1999 - Ladysmith (17 page)

News of the pet picture spread through the camp and the day for which it was arranged saw a large enthusiastic audience gathered round a table covered with a sheet. It was mooted that a battle en masse would provide the greatest entertainment, but the Biographer thought it would be better to have just two contestants, thereby enabling him to focus on them closely—which image, he hoped, would be enlarged to mythic proportions when presented on a large screen. The first bout was between the scorpion and one of the tarantulas, which were decanted amid cheers from the surrounding soldiery. Nothing occurred to begin with, as the gladiators just remained motionless at each end of the table; but with the aid of a poking stick they warmed to their work, to the effect that the scorpion was devoured entire and the tarantula greatly increased in size.

The next set-to, between a snake and the rotund tarantula, was not so successful, since the reptile simply slid off the edge of the table and moved quickly across the ground, causing consternation amongst the audience before it disappeared into some grass. A search was made, but the desire for entertainment being greater than the concern for safety, another battle was clamoured for and prepared, this time between the two trapdoor spiders. They obliged most heartily, displaying satisfactory cannibalistic tendencies and issuing noxious yellow fluid from their wounds.

The daily fights became a feature of camp life, until the Biographer sickened of them, and took to refusing the tide of creatures that was brought to his tent—except for a kitten that had been found in a deserted Zulu kraal. Her antics provided great pleasure during the long wait for the order to advance, and fearful of losing her the Biographer made her a collar and wrote on it: “Biograph is my name. Please take me home.”

Human voices were saying much the same; or, at least, let battle commence and this quarrel be sorted. The weeks passed—until, at long last, the order came. Under a broiling sun, the column finally moved up to Colenso and the big guns began firing at the Boers. Smoke and yellow-green lyddite fumes obscured the kopjes—and the enemy—from view. Many good shots of the effects of recoil and concussion were taken, but owing to the haze and dust it was impossible to focus the lens properly on anything far away. One single sequence—of a great column of earth, stones and men going up in the air—was taken, however, and this pleased the Biographer greatly. However, the deadly fire sent back by Boer sharpshooters and quick-firing guns soon began to cause great discomfort, with some wounded men being forced to tear at the earth to hide their heads from bullets. Still the British troops tried to batter a passage across the river, fighting their way to the south bank, there to be forced to take cover from the withering fire. Some even got across, wading with their rifles above their heads, but those who were not shot down were driven back.

The battle turned, and seemed to be going the Boers’ way. Some guns up ahead were lost to them. Buller himself rode up the lines. The advance crawled forward, seeming to achieve nothing except allow the Boer artillery to burst closer to the Biographer’s cart, which was situated among the Red Cross wagons at the rear of the column. Suddenly, the British forces seemed to be in crisis. It appeared they had walked into a trap, made by Boers they could not see, never mind kill. Even Buller himself was put in danger, his staff surgeon being killed beside him and a piece of the shell casing bruising his own side. He just sat down on the ground and ate some sandwiches, to the Biographer seeming the very picture of a broken man.

At one stage, a shell exploded right in the middle of the ambulances. The effect of this was to prick the Biographer’s conscience, and he went to help with the wounded. Their gasps and groans curdled his blood: many had been shot through the head or stomach. While doing what he could for them, he discovered Gandhi and his Indian friends—the ‘body-snatchers’ as Perry called them—to be among those carrying the injured men away to field hospitals, or down to the train for transport back to the general hospital tents.

“Come on you,” shouted the Indian, looking entirely different in his khaki uniform. “We need as many hands as we can get. Why don’t you help me carry this fellow?”

“Very well,” replied the Biographer meekly, and bent down to pick up the broom-handle ends of the stretcher. The occupant’s face had been torn by shrapnel; even to a close friend or relative he would have been unrecognizable. Only his mouth was visible, under a mask of oozing blood. Every now and then, as the two men jogged with the stretcher, the mouth opened and a low moan emerged from its white-toothed, red-flanged aperture. The sight and sound of it was almost too much for the Biographer to bear.

“This is hardly biographing,” he huffed, to Gandhi’s back.

“It is true suffering and misery,” came the serene voice, seemingly untroubled by breathlessness. “And do not believe that the Boers are suffering any less. I have been on the battlefield and seen it for myself. It is because of such things that I have resolved my metaphysic.”

“What?”

“In my language it is called
satyagraha
, which is the opposite of force and imperialism. It means truth-fervour, or the conquest of one’s adversary by suffering in one’s own person.”

The Biographer could not believe that even this sage, unearthly-seeming man was saying such things, at such a time. “Well, you are hardly doing that now, satya-whatever, are you?” he said, snidely. “Helping the British Army.”

“In spite of my opposition to the Empire, I still believe in the British Constitution,” said the wise-sounding voice. “I would vie with any Englishman in loyalty to the throne. But this is not really about that. It is about the saving of life, and the ending of all violence. Anyway…enough. We are here.”

They had reached the field hospital. The man was taken inside a tent for his wounds to be dressed, in which task the Biographer watched Gandhi assisting the surgeon with great care and attention. Afterwards, with bandages over all parts of his face except for his mouth and two small holes for his nose, the man looked like a mummy. Still the slow, low moans came out of that disembodied mouth, even when Gandhi tried to feed him some Bovril through it, with the effect that the warm brown liquid bubbled horribly back.

“I doubt he will survive,” he said to the Biographer, quietly. “I believe that a piece of shell has opened up his brain.”

The Biographer went outside to be sick. On coming back in, he found the Indian recording the soldier’s injuries in a ledger and writing down his name from the tag on a cord round his neck.

“My, but you are a strange revolutionary,” he said.

Gandhi looked up at him briefly, but said nothing and continued with his note taking.

In the morning, an armistice was called to allow the two sides to gather up their dead. The Biographer went on to the field with his cart, and what he saw was harrowing: everywhere were men—dead men and the pieces of men, their khaki stained, soaked with blood, and their faces black and swollen from the sun. Between the human corpses lay those of horses and mules, their sides opened up to reveal cleaved bone, ripped flesh and marbled layers of fat. Already great swarms of flies hung over the place, and to protect himself the Biographer tied over his face a sieve he had found in one of the looted Boer houses. This beekeeper’s mask did not prevent the smell, however, which was terrible, especially that of the mules, which seemed to become rank quicker than anything else; and the mask had to be taken off whenever he wanted to film. This he did, albeit with little satisfaction, since he suspected such horrors as filled his lens could never be shown to the British public.

The news, if not the images, did become public property. That week, there had been other battles, at Stormberg and Magersfontein, and together with casualties from Colenso, the butcher’s bill came to over three thousand. Britain had never seen the like, and this humiliating Black Week, as it became known, produced great displays of patriotism and indignation at home. As each tragic episode in the drama of the relief of Ladysmith unfolded, a sort of madness seized people, and there was a rush to join the army. The other colonies contributed millions of pounds to the war effort, as well as more than forty thousand volunteers, frightened by the constant stream of bad news and the support for the Boers shown by Germany, Russia and France.

Chief among this bad news was the message that the dispirited Buller was reported to have heliographed into Ladysmith:

I tried Colenso yesterday, but failed. The enemy is too strong for my force, except with siege operations, which will take one full month to prepare. Can you last so long? If not, how many days can you give me to take up defensive position, after which I suggest your firing away as much ammunition as you can, and making the best terms you can. I can remain here if you have alternative suggestions, but unaided I cannot break in…Whatever happens, recollect to burn your cipher and decipher and code books and any deciphered messages.

It was the time of the popular press, and every day the papers were full of ‘the news from the Cape’. Even in the rural seclusion of the Barnes family’s Warwickshire farm, the minutest details of the campaign were discussed and analysed. Lizzie and the rest of the family waited for letters from the two brothers and, receiving them, saw beyond the shrieking stories of, on the one hand, the heroic defenders of Ladysmith and, on the other, the town’s blundering relievers.

57109 Trooper Barnes, P.,

Green Horse, Military Camp N° 2,

Frere,

Natal.

December 17, 1899

Dear Lizzie,

I think it is your turn to get a letter from me. I was wondering how it was I didn’t get a letter from you when your parcel and postcard of General Butter arrived: they are very quick to print them nowadays, aren’t they? Thank you for the handkerchiefs and the chocolate, although the latter was badly crushed—which I know is not your fault.

Sorry I have not written earlier but we have had a hard battle near here recently. You will no doubt have seen from accounts in the papers that we have been doing a good deal of fighting. At this place, Colenso, our men have been lying all over the field, and one squadron alone had over 50 horses killed. I can only say I don’t want another lot like it. One man had his thigh broke. The Indian stretcher-bearers have been doing sterling work.

Some of our men were captured in this last action, and then released to wander on the veld. The Boers strip all of them perfectly naked, as they are short of clothes. It also serves their turn, as in dressing exactly like us, they are continually decoying the chaps into their traps. They have a nasty habit of creeping up under cover of trees, nearly all big mimosas, and hiding under the branches. So we have had to cut them all down, which makes Africa a less pretty place than it was before.

Answering your questions,

N
evinson was depressed, and his depression took the form of a lid opening in the top of his head and the dark of the night sky funnelling down into the hole. He could feel it going through him, like a stain on blotting paper. It had a chemical quality to it, what he was feeling, but he knew that was nonsense. It was purely a matter of cause and effect. The reason? The reason had to do with ink, too. The despatch he had sent out with the boy Wellington had just come back into town—part of a larger bag sent in by the Boers, together with General Joubert’s compliments. The messages had all been opened, and in some cases defaced with obscene messages. Someone had crept up to a sangar on the outer perimeter and cheekily tossed the sack over. It had hit the sentry on the head.