1999 - Ladysmith (36 page)

“What do you make of it?” asked MacDonald, who was standing next to him.

“It’s a trek,” said Nevinson. “A great trek.”

On either side of the line of wagons were black- and brown-coated horsemen moving forward in dense groups, sweeping across the landscape in ever extending curves.

“They are pulling back their columns,” observed Nevinson.

“That’s not a column in retreat,” said MacDonald. “That’s an army.”

“It’s a shame our cavalry and galloper guns cannot pursue them.”

“Not a chance,” said MacDonald. “We’ve eaten our horses into immobility. Anyway, our kit is too heavy. He must fly light who goes in pursuit of the flying Boer.”

As they watched, they heard a loud boom, and saw a great cloud of debris appear on the plain.

“Blowing up the bridges behind them,” said Nevinson.

On their return, the correspondents sat down to what would prove to be their last dinner of horseflesh. They were just about to tuck in when a shout came from outside.

“Buller’s cavalry are in sight! They are coming across the flats!”

Going into the centre of town, the two correspondents found a great crowd of people running through the streets, shouting and cheering—a confused throng of military and civilians, white and black and all the races, mixed together in an ecstasy of joy. All were headed for a drift in the Klip, the place where any incoming column would have to cross, and together they presented a skeletal, hollow-cheeked, spindle-shanked collection.

Tumbled along in this bony crowd, MacDonald and Nevinson could hardly see when they got to the river. Then, craning their necks above the battered, mud-stained helmets of soldiers, the bonnets and straw hats of white womenfolk, above the red fezzes of the Malays and the turbans of the Sikhs and the heads of the leaping, chanting Zulus, they caught a glimpse of a column of khaki-uniformed horsemen splashing through the water.

Two squadrons of Light Horse and mixed irregulars. Nevinson knew they must be from outside, as their mounts were far too plump and sleek to be Ladysmith horses. The crowd opened to let them trot past, and then followed as they swung into the main street, the vanguard of an exultant avenue of humanity, each crying or laughing as the moment took them, letting go their emotions as if siege walls had tumbled in their very breasts. There was no sense, any more, of the mark of the superior race or caste.

The procession came to a climax when General White came out on horseback to meet the rescuers. Straightening up in the saddle, he began to speak.

“Citizens…”

The old man’s voice trembled. The tumult of the crowd died down. He tried again.

“Citizens and soldiers, this…is a great day. It is the time for you to rejoice and not, any longer, for me to give you orders…” He faltered, and then continued. “I thank you for your loyalty, and your co-operation in the defence of the town…Thank God we kept the flag flying!”

Laughs and cheers drowned him out.

“It cut me to the heart,” he continued, “to reduce your rations as I did.”

Then he broke down again, and had visibly to steel himself to control his feelings. He was helped along by the encouraging shouts of the crowd—among whom, it must be said, were many who had cursed him in earlier days. Finally, a smile passed across his face.

“I promise you, though, that I’ll never do it again.”

There were more laughs and cheers from among the mass of straining voices and shrunken faces. Jostled by the crowd, Nevinson was separated from MacDonald. He glimpsed Bobby Greenacre running round and round in a circle, and Mrs Frinton kneeling on the ground in the middle of it, her hands held up in an attitude of prayer.

Others saw the raising of the siege from different aspects. Looking down on Ladysmith from the back of a wagon, Dr Sterkx fretted about the fate of his wife, cursing in the same breath the stubbornness of the English and the treachery ‘of kaffirs who don’t deliver messages as they promise’.

Up in the Star Room of the wrecked Royal Hotel, other eyes, those of Bella’s father, also watched the performance. Under simulacra of Orion and Cassiopeia, he cradled his heavy revolver in his hand, and wondered what to do.

Below the Irishman, too close to the broken frontage of the Royal for Kiernan to see them, MacDonald encountered a Zulu woman, sitting on the wooden stoep. She was weeping. There was a young boy by her side, whom he recognized as Nevinson’s runner.

Looking up at him, with tears streaming down her face, the woman said something in Zulu to the Australian.

“What’s that she’s saying?” MacDonald asked the boy.

“She said—the English can conquer everything but death; why can’t they conquer death?”

“Why’s she saying that then?”

“We have just heard that my father has died.”

It was true. Wellington had made several trips between Intombi and Ladysmith as the siege was being raised, in the course of which Muhle’s leg had been operated on by surgeons of the Army Medical Corps, who had already reached the hospital camp, and were engaged in helping ease the strain among the weary doctors there. A young Indian auxiliary, Mohandas Gandhi, had been among the attendants at the operation, holding Muhle’s hand, and looking into the Zulu’s eyes as they enquired the surgeon’s preparation of his knives and saw. Once morphia had been injected, and its creeping numbness had taken effect, the operator cut the flesh swiftly, and then set to work on the bone with the saw. Within a couple of minutes, the leg was being wrapped in a blanket on the floor; within an hour, Muhle had departed into the world of the spirits. Efficient as he had been, the surgeon had cut too close to an artery in the groin, and had been unable to staunch the flow of blood.

There were many other casualties in the last days of the siege. In the final battle to secure the town, the toll was heaviest among regiments of the Irish Brigade. The Connaught Rangers, Dublin Fusiliers and Inniskilling Fusiliers together lost nearly five hundred men in under twenty-four hours. “My brave Irish,” as Queen Victoria said on receiving the news.

Another who died was Perry Barnes—riding along when a shell struck off his head. The horse carried on down the line with its headless rider still in the saddle. After about a hundred yards, he had fallen off, to be dragged along, like Hector at Troy, with one foot in the stirrup.

The Biographer, who had been filming his chum as he rode, had turned his head away from the eyepiece and promptly fainted. He was hysterical for several days afterwards, and when, together with Churchill, he entered the town, it was with a broken heart, and a heavy message to deliver to Perry’s brother.

Churchill would always maintain that he was with the first column to reach Ladysmith, but in fact he did not arrive until that night, after the initial celebrations were over. He was not the only one to present a ‘colour piece’ as one of the correspondents might have called it. On March 1, Buller came into the town in secret, and departed incognito after a meal with General White. Two days afterwards, a triumphant entry into the town was staged, with the garrison lining the route as Buller’s army marched in. Unable to stand through weakness, they sat down on the kerbs and pavements. In the vanguard of the triumphant procession was Buller, large and powerful-looking on his horse, as he rode up towards where General White and his staff waited to salute them on the steps of the shell-damaged Town Hall. Everyone expected Buller to come over and shake hands, or even embrace his counterpart; but he just rode on.

As Nevinson would write, looking back in later years: “In various antiquated inns and lodging houses, one still may admire a picture representing Buller and White meeting with enthusiastic grip of hands, while lusty crowds applaud the patriotic triumph. Nothing of the kind happened.”

People did celebrate, but the cheers they gave this time were thin and wavering. For by now many in the emaciated garrison were in fact giving vent to frustration that the relief column had taken so long to arrive. So much for the ‘intense enthusiasm’ recorded by Churchill—though we may be fairly sure that the sadness he recorded on learning of the death of his friend and mentor, Steevens, is genuine.

However it was thought to have ended, the siege was over, having lasted one hundred and eighteen days. The facts, under their particular descriptions (some people said it was a hundred and nineteen), were transmitted by cable, newspaper article and letter to Britain, and her rejoicing was mighty. Journals were written up and published, even a couple of novels. The siege was indeed over.

The Monologues of the Dead

We have been uprooting the Boers, burning their farms and driving them off their lands. We strip the houses bare and the sheep we just kill and leave there, stopping only to cut out their hearts and livers. These choice pieces are put in gunny sacks and later cooked over our camp fires.

In this way, it is said, we hope to prosecute the real end of the war, by preventing the guerrillas getting supplies from their wives and from the few farmers who have stayed put. It is General Kitchener’s plan, and to my mind it is a beastly business. It is like driving pheasant for a shoot. The latest thing is that the dispossessed people are being put into camps.

We have also been building things called blockhouses, made of tin and concrete, right across the land. The Boers snipe at us as we build; they are using expanding bullets, which make a horrible mess of our fellows. But in spite of these attentions there is now a line from here to Klerks-dorp. The grim little buildings we make are connected by barbed wire, which we unroll from large wooden drums, dividing up the country across hundreds of miles in an endless web. The idea is that our columns will chase the Boers into the grids made by this arrangement, going from blockhouse line to blockhouse line.

The Boers have recently been trying to get through by driving herds of bullocks against the fences, to crash them down. But there is always another square beyond in which we can catch them. They are all so short on stores now that they dress in the strangest costumes—some with sacks with holes in for trousers, others with women’s bonnets and skirts. All in all, it is an odd way to wage a war, in my opinion more blockhead than blockhouse. I cannot say when or how it will end.

We are now using native troops, which raises the enemy to a pitch of anger. Whenever they capture any, they kill them outright. General Smuts’s troops did this at a village outside Modderfontein lately. When we came there, the bodies of the blacks were still unburied, lying there rotting in the sun. They were all put in one grave, yours truly wielding one of the shovels.

For myself, all I know is that I am quite done in now. Once I heard of Perry’s death, the fighting spirit went out of me. I no longer look after myself either, eating my food with one hand and delousing myself with the other, taking dozens of the vermin out of my shirt simply by running my finger down a seam.

This is, it seems to me, the worse-run campaign ever. We have to replace our horses every two or three weeks now. Many of the mares are in foal, and the other day one foaled while we were actually on the move. The poor thing was half out before someone shouted, “Look out, she’s foaling down,” and the column halted.

When I came out here, I was full of Queen and Country. I am no longer. Partly it is the conditions and the time it is taking to wrap things up, but also it is Kitchener. He is very unjust and arrogant, and untouchable to ordinary soldiers—of an altogether different kidney to White or Buller.

As for the rest, the business with Bella Kiernan, flying off like that with the Portuguee, I was outraged and shamed by it, especially when her gulling of me came to light. Her sister gave me some calming comfort at Intombi, that is true, but I doubt I shall go back to Ladysmith when I am discharged, even though I have promised her that I will try. I must confess a certain amount of self-distrust about my motives towards Jane in this respect.

In truth, maybe it would be better if I just went home. This is a cruel land that has been too much overrun by war. At one farm, there was a woman who was about to give birth in a few days. She was weeping her eyes out, since her man had been killed. We were marching on and there was nothing much we could do. I did help arrange a cart to get her to a rail junction, so as she could be taken to a camp, but whether she or the baby survived I do not know.

December, 1901

Epidemic has struck in this place I am being held in, adding to the burden of starvation. My goose, I am sad to say, has long been eaten. I have no idea where my husband is, and can only pray that he is still alive. When the train brought us in, like animals in open trucks, many of the children were already lying on the floor, sick with fever. At least fifty of those in my train are now dead. A girl from a place outside Lichtenburg gave birth on the train, but the baby was lifeless when it came out. She too has gone now.

On arrival the soldiers pushed us into dirty bell tents: often fifteen or more of us in a space meant for eight. The stink is beyond belief. No soap, not enough water, and hardly any beds or mattresses at all. I myself sleep on bare earth. We do our toilet in steel pails and throw the doings into pits behind the tents, where great clouds of flies swarm over them.

We are given only a little food, nor much fuel to cook with. More and more people are being sent in. Thousands at a time. If it wasn’t for the numbers dying—nearly a hundred each day now—there would be no room for them, and as it is we get packed closer and closer. It is said there are nearly two hundred thousand people in camps such as this now. Many of those interned are kaffirs, and it does us great dishonour to live cheek by jowl with them. They too are dying by the score.

Sometimes we have to wash our clothes in water thick with human foulness. Most of us have no clothes apart from those we stand in. All our linen is filled with lice. I know one woman who has taken to wearing male kaffir clothes, giving up her last bit of money to a black who is in authority here. It is typical of the English that they should use the kaffirs in this way.