’s laconic message flashed by cable from Australia to Calcutta at a time when all India was ripe for any movement in aid of the Empire, and only waiting for a lead in the course it should take. No wonder that the spirit of a man whose enthusiastic confidence was expressed in an offer so munificent communicated itself to all whom Sir Patrick Playfair consulted on the subject. Still, official susceptibilities, ever prone to look askance at anything that seems like civilian interference with military prerogatives, had to be considered. Tact was necessary at the very outset to avoid all possibility of friction. Colonel Lumsden had evidently foreseen this when he selected as the recipient of his cable message an Anglo-Indian of diplomatic temperament, great social influence, and varied experience. Few men, if any, could have been better qualified for the delicate negotiations, or could have appealed to the Indian public, Native and European, with more certainty of success than Sir Patrick Playfair, whose services then and for months afterwards entitle him to a niche in India’s Walhalla beside the founder of Lumsden’s Horse. Even at the sacrifice of continuity, it is appropriate to quote here an appreciative comment by one who knew how much Sir Patrick Playfair did towards the formation and equipment of a thoroughly representative force. From the moment of receiving Colonel Lumsden’s telegram he displayed the keenest interest in its object, and endeavoured to ensure a successful issue with all the energy that has characterised him in his advocacy and support of many public enterprises during a brilliant career. He was the prime mover in every social function organised in honour of Lumsden’s Horse, and in everything done for their benefit apart from military details while they remained in India. After their departure for the front he never lost an opportunity of identifying himself with them in every way, and none would have been keener than he to share their dangers and hardships if his position had enabled him to accompany them. In this connection Sir Patrick had an entertaining dialogue one day with General Patterson, of the United States army, who said, ‘What I have been wondering about is why you did not go yourself, Sir Patrick.’ To this the knight replied, ‘Well, you know, I am a busy man. Of course I should have liked to go above all things, but with my engagements it was impossible.’ ‘Ah, yes!’ said the General; ‘I guess you’re like Artemus Ward’s friend, the Baldinsville editor, who would “delight to wade in gore,” but whose country bade him stay at home and announce week by week the measures taken by Government, or, like Artemus himself, who, having given two cousins to the war, was ready to sacrifice his wife’s brother and shed the blood of all his able-bodied relations “rather’n not see the rebellyin krusht.”’ As it was, Sir Patrick took the pains to publish every item of interest sent to him by the officer commanding throughout the campaign. When, after twelve months of honourable service, the corps turned homewards again, he took the initiative in preparing a welcome worthy of them, and after Lumsden’s Horse had been disbanded he showed a kindly interest in the men by endeavouring to procure appointments for all who needed assistance of that kind, and thereby won their gratitude as he had long before gained their esteem. This is anticipating events, but, like the prologue to a play, it may help to give some idea of a character whose influence on the whole story is potent though not often in evidence.

Photo: Elliott & Fry
CURZON

Sir Patrick Playfair’s first step was to approach General P.J. Maitland[P.J. Maitland], C.B., Military Secretary to the Government of India, to whom he made known Colonel Lumsden’s offer and explained something of its probable scope. General Maitland, who warmly supported the proposal, said he would place it before His Excellency the Viceroy, but intimated that the matter would then have to be referred to the War Office, without whose consent the Government of India could do nothing in connection with the war. At that time Colonel Lumsden was on his way to Calcutta, and had telegraphed again from Albany to find out what progress was being made, but got no answer. Sir Patrick, knowing his man, had no misgivings that he might turn back discouraged by the prospect of an official cold shoulder. Lord Curzon was still absent from Calcutta on tour, and the Commander-in-Chief, the late Sir William Lockhart, had not returned from his official round of inspection in Burma, so that no immediate opportunity occurred for placing the proposal before either of them at a personal interview. General Maitland, however, did more than he had promised by so urging the case in a communication to the Viceroy that His Excellency took it up, and immediately on his arrival in Calcutta telegraphed to the Commander-in-Chief, who thereupon gave his approval promptly. The headquarters authorities asked how many men were to go, and Sir Patrick said he thought from two hundred and fifty to three hundred. That suggestion was embodied in a telegram to the War Office, which, as usual, took time to consider it. Again Colonel Lumsden, who had then reached Colombo, cabled for information as to the state of affairs, but again no reply was vouchsafed. So he came on, fully prepared to meet disappointment at the end of his journey. When he got within sight of land, however, all India knew of his splendid offer and its acceptance by the Home Government. The whole story had been published in every newspaper two days before Colonel Lumsden steamed up the Hooghly to find himself a hero. Crowds of his friends and admirers were there to welcome him as chief of a corps that had neither a local habitation nor a name, nor even a substantial existence at the moment. With characteristic abnegation of self, he had offered his services in any capacity, but nobody doubted from the hour of his arrival in Calcutta that whatever force India might send to the front would have Lumsden for its leader. The newspapers even began to give his name to the contingent before it had assumed bodily shape or anybody knew exactly how it was to be raised. Some days later the popular choice was confirmed by publication of a War Office order couched in the following words:

‘Her Majesty’s[‘Her Majesty’s] Government having accepted the offer of the Government of India to provide a force of Mounted Volunteers for service in South Africa, two companies of Mounted Infantry, to be called the Indian Mounted Infantry Corps (Lumsden’s Horse), will be raised immediately at Calcutta under the command of Lieut.-Colonel D. McT. Lumsden, of the Volunteer Force of India, Supernumerary List, Assam Valley Light Horse.’

With this order, giving unqualified approval of the project, came a mobilisation scheme in which the Government undertook to provide the necessary sea-kit for use on board ship only, the transport, the daily rations as for other soldiers, the weapons, the munitions of war, and pay at the rate of 1s. 2d. a day, but nothing else. The rest was left to private enterprise working on popular enthusiasm and the loyal sentiments of a great community. Towards the sum requisite for the complete equipment and maintenance of a mounted force in the field, even half a lakh of rupees would not go very far. The spirit that had prompted one man to offer that sum and his own services to boot proved contagious, however, and Colonel Lumsden had so little doubt what the result would be that he immediately announced his readiness to receive applications from men who might be willing to serve in South Africa for a year, or ‘for not less than the period of the war.’ That call was published by Indian newspapers on January 10, 1900, and in response Volunteers sent their names from every district far and near, until Colonel Lumsden might have enrolled a thousand as easily as the two or three hundred sanctioned by Government. His one difficulty, indeed, was that of selection, and there the experience he had gained from studying character closely under many different conditions came in. He was assisted by suggestions from officers commanding the Calcutta Light Horse, the Assam Valley Light Horse, the Surma Valley Light Horse, the Behar Light Horse, the Punjab, the Mysore, and the Rangoon Volunteer Corps. Authorities at home had by that time learned a very important lesson, the outcome of which was expressed in a phrase very different from the unlucky telegram that gave so much offence to Australians a few weeks earlier. Colonel Lumsden was told ‘preference will be given to Volunteers from mounted Volunteer Corps, but Volunteers belonging to Infantry corps who may possess the requisite qualifications will also be eligible.’ One of the qualifications laid down was that they should be ‘good riders’ before joining Lumsden’s Horse. Here the value of previous training in military duties and of something more than haphazard horsemanship was recognised; and happily Colonel Lumsden knew exactly the sort of men who would meet both requirements, especially as the limits of age (between twenty and forty) brought the best of those who had the riding and shooting experiences incidental to a planter’s life into the category. It is not surprising if he showed a partiality for them when rival claims had to be decided upon. The fact that many of them offered to bring their own horses weighed nothing with him, though he knew that the companies would have to be mounted somehow and that the Government had explicitly declined to provide horses for that purpose. Either by private contributions in kind or by public subscription toward the necessary funds for purchasing, a horse for each trooper had to be furnished; but this consideration did not weigh for a moment against the chances of a man who could only give himself to the Empire’s service, so long as he had in essential points better qualifications than other candidates could boast. The wife of a prominent and popular soldier—now a general—asked, as a great favour, that her brother might be allowed to serve as a trooper in the corps. To such a pleader Sir Patrick could not say ‘no,’ so he arranged a little dinner at which the fascinating lady was to sit beside Colonel Lumsden. Whether her gentle persuasions prevailed or the brother’s merits were too obvious to be disregarded, it is certain that he joined the ranks of Lumsden’s Horse, and so completely justified the choice that he is now an officer of the Regular army and a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. Naturally, the selection of two hundred and fifty men to represent all India from among a thousand who were anxious for the opportunity of seeing active service gave rise to much jealousy and heart-burning on the part of the rejected. Reading some of their vituperations, one might imagine that they had been aspirants to posts of high distinction, or at least to lucrative sinecures, rather than candidates for the khaki jackets of privates in a regiment about to share the hardships of a perilous campaign. One disappointed applicant, whose martial ardour was not to be quenched by rejection, wrote angrily to the ‘Englishman,’ suggesting that there was gross favouritism in the preference shown for planters over townsmen. His letter is worth quoting at length as typical of the fighting spirit that had been aroused everywhere by Colonel Lumsden’s patriotic manifesto. Thus he wrote:

To the Editor of the ‘Englishman.’

Sir,—I hope I am in time to draw the attention of the Government to the Bahadur[^[1]] style in which the selection to the ‘Indian Yeomanry Corps’ of Volunteers is being conducted. Because a man is the son of his father, and owns a few ponies and a few hundred rupees, is he to be given the preference as a fighting unit?

There are to-day in India, even in the city of Calcutta, men of unquestionable merit, men who are sons and the recipients of a heritage of blood shed in England’s and her Most Gracious Majesty’s cause from fathers who had bled and died for England and England’s prestige, and I beg to ask you, Sir, are these men to be shelved to suit the convenience of a few planters? I am not a planter, and, as an outsider, I put my claims forward as a test of merit. I am willing to shoot a match up the range with the best man selected from Behar, run him a given distance, ride him on strange nags (catch weights), and in the end with my weight and other recommendations beat him.

Photo: Bourne & Shepherd
BEHAR CONTINGENT OF LUMSDEN’S HORSE

There is quite a ring of mediaeval chivalry about that challenge to ‘shoot up the range.’ One cannot mistake its blood-thirsty significance, and perhaps it is lucky for the Champion of Behar that he did not take up the gauntlet thus ruthlessly thrown down. It will be noticed that this duel, after the manner suggested by one of Bret Harte’s heroes, was to precede all other events in the prolonged ordeal; and imagination shudders at the picture of awful slaughter that would have been wrought, as the picked marksmen of Behar and Hyderabad and Oudh and Assam went down one by one, if they had dared to face the deadly rifle of that truculent citizen of Calcutta, without getting a chance to prove whether he could run or ride. Happily, the selected two hundred and fifty kept their heads, so that the trial by single combat never came off; but one must hope that a place was found in Lumsden’s Horse for the self-confident challenger, and that he proved as formidable on the field as in a printed column. Readers may scan the names of troopers, whose occupations before enlistment are all given in the Appendix, and yet be left speculating whether or not the writer of that letter was among the chosen after all. He will not be found in the first or second section of Company A, composed almost to a man of indigo-planters, or in the third section, whose tea-planters, mainly from Assam, have not a townsman among them; and the planters who make up an overwhelming majority of three sections in Company B would equally disclaim all knowledge of the fire-eating citizen. Can it be that he figures in the more casual fourth section of either company, under the vague designation of a ‘gentleman’ or a ‘journalist’? A little levity may be pardoned now in reference to a matter which, at the time, aroused some acrimony. All that, however, was swept away by the wave of enthusiasm, leaving no bitterness behind it, even in the minds of those who at first thought themselves humiliated by rejection. If Lumsden’s Horse were almost entirely a corps of planters, few questioned the care and discretion with which Colonel Lumsden had chosen his men, and none could deny that they made a goodly show at manœuvres on the Maidan, where their camp was pitched within easy reach of the city. Though quartered there for six weeks in circumstances that exposed them to many temptations, those troopers behaved in a manner that would have been considered exemplary for the best regiment of disciplined Regulars. This is not surprising when we consider that in civil life they had been accustomed to exercise, command, and to exact obedience from others, even at the risk of their own lives. At the outset Colonel Lumsden made it a condition that he would have none but unmarried men in the ranks, and to this rule there were few known exceptions, though some Benedicts crept in undeclared. As a regiment, Lumsden’s Horse had an esprit de corps to maintain from the day of its birth under auspices that made the occasion imperial, and every man of it was tacitly pledged to prove himself a worthy recipient of the honour conferred upon him as one of India’s chosen representatives. How that feeling prevailed over all other considerations in the moment when Lumsden’s Horse played their manful part in battle for the first time, and how it held them together in a comradeship that was akin to brotherhood through after-months of hard campaigning, will appear as the narrative unfolds itself. It began to have an influence while the corps was as yet but an invertebrate skeleton, and it helps to explain the anxiety of Indian Volunteers to join the ranks of a force that was destined by the nature of things to become historical. One can understand, therefore, the alternations of hope and depression that passed over certain districts where men who had offered their services waited anxiously for the decision on which their chances of distinction hung. Some glimpses of this may be got through the letters received by Colonel Lumsden from all parts of India at that time, and from the diaries in which thoughts as well as actions are recorded by the men themselves. One begins his notes—two days after Colonel Lumsden’s call for Volunteers had been published—with the entry: ‘An express came from —— to say he had sent in the names of twenty men from C Company.’ After waiting impatiently several days for news that did not come, the diarist got his friend to send two telegrams, one to Colonel Lumsden, the other direct to the Adjutant-General at Calcutta, offering a complete company. The next day somebody turned up with news that they had been accepted. Jubilation on this score, however, lasted no longer than twenty-four hours, when it gave place to dejection caused by rumours that they ‘were not accepted after all.’ This wave of depression passed away as speedily in its turn, dispelled by the rays of hope that burst out radiantly on receipt of a chit from —— ‘asking me to come in at once.’ Under the next day’s date comes the crowning triumph of that anxious time, told very simply but in a way that makes one feel the nerves of those men throbbing through every word. ‘Started for Chick,’ runs the entry; ‘met ——, who told me we really were accepted. Then we met —— dashing along on his bike. He had already upset a woman.’ A week later, after many festive farewells, that contingent was on its way to Calcutta and foregathering with other contingents, whose experiences had all been the same, for every man of them was buoyant at the prospect of seeing active service, and would have regarded it as a personal slight, if not an indelible stigma on his reputation for courage, if he had been left behind.

MYSORE AND COORG CONTINGENT

So day by day the ranks of Lumsden’s Horse gained strength until their numbers were complete and recruiting had to be stopped; while many candidates whom the Colonel would gladly have taken tried in vain for admission. It was a regiment of which any commanding officer might be proud, whether judged by physical or mental standards. A corps of planters it might have been justly called, for they outnumbered all of other occupations; but it represented many classes, and nearly every district in India where sport-loving Britishers are to be found. In its ranks were fifty-five indigo-planters, sixty-one tea-planters, thirty-one coffee-planters, and five of similar occupation not specifically designated. Beside these, the sixteen Civil Service men of various grades, three bank assistants, twelve railway officials, including civil engineers, three medical men from the planting districts, one inspector of mounted police, a brewer, a tutor, a journalist, and a few others whose peaceful days until then had been devoted to commerce, form a comparatively small proportion. Thus considerably more than half the fighting strength were planters. Among the remainder, townsmen must have been fairly represented, to say nothing of artificers who formed the Maxim Gun detachment under command of Captain Bernard Willoughby Holmes, whose services had been placed at Colonel Lumsden’s disposal by consent of the East India Railway Company. The Mercantile Marine also furnished its quota in the persons of a captain, a chief officer, a second officer, and two engineers of the British India Steam Navigation Company’s fleet, and a chief officer of the Hajee Cassim Line. A veterinary surgeon, police inspectors, policemen, clerks in the Military Accounts Department, travelling agents, hotel assistants, a photographer, a theatrical agent, and a superintendent of the Rangoon Boating Club joined the Transport, from which two very smart fellows were drawn into the ranks as troopers during the campaign, and one of them was subsequently gazetted to the West India Regiment as second lieutenant. Counting all these, the enrolled strength was just 300.

Then came the difficult and delicate task of appointing company officers and section commanders—a difficulty enhanced by the fact that many Volunteer officers had enlisted as troopers. I have said that the Government had given its unqualified approval to Colonel Lumsden’s project. This statement, however, applies only to the general scheme. It must be remembered that he had made no stipulation as to his own rank, or the right of selecting officers, and it was not in the nature of a British War Office to let the prerogative of veto slip entirely out of its hands. Colonel Lumsden’s own appointment as commanding officer came directly from headquarters, on the suggestion probably of Lord Curzon. Two other conditions, not very irksome, the military authorities made at Colonel Lumsden’s urgent request. These were that captains commanding companies should be Regular officers on active service, and that the adjutant, who would also act as quartermaster, should be appointed from the Staff Corps or have graduated in it. These nominations were left to the Commander-in-Chief in India, and in the ordinary course of things they involved the appointment of Regular non-commissioned officers as quartermaster-sergeants and company sergeant-majors. Other subordinate posts for which military experience or special training is necessary were also filled by Regulars, who thus relieved the Volunteer troopers of some laborious duties. An officer second in command, four captains acting as senior subalterns, four lieutenants, a medical officer, and a veterinary surgeon had still to be selected, and the choice must have involved many anxious moments, seeing how much depended on the unknown qualities that are hidden in all men and may lie dormant for years, only to be developed for good or ill in the crisis of an emergency. How Colonel Lumsden succeeded in this, as in every other preliminary task that he imposed upon himself, is now a matter of history to be dealt with in proper sequence. The wisdom of his selections could only be proved by events, and to these, as narrated by men who were best able to judge, appeal may be confidently made. Naturally, some who had held commissioned rank previously, and thought their claims to consideration indisputable, felt sore at being passed over in favour of others who were junior to them in the Volunteer service. But this irritation was not allowed to show itself or interfere with loyal subordination in all military duties.

To the inviolable pages of his diary one, whose merits were not at the time so well known as they ought to have been, confides the pregnant sentence: ‘Heard to-day that —— was to be a captain, I a corporal.’ There the entry ends, leaving a blank more eloquent than any scathing comment could have been. For all that, the captain and the corporal remained on the best of terms, and, though they ceased for discipline’s sake to call each other by their Christian names, there is reason to believe that both soon came to the conclusion that no very serious mistake had been made in estimating their relative fitness for command. At any rate, after a little friction they shaped themselves like round pegs to round holes. But that is the habit of Britishers, who, however unaccustomed to discipline, are not slow in recognising its inevitable necessity and its inestimable value. They come to see that without it no concerted movement, whether big or small, is certain of success. You cannot conduct military operations to a definite end, any more than you can navigate a ship or rule a family, if individuality is allowed to take the form of insubordination. These lessons Colonel Lumsden began to inculcate in his peculiarly persuasive way directly he had got his men together and placed officers in authority over them.

Men and officers, however, are not the only things necessary to keep a fighting unit going when once it has been formed and organised. Sir Patrick Playfair found the full equipment of such a force no less costly than he had estimated. Fortunately, however, he had foreseen all difficulties in this connection and provided for them. After consultation with General Maitland, General Wace (Director-General of Ordnance), Sir Alfred Gaselee (then Quartermaster-General), Sir E.R. Elles (Adjutant-General), and the late Surgeon-General Harvey, it was decided that nearly a thousand rupees per man would be necessary for equipping the force, buying horses in addition to those brought in by troopers themselves, and establishing a reserve fund sufficient for all emergencies that might arise while the men remained on active service. This meant that a sum amounting to two and a half lakhs of rupees, or about sixteen thousand five hundred pounds sterling, would have to be got together by public subscription. Until this campaign proved the depth and sincerity of Imperial sentiments among nearly all classes of the community, few people, even in England, believed that such a sum would be given to send a mere handful of Volunteers on active service far from their home. And most people, having but a superficial knowledge of Indian affairs, would have ridiculed the suggestion that native princes or merchants would contribute in proportion little less than Johannesburg millionaires to uphold British supremacy in South Africa.

Sir Patrick Playfair, however, knowing by experience how liberal had been the response of those people to all calls on their generosity, and gauging with remarkable insight the genuineness of their loyal devotion in a time of possible peril to the Empire, had no doubt what the result would be. But even he was not prepared for anything like the unanimity of enthusiasm that his appeal evoked. It took simply the form of a general invitation to subscribe. The marvellous rapidity with which the subscription list filled may therefore be taken as a voluntary expression by Europeans and natives alike of staunch fidelity to the cause for which Lumsden’s Horse were being enrolled as a fighting unit. The contributors included His Excellency the Viceroy (Lord Curzon of Kedleston), His Excellency the Governor of Bombay (Lord Sandhurst), His Excellency the Commander-in-Chief in India (the late Sir William Lockhart), their Honours the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal (Sir John Woodburn), the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab (Sir W. Mackworth Young), the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces and Oudh (the Bight Honourable Sir A.P. MacDonnell, P.C.), and the Lieutenant-Governor of Burma (Sir F.W.R. Fryer). Princes, rajahs, landowners, mercantile firms, and European residents almost without exception, came forward, subscribing munificently, until the sum of 227,000 rupees had been promised and received in cash, besides contributions from tradesmen in kind amounting to another 100,000 rupees.

No single subscription rivalled Colonel Lumsden’s splendid offer, or came anywhere near it in amount; but Sir Seymour King, K.C.I.E., M.P., on account of Messrs. Henry S. King & Co., London, and two allied firms in Bombay and Calcutta, gave a lump sum of 10,000 rupees, while Maharajah Sir Jotendro Mohun Tagore, K.C.S.I., Rajah Sir Sourindro Mohun Tagore, Knt., C.I.E., Nawab Sir Sidi Ahmed Khan, K.C.S.I., Mr. F. Verner, Messrs. Apcar & Co., and Kumar Rada Prosad Roy sent 5,000 rupees each. The last named, a zemindar, or landed proprietor, was quite diffident and doubtful whether he ought to subscribe without being asked directly, but he expressed a hope that his contribution would be accepted. A great many merchants and others who were only known to Sir Patrick Playfair by name sent cheques for amounts varying from fifty to 2,500 rupees. No fewer than twenty-eight mercantile firms in Calcutta subscribed 1,000 rupees each, and among the most liberal donors were native princes of nearly every State in the three Presidencies.

His Highness the Maharajah of Bhownagar, whose palace is 2,500 miles distant from Calcutta, sent fifty Arab chargers and saddlery; the Maharani Regent of Mysore, twenty-two country-bred and Arab horses; and other potentates, like the Maharajah Bahadur of Soubarsa and the Rajah of Mearsa, gave handsome presents of a similar kind according to the resources of their studs. The natives of Aligarh, clubbing together, sent twenty-seven horses and one mule; while one, Mohammed Mazamullah Khan, gave two horses, a mule, a donkey, and two small sleeping tents, accompanied by a touchingly simple letter saying, ‘They are all I have to help to conquer the enemies of the Great White Queen.’ Other contributions in kind ranged from tents sufficient for the whole force presented by the Elgin cotton mills of Cawnpore, rough serge cloth for all coats requisite from the Egerton woollen mills at Cawnpore, puttees from Kashmir and Cawnpore, gaiters, Cardigan jackets, hats, horseshoes and nails, forage, tea, coffee, beer, whisky, and cigars, down to matches, of which no fewer than 7,000 boxes were sent by one thoughtful gentleman. The India General Steam Navigation Company, the River Steam Navigation Company, the East India Railway, and the Eastern Bengal State Railway combined to carry men and horses free of charge from all parts of India to Calcutta.

A small executive committee was formed by Colonel Lumsden to carry out the arrangements for the equipment and despatch of the corps. Its members were:

Colonel Lumsden, President.

Sir Patrick Playfair, C.I.E.

Colonel George Money.

The Hon. Colonel Buckingham, C.I.E.

Major Eddis.

Mr. Harry Stuart.

The work of organising naturally fell to Colonel Lumsden, who was also busily engaged in selecting officers and enrolling men; while Sir Patrick Playfair undertook the entire management of the collection of subscriptions in cash and in kind, assisted by Mr. Shirley Tremearne, Editor of ‘Capital,’ whose local knowledge enabled him to render valuable aid in appealing to the mercantile community where personal appeals were necessary, and in collecting the promised subscriptions for which personal application had to be made in accordance with traditional etiquette. Mr. Harry Stuart, formerly executive manager of the Bengal State Railway, took charge of all arrangements for receiving and messing the different detachments on their arrival in Calcutta from distant districts until a camp could be formed.

Photo: Bourne & Shepherd
Mr. Harry Stuart Sir Patrick Playfair, C.I.E.
Col. Money Col. Lumsden, C.B. Major Eddis
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Though the mobilisation scheme—drawn up by the Indian Headquarters Staff and sent to Colonel Lumsden after approval by the War Office in London—promised no more substantial assistance than the provision of arms, ammunition, rations, and transport to South Africa, it furnished many suggestions of the greatest importance, and, as a model for use on any similar occasion hereafter, it is reproduced at length in the Appendix. This document will be found of interest also as giving a comprehensive idea of the many requirements for which provision had to be made by Colonel Lumsden and his colleagues. Their labours were lightened by the cordial co-operation of military officials, who went out of their way to render every possible assistance. Without the advice and practical aid thus given by heads of departments of the Government of India, it would have been impossible for Colonel Lumsden, or any other commanding officer in his position, to have carried out all the War Office conditions economically. Major-General Wace, C.B., as head of the Ordnance Department, gave every facility for Colonel Lumsden to indent on Government stores for clothing and accoutrements at regulation prices, and not only so, but he and Colonel Buckland, the Superintendent of Army Clothing, with Major-General T.F. Hobday, Commissary-General, and Surgeon-General Robert Harvey, C.B., were ready to place the fruits of their long experience and special knowledge of various details at the service of Colonel Lumsden whenever he felt the need of advice in such matters; and Captain A.L. Phillips, an officer on the Staff of Sir Alfred Gaselee, Q.M.G., was untiring in his efforts to make the movement a success so far as his personal efforts and influence could avail. So everything went well from the beginning, thanks in great measure to the lively interest taken in the corps by Lord Curzon, who was pleased to become its Honorary Colonel, and by all officers of his personal Staff. Her Excellency Lady Curzon was equally zealous and lent her influence to every good work by which the ladies of Calcutta sought to express their admiration, and perhaps their tender regard, for the heroes who were going forth to fight. What form that expression should take was a subject much debated and long in doubt. Of course Sir Patrick Playfair had to be consulted by a deputation of charming damsels. He thought a bazaar might give them the opportunity they wanted. Yes! that was just the thing; but then—and then came a string of fatal objections. A smoking-concert was next suggested, and the young ladies thought that idea splendid, only—well, in short, it wouldn’t do. Then, as if it were the last resource to be thought of—a sort of forlorn hope—Sir Patrick hinted that a dance might meet the case. To that his fair interviewers demurred most effusively; but then and without any hypnotic suggestion, so Sir Patrick avers, they began to see that something might be urged in favour of it, and at last, with a unanimity that was wonderful, they decided that a dance was the only means of fitly celebrating the occasion. Having come to that conclusion, all their coy objections vanished in a moment. Sir Patrick saw his opportunity and seized it to persuade them that, as it was to be a ladies’ enterprise, they must manage it entirely themselves. Thereupon they formed a committee, of which Miss Pugh was elected Honorary Secretary, invited Lady Curzon of Kedleston to become patroness, and set to work with an energy which no mere man could hope to rival. They had of course to enlist masculine services for subordinate duties. This they did with a sweet despotism that made revolt impossible. The men had to accept without a murmur the positions assigned to them as stewards, and obeyed every mandate like the willing slaves we all should be in similar circumstances. The committee of ladies showed a business-like promptitude in settling every detail and a faculty for organisation which won from a military admirer the approving comment that they could conduct a campaign if they would only give their minds to it. This or some other feminine attribute had such an effect on the wine merchants of Calcutta that they sent champagne for the ball-supper and gallantly refused to accept payment. So the Calcutta Ball in honour of Lumsden’s Horse became an assured success almost from the moment of its happy inception. Brilliant beyond the dreams of a débutante, it left on many a susceptible heart impressions which neither time nor the changing scenes of warfare could dim, as the secret archives, to which an editor alone has access, attest; and in a less romantic way it proved the unselfish devotion of those ladies, who, after paying all expenses, handed over a balance of 6,000 rupees to the war-chest of Lumsden’s Horse.

Lieut. Sidey Lieut. Pugh Capt. Clifford Lieut. Crane Lieut. Neville Capt. Rutherfoord

Photo: Harrington & Co.

Capt. Chamney Major Showers Col. Lumsden Capt. Taylor Capt. Beresford

Capt. Noblett Vet.-Capt. Stevenson

OFFICERS OF THE CORPS

Such financial aids came not amiss at the moment. Government transports chartered by the Royal Indian Marine for taking troops to Natal were delayed on the return, and, one vessel having broken down, Colonel Lumsden found that he would have to encamp his men on the Maidan for two or three weeks longer than he had anticipated, and this entailed an additional expenditure of nearly 1,000l. for extra rations and comforts. To soldiers of Spartan mould, who pride themselves on discarding luxuries at the first call to arms, this might have seemed like pampering the Volunteer troopers; but it must be remembered that in India men cannot give up the habits of a lifetime all at once and come down to bare soldier’s rations without danger to their health. And Colonel Lumsden’s first object after getting his men was to keep them fit. His care in this respect was justified by events no less than his judgment in the selection of men for mental and physical attributes. At the end of a year’s campaigning he was able to boast that his losses from sickness were proportionately less than in any other regiment. This delay had its advantages in so far as it gave Colonel Lumsden and his officers a chance of training the troopers for their duties and accustoming them to their horses before the day of embarkation. The postponement, we may be sure, was no disappointment to the people of Calcutta, who felt that the Maidan would be a cheerless blank without Lumsden’s Horse. It will be well to give here a few details of organisation. By War Office order the corps was to consist of two companies, each commanded by a Regular officer, and the Government also appointed a Regular adjutant to assist Colonel Lumsden in executive work; while Colonel Eden C. Showers, Commandant of the Surma Valley Light Horse, offered to serve as Major, and was gazetted with that rank as second in command. When other officers had been selected, chiefly on the recommendation of commandants under whom they had served in Volunteer Corps, they were posted in the following order:

Staff.—Lieutenant-Colonel Dugald McTavish Lumsden, Commandant.

Major Eden C. Showers, Second in Command.

Captain Neville C. Taylor, 14th Bengal Lancers, Adjutant and Quartermaster.

Captain Samuel Arthur Powell, Medical Officer.

Veterinary Captain William Stevenson, M.R.C.V.S., Veterinary Surgeon.

A Company.—Captain James Hugh Brownlow Beresford, 3rd Sikhs (commanding), Captain John Brownley Rutherfoord, Lieutenants Charles Edward Crane and George Augustus Neville.

B Company.—Captain Louis Hemington Noblett, Royal Irish Rifles (commanding), Captain Henry Chamney, Captain Frank Clifford, Lieutenants Charles Lyon Sidey and Herbert Owain Pugh.

Maxim Gun Detachment.—Captain Bernard Willoughby Holmes (commanding).

Each company had a Regular non-commissioned officer as Company Sergeant-Major and another Regular as Company Quartermaster-Sergeant for office duties under the Regimental Quartermaster-Sergeant. Regulars from the Artillery, Cavalry, and Infantry were also attached as Farrier-Sergeants, Saddlers, and Signallers, and from the Indian Commissariat as Transport Sergeant. The Maxim Gun Contingent, under Captain Holmes was raised and equipped by the East India Railway Company, who offered its services to Colonel Lumsden. The Calcutta Committee had decided, with the sanction of the Government, that Lumsden’s Horse should not want for adequate regimental transport in the field, but, on the contrary, should leave India as a thoroughly organised unit in that respect, with a complete train of transport carts, ponies, and pack mules, all properly equipped. It is hardly necessary to say that the grant of transport, saddlery, and draught harness, for which provision was made in the mobilisation order, did not comprise all that the committee desired; but the inexhaustible Ordnance Stores were again open to be requisitioned ‘on payment,’ and carts of the Indian Army Transport pattern were drawn in a similar way from the Commissariat Department. The ponies and mules, however, had to be collected by agents in the hill districts of Assam and Thibet, a distance of 1,000 miles from Calcutta. When all this was done, the corps could justly be considered fit for active service, and it is certain that no contingent, Volunteer or Regular, landed in South Africa with a more efficient transport than Lumsden’s Horse. It came near being upset, however, by a War Office decision. Almost at the last minute Colonel Lumsden was told that the native drivers would not be permitted to accompany the corps, and that no natives could go except one personal servant for each officer and a limited number of syces, or grooms, in the proportion of one to each charger, as laid down in the mobilisation scheme. This allowance of three native attendants to every officer was on a sufficiently liberal scale, but it did not meet the requirements for transport purposes. Therefore Colonel Lumsden had to enlist European drivers, of whom twenty-six were needed for each company. In ordinary circumstances Anglo-Indian prejudices would have combined to make this an insuperable difficulty; but so keen was the anxiety of men to see war service in South Africa that they volunteered to go in any capacity not necessarily menial, and so Colonel Lumsden got the full complement of drivers together just as readily as lie had filled the ranks with fighting men. War Office conditions stipulated that officers and troopers of the corps must provide their own horses and saddlery, though nearly all of the latter might be drawn from Ordnance Stores at cost price. Naturally the supply of suitable animals for Mounted Infantry work had to be made a corps affair from the outset. Very few of the enlisted troopers owned horses of a class that they would have cared to ride through the rough work of a campaign, even if they could be always sure of having their own; and Colonel Lumsden was not likely to countenance any claims of private ownership when once horses were numbered as of the troop. He therefore informed every man who brought a horse with him that it must be considered corps property, and might not be appropriated by its owner without the commanding officer’s sanction. No other arrangement could have worked satisfactorily. In consideration of this understanding Colonel Lumsden promised that he would endeavour to obtain from Government a scale of compensation for horses thus appropriated, and in the event of being successful the sums obtained under this head would be returned pro rata to the owners of horses. It may be mentioned in passing that Colonel Lumsden’s efforts to this end were ultimately successful, the Government consenting to allow an average of 30l. per horse to the corps, so that every man who brought his own charger was compensated at last.

Photo: F. Kapp & Co.
MESSING AT CALCUTTA
Under the Shamiana

The men having drawn their Lee-Metford rifles with short bayonets and an abundant supply of ·303 ball cartridges, both for practice and the sterner work to come, were duly clothed and equipped, much to their satisfaction.

Not many of these things, in addition to rifles and ammunition, were free gifts from Government, whose contributions in kind had to be supplemented by purchases out of store at the cost of corps funds and by gifts from the appreciative public to whom no appeals were made in vain. The troopers, at any rate, were troubled not a whit about these things, being quite satisfied with the completeness of their personal outfit, even before Mrs. Pugh and the ladies of Calcutta bethought them to work woollen comforters for presentation to every man of Lumsden’s Horse on the day of embarkation. They did not, however, take so kindly at first to the Lee-Metford rifle. It was a new weapon to most of the men, who had never handled anything more complicated than the old Martini carbine. So batches of men went to the ranges every morning to practise and accustom themselves to the peculiarities of a firearm that made no more noise than the crack of a whip and ‘had no kick in it.’ This was a time of gradual but sometimes painful initiation to the hardships and discomforts inseparable from camp life. Lessons, however distasteful, had to be learned, and it must be said that Lumsden’s Horse took the rough with the smooth cheerily enough, enlivening their daily routine with many pleasantries. They were always ready to laugh at a comrade or with him in a merry jest at their own expense. Some literary contributions from the ranks to local papers were amusing in their fanciful exaggerations, which nobody enjoyed more than did the troopers whose foibles were thus humorously railed at. For sanitary reasons they were one day ordered, by medical authority, to strike their camp and pitch it on fresh ground, whereupon one of them wrote:

Like a bolt from the blue has fallen upon this camp the Æsculapian decree that we must go hence! It happened to-day that the medical eye of Lumsden’s Horse opened wide, and beheld strange sights. What the vision was has not been recorded owing to no ink being found in camp capable of expressing its blackness, but it is no secret that microbes as big as mastodons were observed freely gambolling in the immediate vicinity of the commissariat tent. The marvel is that a number of men can have lived on such a spot for ten days without coming to more serious harm.

The green sward on the banks of the Tolly’s Nullah has presented an animated appearance within the last few days, for every train arriving in Calcutta has brought its quota to swell the corps. A number of men from the Assam Valley Light Horse are now in camp. The Mysore contingent is also established, while the Behar lads are expected to-morrow by 10 o’clock. These will number a few over fifty, and will prove no doubt the crème de la crème of the corps. In a day or two the Maxim gun will come into quarters, and Oakley, of Kooch Behar and Tirah fame, has gone to some up-country sequestered spot whence comes a particularly quiet jat of pony, where he will choose animals of gentle temperament and so small that falling off them won’t hurt—for Maxim gun men scorn to ride.

This question of riding is no small one, and many gallant sportsmen may be seen tearing down the lines trying to get there before their horses. One like this was advised by a real Tommy Atkins to sit further back and so enjoy a longer ride. Not the least pleasurable sight in the camp is when bold Volunteers begin grooming their own horses. Some never do more than the neck, because of the risk attached to venturing within range of hind feet, with which country-bred horses are notoriously handy—if it may be so said of feet. Then saddling troubles others, because of the difficulty in distinguishing between cantle and pommel when a saddle hasn’t a horse inside to illustrate the difference.

There is a touch of boyish imagination about that sketch, but it is not altogether fanciful. Some of the Volunteers who joined first were by no means experienced horse-masters, and, to nearly all, the equipments for Mounted Infantry in full campaigning kit were not less strange than military technicalities. There was a rich fund of amusement for Lumsden’s Horse in the unauthorised version of ordinary commands as one trooper construed them. When sections in line were crowding too much upon him he would say, ‘Fall off, man! Fall off to the left.’ The comrade thus admonished would murmur, ‘Hang it all, man, that is just what I am trying not to do.’ Still, young Malaprop would repeat, in defiance of the Sergeant-Major’s peremptory request for silence in the ranks, ‘Fall off! fall off!’ meaning all the time ‘Ease off.’ These simple incidents of every day gave a piquancy to camp ‘gup,’ and were the cause of more mirth than the elaborate jokes concocted by literary troopers could arouse. One civilian, in a playfully prophetic mood, devised a new coat of arms for Lumsden’s Horse, which was published in the ‘Indian Daily News’ as a clever play upon the cant of Heraldry; though the Earl Marshal and all the Kings-at-Arms and all the learned pursuivants of Heralds’ College might have been puzzled if called upon to emblazon the quaint conceit with its complicated quarterings, its proper shield of pretence, and its lurid crest of augmentation.

CHAPTER II
PREPARING FOR THE FRONT—DEPARTURE FROM CALCUTTA

Life in camp on the Maidan was becoming somewhat monotonous to men whose ardent spirits panted for opportunities of distinction in the Empire’s service, and for freer movement on the vast South African veldt. For traces of this yearning one may search in vain through pages of diaries, to which men do not commit all their secret thoughts. Perhaps they regarded a parade of warlike sentiments as bad form even in the written impressions that were intended only for private perusal. So they contented themselves with noting briefly the minor events of listless days and the mild excitements of evenings that passed swiftly enough in such social pleasures as dining, theatre-going, or listening to the latest London melodies at a smoking-concert organised in aid of the war fund. Even a flower-show was regarded by some as an amusement. We come across frequent references to baths at the Swimming Club, tiffin at Pelité’s, and luxurious little dinners at the Bristol, the Continental, or the Grand; but only by inference, from the sudden importance given to these everyday incidents of civilian life, can we gather what a contrast they were to the coarser fare and rougher surroundings of meals in camp. There is not a hint of discontent at being reduced for the first time in their lives to soldiers’ rations or at the hard fatigue work they were put to as a necessary part of the daily routine. These manly young troopers were beginning to learn the soldier’s lessons of subjection to discipline and endurance of discomforts that must have seemed sufficiently like hardships to most of them, but they had not acquired the habit of grumbling which is Tommy’s cherished privilege. The visits of crowds to that camp on the Maidan every Sunday were evidence enough of the great interest taken by all classes of citizens in Lumsden’s Horse, who were properly appreciative of those attentions, and not quite insensible to the sweet flattery of admiring glances from pretty eyes. The motto that ‘None but the brave deserve the fair’ is one in which gallant soldiers from all time have found encouragement, and Lumsden’s Horse were beginning to appropriate it with other soldierly attributes, for were they not all brave and resolved to prove it? Their only fear was that the chance of doing knightly deeds might not come to them, and that they would land in South Africa only in time to learn that the war had been finished before the tardy transports could get there. Nevertheless, we know that they relaxed no efforts to make themselves fit for the fray. From contributions by troopers to the Indian papers we may learn how zealous they were to master the least attractive duties of military life, and Staff officers bear witness to the sincerity and success of these endeavours. Mere forms of discipline might have been lacking, and one cannot wonder that men who had lived similar lives, sharing the same sports and social pleasures, found it difficult at first to fall into their relative positions, some as officers, others as troopers, and to keep each his own proper groove, ignoring old associations. But the right spirit of subordination was there, and a commander of Irregulars does not ask for more if he has the true capacity for leadership. The daily routine of duties in camp on the Maidan was designed to foster this spirit without making the yoke of essential discipline too galling. A description of it as given by one in the ranks will show that Lumsden’s Horse were by no means pampered Sybarites even at that early stage of their soldiering:

At 6 the ‘rouse’ sounds, and, some minutes later, men clad in khaki breeches, putti gaiters, and flannel shirts issue from the little bell tents into the clammy mist of early morning, and after obtaining a cup of tea at the mess, remove the jhools—which are a most necessary protection against the heavy dew—from their horses, and give them a rub down. At 7 we hear the bugle call ‘Saddle up,’ and at 7.30 the men are all fallen in on the Maidan in column of sections, and go through the various evolutions, special attention being given to mounting and dismounting on saddles packed with full kit, and the leading of horses, the correct and rapid performance of which is so important in Mounted Infantry work. The regiment is divided into two companies, each company consisting of 120 men formed into four sections, and these again divided into permanent sub-sections of four men each. As a rule the sections work independently, each under its own commander. Blank ammunition is liberally expended in order to accustom the horses to the rattle of musketry. Most of the men are mounted on country-breds; but several ride shapely walers averaging 14.2. Considering that 50 per cent. of the horses are quite untrained as chargers, they are astonishingly quiet and well-behaved; the C.B.s—with the exception of an occasional kicker, which plays havoc in the ranks, and is a source of some danger to his unfortunate companions, both men and horses—are quick, handy little brutes, and already they have learnt to lead steadily and well. There are, of course, a good number of trained horses in the ranks; the Mysore men, for instance, being almost without exception mounted on Silidar horses, which are proving most satisfactory chargers and are expected to do well in Africa. After parade the horses are watered, fed, and groomed by their respective owners, and then, as Mr. Pepys would have said, ‘to breakfast,’ under a large shamiana placed at one end of the camp in the shade of sycamore-fig trees. The morning passes quickly while men are drawing and marking kit, cleaning rifles, or doing fatigue duty at pitching tents and other healthy exercises. At noon we water and feed the horses, and 1 o’clock is the tiffin hour. At 4.30 there is an afternoon parade, sometimes by companies, and sometimes the whole regiment parading under the Colonel or Major, after which water, feed and bed-down, and then dinner, and an early retirement to bed. But not for all is this happy rest. There are two guard tents, at opposite ends of the camp, each company providing a sergeant and three men for guard every twenty-four hours, while a man from each company is on sentry throughout the night, his duty being to see that the horses are properly secured—head and heel—and be on hand in case of sickness.

Photo: F. Kapp & Co.
HORSES IN CAMP AT CALCUTTA

They were not all tyros in war. Burma ribbons on the breasts of some Surma Valley Volunteers who were at Manipur told of previous service in the field, though against enemies very different from the ‘slim,’ evasive Boer. Others who wore no badges of distinction were believed to have fought in more than one campaign; at least, the fair visitors declared that such a martial mien as some men bore could only have been acquired on active service: it bespoke a consciousness of great deeds gallantly done. The heroes of these flattering tributes lived up to their reputations by putting on an air of mystery, which the Colonel alone could have dispelled, for none but he knew the history of every man in the regiment. Still, nobody would have thought of looking for suspected Boers or Boer spies in the ranks of Lumsden’s Horse. A good story, however, is told in this connection at the expense of an officer who overheard two men in the uniform of Lumsden’s Horse talking, in a tongue that was not English, at one of the hotel bars. The officer, not recognising either of them, listened curiously, and caught a few phrases which he declared to be German by the sound (and he claimed familiarity with that, though he did not know enough of the language to repeat the words he had heard). ‘It was German, and no mistake,’ he said, ‘and those two men in our uniform were talking it fluently. What could they be but Boer spies?’ One had a distinctly Boer face, he thought, and, deciding that something ought to be done at once, he assumed his most nonchalant air and asked the two men politely for their names. In reply they gave names so common in England that he could only regard them as aliases. His suspicions being thus seemingly confirmed, he took into his confidence two brother-officers, who, when the two ‘spies’ were pointed out to them, saw the possibility of playing off a joke on the amateur detective, for they recognised in the one with a ‘distinctly Boer face’ a young planter from Behar whose fresh, boyish appearance had won for him the nickname of ‘Baby.’ He looked innocent enough to be capable of anything. Admitting that both these men had come with them from up country, the two mischievous friends added, ‘But we don’t know much about them.’ That was enough for the investigator, who rose at dawn next morning to prepare a circumstantial report for submission to the Colonel. He declared this to be ‘his duty,’ and announced a stern determination to go through with it in spite of pretended protestations from many comrades who had somehow got wind of the story. Their pleadings and wily persuasions only served to goad him on. The responsibility of silence, which they sought to impose upon him, was too much for one in his position to bear, so he hurried off towards the Colonel’s tent, eager to make his startling disclosures. On the way, however, he met a trooper, who unwittingly ‘gave the whole show away’; and the crestfallen officer learned that the men whom he was going to denounce as Boer spies had been coffee-planting for several years in Coorg, and that the language they talked when exchanging confidences in a public place was not German but Canarese. Such incidents as these helped to while away the tedium of life in camp when the iron hand of discipline was beginning to make itself felt lightly but firmly. A very little humour provokes much mirth when other entertainments are scarce. By that time even the sing-songs in camp were being cut short, and the only note of revolt that Lumsden’s Horse were ever known to have sounded arose on that account. It did not grow loud enough to reach the commanding officer’s ears, but is recorded in the diary of a trooper who, after describing a very pleasant little camp-fire concert, says: ‘We were all packed off to bed at 9.30 by the Sergeant-Major, to our indignation.’

Photo: Bourne & Shepherd.
ON PARADE, CALCUTTA

Public efforts for their amusement, however, did not flag, nor were camp regulations always enforced so strictly. These facts we may gather from an entry that would have delighted the methodical Samuel Pepys. ‘After dinner drove to the Grand. Played snookers and won. Afterwards to the Biograph, to which we were invited for nothing. Rather a noise cheering for the Queen, Colonel Lumsden, &c. Marched back singing, though someone tried to stop us. The Colonel came too and bade us sing. Had supper and more songs, and three cheers for the Colonel, and to bed at two.’ These frank revelations are worth whole columns of detailed description as giving an insight into the character of the men who formed Lumsden’s Horse and their adaptability to circumstances that marked the later days of their camp life on the Maidan. The time for such festivities was drawing rapidly to a close, and none but Puritanical moralists would blame them for making the most of it after the manner of light-hearted youth. They had serious thoughts on occasion, however, and all their letters show how deeply impressed they were by one ceremony. The date of embarkation was still uncertain when on Wednesday, February 14, some two hundred officers and men under Colonel Lumsden’s command, headed by the band of the Royal Irish Rifles, marched from their camp to the Cathedral in Calcutta, where a special evening service of farewell was to be celebrated. The Viceroy and Lady Curzon, Sir John Woodburn, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, nearly every officer of the Viceregal and District Staffs, with regimental commandants and representatives of other Presidencies, attended, and a sympathetic congregation filled every part of the building. Soldiers and civilians joined in singing the Processional hymn, ‘Onward, Christian soldiers,’ their voices mingling with an effect never to be forgotten by anybody who took part in that devotional service. The Lieutenant-Governor read the First Lesson and Colonel Lumsden the Second. The choir sang ‘Fight the good fight,’ and a deep silence fell on the congregation when Bishop Welldon began his address to the contingent that numbered in its ranks many men whose course in life had been guided by the high principles instilled by him when he was master and they schoolboys at Tonbridge and Harrow. In a clear strong voice, the ring of which they knew so well, he spoke to them and their comrades, saying:

This is a service of unique interest in the history of our city, and of our cathedral. It is one of those occasions which make us realise, amid many differences, the essential fact of our national spiritual unity. All who are loyal, all who are patriotic in Calcutta, are gathered or would have gladly gathered within this cathedral to-night. There is not in all this congregation—there is not, I think, in all Calcutta—a British heart that is not moved with sympathy and admiration for you, my brethren, who are going forth to the war in South Africa. And surely there is not a British heart but feels how just it is, how wise and how truly consonant with the best traditions of our race, that it should be your wish on the eve of your departure to seek the protection of, invite the benediction of, and to consecrate yourselves to the name and service of the Most High God. For if it has been possible at other times and in other places within the last few weeks to strike a note of felicity and festivity—I do not say that they have been unduly prominent, but who has not heard them?—if there has been excitement, merriment, and applause on your behalf, it is a note that I would not sound this evening. You are going, I know, with deep solemnity and resolution, and you are going as men who have undertaken a noble duty from which you might have held aloof without reproach, in the full consciousness of its cost and peril, and in the sure conviction that the part you are playing is not unworthy, as indeed it is not, of the British race and the British Empire. You are proud, then, of your self-chosen mission, but it may well be that someone who looks forward with eager anticipation to the future is yet, in his heart, possessed with the not ignoble anxiety that warfare is no child’s play. It is stern and awful. He who enters upon it with a light heart is no true soldier of God or man. You are assembled now within the sanctuary of religion. In a few hours or days you will set sail for a distant land. It is certain that you all will be exposed to the strain and danger of the battlefield, and it is by no means certain that all will return to their homes in safety. Some who hear me now will probably yield their lives for the Empire. Can I forget how, on the 24th day of last September, I shook hands at the Kidderpore Docks with the gallant officer commanding the Gloucestershire Regiment, and how within a few weeks from that day he had fallen—shot dead at the head of his regiment? As his fate was, so may be yours. That is the nobility and dignity of your service. The people of Calcutta would not throng into this cathedral to pray for you, with you, if it were not impressed upon their minds that you are inspired with the brave ambition that makes great Empires great. When they shall bid you farewell, as the troopship slowly passes into the distance, it will be with full hearts, and believing that you will be true even to death, that they will one and all say, ‘God bless you.’ You go for the conservation of the Empire. I look upon the British Empire as the highest of human institutions, and realise that the Empire appeals to the spirit of chivalry, magnanimity, unselfishness, and devotion in all its members. Nobly, indeed, has India, European and Native, responded of late to that inspiring appeal. Who is there that has not felt his pride of Empire to be quickened by the generous loyalty not of Englishmen only but of the princes and nobles of India to her Majesty the Queen-Empress? For that loyalty, unexampled as it is in the history of other peoples, is itself a witness to the beneficence of British rule. May I venture, if only in passing, to express the hope that such an exhibition of loyalty may bring comfort to the sick-bed of that illustrious soldier, the Commander-in-Chief, who in a retrospect of his life can recall many a battle in which Europeans and Indians have fought side by side for the Empire? But if to the princes and nobles—may I not add to the people of India?—the thought of the Empire makes a paramount appeal, how much more to every man and woman of us.

The Imperial spirit is in the air, it has passed from the chamber of philosophical thinkers to the common life of the nation. We are all Imperialists now, and it may be said in the sacred language, of our country in relation to her colonies and dependencies, that ‘her children have risen up and called her blessed.’ So in the hour of her stress and suffering there is not one colony that has failed to render her aid with the resources of its wealth, strength, and its armed men. Well is it, then, that Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen resident in India should take their stand with the colonists, not of South Africa only, but of Australia and Canada, in a cause which makes them one, for the Empire means not conquest alone. It means the principles upon which the modern Christian world is broadly based—justice, equality, freedom of thought and speech, intellectual progress, pure religion, and the sense of personal responsibility to God. You go forth, and by your going you assert that all the constituent members of the Empire are one. As the Apostle said of old, ‘We are members one of another’; and again, ‘If one member suffer all the members suffer with it.’ It is not nothing to you, and it is a matter which vitally and personally touches your interest, that to your fellow-subjects in South Africa should have been denied the elementary rights of citizenship and the common privileges of humanity. The injury that has been done to them is done to you. That you should go forth in a right and reverent spirit is the prayer of all who worship with you in this cathedral. Is it possible—I hardly like to suggest the reflection—but is it possible that we have lately thought too little of Almighty God? Is it possible that we have entered upon the war with something like levity in, the reliance upon our army and upon our pecuniary military resources rather than upon Him who has made and sanctified our Empire? Is it possible that we have forgotten that even if the ‘horse is prepared against the day of battle’ yet victory is of the Lord? If so, let us return to Him in penitence and prayer.

Let us, confess our many failings and shortcomings, our imperfect sense of responsibility to Providence, and our disloyalty, if such there has been, to His commands. May you go forth, brethren, as trusting in Him, for you believe that your cause is just. If it were not just, if it were the cause of oppression or aggrandisement, may He Himself forbid that it should prosper; but if it be His will to use you in His service, to make you the instrument of His providence in the subjugation and pacification of the country which has flouted the majesty of the British Empire, if He has called you, and you have responded to His call, then His blessing will abide with you always. It is in this spirit that we bid you an honourable farewell. It may be that when you are severed by thousands of miles of ocean from the country of your birth or of your adoption, the memory of this service shall not wholly fade from your hearts. Here, in India, where the majesty of the Empire was most fiercely assailed and most successfully vindicated—here in this cathedral, where many monuments eloquently remind you of the courage, faith, and heroism of your race down to the memorial of those young Englishmen who laid their lives down for their country saying that they were not the last English—here, in the presence of the Power which controls the destinies of nations, we invoke the Divine blessing upon your arms. One last word, one inspiring motto, we will offer you. It is the watchword of our race: it is ‘Duty.’ ‘I thank God,’ said Nelson to Captain Blackwood, on the morning of Trafalgar, ‘for this great opportunity of doing my duty.’ ‘Whatever happens, Uxbridge,’ said the Duke of Wellington on the morning of Waterloo, ‘you and I will do our duty.’ That the thought of ‘duty,’ inspired and sanctified by Heaven, may dwell in your hearts is our prayer for you all—the highest prayer that man may offer for man. May the God of our fathers be with you always, and help you to be brave, generous, and merciful, and vouchsafe to you safety; and if it be His will may victory and peace restore you to those who love you so well at home or in India, and grant you in life or in death to prove yourselves worthy citizens of the Empire, faithful servants and fellow soldiers of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

The choir next sang

‘Soldiers of Christ, arise,

And put your armour on,’

and this was followed by two special prayers. Then came the National Anthem, in the singing of which the whole congregation joined, and then the Recessional hymn, ‘For all the saints who from their labours rest.’ The service over, Lumsden’s Horse marched back to camp through roads that were thronged with enthusiastic spectators.

The next ten days were crowded with necessary preparations that left the men little leisure for enjoyment of social entertainments arranged in their honour, yet they found time for a pleasant gathering as spectators at an amateur performance in the Calcutta Theatre, and possibly for some tender leave-takings of which no note was made. They were not, at any rate, allowed to go away without many manifestations of good-will from all classes and abundant proofs of appreciation and care for their welfare by the Government of India. It has already been said that his Excellency Lord Curzon accepted readily the rank of Honorary Colonel of the corps, while both he and Lady Curzon took every possible opportunity of identifying themselves with a force in which they continued to show the liveliest personal interest throughout its career of active service. Sir William Lockhart, then Commander-in-Chief, was lying in Fort William, Calcutta, dangerously ill of the malady from which he died not long afterwards, and was therefore unable to see the corps, but he sent to Colonel Lumsden and the executive committee several messages of kindly encouragement. The contingent was inspected on its parade-ground by General Leach, C.B., commanding the troops in the Presidency District. Sir John Woodburn, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal and Honorary Colonel of the Behar Light Horse, also paid an official visit to Colonel Lumsden and made a farewell speech to the corps on parade the Sunday before its first company embarked.

Photo: F. Kapp & Co.
TAKING HORSES ON BOARD TRANSPORT 28
A Company

Orders for the front had come at last, but one of the transports had not. So it was necessary for Lumsden’s Horse to go off in detachments. The ‘Lindula’ was alongside the wharves in Kidderpore Docks, but she had no room to spare for more than a hundred and fifty troopers, with their officers and the necessary number of horses. Colonel Lumsden and the headquarters were to go in her with A Company and the Maxim Gun detachment, leaving B Company still camped on the Maidan, where Major Showers would take over the command. Delays and alterations of dates with regard to troopships, for which nobody in India was responsible, would have been still more serious but for the resourceful energy of Captain Goodridge, R.N., Director-General of Marine to the Government of India, and Captain Gwynne, R.N., the executive transport officer at Calcutta, who did all in their power to expedite matters and to meet the wishes of Colonel Lumsden, whose one anxiety was for the comfort and well-being of his men on the voyage.

Before daybreak on Monday, January 26, 1900, bugles were sounding the reveillé for A Company, and from that moment its camp was a scene of liveliest activity. Though the men whose turn to embark might not come for a week or two longer went about their ordinary duties with assumed unconcern, they cast many wistful glances at the busy preparations of their envied comrades. Life in Calcutta had been pleasant enough to make parting ‘such sweet sorrow’ for many that they would fain have prolonged it at the last, but none gave a thought to such things in the dawn of the day so long desired. For them all, South Africa was then the goal of hope, and naturally the troops to go first were deemed most fortunate. An old campaigner might have told them of the days to come, when, in the weariness of a realisation more hollow than their dreams, they would be haunted by the music of that last waltz in Calcutta, and longing to hear once more the rustle of palm fronds under soft Indian skies, to breathe the sweet fragrance of oleanders and roses. These thoughts, however, were unspoken, and if anybody had ventured to hint at them he would have been rightly scouted as a sickly sentimentalist by Lumsden’s Horse, who were going forth to do the work of men. Yes; but somehow they were not all adamant when they heard the cheers of thousands greeting them as they marched through streets crowded with Europeans and natives. The service company, in full campaigning kit, took the lead, proudly conscious that all this was meant as an enthusiastic farewell to them and for the gallant Colonel at their head; and B Company followed, wearing simple drill order, with becoming modesty. An escort of ladies and gentlemen on horseback accompanied the marching contingent. So uncontrollable did the excitement of spectators become that they broke in upon and mingled with the ranks, a confused mass from which it was difficult for Lumsden’s Horse to disentangle themselves and pass in any semblance of military formation through the dock gates, within which they dismounted. Embarkation of their horses would in ordinary circumstances have occupied a whole day if the slow system of hoisting by slings had been adhered to. Major Taylor, however, suggested the use of zig-zag gangways, ascending by easy inclines stage above stage. To this arrangement the broad wharves of Kidderpore Docks were admirably adapted. Captain Gwynne, with a seaman’s ready appreciation of common-sense proposals, consented to this departure from former methods. The gangways were rigged accordingly, and so the horses walked quietly up the slopes to their berths on different decks instead of being slung on board in the barbarous old fashion. The whole operation thus took an hour instead of a day, and not a single horse was injured or had its temper upset. While horses were being got on board the companies drew up to await the Viceroy’s coming, where burning sunlight fell full on the white helmets that were not to be worn again for many a day. All their march from the Maidan had been like a triumphal procession, to the accompaniment of cheers and waving handkerchiefs; but a scene even more inspiring awaited them at the docks, where a great crowd had assembled, making the grimy wharves bright with the colours of dainty costumes. People lined the parapets of surrounding houses in masses uncomfortably dense, and a multitude thronged the jetty, alongside which the transport ‘Lindula’ lay waiting to receive her full complement of troops. Enclosures reserved for favoured spectators were filled to overflowing, and at least 2,000 of the number assembled there had to stand, the 3,000 chairs being mostly occupied by ladies.

Photo: F. Kapp & Co.
EMBARKATION AT CALCUTTA
Kidderpore Docks, February 26, 1900

Judges of the High Courts and senior officials of all departments were present. Lumsden’s Horse lined one side of a great quadrangle facing the flower-fringed daïs from which Lord Curzon was to deliver his farewell speech. Behind them, stretching from end to end of the line, were gay streamers bearing the time-honoured mottoes that served to inspire Roman legions when they set out in galleys to conquer the world. ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ and ‘Fortes fortuna juvat’ are sentiments that have happily not lost their meaning or their power to influence the actions of men even in our unromantic age. The crowds had gathered there to bid ‘God speed’ to the first contingent of Volunteers that had ever left India to fight for their Queen and country. And each unit of that assemblage seemed eager to do or say something that might emphasise the heartiness of the farewell. So general and earnest was this desire that the police had great difficulty to keep the pressing spectators within bounds.

On arrival at the dock gates, their Excellencies the Viceroy and Lady Curzon were met by his Honour the Lieutenant-Governor and officers in attendance, who conducted them to the Viceregal platform, above which the royal standard was hoisted. Lord Curzon then inspected the ranks of Lumsden’s Horse, chatting with their Colonel the while. This inspection over, his Excellency returned to the daïs, and, in a voice that carried far among the silently attentive spectators, addressed the corps in these words:

Colonel Lumsden, Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, and men of Lumsden’s Light Horse: In bidding you good-bye this afternoon, I feel that I may claim to speak for others besides myself. I do not appear here merely as the Honorary Colonel of your corps, proud as I am to fill that position. Nor am I merely the spokesman of the citizens of Calcutta, European and Native, among whom you have spent the past few weeks, and who desire to wish you all success in your patriotic enterprise. I feel that I am more than that, and that I may consider myself the mouthpiece of public opinion throughout India, which has watched the formation of this corps with admiration, which has contributed to its equipment and comfort with no illiberal hand, and which now sends you forth with an almost parental interest in your fortunes. At a time when the stress of a common anxiety has revealed to the British Empire its almost unsuspected unity, and its illimitable resources in loyalty and men, it would have been disappointing to all of us if India had lagged behind—India which, even if it is only peopled by a small minority of our own race, is yet the noblest field of British activity and energy and devotion that the world can show. Already the British regiments that we have sent from this country have helped to save Natal, and many a brave native follower has borne his part in the struggle. But as soon as the electric call for volunteer help to the mother land ran round, India responded to the summons. She has given us from the small civil population of British birth the 250 gallant men whom I am now addressing, and she would have given us as many more as Government would have been prepared to accept. I doubt not that had we been willing to enrol 1,000 instead of 250, they would have been forthcoming; and that had not one thousand but many thousand volunteers been called for from the native races, who vie with us in fervent loyalty to the same Sovereign, they would have sprung joyfully to arms, from the Hindu or Mussulman chief of ancient lineage and great possessions to the martial Sikh or the fighting Pathan.

You, however, are the 250 who have been chosen, the first body of Volunteers from India that have ever had the chance of fighting for the Queen outside their shores; and you, Colonel Lumsden, to whose patriotic initiative this corps owes its being, and from whom it most befittingly takes its name, are the officer who is privileged to command this pioneer body of Indian soldiers of the Empire. Officers and men, you carry a great responsibility with you; for it will fall to you in the face of great danger, perhaps even in the face of death, to sustain the honour of the country that is now sending you forth and of the race from which you are sprung. But you will have this consolation. You are engaged on a glorious, and as I believe a righteous, mission, not to aggrandise an Empire, not merely to repel an unscrupulous invasion of the Queen’s territories, but to plant liberty and justice and equal rights upon the soil of a South Africa henceforward to be united under the British and no other flag. You go out at a dramatic moment in the contest, when, owing to the skilful generalship of an old Indian soldier and Commander-in-Chief, and to the indomitable gallantry of our men, the tide of fortune, which has too long flowed against us, seems at last to have turned in our favour. May it carry you on its forward crest to Pretoria itself! All India applauds your bravery in going. We shall watch your deeds on the battlefield and on the march. We wish you God speed in your undertaking; and may Providence in His mercy protect you through the perils and vicissitudes of your first contact with the dread realities of war, and bring you safely back again to this country and to your homes.

Colonel Lumsden and men, on behalf of your fellow-countrymen and your fellow-subjects throughout India, I bid you farewell.

Photo: F. Kapp & Co.
H.E. THE VICEROY ADDRESSING THE CORPS
February 26, 1900

There is ample evidence from the letters of troopers themselves to prove that Lord Curzon’s eloquent words inspired them with an ideal which they determined at all hazards to live up to, and perhaps it is not too much to say that the conspicuous gallantry everywhere and at all times displayed by all ranks of Lumsden’s Horse is directly traceable to the high conception of their duty breathed in every sentence of the Viceroy’s speech, though they paraphrased it in more homely language, taking for their regimental motto ‘Play the game.’ For a while after Lord Curzon had finished speaking the troops were silent. Then they raised lusty cheers for his Excellency and Lady Curzon and the people of Calcutta, who in their turn cheered Lumsden’s Horse again and again. The Viceroy and his suite, accompanied by Colonel Lumsden, Sir Patrick Playfair, and other members of the executive committee, then went on board the ‘Lindula’ for a final inspection of the arrangements made for the comfort of the corps, whose horses had already been shipped. Meanwhile Mrs. Pugh had presented each officer and trooper with a Prayer-book, and in giving it she said a few simple words that touched all hearts. Some tender scenes of leave-taking had been enacted, and men came back to their places in the ranks with faces not quite so hard as they thought. There may have been sobs in the sweet voices that whispered ‘Good-bye!’ but if so they were lost in the loud chorus that rang out from comrades cheering each other. Then the band struck up ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me,’ and the troopers of A Company marched on board the ‘Lindula.’ As she cast off from her moorings amid many touching demonstrations and more enthusiastic cheers, the strains of music changed to ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ The sun had set then, but crowds lingered, cheering still and waving handkerchiefs until the transport disappeared in the gathering darkness. She dropped down to her anchorage in Garden Reach that night, and when Calcutta awoke next morning she had gone, bearing the first contingent of Lumsden’s Horse towards South Africa. Colonel Lumsden’s appreciation of all that had been done for the corps was expressed in the following letter:

To the Editor of the ‘Englishman.’

Sir,—On the eve of leaving India for South Africa with the corps which I have the honour to command there is one pleasant duty which I have to fulfil. This is to convey, in the most public manner, to all who have helped me in raising ‘Lumsden’s Horse,’ my grateful thanks for their sympathy and support. To the Viceroy, who has accepted the Honorary Colonelcy of the corps, I owe more than can be stated in this letter, for his Excellency removed all difficulties which lay in the way of sending an Indian Volunteer Contingent to the seat of war. To his Honour the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal and his Excellency the Commander-in-Chief I am indebted for their support and sympathy. Sir Edwin Collen, Military Member; Sir Edmund Elles, Adjutant-General; Major-Generals Maitland and Wace; Surgeon-General Harvey; Brigadier-General Leach; Colonel Money and Captain Drake-Brockman; Colonels Buckland and Spenser, Army Clothing Department; Captain Gwyn, Royal Indian Marine; Captain Philipps; Colonel Mansfield, Commissariat Transport Department; the Commissariat Staff in the Presidency District; one and all gave me the benefit of their experience in military matters in addition to official assistance which was of the highest value. There were many occasions when their personal influence smoothed over difficulties connected with organisation and equipment, and made my task much easier than it would otherwise have been. I wish gratefully to acknowledge the special kindness of Major Pilgrim, I.M.S., who medically examined the members of the corps. To the executive committee—Sir Patrick Playfair, Colonel Buckingham, Colonel Money, Major Eddis, Major Dolby, and Mr. Harry Stuart—I am most deeply indebted, for they have all worked hard from first to last; to the general public who responded so handsomely to the appeal for subscriptions; to the Press, who gave full publication to the movement; to the donors of camp equipment, kit, and things in kind; to the railways for their assistance; and to the India General and River Steam Navigation Companies, who carried the Assam Volunteers free of cost; to these I must express the warmest thanks, not merely on my own part, but on behalf of every officer and man of the corps. They, indeed, rendered it possible for my scheme as a whole to be carried out. To Mrs. Pugh and the ladies of Calcutta we can only say that their labour of love will never be forgotten by ‘Lumsden’s Horse.’

D.M. Lumsden.

February 26.

Photo: F. Kapp & Co.
B COMPANY LUMSDEN’S HORSE LEAVING CALCUTTA
March 3, 1900

Four days later welcome orders came for B Company to be ready for embarkation, and, early in the morning of March 3, Major Showers, in command of all that remained of Lumsden’s Horse on the Maidan, marched out of camp, escorted by Europeans and natives principally on horseback. For them the enthusiasm that had marked the departure of their comrades was revived with even greater fervour, and though this second leave-taking was less ceremonious than the first, it lacked nothing of the heart-stirring eloquence that rings through the voices of people when they are moved by great impulses. The Viceroy, when he addressed Colonel Lumsden and A Company, had spoken his farewell to the whole regiment. This second demonstration, though accompanied by many signs of official interest, was in all essential characteristics a popular movement in which all classes joined with the more impressive warmth because it was the last tribute they could pay to Lumsden’s Horse before the corps might be called upon to take its place in the fighting line. The Lieutenant-Governor (Sir John Woodburn) and the Bishop of Calcutta made eloquent speeches that were emphasised by repeated cheering; and with many cordial words of farewell ringing in their ears, to the musical accompaniment of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ Major Showers and his hundred troopers embarked on board the ‘Ujina.’ After she had steamed down the Hugli there was no more work to be done by the committee, whose members had laboured with patriotic self-sacrifice to raise and equip Lumsden’s Horse and send the contingent forth a perfectly organised force in all respects. The executive committee then practically handed over all its authority to Sir Patrick Playfair, who never ceased for a moment to watch over the interests of the Contingent, for which he had already done so much. The following letter shows how greatly Lumsden’s Horse were indebted for their rapid and complete organisation to the business capacity and indefatigable industry of Sir Patrick Playfair:

S.S. ‘Lindula,’ en route for South Africa: March 12, 1900.

My dear Playfair,—I have felt ever since leaving Calcutta that I never half thanked you for what you did for Lumsden’s Horse, and no one knows so well as myself, or appreciates more to the full, the work you did on its behalf. Now, when I have time to think calmly over the events of the past two months, I can see plainly that the successful issue things were brought to, financially and otherwise, was entirely due to your energy and guidance; and this without in the slightest degree depreciating the valuable services of your fellow-workers on the committee, as I feel confident one and all of them would coincide heartily with my sentiments....

Yours always,

D.M. Lumsden.

CHAPTER III
OUTWARD BOUND

Life on board a troopship does not offer much material for graphic description, and none but a Kipling could give to its ordinary incidents an absorbing interest for general readers. Nevertheless, it has charms for those who look at it with eyes fresh to such scenes, and for Lumsden’s Horse, at any rate, there was a novelty in the situation not wholly unpleasant in spite of the many discomforts they had to endure and the distasteful duties necessarily imposed upon them. They were learning there a harder lesson than any of which their experiences in camp on the Maidan could have given the slightest conception. It is one thing to go a long voyage on board a liner as first-, second-, or even third-class passenger, but quite another to be penned up between decks in a crowded transport with native servants and Lascars, eating coarse Government rations served in the roughest fashion, doing the work of grooms and lackeys, and sleeping on bare planks in an atmosphere odorous with exhalations from stables and galleys. They had enlisted for a soldier’s life, however, prepared to take the rough with the smooth, and, being in for it, they made the best of their circumstances after the first rude shock of feeling what military service really means had worn off. Discipline may become a property of easiness anywhere else, but on board ship the line that separates rank from rank must be sharply drawn even in the case of a Volunteer company. Comradeship and interchange of friendly greetings between officers and men may still go on as of old; but they cannot make a trooper forget for a moment that certain privileges follow rank, and disabilities cling to those who have it not, while these facts are thrust upon him insistently at every turn and dinned into his ears by every bugle call to duty or to meals. It is well that we also should remember these things in estimating the sacrifices that Volunteers make when they give up the comforts, if not luxuries, of home life and go forth to fight for country and for empire as private soldiers. The privations, the rough fare, the hard marches in all weather, exposure to rapid alternations of heat and cold, fierce sunshine where there is no shelter by day, and pitiless rain from which there is no escape at night, hunger, wounds, and sickness—all these may be cheerfully borne because they are the lot of all ranks alike. Not so, however, with the petty humiliations and drudgery inseparable from many duties on board a transport, where the mere trooper finds that a soldier’s uniform is a badge of distinction truly, but the distinction at times brings with it something closely akin to a sense of humiliation. The company or regimental officers may do all they can to take the keen point off this goading sentiment, but it will wound where there is the least protection against it and rankle too. One must say to the credit of Lumsden’s Horse that they did not allow such considerations to trouble. There is no trace of discontent in their published contributions to Indian papers, of which some extracts from the ‘Englishman’ may be made by way of giving a picture of the voyage as troopers looked at it. We left the ‘Lindula’ steaming down the Hugli apparently well on her way towards South Africa. Though lost to the view of interested crowds who looked for her soon after dawn on the morning of February 27, she did not pursue an uninterrupted course. At this point a trooper of A Company takes up the story in a lively narrative, writing thus:

The absurd antics which the river Hugli thinks it necessary to go through ere flowing to rest in the bosom of its old mammy Ocean compel mariners to sail on it by day alone, and then to go as cannily as a cat on hot bricks. On Tuesday morning we dashed off letters and telegrams, and with a sigh of relief despatched them by the post boat, thinking we were fairly off for Afric’s sandy shores. But no! We had not reckoned with the lead line, which recorded much the same number of feet and inches that the good ship ‘Lindula’ drew, so with a Heave! Ho! Holly! the anchor fell overboard, and then we were stuck for a whole day.

Fancy getting up at 4.30 in the pitch dark! And no chance of shirking either, for the decks are swabbed down and clean as a child’s plate after a penny dinner by 5 A.M. of the clock. Five-thirty heralds a cup of tea, and 6 o’clock sets every nag aboard neighing and whinnying, for do they not know it to be feeding time, better even than the Sergeant-Major, who marches about with a little stick marking time? Then stables—a pleasant job for the deaf and dumb, but trying to a man who wishes to retain the lily-white unstained purity of his mind. Nine o’clock is the signal for the bugler to tootle ‘Mary! come to the cook-house door,’ and before he gets to the ‘y’ in Mary, A Company is tumbling head over heels down the fore companion.

Spinning down the river with the banks gradually receding from sight raises everybody’s spirits, and a merry lot we are when from the Sandheads comes a telegram announcing the capitulation of Cronjé—news greeted by loud and continuous cheers. A little way more and the pilot brig heaves in sight, and soon we lie to in her neighbourhood, listening to round after round of hoarse cheering from the white-hatted figures aboard. Our pilot drops over the side, accompanied by a great sheaf of our last messages to friends, and we get up steam, waving good-bye to India, and begin our voyage, never a man of us for whom the future does not loom big with adventurous hopes; never a man of us reckoning of the toil or peril. Young British blood, hot and eager, keen to flow more swiftly, keen to taste of the life that has given the world so many great names, so many great deeds. India, au revoir!

The gentle reader must not imagine that we have nothing to do. Breakfast finished at 10 o’clock, the bugles wax busy, and call after call resounds through the ship, summoning sections to various tasks. One of the earliest parades of the voyage was that to practise the fire alarm and ‘boats.’ Every man has his appointed place, and lest any should hurry unduly for the boats, sentries have been told off to guard these, having their rifles loaded with ball cartridges, and orders to shoot the first man who may attempt a rush. This extremely important matter has been thoroughly impressed on our minds by practice, and should the alarm be given in stern reality we all know where to make for.

Needless to say, rifle exercise is one of the chief things to which we must pay attention, and morning and afternoon the words of command ring through the ship as squad after squad is put through its facings. Fatigues are innumerable. Bringing forage and stores on deck is a daily task; oiling and packing away saddlery; cleaning spare arms; painting side arms; marking equipment and a dozen other things. Then a signalling class is terribly busy, and a row of otherwise intelligent-looking lads wave their arms wildly to the accompaniment of strange sounds bellowed by the signalling instructor.

When the rifle exercises have sunk into the minds of men, they are allowed to practise shooting. Every day, at 12 and 2, parties assemble on the quarter-deck and shoot at wine cases, biscuit boxes, bits of paper, anything that affords a mark. In spite of the rolling and pitching of the ship, and, what is worse, the vibration caused by the screw, wonderful practice is made. A bit of paper a few inches square is hit several times at 200 yards, and as the larger obstacles recede they are repeatedly struck. Men firing have to judge their own distances, and the practice on the whole has been marvellously good. The Maxim gun has had a turn, too, and a very terrible weapon it is. In spite of the extreme disadvantage under which it labours when placed on a moving platform, excellent shooting has been made with it. An ordinary beer barrel at 800 and 1,000 yards was douched with spray, and then struck after three or four shots had been fired. The noise is atrocious, but it is grand to see the bullets striking the water, one! two! three! four! ever nearing the mark, and then, five! Plump in.

Though we have lots of work to do we don’t forget to play, and many are the tasks indulged in. One of the favourite amusements is boxing, and morning and evening a ring is formed wherein all may enter for a round or two. A few matches have been got up, and desperate battles have been fought betwixt champions of the various sections. Naturally party feeling runs high on these occasions, and everybody in the ship, from the Colonel and the Captain down to Carpenter Chinaman John, takes up a place outside the ring, watching the fray with bated breath. The end is usually a black eye or blood drawn, neither of which temporary inconveniences prevents furious and friendly handshakings at the finish. Singlestick has supporters, but none so many as the gentle art of boxing. Cockfighting has many votaries, and wrestling a few, for both of these elegant diversions may be partaken of in the comparative dark. Duty and pleasure are combined in tubbing. A sail bath four feet deep and some six square is slung and filled with sea water. The bather, dressed ‘altogether,’ stands well back and runs at the bath, rolling in head over heels. Number one is followed quickly by more, one on top of the other, until the bath is nothing but a struggling mass of arms and legs. Then the hose is turned on, and every man must take his turn or pay the penalty of being thrust underneath.

On our first Saturday night at sea the skipper—Captain Steuart—was kind enough to permit a smoking-concert to be held on the quarter-deck, where the saloon piano had been comfortably ensconced on a raised stage ornamented with flags. Corporal Blair took the public fancy tremendously with some of the comic songs that soldiers delight in. Corporal Skelton’s recitation about the Volunteer Instructor who complains of his squad that ‘They Largifies,’ fairly brought the house down. Among others who gave us pleasure were the brothers Wright and Private Woods, who, à trois, drew much melody from the banjo. The following morning (Sunday) we had service on deck, the Colonel and the Captain reading the Lessons. The little book so thoughtfully presented to every man by Mrs. Pugh was used.

Crossing the line was a most unexciting experience, for no Father Neptune came on board, nor did any of the other time-honoured things befall us. Alas! for the merchant navy! We did not see Ceylon at all, but during the night we passed, in the distance, a light which shone out from somewhere on its coast. That was our last sight of the outside world until we had crossed the great Indian Ocean.

On the whole, the horses have had a good time, very different from that endured by shiploads coming over from Australia. Most of them get a grooming of sorts every day, and many get an hour’s walking exercise round a small circle once or twice in the week. It is wonderful to behold an animal with legs puffed out like tea cosies begin his little tour and finish up with extremities clean cut as those of a racehorse.

Still, there is a good deal of sickness among them in various forms of fever and colic. First, Private Case, from Behar, lost a very clever little horse. Since then two more have died, one a valuable mare, the property of Lieutenant Crane, of Behar, and the other the charger of Private Atkinson, from Mussoorie.

The fifth officer of the ship, a braw lad frae Glescae, finds it very trying to hear us miscall the different parts—‘pairts,’ he says—of his beloved she. ‘A ship’s no like a house, wi’ upstairs an’ doonstairs,’ he plaintively remonstrates. And when any of us join him in a cigar and throw the stump out of the ‘window’ instead of the ‘scuttle,’ the poor man almost cries. One continually finds him gravely pointing out to little knots of men the absurdity of referring to the back or the front of a ship. He explains how it ought to be ‘forrard’ and ‘aft,’ and ‘above’ and ‘below.’ Then someone will mildly query where ‘astarn’ comes in, and how it is possible to distinguish between port and starboard. And he tells. But, all the same, we continue to search for each other upstairs and down; we lie on the floor, forgetting it is deck, and it still passes our comprehension how ‘loo’ard’ can be at one side of the ship one day and the opposite to-morrow. This fifth officer is a bit of a humourist, too, and, finding an appreciative audience, plays off a rich fund of nautical yarns that have gathered raciness in the course of long centuries since they were translated from the Portuguese of Vasco da Gama. The narrator evidently thinks that Lumsden’s Horse are as credulous as ‘the Marines.’ Perhaps he takes them to be a mounted variety of that species, and, being a naturalist among other things, he has a scientific motive for studying their peculiarities.

Colonel Lumsden confirmed the following non-commissioned appointments in A Company, some of which were provisionally made before leaving Calcutta:

Regimental Sergeant-Major: C.M. Marsham (Behar L.H.); Company Sergeant-Major E.N. Mansfield (Punjaub L.H.); Sergeants: H. Fox (Behar L.H.), E.M.S. McNamara (Behar L.H.), R.S. Stowell (Poona V.R.), and W. Walker (Assam V.L.H.); Lance-Sergeants: F.L. Elliott (Assam V.L.H.), D.S. Fraser (Oudh L.H.), J. Lee Stewart (Coorg and Mysore R.), and R.E. Dale (E.I.R.V.C.); Corporals: Percy Jones (Behar L.H.), G. Lawrie (Oudh L.H.), E. Llewhellin (Behar L.H.), and H. Marsham (Behar L.H.); Lance-Corporals: A.M. Firth (Behar L.H.), A.C. Walker (Assam Valley L.H.), E.J. Ballard (Punjaub L.H.), H.F. Blair (Behar L.H.), D.J. Keating (Calcutta Port Defence), W.S. Lemon (Calcutta V.R.), A. Macgillivray (Behar L.H.), and J.W.A. Skelton (Assam V.L.H.).

Transport Establishment: Lance-Corporals R.P. Estabrook, C.T. Power, J. Charles, S.W. Cullen, and G.W. Palmer.

It could not be expected that 150 men would be together on board ship for three weeks without a certain proportion going sick. Lance-Sergeant Lee Stewart, of the Coorg and Mysore Rifles, was struck down with pneumonia. Shortly afterwards Private H.H.J. Hickley, of the Behar Light Horse, was attacked by the same illness aggravated by pleurisy. About this time a large number were bowled over. Blame was laid on the tinned provisions, but, probably, if men had worn the mufflers, so tenderly knitted for us by Calcutta ladies, about their waists instead of round their necks much pain and trouble would have been avoided. The decks at night were covered with sleeping figures, clad and unclad in every degree. At turning in, a gentle zephyr that wouldn’t disturb the ringlets on a fair lady’s neck might be blowing, and in an hour a sharp breeze laden with heavy rain would sweep down and drench the unconscious sleepers. Then one of the immediate results of an order for men to go about barefooted was that Private Clayton-Daubney, of the Behar Light Horse, took a fall when turning a slippery corner and broke his collar-bone.

Photo: Bourne & Shepherd.
THE REGIMENT IN CALCUTTA
Part of A Company

To Sir Patrick Playfair Colonel Lumsden wrote while at sea a letter that is interesting as a proof of his interest in and care for the men under his command. They paid many glowing tributes to him afterwards, but none that gives a better key to the hold he had on their respect than his own simple words as they appear in the following extract:

I regret to say Hickley, from Behar, is in a very bad way. He had fever and pneumonia to start with, and has now gone clean ‘pāgāl,’[^[2]] and, though quite quiet and harmless, has to have two men in close attendance day and night. I had him taken into the saloon yesterday, in a cabin near my own. I am intensely sorry for the poor chap, as, unless a sudden recovery takes place, we shall have to make arrangement for the authorities to look after him when we land. We have one more case on board, which I was in hopes it might not be necessary to mention. Stewart, the planter from Mysore, had an attack of pneumonia which has taken a chronic form, and I fear there is small chance of immediate recovery. He may have to go into hospital at Durban—whether we land there or not—and I much doubt his ever being able to join us again. You will remember my telling you about him, a man of independent means (married, with a family), who came for the love of the game. He was a most useful man, knowing a lot about horses, and was made an acting sergeant almost as soon as he arrived, and put on to help Veterinary-Captain Stevenson. He did excellent work on board until he got ill, and I shall miss him much. It is his own wish to land if he is not better.

Beyond this we have had a most delightful voyage, simply perfect weather, and a sea like glass. The men act up to our corps motto ‘Play the game’ like the good chaps they are. You should see them at stable work in the morning, with nothing on but trousers rolled up to their thighs, or pyjamas ditto, and later in the day, washing their kit or making up puddings and cakes of sorts—some of the latter are works of art! We have a lot of musical talent on board, and have had a couple of excellent concerts. Captain Steuart added to the enjoyment of the last by giving a magic-lantern show. He is a very good sort, and has done everything in his power to ensure the comfort of the men. After finishing our daily inspection to-day he confided to me that he had never seen a troopship better kept, as regards order and cleanliness. The men are being practised daily in the use of the rifle, dropping boxes and wisps of straw overboard for targets, and I am more than pleased with the way they are shooting, at a moving target from a moving ship. You might also mention to my friend General Wace that Holmes is making excellent practice with his Maxim gun.

C.V.S. DICKINS

N.J. BOLST

CAPT. HOLMES

P.T. CORBETT

SERGT. DALE

MAXIM-GUN CONTINGENT

This is one picture of life in a troopship under the happiest conditions. There is another side to the picture, of which we may get glimpses in the experiences of men in Company B, to whom Calcutta’s citizens gave a hearty ‘God speed’ when they embarked in the ‘Ujina’ at Kidderpore Docks on March 3. Before she had cast off from her moorings the troopers had been called to dinner, and that feast was a revelation to them of all they were leaving behind. One corporal described it as ‘a sort of stew in stable-buckets, too filthy for anything’; but that may have been merely a little ebullition of aristocratic prejudice. Nevertheless, he and two comrades hurried on shore, and drove as fast as they could to Madan’s in the town, where they invested 200 rupees in sundry things which they regarded as necessaries for their sustenance during the voyage. They were back in time to hear the Lieutenant-Governor’s and Bishop Welldon’s speeches, and then to join in a parting cheer for their old adjutant, Captain Martin, who only left them to go on shore as the ‘Ujina’ cast off. The subsequent proceedings of that day are not recorded in the corporal’s diary, who contents himself with noting that he ‘had some tea—no milk, and awfully sweet.’ When he awoke next morning, after a restless night on bare planks between decks, the thought of creature-comforts must have been uppermost still, for he was aware of ‘gnawing pains—result of nothing to eat,’ and his morning reflections begin with the disjointed phrases: ‘No knives and forks. No salt. Those who had penknives were lucky. Fortunately we all had fingers.’ Was there in those last words a prophetic suggestion that some of them might not even have fingers for such uses after a while? If so, the gloomy foreboding passed without record, giving place to action, for at 6 o’clock that morning the corporal whose notes throw a glimmer of light on much of the darker side that is too often ignored, found himself in charge of a stable fatigue, wading at the heels of the horses in a foul, dark, unventilated drain about thirty inches wide, from which nothing ran off. He mentions incidentally that the four unfortunate men who had to clear away this accumulated filth were ‘very indignant’; and from this we may gather that they used adjectives to express their opinion of that first stable fatigue on board ship. It does not read like the best possible means of promoting a healthy appetite, but when called to breakfast three hours later they looked with dismay at a loaf that was to last each of them the whole day, and when one small tin of brawn was put before them for division among sixteen men at a table, they came to the conclusion that it ‘seemed very short commons indeed.’ Some of the men found that their carefully-arranged kits had been thrown aside in a confused heap to make room for native followers, and they ventured on a mild remonstrance, but were told, ‘You must look after your own things; you don’t have your bearers here.’ That obvious truth had impressed itself upon them very forcibly some hours earlier, while they were doing stable fatigue, and it needed no rubbing in. Other trials followed, as we gather from a brief but expressive note: ‘Dinner at 1.0. Soup and a messy stew in buckets, as before. Tried to get some salt unsuccessfully, and, returning, found the stew all gone. Beer was served out, which I didn’t drink. Gave my bottle away and drank water, hot and cloudy, out of a bath-tin. No knives or forks yet. Through our mess-room, while we feed, files a long procession of syces, transport wallahs, servants, Candaharis; sometimes a herd of goats, and always Lascars, carrying ropes, hoses, or buckets. Now they have kicked us out from where we were making ourselves comfortable below, and I miss much a corner, even such as my horse has, where I could put my things in safety. At night we throw our straw mattresses wherever we can find a vacant space, and scramble in confusion for our kits out of a heap of exactly similar ones. We would gladly have paid our own expenses for a little more comfort. The last straw came at 7.30, when the “cook-house” bugle went again, but the chef said, “No orders to cook anything more,” and shut the door in the faces of orderlies. The N.C.O.s then went in a body and complained. Result—bread and beer were served out. It was bread and water for me. Lay my mattress down among the horses, and was comfortable in spite of the stuffy smell and stamping about all night.’ Still, his thoughts seem to have dwelt on the idea that there was much to complain of—the coarse tin pots, the tea extremely sweet and without milk, the hot and dirty water—not even a dry canteen from which to supplement the scanty fare, and so on until he dropped into sweet sleep. That sleep must have been very refreshing, or a considerable change had come upon the ship by the next morning, when the food had improved greatly, and at supper the ‘men were merry enough, with great singing of songs.’ Later entries in this diary show that the first highly-coloured outbursts of discontent were due mainly, if not wholly, to a sudden change from the luxury and plenty of a planter’s ménage to the comparative coarseness of a simple soldier’s fare—otherwise Government rations—in necessarily rough circumstances. The additional comforts thoughtfully provided by the Calcutta Committee for consumption on the voyage were by mistake stowed away with baggage and other stores below. Thenceforward matters mended day by day, and, though there were still some discomforts to be endured, they seem to have been relieved by more amusements than appear in the letters sent for publication to the Indian newspapers. On the whole, however, a fairly comprehensive idea of the way in which B Company passed its days on board the ‘Ujina’ may be formed from the following letter, parts of which were published in the ‘Indian Daily News’:

Photo: Bourne & Shepherd.
SURMA VALLEY LIGHT HORSE. CONTINGENT OF LUMSDEN’S B COMPANY

Hard work and plenty of it has been the order of the day ever since we came on board. The greater part of this is in connection with the horses. It is, of course, of very great importance that we should be in a position to move forward as soon as possible after landing, and, bearing this in mind, Major Showers and his officers are doing their utmost to keep the animals fit. For the first day or two bran mashes were given the horses, with as much hay as they could eat. This has been gradually augmented, until they are now getting a mixture of bran and gram or linseed three times a day. The watering and feeding are carried out with the greatest regularity, each section officer personally superintending the work. Our daily routine may prove interesting to the uninitiated in these matters. Awakened by reveillé at 4.30, we have time to put our kits in order before getting a cup of tea at 5.30. Half an hour later the bugle sounds ‘stables,’ and the men immediately assemble on the lower deck, each section separately, to answer the roll. Absentees who are not on the sick-list, or engaged in fatigue or other duties, have their names noted down, and are dealt with afterwards. Each horse is taken out of his stall and thoroughly groomed, and the stall itself cleaned and disinfected daily. The horses are then watered, a certain number of men being told off for this duty; the rest are occupied in drawing and mixing the feeds, which they place in tin troughs, one in front of each horse. As soon as word is passed that watering is completed, the command ‘Feed’ is given, and the troughs are immediately lifted and fixed on the breast-boards attached to each stall. The hay is then served out in bundles, each horse getting six. These are opened and put in the bags hung over the horses’ heads.

The stable picket, consisting of three men from each section, is posted at 7 o’clock in the evening, and is on duty for twenty-four hours—till seven the following evening. Each man takes his turn as stable sentry for eight hours altogether out of the twenty-four—two hours on and four hours off. A non-commissioned officer is in charge of all four section pickets, and he also is on duty for twenty-four hours until relieved when the guard is changed next evening. He is expected to go round the pickets two or three times during the night, and see that the sentries are at their posts all right. The orderly officer also visits the pickets twice during the night. The duties of each sentry are to see that the horses do not get loose, or injure themselves, or ‘savage’ each other, and that they are fed properly.

After breakfast, at 8 o’clock, the men’s time is generally taken up in cleaning rifles and accoutrements, and washing and dressing themselves for a general parade at half-past 10.

The men are then kept busy at the manual and firing exercise for about an hour, and also bayonet exercise occasionally. The inspection of the steamer by the Captain, accompanied by Major Showers and officers, including the doctor and veterinary officer, also takes place at this hour, and Major Showers afterwards inspects the company. For the next hour or two we have little to do bar fatigues until the time comes for watering and feeding horses at midday stables.

During the afternoon the men usually employ themselves in playing cricket, boxing, wrestling, football, and tugs-of-war, until the bugles sound for evening stables at 5.30. Sunday is a day of rest, as far as possible, only necessary work, such as ‘stables,’ being done, and church parade is held at 10.30, the service lasting about half an hour. There are almost daily calls for fatigue parties, a few men being taken from each section to bring up stores or forage from the hold, and this is pretty hot and dirty work. At 9 o’clock every night the ‘last post’ sounds, and half an hour later ‘lights out.’ After that ‘there is naught but the sound of the lone sentry’s tread’ or the squeal of an angry horse to disturb the peaceful slumbers of snoring troopers on board the ‘Ujina,’ until the notes of reveillé, shrill if not always clear, wake them at dawn to another day of similar routine.

CHAPTER IV
NEARING THE GOAL—DISEMBARKATION AT CAPE TOWN AND
EAST LONDON

Though something went wrong with the ‘Ujina’s’ engines, which had to be stopped twice for repairs in the Bay of Bengal, she covered the remaining fifteen hundred leagues or so in very good time, and, passing Madagascar during the misty night of March 18, was within sight of the South African coast by daybreak of the 24th, and at midday she anchored off Durban, being unable to get nearer that port than the troubled roadstead two miles from shore. Thus her time from the Hugli to Port Natal was just three weeks, and those on board had the satisfaction of hearing that the ‘Lindula,’ with A Company, must be still at sea, having left Durban for Cape Town only three days before the ‘Ujina’s’ arrival. The man who brought that good news had evidently acquired a Kaffir or Oriental habit of saying the things that are pleasant whether true or not. In sober fact, the ‘Lindula’ had gone a week earlier, and was by that time landing her troops at Cape Town. As nobody was allowed to land, Lumsden’s Horse did not get the exciting experience of being lowered in a cage from the troopship’s gangway to a tug plunging and tossing and wriggling among the ‘rollers’ twenty feet below. But they had an opportunity of seeing how the thing was done when a Transport officer came on board that way with an order for the troops under Major Showers’s command to disembark at East London. This officer was accompanied by three of the Natal Carbineers, who had been with Sir Redvers Buller’s force to the relief of Ladysmith, and whose thrilling tales of adventure were as welcome as a newly-discovered series of Arabian Nights’ stories might have been to men who had heard no news for twenty-one days. The general situation was not quite as those Carbineers described it, but their account of Boer resistance in Natal did not by any means convey the idea that war was nearly at an end, although rumour magnified Lord Roberts’s successes to the extent of placing him within a march or so of Kroonstadt at a time when his troops were still hung up at Bloemfontein waiting for food and transport. As B Company had heard of Cronjé’s surrender and the relief of Ladysmith before leaving Calcutta, it would hardly have surprised them to learn that the Union Jack was floating over Pretoria. To them the mere occupation of Bloemfontein seemed a comparatively small matter, so they at once turned and began to rend with keen sarcasm the croakers who had predicted that B Company at least would be too late for anything. Too late! Why, their orders were to disembark at East London, and did not that mean an immediate start for the front? One sanguine trooper in the gladness of his heart wrote, ‘We go on shore at 11.30 to-day, leaving for Bloemfontein by train about the same hour to-night, and expect to arrive in forty-eight hours. We shall probably train to Bethulie and march from there to Bloemfontein, about 120 miles.’ His faith in the marching powers of Lumsden’s Horse must have been great indeed if he thought they could trek 120 miles across unknown veldt after travelling from East London to Bethulie by rail, and all in the space of forty-eight hours. There is something very fascinating about that picture of troopers so eager to be at the taking of Kroonstadt (‘which, it would seem, will be a big affair’) that they would perform superhuman feats to be there in time. No admirer of Lumsden’s Horse would venture to suggest that a march of forty leagues in less than two days was beyond the compass of their powers, but the man must be brimful of hope who could believe that there would be any time left for marching, or any inclination to march left in the men, after a South African railway, working under war pressure, had done with them. But in fact there was no such need for haste. B Company was quite in time for the ‘big affair’ at Kroonstadt, though it took more than twenty times forty-eight hours in the getting there. Colonel Lumsden, going ahead with A Company to land in Cape Town, had still more reason for entertaining sanguine views, though in his case they were modified by a fuller knowledge of events. When in sight of Table Mountain he added a postscript to his letter: ‘Off Cape. Just got orders. May be in for Pretoria. Hope so.’ The two companies, however, were not fortunate enough to come together under one command until nearly a month later. Their fortunes as separated units must therefore be dealt with in somewhat disjointed form still. How A Company fared after casting anchor off Durban may be told in the words of a special correspondent pf the ‘Englishman’ who had joined the corps for active service:

As we came in sight of Durban everybody was expecting that some official would dash on board directly he knew it was Lumsden’s Horse, to order us off down the coast, and that in a minute we should be steaming hard for our destination. But it happened otherwise. When fairly close in we signalled to the Coastguard station what ship we were and what she contained. Then a deep silence settled over things. Lots of shipping lay at anchor there, and every ship except ours had a steam launch calling upon it. But we, waiting with beating hearts, had no one to pay us a visit until a great puffing, rolling, important-looking tug bore alongside, churned up the blue water into white foam, dropped a tiny boat, and in a jiffy a blue-suited, gold-braided gentleman was on board and the tug had gone away over the waters. So we thought that meant orders to bring us ashore. But, alas! it was only a pilot come aboard to have a buck with the captain. Then, while we waited and waited, our signalling class set to work, and an energetic waving of arms and little flags elicited the reply from neighbouring ships that Ladysmith had been relieved. They also confirmed the news, which we had received at the Sandheads, of Cronjé’s surrender. Close by lay H.M.S. ‘Terrible,’ from which a naval contingent had been sent with her big guns to reinforce Sir Redvers Buller on the Tugela, and our first sight of one of the consequences of war was a launch full of wounded Bluejackets returning to their ship after relieving Ladysmith. While we lay peacefully swinging at anchor a great white ship flying the Stars and Stripes and Union Jack steamed slowly out of the harbour, and swung off to the left. As she passed a big transport the troops on board broke into ringing cheers, and when she neared us those with glasses read her name. It was the ‘Maine’ full of wounded soldiers from Sir George White’s gallant garrison. She went right round the harbour, visiting all the ships with troops. Last of all she came to us, and as she passed by, and we could see the white-aproned nurses and the bandaged figures with pale faces we gave them three times three, and still cheered again for the plucky ladies who had come all the way from America to care for our wounded. The poor chaps aboard did their best to answer our cheers, and then the ‘Maine’ steamed away down the coast on her way home to England.

However, the long-delayed hookum[^[3]] came at last, and a great shout broke forth when it was announced that we were ordered to proceed to Cape Town. We sat down to dinner at 7.30, and as we toasted Ould Oireland because ’twas St. Patrick’s Day, the ‘Lindula’s’ anchor heaved, and the screw that for twenty days had toiled without ceasing began its unremitting task again. When morning broke we had steamed well down the coast, passing the lights of East London in the night. Ten miles away was the seashore, bare, and uninteresting, but still the Africa that we had come some six thousand miles to argue about with the redoubtable Boers. And now we had to reckon with a foe that used no weapons nor fought with hands. This was Mother Ocean, who must have been troubled in her mind, for her breast heaved and tossed, and our good ship rolled until—well, better change the subject. The coast slipped by, and on the forenoon of the 20th we sighted afar off the flat top of Table Mountain. Steaming across the wide mouth of Simon’s Bay we saw hundreds of sharks—brown brutes that scooted away, showing a black fin, as the steamer ploughed her way through the waves. Then rounding the Point we sailed into Table Bay, and dropped anchor with a grand feeling of satisfaction that the voyage had ended. Journeying by sea is pleasant enough when you do it first class by P. and O., but when you go no class at all, and sleep on the deck, and get turned out before 5, and spend a big part of the day clearing out horse stalls or cooking your own food, and enduring lots of other discomforts, it’s no catch at all; and it was with intense relief we took our place among the lines of troopships in Cape Town harbour. And what a sight it was! Ships! ships! ships! And everywhere more ships! And most of them transports. From great 10,000-ton White Star Atlantic liners down to little coasters like our own ‘Lindula.’ All around us were vessels full of troops. Every hour or two a new one came in, or one weighed her anchor and steamed slowly by into the dock to disembark her living freight. Other ships were crammed from stem to stern with cattle, sheep, horses, leaving barely enough room on deck to turn the wheel. Vessels were packed like herrings in the harbour: so thick did they lie in places you could hardly see the water for ships. There we waited, and next morning the Health Officer came on board and gave us pratique, which meant a clean bill of health and freedom to land. Another day of waiting for the pilot. Then after a great rush and scurry collecting kit we slowly slid into harbour. And, lo and behold! it was Cape Town—Africa at last.

Disembarking is not a pleasant pastime, especially when 150 men have had three weeks in a ship during which to lose and mix up their belongings. But the order to clear out and make room for another ship was given, and had to be obeyed in a hurry. So we said good-bye to the ‘Lindula.’ Poor thing, she had done her best for us, though in her we lost four of our chargers and two transport ponies, a big proportion of our total of 180 animals, but nothing like the number that died on some other ships. A transport lying near us with Imperial Yeomanry lost 39 out of 450 in a three weeks’ voyage—nearly all from pneumonia.

Our orders were to proceed to Maitland Camp, some four miles to the north of Cape Town, and thither we marched, leading the horses, which of course were hardly in a fit state to ride. However, the walk seemed to do them good, and after a week in camp, with good feeding and gentle exercise, they picked up condition rapidly.

The men have little that is good to say of Maitland Camp. It is a place stale, flat, unprofitable, and altogether accursed. When we arrived the wind blew a hurricane, and setting up the tents was a task to try a Stoic. Once they were up the sand crept in at every crevice and lay thickly on everything, especially butter and food of every sort. Men went to sleep, or tried to, with the feeling that the bit of the earth on which they lay must surely be swept into the next world ere morning broke. But day dawned and we were still in Maitland Camp, with the rain pouring in torrents and turning the sand and earth into mud puddings, which clogged and wetted and dirtied every scrap that belonged to us. However, the third day recompensed us, for the sun shone hot and bright, and a gentle breeze wafted delicious scents from the woods of eucalyptus and fir trees all around. Boys came to us with delicious grapes, great bunches weighing one to two pounds apiece, each grape being as large as a pigeon’s egg and as full of juice and flavour as fruit can be.

Of Cape Town we saw very little, but liked that little much; only the price of things is terrible, and it seems much more serious parting with shillings than with rupees. Lumsden’s Horse had many eyes for the beautiful, and while declining to play the part of Paris in deciding on rival charms, they wax eloquent when their theme is the sex which, as one gallant trooper says, has done much to make this world the habitable place it is. In Cape Town the ladies are charming to look at. They dress just as they do at home in summer, and their cheeks are rosy, and they are altogether delightful to look upon. But still it matters little whether the cheeks be pale or rosy, we are all ready to back our ladies of India against any in the wide world for kindness and every other feminine attribute.

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 about the South African war method of standing men, some forty-five or so in a cattle-truck, encumbered with heavy coats, rifles, and other baggage—a leaky roof, and no sides.

This may be economical, as the Major said, but on a wet blustry night, when buckets of rain, mixed with soot from the engine, are falling, it is not a style of travelling that conduces to comfort. Then there is still another African style—namely, ten men with rifles, &c., in a third-class carriage meant to hold eight only. Both of these methods we sampled on our way up to Bloemfontein. And right glad I was when we had done with it, and took to the saddle. Some, however, confessed to having slept very well that first night in such strange circumstances, tired out as they were by hours of previous toil, though they woke next morning very cold, with nothing to eat but one loaf, which ten men divided between them.

They had eyes for the picturesque as well as for the agricultural possibilities of a country where Nature does much and man apparently very little, except to stroll about watching the cattle graze and the crops grow, unless he happens to be a Kaffir, which makes all the difference. Chiefly, however, Lumsden’s Horse must have been struck by the barren, rocky kopjes that seemed to spring suddenly in the midst of fertility and rise range behind range, stretching away to the mountains, which looked so near that it was impossible for imagination to measure the breadth of intervening plains. As one of them wrote, acquaintance with this country for the first time ‘made us realise the fearful odds that Buller had to tackle’; and no doubt many other troopers went on fighting fanciful battles against a wily enemy who, driven from one position, would gallop off to occupy another kopje still more formidable, and so prolong that imaginary fight, while the train, like a British column, wound its slow way through tortuous defiles. Lumsden’s Horse, however, had eyes for other things also, as a candid chronicler admits in his simple narrative, which may now be allowed to run its uninterrupted course:

At several stations on our way there was the usual crowd of ‘loyal’ ladies of mature age, and the still larger crowd of schoolgirls. The people seemed very glad to see us. There was a lot of cheering and waving of handkerchiefs and pleasant greetings at every station. They gave us cigarettes and cheroots, and some men were seen to be sporting bows of red, white, and blue when we left—little attentions from some fair hands in return perhaps for Lumsden’s badges, of which many shoulder-straps were by that time bereft.

Early next morning saw us at Cathcart, where we stopped about two hours, and took the opportunity to water and feed our horses. There is a nice little inn here, and we went down in a body and indulged in delicious bread, butter, and milk. Oh, such a contrast to the same articles of diet in India! The weather at this time of the year is nearly perfect, the air being fine, dry, and invigorating; to the eye wearied by the flatness of the plains of India the undulating country, small hills and green valleys between, is very refreshing; but what strikes one, more especially in the Free State, which we marched through later, is the desolateness of the country, miles and miles of veldt dotted here and there with small houses. Cattle-farming seems to be the principal thing they go in for here, but the farmers say that, what with rinderpest and drought, it is very disheartening work. The cattle are very fine, and strike us especially coming from India, where one sees such miserable specimens. About midday we arrived at Queen’s Town, and were very much disgusted to hear that Lord Roberts had wired down that we were to detrain and go into camp, as he needed all the horse-waggons and cattle-trucks for carrying remounts (several thousands of which were collected at Queen’s Town) to troops at the front. The camp is situated about two miles from the railway station, but they have run a siding into it, so that the carriages containing ourselves and our horses were simply detached from the rest of the train and we were run into the camp. We did not take long in detraining and picketing our horses; the poor brutes were simply delighted to get on firm ground again, and when let loose indulged in all sorts of antics—rolling on the grass, kicking up their heels, and larking like colts, to show appreciation of their freedom. As our tents had not arrived yet, we were obliged to sleep out in the open; but, knowing this would be a matter of course sooner or later, we made no bones about it. Unfortunately it came on to rain at night, and this made things generally uncomfortable. The mufflers so kindly knitted for us by the ladies of Calcutta proved simply invaluable; with these, Balaclava caps, and greatcoats on, we made ourselves perfectly comfortable. There were about twelve men of the Army Service Corps stationed here, and, with the proverbial hospitality of Tommy Atkins, they very kindly supplied us with hot cocoa and coffee, and offered to put up as many as possible of us in their tents. We found several of the Queensland Mounted Volunteers encamped here, also a part of the Militia Battalion of the Cheshires awaiting marching orders like ourselves. Next day our tents arrived, and we were soon quite settled down, ten men in a tent—a bit of a squash, but all right when one gets accustomed to it.

There they may be left for a time chuckling over the good story of a Militia regiment whose officers complained to Major Showers that they could not stand the language of which Lumsden’s Horse made such free and frequent use at ‘stables’ and other daily duties. Of course that language was only the mildest of mild Hindustani put into terms of endearment with certain genealogical references that sounded mysterious to the uninitiated.

CHAPTER V
AN INTERLUDE—THE RESULTS OF SANNA’S POST

At Maitland Camp and Queen’s Town the two companies of Lumsden’s Horse would probably have remained many weary weeks, eating their hearts out with the fever of impatience, but for circumstances which must necessarily be explained at some length in order to give a clear view of the general situation. With events leading up to that situation Lumsden’s Horse had nothing to do, but incidentally the crisis had a great deal to do with them as influencing their movements immediately afterwards. It will be remembered that Lord Roberts had found it necessary to halt at Bloemfontein a fortnight earlier, his victorious advance beyond that point being checked by the loss of a very valuable convoy which had fallen into the hands of the Boers at Waterval Drift. With characteristic cheerfulness he made light of a mishap that would have been regarded by many generals as almost disastrous in the circumstances, seeing that the convoy contained supplies without which no forward movement of troops beyond Bloemfontein would be possible pending the repair of railways and the opening up of communications with a secure base. In his despatches Lord Roberts makes but a passing reference to the Waterval Drift affair, as if it were of comparatively little importance, yet he knew perfectly well that its consequences would be a temporary paralysis of his whole force and heart-breaking delay at a time when energetic action might have brought the campaign to a decisive issue.

The relief of Ladysmith, far from improving matters in this respect, had simply set free a number of Boer commandos, whose leaders, baulked in their ambitious schemes for the conquest of Natal, were burning with desire to achieve successes in the Orange Free State. From their point of view it was still possible to retrieve the disaster of Paardeberg, and they knew that a severe blow struck at the British lines of communication would bring them many adherents from Cape Colony who were only waiting for such an opportunity. It would also inevitably prolong the campaign by cutting off sources of supply, on which Lord Roberts was dependent; and it might even turn the scale in their favour by bringing about European intervention. To that hope they clung always, as their State documents and correspondence prove abundantly. Therefore it was of the first importance that they should assume the offensive before Lord Roberts could strengthen his lines of communication and bring up ample supplies to form an advanced base at Bloemfontein. If circumstances had permitted him to push on at once, the moral effect on enemies already disorganised and disheartened would have been enormous. As it was, his inaction revived the drooping Spirits of Boers who were previously on the point of accepting defeat as inevitable. They saw the inherent weakness of a force that could not move far in any direction until the means of feeding itself had been secured, and their thoughts turned at once to the possibility of frustrating that object by vigorous raids at every vulnerable point. In such an emergency the presence of men like Louis Botha and Christian De Wet was worth more than a thousand rifles. They had the brain to plan and the intrepidity to attempt any enterprise that might bring them an advantage by embarrassing their adversaries, and every day’s delay on our side was an opportunity given to them for more complete concentration. This last word must not be misunderstood. When applied to Boer strategy or tactics it does not necessarily mean,a gathering of units into one great force, but rather a concentration of efforts on one object which they often secure while seeming to aim at something entirely different by a distribution of their commandos in many directions. Necessarily such distracting operations can never bring about decisive results, but they served the Boer purpose admirably then, and De Wet got the opportunity he wanted to prove himself an ideal leader for work of that kind.

From some points of view this may be regarded as the most important phase of the whole campaign; it taught the Boers how to harass our forces with the greatest effect while exposing themselves to comparatively little danger. First of all, however, they set themselves to the task of showing that there was life and power for mischief in them yet, their object evidently being to effect surprises that might create panic among our troops and so render raids less difficult of accomplishment. In the development of that idea we recognise the peculiar craft of Christian De Wet, who at that time had less respect for the courage of ‘rooineks’ than he began to entertain soon afterwards. Sanna’s Post was a lesson to him not less than to us. With the exaggeration which characterised a great deal that was written in those days some critics at home described this affair as a ‘black disaster,’ thereby meaning apparently that it was something rather disgraceful and a stain on our military reputation. A disaster it was in the literal sense, for the stars in their courses seemed to be turned against us; but they were certainly not blotted out, and they never shone on soldiers whose deeds could better bear the light. The story of Sanna’s Post or Koorn Spruit is worth telling again, not only because it marks emphatically the revival of Boer hopes, after Ladysmith and Paardeberg and Kimberley had done much to shatter their self-confidence, but because it furnishes a splendid example of British valour, defiant in the moment of defeat, and all the brighter by contrast with the gloom through which it shines. In details the following version of what happened may not be more accurate than others, and it lacks the completeness that subsequent access to official documents might have given; but at least it has the merit of having been written at the time, and of showing what was the impression conveyed to the minds of people who were in the midst of those stirring events and could gauge their significance without exaggeration. This description by the Editor, who, as War Correspondent of ‘The Daily News,’ was then at Bloemfontein, may be given almost in its original form.

We knew that Colonel Pilcher, in attacking Ladybrand, had roused a hornet’s nest, and that Brigadier-General Broadwood, in command of a small mixed column, was retiring along that road from Thaba ’Nchu, hard pressed by Boers, whom he could only keep at a distance by the skilful disposition of his forces in successive rearguard actions. His movements were hampered by the slow progress[progress] of a convoy. He was falling back on a post at Sauna’s near the waterworks from which Bloemfontein draws its main supply, and expected to be there some time during the night of Friday. He had made application for reinforcements when the Boers, gathering strength as they came, began to overlap him on each flank, in spite of anything that his men could do to check every move of that kind. Thereupon Lord Roberts sent General Colvile’s Division, with artillery, and Colonel Martyr’s brigade of Mounted Infantry and Irregular Horse eastward by a forced march. They left Bloemfontein hours before daybreak on Friday, but even then it was too late. Colonel Martyr, pushing on as fast as the condition of over-worked horses would permit, only reached Boesman’s (or Bushman’s) Kop with his leading troops about 7 o’clock. There was still six miles of veldt between him and the scene of disaster. Before he could cross that in force sufficient to be of any use, the worst had happened, and nothing remained for him but to cover the retreat of detachments that had already got through the Boer lines before going to help those who were still beset.

What were the causes leading to disaster we did not know then—we do not know with absolute certainty even now. No special correspondents were with General Broadwood’s column when sudden misfortune fell upon it. All details had to be gathered at second hand, and many of the combatants who were best qualified to give an impartial account of the trap in which our troops were caught were either dead or prisoners in the hands of the enemy. In the excitement following that swift surprise those who had to fight hard for their lives could not see much on either side of their immediate front. They were mainly concerned with the necessity for shooting quick and straight. It is therefore not surprising that stories of the fight, as seen from many different points of view, should vary so that it becomes a little difficult to follow the exact sequence of events.

Two or three points, however, seem tolerably clear. When Brigadier-General Broadwood halted his troops to bivouac at 4 o’clock on Saturday morning, March 31, after crossing the Modder River, they were worn out by a long night march that had entailed incessant watchfulness. He was then in touch with the small force of Mounted Infantry holding the waterworks, and, naturally supposing that their commander had taken all precautions to safeguard the drift across Koorn Spruit, he did not call upon his weary column to furnish additional patrols for duty in that direction, but formed a chain of outposts along ridges in rear towards the known enemy, who had been harassing his march all the way from Thaba ’Nchu.

It is known that the officer who was in command at Sanna’s Post did take more than ordinary precautions before dawn that morning by sending a company of Mounted Infantry westward across the drift near Pretorius’s Farm, and, if a Boer prisoner may be trusted, that very precaution contributed to the disaster. According to his story, a party of three hundred Boers, who had been cut off from the main Brandfort body by General French’s Cavalry, on Thursday, were making their way across country to join Grobelaar’s[Grobelaar’s] (or, rather, as it had then become, De Wet’s) command on the Ladybrand side. Hearing Koorn Spruit, this party saw the Mounted Infantry patrol, and, the first principle of Boers in warfare being to hide themselves from the enemy, they at once took shelter between the high banks of a water-course which is, in places, nearly as dry as a khor in the Soudan. Then they began to plan an ambush, with the object of cutting off that isolated Mounted Infantry company. Until that moment they had not thought of laying a trap for the convoy, about which, indeed, they knew nothing. Such is the story told by a Boer prisoner. If true, it proves that the capture of Broadwood’s convoy was by a force entirely independent of the one against which he had been fighting his rearguard actions, and therefore unpremeditated, or, at any rate, not the calculated result of skilful tactics.

At first it was hastily assumed that one of the ablest scouts in the British Army had been out-manœuvred, and allowed himself to be surrounded by Boers. That the officer who gained distinction for boldness, dash, and caution when reconnoitring successive Dervish positions in the Soudan, should allow himself to be caught in a trap by Boer farmers was almost inconceivable. It now seems as if the enemy had merely stumbled on an opportunity, of which they took advantage, not quite realising what it meant.

Against this, however, was the evidence of a civilian refugee who declared that there were many more than three hundred Boers concealed in Koorn Spruit, and believed that secret information must have been given to them of the fact that no force had been posted to guard the drift by which Broadwood’s column must cross. On Pretorius’s Farm he met a burgher who had given up his arms, and received a pass from our military authorities permitting him to return to his home and settle down in peace, secure from all fear of molestation at the hands of British troops. This disarmed burgher, who had been fighting against us up to the occupation of Bloemfontein by Lord Roberts, showed such an accurate knowledge of the Boer movements that he must have watched them very closely. He could tell the exact position from which every gun would open fire on the English, column before it came into action. This knowledge he imparted without reserve, and yet, apparently, he had no apprehensions of ill-treatment from his former comrades as the penalty for deserting them. The incident, whatever interpretation may be put upon it, is curious, and will, perhaps, help to explain many things that happened when submissions were accepted and passes granted with too lavish leniency.

It is more than probable that a Boer attack on the waterworks in order to destroy the pumping machinery there was part of a plan conceived directly after the occupation of Bloemfontein by our troops, but it could not be carried out before the column holding Thaba ’Nchu had been forced to retire. The artillery positions may therefore have been selected some time previously for the purpose of shelling out any force that might make a stand at the waterworks, and it is all consistent with the Boer prisoner’s statement that no deliberate attempt was made by General Broadwood’s pursuers to surround him until they found that his convoy had been accidentally headed off and partly destroyed at the drift across Koorn Spruit by a comparatively small body lying in ambush there for another purpose. Such a combination of accidents seems improbable, but certainly not more so than the assumption that a Boer commander, calculating all the chances to a nicety, had ventured to detach such a small force and send it round by a wide détour across some miles of open plain with the object of intercepting, by an ambush, a column that had been able to hold its own against odds for some time. If so, he gave more hostages to fortune than the Boers have risked elsewhere.

Whatever may be the truth in this respect, it is clear that neither the officer in charge of communications, whose Mounted Infantry held Sanna’s Post, nor Brigadier-General Broadwood, had reason to suspect the presence of any hostile force in that immediate neighbourhood.

When the retiring column got touch of its friends near the waterworks, bivouac was immediately formed, and tired men no sooner lay down, with saddles for pillows, and rifles by their sides, than they were sound asleep, leaving the duty of watchfulness to their rearguard, which, in outpost line, occupied a range of rough hills southward, overlooking the road by which they had retired from Thaba ’Nchu. It was then 4 o’clock. Little time could be given to rest, for the column had to start again in two hours. Just before 6 o’clock the convoy of a hundred waggons with mule-teams began to move off towards Koorn Spruit Drift. Such was the false sense of security that no armed body went ahead. Some dismounted men, whose horses had been shot or otherwise used up, marched as a baggage-guard, but most of them had stowed their rifles on the waggons while helping to get the column in marching order. Nothing warned them that danger was near as they approached the drift. Not a movement was to be seen across the broad veldt but dark shadows of hills creeping backwards as the sun rose.

At that moment, from a distant hill in rear, overtopping the outpost ridge, darted the flash of a Boer gun, then another and another from different positions, followed by the shriek of shells and the crash of bursting charges. Every shot, well aimed, struck with a dull thud, and threw up columns of earth among or near the masses of men who were saddling up or inspanning teams for the march, but did no damage beyond frightening mules and increasing the confusion, where Cape boys, in their haste to obey a peremptory order, got harness entangled and themselves bewildered. Our Horse Artillery, being in a hollow, and masked by the movement of troops about them, did not reply, but limbered up and followed the transport waggons, which by that time had begun to cross the drift. Nearly half of them had cleared it, when from behind steep banks in the winding spruit on each side Boers galloped forward in dense troops, and, halting with rifles at the present, summoned everybody to surrender.

Some men of the baggage guard got to their arms, and, lying between waggon wheels, opened fire, but they were few, and the Boers many. The others, unarmed, could do nothing but obey the stern mandate: ‘Hold up your hands; come this way and give us your bandoliers.’

Then U Battery of the Royal Horse Artillery, following close upon the waggons, was surrounded before a gun could be wheeled about for ‘Action front,’ and the drivers were ordered to dismount and outspan. Gunners, however, do not yield without a struggle, even when their eyes look into the barrel of an enemy’s levelled rifle. Hands were on revolvers in an instant, but before these could be drawn shooting had begun, and many a gallant fellow fell. Horses, too, were shot down, or, being wounded, plunged madly over the traces. One team, startled by the din about it, stampeded, and galloped off with gun and limber, but no drivers. Thus one gun was saved. The other five fell into Boer hands, their gunners being either killed, wounded, or taken prisoners.

Sergeant-Major Martin escaped and ran back to warn Major Hornby, who, in command of Q Battery, was then scarcely a hundred yards from the scene of disaster. That officer gave the order to unlimber and come into action, but could not open fire while our men and the enemy were mixed up together among baggage-waggons, and at the same time his own gunners were being shot down. A small body of Remington’s Scouts made one plucky effort to get near the captured battery, but suffered heavily. Then two troops of Roberts’s Horse, acting as escort for the convoy, dashed forward to cross the spruit and take the Boers in flank, but they were confronted by enemies from another ambush, who, at a distance of only a few yards, had them covered and called upon them to surrender. Their only answer was ‘Fours about—gallop’; but it came too late, and before they could get out of range nearly every saddle was emptied. Only five men got away, and of these four were wounded. Among the missing, nine officers had either been killed or fallen into the enemy’s hands.

Emboldened by success, the Boers came into the open, as they had never done before. They galloped up to groups of men who were fighting shoulder to shoulder, reined in, and shot as they sat in the saddle, reckless of the bullets that whistled about them. One body charged close up to a Maxim gun that was pouring out a deadly torrent of bullets, and silenced it for a time by shooting down the detachment, but whether they got away or fell victims to their own bravery could not be seen as the struggle surged round them. Three New Zealanders whom I met coming out of the fight told the story, and spoke with admiration of the daring displayed by many of their foes, but still more enthusiastically of the splendid courage of our Horse Artillery. Of these three, one was a fine type of the half-caste Maori, the others hardy Colonists, who looked as if they had faced death more than once—cold-eyed and calm. They had evidently taken mental note of all that passed within sight of them, while they with others held a group of buildings, keeping the enemy in check by steady shooting.

Major Hornby, finding that he could not bring his guns to bear at short range without shooting down friend as well as foe, limbered up to get clear of the close mêlée. In wheeling round on rough ground one gun capsized, bringing all the team down with it—horses and drivers together in a confused mass. The Boers saw their chance, and brought a withering rifle fire to bear, so that every attempt to right the gun failed. Under this fire the two wheelers of another team fell. The leaders struggled on for a time, dragging their maimed comrades, then came to a standstill, and that gun also had to be left behind. Marksmen of the Durham Light Infantry did their best to keep down the enemy’s fire, while volunteers ran out to help the distressed gunners, who, managing to escape, went off for fresh horses.

Captain Gore Anley, commanding the Essex Regiment’s Mounted Infantry, aided by two of his men, brought a wounded gunner from under that terrific fire to safety, and then went out with a brother-officer to help at the guns. Time after time the artillerymen brought up fresh teams, which were shot down before they could be hooked to the limbers. One driver had nine horses killed or wounded before he gave up the attempt as hopeless.

Meanwhile Major Hornby, with four guns of his own command, and the only one remaining of U Battery, which had been recaptured after stampeding, moved southward to a position twelve hundred yards from Koorn Spruit Drift. There he brought them into action with a cool audacity and effect that paralysed the enemy. Though he could not save the guns that had been left behind, he could cover the retirement of Cavalry and Mounted Infantry of the rearguard, who, unable longer to hold the low ridge against heavy odds, were being forced back from the waterworks, fighting stubbornly, though threatened in flank by the force that had captured our convoy. Shelled at from right and left, smitten by storms of rifle bullets, the gunners of Q Battery never budged. Coolly, as if at target practice, they loaded and aimed. The shells burst among the Boers, checking more than one attempt at a rush, and then the remnants of a shattered brigade were enabled to retire upon their supports, who had rallied for a stand at the station buildings.

All the time officers and men of the Army Medical Corps were covering themselves with honour by brilliant services rendered to stricken soldiers, who lay helpless where the ground was torn by bullets. The coolest deed of all, however, was done by an American named Todd, a trooper in Roberts’s Horse. With a comrade he had first volunteered to go out and bring in some stray horses for the disabled guns. Before they had ridden fifty yards the second trooper was shot dead, but Todd galloped on straight towards the Boers, rounded up both horses, and had nearly brought them back when one was killed. When he rejoined his detachment Todd heard an officer asking for volunteers to go out in search of their doctor, who was lying wounded in a donga. Without waiting to hear more the trooper turned his horse’s head towards the Boer lines again and galloped off. Twenty minutes later he rode back slowly, bearing a heavy burden on his arms. ‘I couldn’t see the doctor anywhere,’ he said, ‘but I have brought back the only wounded man that I found alive there.’ If ever a man earned the right to wear the grim badge of Roberts’s Horse it is Trooper Todd. Deeds of heroism, however, were not rare that day. They could not avert disaster, but they shed a light upon it that dispels the shadow of humiliation.

Our men had still hard fighting to do before they could hope to extricate themselves. Brigadier-General Broadwood’s retirement upon the station buildings was not effected without difficulty, and it is wonderful that he should have been able to keep the remnants of so many broken squadrons in hand, while they were weakened by further losses every minute, and the on-coming enemy gathered strength. Several horsemen, escaping, got away across the veldt, and then, forming groups, headed towards Boesman’s Kop, Boers pursuing for some distance. But the main body made a stand at the station buildings, and fought it out for two weary hours, so fiercely that the enemy did not dare to come to closer quarters. The company of Burmese Mounted Infantry that had been on outpost duty west of Koorn Spruit, when they found themselves cut off by Boers in ambush, made an attempt to rejoin the main body, but were in turn surrounded. Having some advantage of ground, though outnumbered, they were enabled to hold their assailants off until 7 o’clock.

Then the scene changed. Troops appeared on Boesman’s Kop. They were the advanced guard of Colonel Martyr’s Mounted Infantry brigade, which had made a forced march to relieve the beleaguered column. Their commander halted only long enough to let the main body close up, and then ‘Queenslanders to the rescue’ came sweeping across the veldt as fast as their jaded horses could move. But the Boers were at their old tactics again, and the Queensland Mounted Infantry fell into a trap skilfully laid for them. Before the enemy could reap much advantage, however, Colonel Henry was at them with all his companies of Regular Mounted Infantry, which the astute Brigadier had ordered forward when he saw the Queensland men in difficulties. The young officer, who has spent many years with Egyptian Camel Corps, chasing Dervish raiders and scouting about their strongholds, was not to be caught by a Boer ambush. He advanced upon them in a formation too flexible even for their mobility, and gradually drove them before him until the Burmese and Queensland Mounted Infantry were enabled to fight their way through the weakened cordon.

This timely diversion gave General Broadwood his opportunity, Major Hornby’s battery fell back to another position, covering the retirement, and then the column, leaving its wounded under care of our own surgeons, retired slowly to join the welcome reinforcements. They had to turn again and again to face the foe, who still hung on their heels, and all the way they were shelled by Boer guns, until a final stand was made near the waterworks, where the enemy dared not attack, though the artillery fire continued for nearly two hours longer.

Late that afternoon the Highland Brigade, under General Hector MacDonald, passed Boesman’s Kop, and advanced to get touch of the enemy, near Modder River; but except for a few shells and sputtering rifle fire, no attempt was made by the Boers to resist this advance. When General Smith-Dorrien’s brigade, and other troops of the Ninth Division, joined MacDonald, the column that had fought so well after disaster fell upon it, dispersed into scattered remnants once more, each unit making for the appointed bivouac in any want of formation best adapted to the needs of weary men who had to walk because their horses were more tired than themselves.

What a roll-call it would have been if the Brigadier had not in mercy spared them that melancholy ordeal! When the losses came to be counted, they numbered, in dead, wounded, and prisoners, nearly a third of the force that had marched out of Thaba ’Nchu forty hours earlier. Of U Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, only a mere handful remained, and Q Battery had suffered heavily too. Seven out of twelve guns had been left in the enemy’s hands, with some eighty baggage waggons full of stores. Household Cavalry, 10th Hussars, and Mounted Infantry had losses to mourn, and Roberts’s Horse the most of all. Unhappily, it was too late to hope that either guns or convoy could be recaptured. They had all been taken off during the afternoon towards Thaba ’Nchu, and Boers were in possession of the waterworks, with artillery on heights behind, covering the road.

Next day a demonstration of the whole force under General Colvile’s command was made, as if to drive every Boer from the waterworks, where mischief had been done by the destruction of pumping engines; but it ended in nothing, and then we gradually drew in our forces. The Boers assumed the offensive again, and began to threaten our line of communications at several points.

These were the conditions that made Lord Roberts anxious to secure the services of every mounted corps on which he could rely for meeting the new Boer tactics by swift counter-strokes. Most of them he had foreseen when orders were sent for Lumsden’s Horse to be supplied with all the remounts necessary for repairing losses and pushed on to the front. Sanna’s Post with all its consequences had not been counted on; but it made the need for mounted troops all the more urgent in order that pressure round about Wepener might be relieved and lines of communication cleared. That action, lamentable because of the sacrifices it entailed, but glorious in its heroic incidents, gave to Lumsden’s Horse not only an opportunity, but an example; and we may be sure that, when the news reached them at Maitland Camp and at Queen’s Town, every trooper made up his mind to be a worthy comrade of the men who had risked their lives so nobly and fought with such stubborn valour in vain attempts to save the guns at Sanna’s Post.

CHAPTER VI
BY RAIL AND ROUTE MARCH TO BLOEMFONTEIN

A week was more than enough in which to exhaust all the charms that A Company could find round about its dusty camp at Maitland. The fragrance from woodland belts of pine and eucalyptus trees soon began to pall; there was little to refresh the eye in that changeless view across unbroken flats, where a grey haze hung morning, noon, and eve, veiling the distant mountains northward; the beauty of Table Mountain, as seen from there, with kloof-fretted steeps towering up to the clouds, is not a joy for ever; and Cape Town shows its least attractive side towards Maitland, which in itself is the embodiment of suburban dreariness, having but two places of entertainment—a swimming bath and an observatory. As admission to the latter can only be gained by a special permit from the Astronomer Royal, Lumsden’s Horse had few opportunities to appreciate the wild dissipation of ascending its quaint old tower, which, indeed, most of them mistook for a dismantled windmill. And the amusements that Cape Town offers to soldiers of less than commissioned rank had few temptations for troopers of Lumsden’s Horse. Mount Nelson, with its gay crowd of fair women and maimed heroes, was to them but a vision of the life that had been. How those dainty damsels would have been shocked to see a trooper in weather-stained khaki and ammunition boots treading the glades and terraced heights of that South African Olympus! But not more shocked than a man of Lumsden’s Horse would have felt at finding himself in such a situation. Ridiculous prejudice, of course, and to be condemned by all right-thinking people in whose opinion the soldier’s uniform is a badge of honour. Yes! but like many other badges it has to be worn with a difference; and nobody knows better than those who have tried the experiment of putting it on that a private soldier’s service kit is not the garb in which one would choose to appear where fashion and beauty congregate. A man may have served through a whole campaign in the lowest ranks, obedient to every command, however humiliating or distasteful, and not have felt the yoke gall him half so sorely as it does when 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 to the front. So Stellenbosch grew in repute, and visits to it (without return tickets) were so frequent, that an expressive verb had to be coined for use in everyday conversation. The phrase ‘I’ll be Stellenbosched if I do,’ became quite familiar, and many a gallant officer knew to his cost what it meant. Rustication in that old Dutch settlement under leafy arcades, where, in ordinary times, ‘the stillness of the cloisters reigns,’ was not the only penalty. These, however, were things not known to recent arrivals like Lumsden’s Horse, who might have met and hobnobbed with the latest candidate for Stellenbosch and have been none the wiser. So they went on their way thinking nothing of the old Dutch town and its new notoriety, and in the darkness of night, when the new moon showed no more than a crescent thread of silver, were winding by sharp curves and steep gradients up the kloofs of Hex River Mountains towards the Great Karroo. Lumsden’s troopers saw little of the glorious landscape that is opened up at that height. Those who were not asleep had no light to see it by but the cold light of the stars, and that seemed to be swallowed up in the depths of impenetrable shadow, except where the lamps of Worcester Town, in the plains 2,500 feet below, twinkled like feeble reflections on a wine-dark sea. Then the swift dawn came, and when the sun rose they were crossing the Great Karroo, which at that time of year—the true winter of Cape Colony—wore its least attractive garb. Bare patches of sandy soil gaped between scattered clumps of blue-green scrub, where a month or so later it would be glowing with the purple and gold and scarlet flowers of lilies and asters innumerable, and the gorgeous crowns of mesembryanthemums of every conceivable shade, from white through primrose and orange to the deepest crimson. In its winter state the Great Karroo brings back to travellers of wide African experience clear memories of the Northern Soudan. In all chief physical features the two regions, so widely separated, are curiously alike. Here are pyramidal mountains with flat-topped crowns rising wall-like above the conical base exactly resembling the ‘Jebels’ on which one has looked with weary eyes, day after day, through the rippling heat of the Soudan deserts. In some parts of the Karroo these mountains close upon narrow gorges, along which the railway winds, and its sudden turns round rocky buttresses seem so familiar to one who knows the old military line above Wady Halfa that he can imagine himself travelling once more through the desolate Batn el Hagar towards Khartoum. To men for whom the rugged Karroo had no such associations with the land of mysterious fascination, there may well have been a wearisome monotony in the unvarying repetition of similar forms—the vast plains whereon no tree bigger than the Acacia horrida grows, and where the houses, if any, are so widely separated that they only serve to deepen the impression of melancholy solitude; the waterless rivers, the bare brown kops. For full appreciation of the Karroo one must have breathed its invigorating air from childhood, and seen it in seasons of beauty with all the glory of its summer raiment on. De Aar Junction is no more than a huge collection of railway sheds and equally hideous houses set in the most barren plain of the Great Karroo; but Lumsden’s Horse saw it busy with many signs of military preparation for a forward movement, and so it seemed to them the very gateway of the fateful future, in the shaping of which they were to have a hand. That night they crossed the Orange River at Norval’s Pont, where Railway Pioneers, mostly skilled artificers from the Johannesburg mines, under Major Seymour—‘the greatest of mechanical engineers,’ as Colonel Girouard styled him—were hard at work, night and day, repairing the broken bridge, while baggage was being transferred by the wire trolly high overhead. Lumsden’s Horse crossed the pontoon ‘deviation’ to a train on the farther side, and when morning dawned they were journeying slowly—with many precautions against possible surprises by marauding Boers—to the goal of their hopes. Bloemfontein was reached by A Company in the afternoon of April 3, when they went into camp at Rustfontein, two miles from the town, and became part of the 8th M.I. Regiment, under the command of that very able leader, Colonel ‘Watty’ Ross, whose portrait appears on the opposite page. Of him Colonel Lumsden writes: ‘No better man could have been chosen to command a body of Irregular Horse. Capable, tactful, with a keen eye for a country, and a man hard to beat in the saddle, he was in fact an ideal leader at the game he had to play. We were under his command from the time the 8th M.I. was formed at Bloemfontein, early in April 1900, taking part in every action of that eventful march to Pretoria, and the 8th M.I. had the honour of scouting in front of headquarters throughout.’ After the memorable June 5, when the capital of the South African Republic fell into our hands, Lumsden’s Horse were placed for some time on communications at Irene and Kalfontein, but their Colonel, tiring of this inaction, applied to General Smith-Dorrien for more congenial employment. His wish was shortly afterwards gratified, and Lumsden’s Horse, with mutual regrets on both sides, were transferred to another column, thus severing their connection with the 8th M.I. and the leader whose soldierly qualities had endeared him to all ranks. Their respect for him found appropriate expression long afterwards, when every man of the corps, from Colonel Lumsden downwards, subscribed for a badge, the regimental ‘LH’ in diamonds, and this they presented to Mrs. Ross in token of their admiration for her husband as a commander and in appreciation of the considerate kindness he had shown to all ranks while they served under him. That the admiration was not all on one side may be gathered from an incident that occurred some time after Lumsden’s Horse were embodied with the 8th Mounted Infantry Corps, and Colonel Lumsden thinks justly that no better proof could be given of the able and smart class of men he had in his command than the following remark from Colonel Ross: ‘Lumsden, whenever I ask you to send me an A.D.C. or galloper, never mind sending me one of your officers; your troopers are just the class I want.’

Photo: Dickinson
MAJOR (LOCAL COLONEL) W.C. ROSS, C.B.

Some months after the severance of associations that had been so pleasant for commander and commanded, when Lumsden’s Horse had seen their last of South African fighting, Colonel Ross had the lower part of his face shattered by a bullet while attacking a Boer position at Bothaville with the gallant dash which his old comrades remember so well. In that fight De Wet’s forces were completely routed, and lost nearly all their artillery; but the victory was not achieved without heavy sacrifices on our side. Colonel Le Gallais, who commanded the Mounted Infantry, and also Captain Williams, formerly Staff-Officer of the 8th M.I. Corps under Colonel Ross, were killed, while going to the assistance of their brother-officer; and, in the same fight, Lieutenant Percy Smith, who had gained honours as a trooper of Lumsden’s Horse at Ospruit when he went out with his Colonel to bring in a helpless comrade, was wounded in the performance of a gallant action by which he won the D.S.O.

For the sake of finishing a story events have been somewhat anticipated, and B Company may resent the interpolation, at this stage, of a flattering comment that belongs properly to a later period. In the actions from which Colonel Ross formed his high opinion of Lumsden’s troopers, B Company had taken its full share. Before resuming touch with the movements of that body, however, reference must be made to another incident in which A Company had the proud distinction of representing the whole corps. The occasion was a visit on April 4 by Lord Roberts, who, after inspecting the company, called out and shook hands with Trooper Hugh Blair, whose brother, an officer of the Royal Engineers, had been badly wounded in the Candahar campaign. The Commander-in-Chief then made a brief speech to Colonel Lumsden and his troopers. Of this no shorthand note or transcription from mental tablets seems to have been made, but its meaning is probably expressed in the following letter which Lord Roberts wrote to Sir P. Playfair, C.I.E., Chairman of the Executive Committee of Lumsden’s Horse: ‘Dear Sir Patrick,—Many thanks for your letter of February 26. A few evenings ago I had great pleasure in inspecting Lumsden’s Horse immediately after their arrival here. I sent a telegram to the Viceroy to inform him that I had done so. They are a workmanlike, useful lot. I am sure they will do splendidly in whatever position they may be placed. It is most gratifying to hear the way in which the corps was raised. The sum subscribed by the public generally is the proof of the patriotism of the subscribers, especially Colonel Lumsden himself. You will have seen in the papers that we are detained here for a while until we can refit, but when this is done we shall move northward. I am confident that during our advance Lumsden’s Horse will do credit to themselves and to India. Believe me, yours very truly, (Signed) Roberts.’

A few days after that inspection the Commander-in-Chief sent to Colonel Lumsden a telegram he had received from the Viceroy. Lord Roberts’s secretary wrote as follows: ‘Dear Colonel Lumsden,—The Field-Marshal 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 habitation. Towards the end of the march, whether through sheer exhaustion or from the effects of the moonbeams (one of our sages started this theory next day), half the men went to sleep in their saddles. I was one of the somnolent ones, and my horse took me several yards in front of the main body, and I awoke with a start to hear my companions silently chuckling at the situation. The only remedy was to get off and march alongside our horses, and several of us did this. Natives told us afterwards that Boers had been hanging on our flanks all through that march, and the only thing that saved us was our water-cart, which they mistook for a gun-carriage. The Boers must have changed a good deal since then if they could be so easily deceived.

We left Spytfontein about 7 o’clock that morning and arrived at Springfontein at 3 in the afternoon. Here the orders were for us to start again next morning, escorting a Maxim battery of four guns to Bloemfontein, in addition to the 600 mules we already had under convoy. I may mention that one section of our company always acted as advance guard, throwing out scouts in front and on the flanks; the duty of these scouts being to search the kopjes on either side of the road, and communicate with the main body by hand signals should any enemy appear in sight. Starting from Springfontein early on April 10, we did a march of fifteen miles to Jagersfontein. Here Jim, having pity for my lameness, took my horse to water while I, in return, prowled round and found a little house where the womenfolk agreed to let us have tea. I was shown into the drawing-room, which looked very cosy by comparison with the dreary veldt. Ordered tea for six and went to gather my pals for the feast. After I had groomed my horse, fed him, and put his jhool on, we went off to the small house. But, alas! the tea was all gone. Six other men had been there and declared that I had ordered it for them. This is the first example of ‘slimness’ recorded to the credit or otherwise of Lumsden’s Horse. At 4 o’clock next morning a party of us went out on patrol duty among the surrounding hills. We had our magazines loaded and in the dim morning light it was rather exciting work marching silently along with the chance of meeting the enemy at any moment. We stayed out till about 7 o’clock, having thoroughly examined the surrounding country from the top of a high kopje, without discovering any traces of Boers. After half an hour for breakfast, we started on the day’s march, which it was intended would be a short one of fifteen miles; but it rained so heavily about noon, and for an hour or two afterwards, that on arrival at the camping-place we found it to be a mass of liquid mud and grass, and the Major decided to keep marching on for Edenburg, about eight miles distant, in the hope that it would be drier there. But it continued to pour steadily all the afternoon, and we arrived to find our camping ground at Edenburg inches deep in water. We had no tents, so simply wrapped ourselves in our blankets and slept where we could. Many of us woke an hour or two afterwards, and found ourselves wet to the bone, and in preference to trying to sleep again we made a good fire and sat round this all night. There were a few men of one of the New Zealand Volunteer regiments encamped here also, in charge of sick horses, and they very kindly supplied us with hot cocoa—a most grateful and comforting drink on such a night. They gave us very graphic descriptions of hard times in the field. They had seen lots of fighting, being used mainly, if not entirely, as scouts. They told us how difficult it was to find the enemy, who kept hidden among rocks on the kopjes and never fired till our men were within about a hundred yards. As soon as the first shot was fired, the scouts turned and galloped for their lives, and the artillery then began to shell the kopjes. Next morning we saw several Boer prisoners, among them being a lad of about eighteen, who had killed a Major in one of our regiments while coming towards him with a flag of truce in his hand. Near the place where we had bivouacked quantities of buried Boer ammunition and guns were discovered. We continued our march at about 1 A.M., and encamped in the afternoon at a small place called Bethany. Here a night attack was expected, a Boer commando of several thousand men being reported in the vicinity. The men of the Maxim battery stood to their guns all night on a kopje close by, and about thirty of us accompanied them as an extra precaution. Cossack posts were also thrown out. Locusts, of which we had already met several swarms on our march up, literally covered the hill-sides here, and, getting down our backs and up our sleeves, took some dislodging. No alarm was given, so we passed the night in peace. We resumed our march on Good Friday, and, reaching Kaffir River in the afternoon, encamped there for the night with Regular regiments—Guards, Highlanders, and several others. Camps were fairly far apart, and after picketing horses, drawing forage, and eating our frugal meals, we had no time for exchanging visits or getting any news from the various regiments we met at our stopping-places. However, there was consolation for us when we received our first budget of home and Indian letters, one of the men from A Company, then at Bloemfontein, having been sent down with them.

Up to this point the march had been across monotonous veldt, mostly flat, treeless, and uninteresting. Here and there, where the ground held moisture, little pink flowers of a wood sorrel showed, and nearly every mile one came across some fresh variety of aster or daisy-like flower with composite crown shining brightly in the coarse grass. Occasionally the ridges were rich with clumps of heath, scarlet, yellow, and white, but not enough to relieve the general dreariness of distances across which one often looked in vain for any sign of cultivation. Ant-hills and the burrows of ant-bears were on all the veldt, and we had to wind our way among them, following no well-defined road, but only a track, the general direction of which was marked by a browner thread running across the tawny veldt. Several horses blundered into the bear-holes and brought their riders to grief, much to the general amusement. One trooper who rode ahead waving his hand and warning those who followed by frequent cries of ‘’Ware hole! ’Ware hole!’ suddenly disappeared, and we heard him groan as his horse rolled over on top of him, ‘Here’s one, and I’m into it.’ It was nearly dark then; but dead horses, mules, and dying oxen marked the track by which other convoys had gone. We felt glad that our transport ponies were not to share their fate. They had proved quite useless for drawing the heavy loads in this country, so we left them behind at Sterkstroom, sending all our baggage-carts on by train, while we marched and bivouacked with only the blankets and supplies that could be carried on our own horses. It was at Edenburg, I think, that after a wet march we got leave to go into the town, hoping it might be possible to get something better than the perpetual ‘bully beef’ and biscuits, but the only room we could find in the only decent hotel was wanted for officers. However, a little man of the Derby Militia came and showed us a small Boer ‘Winkel,’ where we got excellent tea, bread, and jam. The Derby man said he knew where he could buy some butter, which was all we wanted to make us happy. C—— gave him 2s. to go and get it. We finished our meal without that butter, and the Derby man didn’t return. So we went back to find everything in camp wet, muddy, and beastly. To add to our misery, a thunderstorm came on, and while we wallowed in slush there were empty houses with roofs to them not half a mile off. From Kaffir River we might easily have done the distance to Bloemfontein in one march, as it was only nineteen miles; but there was apparently no reason for hurrying, so we spent one more night in bivouac at Kaalspruit, and on Easter Sunday, in the afternoon, marched through Bloemfontein to our camp, which was three miles beyond. We only got a glimpse of the town in passing through its central square and along the main street, but, considering it was the capital of the Free State, I don’t think any of us were very much struck with it at first sight. Colonel Lumsden and A Company welcomed us very warmly. Our tents were already pitched and food prepared, so we soon settled down in our new quarters, A Company’s men receiving us as their guests and treating us most hospitably.

There the trooper’s narrative ends, and Colonel Lumsden follows with a well-deserved tribute to Major Showers and the men of B Company, saying:

They made a very plucky march up, the officers and men carrying nothing but their greatcoats and blankets, and sleeping out every night in the rain. It was too much of a trial for the ponies to pull their carts over the hilly and heavy going; and, as I said before, this method of transport had to be abandoned, and their carts and baggage railed up.

Considering the long and trying marches they had undergone, I consider both men and horses looking wonderfully fit. A certain proportion of them, however, were not in condition to resume immediate work. Therefore, to replace these and in lieu of thirteen casualties on board ship and en route, I have procured from Prince Francis of Teck, the remount officer, twenty-six Argentine cobs, which, although not up to the standard of our Indian mounts, are nevertheless a boon to us in the circumstances, in a situation where horseflesh is at a premium. A certain amount of kit and necessaries had been lost by both companies during our journey here; but, it being our first demand on the military authorities for such, we had no difficulty in getting our requirements satisfied.

We are now (April 18) under orders to move to-morrow for Spytfontein, five miles to the east of Karree Siding station, halting for the night at Glen. There has been heavy rain for the past four days, and it will be bad travelling, especially crossing the drift at Modder River. I have been fortunate in being able to retain the whole of our transport, which privilege has not been granted to any other unit, and shall to-morrow be complete in every respect. The men are in keen spirits, as our post is to be an advanced one and within range of the Boer outposts.

I regret to say that Captain Beresford is no better, and will, I fear, have to be invalided home.

CHAPTER VII
IMPRESSIONS OF BLOEMFONTEIN—JOIN THE 8th MOUNTED
INFANTRY REGIMENT ON OUTPOST

Long streets, ill-paved and deep in mud or dust; a low stoep-shaded cottage with vines trailing about its posts here and there between long rows of featureless shops; a large market square where no farm produce is displayed; a club frequented by British officers who have little time to lounge; several churches of the primmest Dutch type, with tall steeples that cut sharply against the clear sky in lines uncompromisingly straight; some public buildings, pretentious without grace or beauty; on one side a steep hill terraced with houses of which little but the corrugated iron roofs can be seen; on the other, roads that straggle off to level outskirts, where villas painfully new stand in the midst of flowerless gardens surrounded by barbed wire. These were the first impressions of Bloemfontein gathered by Lumsden’s Horse, and few troopers had any opportunity to modify these impressions in more favourable circumstances afterwards. The camp to which A Company went originally at Rietfontein was within two miles of the town, and might have been pleasant enough if thousands of hoofs had not cut up its turf, and the ground had not been used as a dumping-place for rubbish which Boer commandos could not turn to any use. Some of them had been there before Lumsden’s Horse, and several British regiments also. So many tens of thousands of soldiers were camped round about the town that they may have interrupted the currents of salubrious air which made Bloemfontein famous in other days as a resort for invalids. There were plenty of invalids to be seen there in the early weeks of April 1900, but they did not regard it as the best type of sanatorium, and men who had to sleep in small tents on the reeking ground of Rietfontein would not willingly go there again in search of health. They had hardly begun to realise how serious was the stoppage of a fresh water supply which the Boers had cut off from the main at Modder River. Hundreds of old wells existed in the town and its outskirts, and by opening these enough water could be drawn for immediate wants. But, alas! the water had been undisturbed since Bloemfontein began to draw its supply from the distant waterworks some six or seven years earlier. What impurities had drained into the wells during all that time nobody knew until hospitals filled rapidly with patients suffering from enteric and dysentery. Rietfontein was showing symptoms of an outbreak, and so, after a week under canvas there, Lumsden’s Horse got the welcome order to strike camp and form a new one some three miles farther north, by Deel’s Farm, where a clear spruit flows over its bed of white gravel between banks that are shaded by tall eucalyptus trees and drooping sallows.

After days on duty, in which they were not allowed to be slack, troopers felt little inclination for walking the four or five miles to Bloemfontein, which did not become more cheerful as the number of troops increased, except for the traders, who were rapidly getting back all they had lost by the war and a great deal more. Officers had always the chance, whenever they could get away from camp for an hour or two, of pleasant social meetings at the Bloemfontein Club, where generals, regimental commanders, and company officers from other brigades came together for a little while at lunch or afternoon tea and exchanged all the rumours that could be told in a few minutes—and they were many. It was a place of strange meetings. Men from the uttermost corners of the earth, who had perhaps not seen each other for years, foregathered there, only to separate a little later and go on their ways with different columns, none knew whither. Troopers had similar experiences in the streets and inns of Bloemfontein, where nearly every regimental badge of the British Army and every distinguishing plume adopted by Irregulars who had come to fight as ‘soldiers of the Queen’ were to be seen in a variety that seemed endless. Brothers whose paths in life had parted when they left school, one going east, another west or south, came face to face in the streets of that little Free State town or rubbed shoulders in a motley crowd of khaki-clad soldiers, sometimes without recognising each other, until accident gave them some clue. A rough word or two of careless greeting, a tight hand-grip, a steadfast look into eyes that remind the boys of father or mother, a light laugh on lips that might otherwise betray too much feeling, a drink together (if it is to be had), for ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and then with a jaunty ‘So long, old chap,’ they part again. It is a superstition, or at any rate a recognised custom, not to say ‘Good-bye’ in such circumstances. But if men only thought of its literal meaning, what better wish could there be? Yet, for all its stir and bustle and dramatic incidents, Bloemfontein was a dull place in those days for any man who entered it and found no intimate friends there to greet him. Comrades they all were, but in a rough-and-ready sort of comradeship that needed the fire of the battlefield to try it and perchance anneal it into something stronger than the ties of mere kinship. But this is a thing which only soldiers understand, and seldom even they. Lumsden’s Horse knew it not then, but for some of them the secret was to be disclosed before many days had passed, and in a form that will never fade from their memory. Meanwhile, they went about their duties methodically enough in camp or took their pleasures sadly in streets where thousands of soldiers wandered daily, finding no entertainment, no place of resort except dingy bars, where liquors of more than alcoholic potency were sold, and very little change from campaign fare except at a price that made even the necessaries of life prohibited luxuries for a man who had no more than his shilling a day to spend. One of Lumsden’s Horse who was sent into Bloemfontein on orderly duty gives a vivid sketch of all this in a few touches that are the more graphic because they only pretend to note passing impressions. Writing a day after B Company’s arrival at Deel’s Farm, he shows how the men had to rub their horses down while standing inches deep in mud. So much rain was out of season, but South Africa is, like other places, occasionally fickle in this respect. To troopers it did not seem an ideal way of spending Easter Monday, and the whistle, of which officers made free use, must have been irritating to nerves already overstrained, for it is never mentioned without a forcible prefix. However, when rain ceased and sunshine appeared for an hour in the afternoon, these men were merry enough at a game of cricket, which, by violating all the higher rules, must have reminded them of similar sports in England when they were boys and welcomed Easter Monday as the day of all others appropriate to cricket. The next morning a great cheer rolled from camp to camp, and Lumsden’s Horse, responding lustily, passed it on to the next without asking what the unusual excitement meant. When they heard afterwards that troops were cheering because ‘Kruger had surrendered,’ a strange depression took hold of them. At that moment all the discomforts and drudgery of a soldier’s life were forgotten in the humiliating thought that the corps would have to go back to India without a chance of proving itself in battle. It turned out, however, to be all mere rumour, though not so baseless as some of which Lumsden’s Horse had after-experience. The Transvaal President’s offer to negotiate for peace on terms all in his own favour must have been known in England then, and in some mysterious way a reflex of it came to camps on the veldt, where troops, who had seen plenty of the fighting that Lumsden’s Horse were eager for, welcomed the illusive tidings with a cheer. In its train, however, came something nearly as good—a post bringing letters from ‘England, home, and beauty,’ and for one non-commissioned officer at least ‘a parcel full of excellent things.’ Before he had time to enjoy these he was under orders for Bloemfontein, and after a ride through pouring rain he got there in time to hear another disconcerting rumour, and to find some of his comrades selling their kit because ‘they had been ordered back.’ Wisely resolving not to act on anything but definite orders, and, taking the advice of a corporal in the City Imperial Volunteers, who persuaded him ‘to sit tight,’ he waited, making the best of circumstances that were by no means bright according to his own brief record, which runs, ‘No dinner to be had at the station. Got tea sixpence a cup, bread and jam sixpence.’ Hungry and dispirited, he turned in and went to bed at the station, which means something very different from the untravelled civilian’s idea of a bed. Then next morning ‘bought a bob’s worth of oat straw for horse—groomed and fed him. Put my wet things out to dry, and sallied forth to the station. Had an excellent breakfast: porridge, haddock, chops, and two cups of coffee, for three shillings. Went to the hospital to try and get my leg dressed, but couldn’t find anybody to speak to. Thence to a most pleasant chemist—a Dutchman. Went to the station for lunch—another three bob.’ Not a profitable day’s work for a corporal on Cavalry pay without ‘colonial allowances.’ After that came tea and dinner, so that he was evidently doing his best to prove the wisdom of Mark Tapley’s philosophy. Having found circumstances in which it was a credit to be jolly, he made the most of them. It is not every soldier, however, who, having indulged in a little extravagance of that kind, could write, ‘Afterwards to the bank, and had an agreeable interview with the manager’; nor every man, with a balance to his credit, who would have turned cheerfully again towards the rough life of a camp and the unknown hardships that were to follow. When orders came next day for all Lumsden’s Horse to rejoin their corps in readiness for an immediate advance, this non-commissioned officer paid another visit to his friend the chemist and asked how much he owed. ‘The chemist refused to take anything. Pretty good that for a Dutchman and evidently a pro-Boer.’ With that pleasant experience blotting out all unfavourable impressions of Bloemfontein, the corporal rode back to camp at Deel’s Farm to find all the tents being struck.

So they had to spend a miserable night by the bivouac fire and get what amusement they could out of good stories. One, suggested perhaps by talk of chemists and surgical operations, is worthy to be preserved. To appreciate the point of the joke you must know that a lieutenant-general’s badges of rank are a sword and bâton crossed, with the crown above them. A man of the —— Yeomanry, then quartered in Bloemfontein, was suffering agonies from toothache, and, like our friend the corporal, had searched every hospital in vain for a surgeon who might have leisure to extract it. As he crossed the Market Square, a general of division whose kindness of heart is as notorious as his strength of language, was coming out of the Club. To him the yeoman advanced, and, after a hesitating preface, asked the General whether he would mind drawing a tooth. For a moment the General was dumbfounded, but then his powers of expression came back to him. ‘What the devil do you mean?’ he roared, thinking the yeoman was unpardonably familiar. The man’s face fell. ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he said, ‘but our doctor’s on leave, and——’ ‘But,’ said the officer, smiling at the man’s mistake, ‘I’m not a doctor; I’m General ——’ The yeoman stammered, ‘But—but—your badge, sir!’ The General good-humouredly turned his shoulder to the abashed trooper. ‘Here you are, my lad; what’s the matter with the badge? “Crossed swords, bâton, and crown.”’ ‘Good heavens!’ said the man, ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, sir. I thought it was the skull and cross-bones!’

Photo: F. Kapp & Co.
TRANSPORT AND WATER CARTS

Before daybreak in the morning of April 21, Lumsden’s Horse were roused to pack kits and saddle up for their march. Impartial observers said they were very smart about it, but a story went round that the Colonel had expressed himself as much disappointed with B Company, saying that the others would have saddled up and walked round them three times. This was apparently only a playful invention, but it so angered one trooper that he could only express his feelings in choice Hindustani. He was mollified afterwards on learning that A Company had really admired the soldierly way in which B Company got ready, and then he excused his strong language by writing, ‘I understand now the expression “Swear like a trooper.” We hear and do more of it every day.‘ It was a painful confession for one of Lumsden’s Horse to make, but the incident, apparently trivial, shows that a wholesome spirit of emulation in deeds was animating the men, and that would always be regarded by soldiers as ample atonement for unnecessary rivalry in linguistic attainments. The time was close at hand, too, when Lumsden’s Horse would have more serious things to think about than these. Yet nobody knows better than old campaigners how little things occupy the thoughts of men even when they are doing great deeds. No opportunity for achieving greatness came to the corps during its first day’s march through a country where the enemy’s appearance might be looked for at any moment, but in another way the men showed their fitness for a soldier’s work—by helping the transport out of difficulties. It was in crossing a drift at the Little Modder River that carts stuck with wheels jammed tightly in deep holes between slippery boulders, and teams floundered in fruitless attempts to recover their footing. The Editor, having been in one of those holes, horse and all, has reason to remember the place and the swirl of water where it rashes over rocky ledges into a deeper pool. By dint of manful work, Lumsden’s Horse got their carts clear of the drift, only to find them axle deep in the treacherous soil of a neighbouring vlei some minutes later. Then ammunition had to be taken out and carried to firm ground and carts lifted bodily out of the mire. It was an experience by which the transport drivers learned not to trust appearances and to beware of grass that looked unusually green. Still, as Sergeant Stephens, of the Transport, wrote in relating his experiences, ‘If anything ever frightened our drivers it was the word “drift”; you should have seen the worried looks when they heard there was a drift ahead.’ That night the corps bivouacked beyond Glen, where General Tucker’s division had been in touch with the enemy for nearly a month and warding off frequent attempts to interfere with Engineers who were hard at work on a ‘deviation’ near the ruined railway bridge. There they had to bivouac with nothing but blankets to protect them from the bitterly cold wind, and they went to sleep supperless because the transport, delayed by many causes, had not come up. No alarms or excursions disturbed their rest that night, but their march next morning was to the accompaniment of distant pom-poms and heavier guns and the sounds of fighting not far off. They did not know the meaning of it all then. It seemed to them but a local skirmish, and not the penultimate phase of a great movement in which Ian Hamilton, French, and Rundle had been sweeping the Boers before them from Wepener to Thaba ’Nchu and thence eastward and northward, clearing the country for a still greater movement. No shots came near the marching column. The screen of outposts holding inquisitive Boers in check was miles away from the drift where Lumsden’s Horse crossed the main Modder River, and, for all they could see, it might have been still miles off when they marched up a steep track and bivouacked on the pleasant hillside, relieving some New South Wales Mounted Rifles, whose horses had been used up by incessant patrolling. They were, however, in the outpost line there as part of the 8th Mounted Infantry, commanded by Colonel Ross, to whom Colonel Lumsden reported himself that afternoon. Some officers of Regular regiments whose pickets were near at hand came to have a look at these Indian Volunteers, who were quite gratified afterwards to hear that the Colonel of the Norfolks thought them ‘a very fine set of men, but undisciplined.’ It was true enough they had not much discipline of the parade-ground type, but they were held together by bonds stronger than any rules or regulations can weld, and inspired by a sentiment that would have made them ‘play the game’ wherever fortune might place them. And part of that game was for them to be soldiers in deed as well as in spirit, though they might lack the mere outward show of subordination. Spytfontein, which formed the centre of a position held by Lumsden’s Horse, is an outwork of the rugged range that sweeps from east to west in an irregular curve just north of Karree Siding, and from which General Tucker’s division, aided by a turning movement of Cavalry and Mounted Infantry under General French, dislodged the Boers a month earlier. Though they had made several attempts to reoccupy that range in the hope of being able to shell us out of Glen, they lost ground each time, and finally retired to an entrenched position in front of Brandfort, to which Spytfontein was our nearest approach. Trooper Burn-Murdoch in one of his clever letters to the ‘Englishman’ gave an admirable sketch of outpost work when it was a new experience to Lumsden’s Horse:

Spytfontein consists of several kopjes with rocks between and, so far as I could see, only one farmhouse, so you will not find it marked on the map. We took the place of some Australians, as they had been pretty busy and their horses were all knocked up. To the north of us were Loch’s Horse about 500 yards off, and quite close to our southern flank were some companies of East Lancashire Mounted Infantry. What with outlying pickets, guards, horse pickets, and such like, we did not find time hang heavy on our hands. And, as our nearest neighbours over the kopjes were large bodies of Boers with heavy guns and other arms, we had, as the saying is, to sleep with one eye open, and that one well skinned. I have many a time steered my way by Old Crux away down south. But I found that gazing at it over the icy-cold muzzle of a Lee-Metford was, though possibly just as profitable and useful a job, very much less romantic.

One reads in Olive Schreiner and in other African authors’ books of the never-to-be-forgotten pleasure of sleeping out on the great South African veldt, the pale calm moon overhead, and only the shade of the waggon for covering, around which the trek oxen rest after their day’s toil, the monotonous crunch, crunch of their jaws as they chew the cud being the only sound that breaks the awe-inspiring silence. My personal experience was vile—cold winds, little or no moon, wet grass and rocks to lie upon, soaking wet feet and clothes, one wet blanket and ditto coat, the only change to this being two hours’ sentry-go every four hours.

OUTLYING PICKET TAKING UP POSITION
(From a sketch by J.S. Cowen)

We were not allowed to walk about as on ordinary sentry-go, but had to keep quiet and sit or lie down for the most of the time, with our eyes straining out into the dark north, where every piece of scrub or large stone rapidly grew into a slouch-hatted Boer, as our brains became hypnotised with ceaseless gazing. And on our keen sense of hearing and sight depended the lives of all the corps!

One afternoon the alarm was given, and we promptly ‘stood to arms’ in excited expectation of an attack. But it proved to be a false alarm; and I was not surprised that it was so, as our valiant signaller standing on the sky-line of a neighbouring kopje flagged the news down to us, and of course all the Boers between our pickets and Kroonstad at once knew that Lumsden’s Horse were awake and there—so they thought better of it. Some few days afterwards we got orders to parade at 2.30 A.M. to take part in an attack on a Boer force which had been ‘located’ on some hills to the south-west of us and skirting the Modder River. I was horse sentry that night, so got practically no sleep. At 2.30, however, amid a thundercloud of English and Hindustani, Lumsden’s Horse awoke and managed to saddle up in the darkness; and then, by dint of shouting out each other’s names, we managed to wriggle into our proper subsections. As one man put it, ‘the bundabust was shocking.’

From the midst of this noisy dark chaos emerging, away we marched. Bitterly cold and cheerless was that morning, every second man’s teeth chattering like so many castanets, while one’s feet felt en masse with the stirrup irons. In a short time we were joined by Loch’s Horse, the Victorian Mounted Rifles, the Artillery, and Lancashire Mounted Infantry, and silence was the strict order of the march; and silence it was pretty well, until one of Loch’s Horse, with his cut-off open, let bang two shots—phew! phew! went the two nickels over the lot of us, and half of us ‘bowed our heads’ reverently. I believe Mr. Loch got fourteen days’ for that, and served him jolly well right.

The sun coming out, our spirits rose somewhat, and our fingers became warm enough to pull out bits of biscuit from our haversacks and so have a sumptuous breakfast on horseback. An hour and a half’s march brought us to a deep creek with a good drift over it, and this we crossed in safety. On the other side we found a long and broad expanse of plain gradually sloping up to a ridge of high kopjes some four miles in front of us. On these kopjes our friends the Boers were supposed to be waiting for us, so we spread out into extended single ranks with about eleven yards interval. A kind friend having given me a cheroot, I lit up and enjoyed a peaceful smoke, while at the same time I could not help wondering how many more smokes the Boers would allow me to have. Shortly afterwards we got the order to advance at the canter, which we did; as our scouts were barely 1,500 yards ahead and had not had time to ‘search’ the kopjes properly, this was, in my opinion, a risky order. However, we got there.

Firing had meanwhile commenced on our left, and two of our Victorian scouts were bagged. Our pom-poms and guns then tuned up; boom! pom-pom-pom, pom-pom! boom—and after a little of this double-bass tune the Boers bolted and left us in possession. Skirting along the scrub-covered banks of the Modder River, we at length reached Waggon Bridge, over which my subsection took the lead as scouts; and about midday arrived at a Boer farm some two and a half miles further on. Here we stayed the night, camping out on some commanding kopjes. A strict watch was, of course, kept up all night. Next day we duly received some nice compliments from the General in command on our rapid march and successful capture of Waggon Bridge; and then, like the celebrated Duke of York’s Army, we marched back again to our camp.

An officer of the corps, writing to friends at Calcutta, adds some interesting details:

We are right up at the front now holding a line of kopjes overlooking a large plain all round. There is nothing in the plain except one or two small kopjes occupied by the Boers between here and Brandfort. They come close in every night, and often do a little sniping at our outposts, but they disappear at daybreak. The other morning four Australians went out to a farm about three miles off; there were supposed to be only women there, and they had a couple of white flags up; but as soon as the first man got into the yard several Boers jumped out of the pigsty, shot his horse, wounded him and took him prisoner—the others had to clear. They say about a dozen Boers come there every night. The Australians have a picket a mile off, but they have not succeeded in catching anybody. The General won’t allow firing into the farm, because he says the women can’t help the Boers coming for supplies and things. The farm where we get our milk and stuff is owned by a Boer who has given up his arms; he fought against us, and bucks that he shot a Gordon Highlander officer at ten paces at Magersfontein. This Boer was in an awful funk lest his old friends should reach his farm and shoot him; at least, he said so. The night before last our sentries on one of the pickets were quite certain they saw our Boer friend lamp-signalling, and our signallers on the kopje noticed it also. Twenty Boers were seen in the distance in the afternoon, and he was evidently signalling to them. To-day there was a quantity of ammunition found in one of his kraals, so he will probably find himself in chokee. The day before I rejoined from hospital we attacked, or, rather, the Boers attacked us, but were shelled out of their position. Two of our officers who were left in camp saw from one kopje a shell burst in the middle of five men, and saw them all go down.

On the 23rd, when our men were sent away to the right with some other M.I. and the Cheshires to seize a bridge and to drive Boer raiders from some kopjes, they did not apparently wait to be turned out, but cleared and trekked across the plain to Brandfort. Our men never fired a shot, though Loch’s Horse on their left had a little shooting and lost one man, an advance scout. The Boers let him walk right into their midst, and as he turned round to bolt his horse came down and they took him prisoner. Our position is about, as far as I can make out, the centre of a half circle from Karree Siding to the Glen. One quarter circle is held by the 7th Division, two batteries, and various M.I. The other afternoon some Boers started sniping at our signal-post, but came nowhere near hitting; we all stood to arms, and when thirty men were sent out they cleared. They generally amuse themselves sniping at our outposts at something like 2,000 yards with no effect. We have to furnish three night pickets—three officers, five non-commissioned, and sixty men every night; it falls rather hard on the section officers, as one is sick, and the company commanders and the staff, of course, don’t do it, so it means three of the seven are out every night. There is not very much to do on picket except post the sentries, visit them two or three times in the night, and get them in again a little before sunrise, when they return to camp. There is also a day outpost of twenty men and two non-commissioned officers, and generally a convoy of similar size into Karree Siding; so the men, too, have enough to do.

There was a fight expected to-day (29th), but it has not come off, only a few shots on our left. The order has just come for us to go out to-morrow, leaving a sufficient guard to strike our tents and bring them on if necessary. We hope it is the real advance this time.

Douglas Jones proved himself such an excellent Assistant-Quartermaster that, as B Company’s appointments were all probationary, he has been made Company Quartermaster-Sergeant. We lost poor old Roger at Kruger Siding on the way up. He had quite turned into a regimental dog, and on the march used generally to come along with the rearguard. We halted to feed there one march, and he may have stopped with the Royal Scots. It is quite possible he went back to Jagersfontein, and made up to the Gloucester Yeomanry. They are bringing in two of our lame horses, so if he did we may get him again.

Photo: Bourne & Shepherd
CAPTAIN NOBLETT (Major Royal Irish Rifles)
(Commanding B Company Lumsden’s Horse)

Another correspondent who was kept in camp by a slight ailment while his comrades were away on patrol or some more exciting expedition records how he got out kits and collected firewood, ‘a thing I never did before,’ and how when others of his section came back they lay by the dying embers to keep themselves warm and occasionally made the fire flicker up by throwing more wood on it, reckless of danger from snipers, who were always on the prowl. While the main body of Lumsden’s Horse were away on that dash for Waggon Bridge the Boers made a counter demonstration from Brandfort, supported by pom-poms, and got within a thousand yards of the Red House Farm, but did no damage beyond interfering with the domestic arrangements of a Regular regiment, whose officers, being too far from the point of attack to see what really happened, thought their position was being seriously threatened and wanted 28,000 rounds of ammunition brought up from Karree Siding for emergencies. The orderly corporal who sent that request on got jeered at as an alarmist, when nothing happened except a retirement of the Boers. The next day Lee Stewart, who had been left behind in hospital at Cape Town, rejoined, and got a cordial welcome from all his comrades when they marched back from their first little expedition. The section mess was enabled to regale him at dinner that night on ‘chicken cooked by N—— and beefsteaks,’ so that one hardly wonders to find in the next day’s record the melancholy note, ‘There little was to eat; sat round the cook-house—two tins on the open veldt—and talked.’