Blunted Lance (8 page)

Buller listened quietly, his heavy face expressionless, but when Milner moved to other matters and turned to his advisers, he drew General Goff aside. ‘Now, Coll,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear some sense. What’s happened?’

Standing with Ellesmere and the members of Buller’s staff, holding a glass of Cape wine and a biscuit spread with pâté, Dabney tried to catch their words.

‘White was flanked,’ his father said.

Buller frowned. ‘Ladysmith’s no place to be invested in,’ he said. ‘It’s in a saucer of land and the Boers can get their guns on to the hills. It’s also damned hot and dusty.’

‘It’s none too healthy either. Even less so now, I imagine, with four thousand Boers and eighteen guns within striking distance. They came through every available pass. White told Symons to entrench but it seems he believed he could destroy them as they arrived. He was brought down at Talana Hill.’ General Goff frowned. ‘Everybody’s saying we won the battle, of course, but the Boers did what they usually do and withdrew as soon as their casualties began to mount. I don’t suppose
they
considered themselves defeated. Ian Hamilton did well and so did John French. The Lancers caught the Boers at Elandslaagte and knocked them about a bit, but Yule, who took over from Symons, had to retreat to Ladysmith. Then White lost the Irish and the Gloucesters at Nicholson’s Nek.’

‘Didn’t they fight?’

Dabney saw his father’s hand move in a gesture of disgust. ‘Usual trouble, it seems,’ he said. ‘The man in command of the brigade just wasn’t up to it.’

‘What’s the transport situation?’

As his father beckoned, Dabney moved nearer with Ellesmere and the others.

‘A Director of Railways has been appointed,’ General Goff pointed out. ‘He’s already laid the foundation of a railway administration for the movement of men, horses, mules and supplies. Our objective must be Pretoria.’

Buller frowned. ‘The idea was to have a converging drive from Cape Town, East London and Port Elizabeth. We’ve got forty-nine thousand men when the army corps arrives. Including eight cavalry regiments – among them yours – eight mounted infantry companies and thirty-two infantry battalions. In London they feel we should use the lot together. It looks different from here. We can’t let these sieges at Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith succeed.’ Buller gestured. ‘I’d expected White to hold Natal for two or three months, but now it seems the whole colony will be overrun if we don’t do something about it. I’m afraid I’m going to have to divide the troops. One half to defend Natal, the other to be pushed up in the west to relieve Kimberley. Methuen can look after that, Clery can look after the centre, and Gatacre after the Orange River front. Intelligence isn’t much help.’

‘It never was,’ General Goff said bitterly. ‘And I wouldn’t trust the guides.’

‘You’ll also find there’s a shortage of maps, sir,’ Ellesmere said.

‘It’s something we’ve tried to rectify,’ General Goff pointed out. ‘The clarity of the atmosphere here doesn’t make up for the lack of information about the lie of the land. We’ll be fighting in the dark and that’s a futile exercise. At Estcourt they have no maps at all.’

Buller seemed stolidly unmoved, his mind occupied with his problems.

‘A Director of Military Intelligence was appointed in 1895,’ he said doggedly.

‘With a staff of eighteen officers,’ General Goff snapped. ‘The German Army has a comparable staff of a hundred and fifty.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You forget my daughter married into a German military family.’

‘And that could be an embarrassment,’ Buller said, ‘if their half-witted Emperor drags us into a war.’

The General acknowledged the fact. ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘on more than one occasion it’s had its advantages. Great God and all His pink angels, we knew eight months ago we were likely to be at war before the year was out and we’ve been in this damned country since the beginning of the century!’

Buller, who had been at the War Office himself during the crucial years, tried to defend the system. ‘Intelligence has no means of drawing maps,’ he said. ‘We tried to buy ’em but the man who was handling it died and nothing was done.’

‘
Something
was,’ General Goff snapppd. ‘My son did it. He found maps in the public library and we had them copied and printed. He also found a thousand copies of a map of the Transvaal, which was being produced here for the Transvaal government. We impounded them as contraband of war.’

The following week saw the arrival from Ladysmith of French, the cavalry leader, who had been released with his chief of staff, Haig, to lead the cavalry from the south.

‘Last train out.’ French was so busy talking he didn’t notice Dabney place a glass at his elbow. ‘We were hit by a volley near Pieter’s Station and when we stopped we were all expecting to be greeted by the Boers. In fact we’d reached one of our outposts and we found a 3-inch shell had gone through the second truck. Good job it didn’t hit a wheel or we’d be on our way to Pretoria now.’

French was a short man whom Dabney knew well because he’d commanded the 19th Lancers’ sister regiment, the 19th Hussars, and had often been seen at the depot at Ripon. Short-legged and burly to the point of appearing to have no neck, he was a fluent and persuasive talker, but from things his father had let drop Dabney knew he was not regarded as an intellectual genius. He was also supposed to have a liking for women, which was why he was said to be sometimes short of money and, though his reputation as a cavalryman was good, he was rumoured to be weak-willed and petulant when he couldn’t have his own way. His chief of staff, the quiet, educated Haig, his looks those of a matinee idol, watched his chief placidly. Dabney had heard that French had borrowed money from him.

They brought information about Ladysmith which was of help, but sounded pessimistic all the same. White, it seemed, was behaving with a curious mixture of rashness and vacillation.

‘They’re keeping the horses to mount counter attacks,’ Haig said. ‘But it seems to me if the siege lasts long enough they’ll end up eating them.’

By this time, Ladysmith was heavily invested and it was clear that a strong force would have to be sent to relieve it. At Mafeking and Kimberley the Boers appeared quite content to sit and wait and in that area there seemed no great hurry. Then, in November, came news of the destruction of an armoured train from Estcourt and the capture of two officers and fifty-three other ranks, together with the war correspondent of the
Morning Post
, Winston Churchill.

‘Well,’ General Goff said dryly, ‘he always wanted to be noticed.’

Table Bay was full of ships now as the army corps began to arrive. After weeks of playing ‘House’ and drinking ‘Bombay fizzers’ – mugs of effervescent sarsaparilla brewed in buckets – and beer in such quantities an enemy could have followed the route to the Cape by the floating bottles, they poured down the gangplanks to be stuffed at once into trains and despatched to the fronts.

‘War,’ Ellesmere smiled, ‘is about to begin in earnest. The 19th Lancers are due any time.’

But when the
Carlisle Castle,
carrying the regiment, arrived alongside in the middle of November, it was found, when the baggage had to be landed, that it was so mixed up in the holds it would take hours to sort it out. Sent down to meet them, Dabney found his brother snarling at a group of bewildered Kaffirs.

‘It’s the damned crew’s fault,’ Robert fumed. ‘They shoved everything aboard in the wrong order.’

The dispute as to whose fault it was grew hotter, with a furious duel developing between the Colonel, Morby-Smith, and Ellesmere.

‘The things we wanted first were shipped first,’ Robert snapped as the other two stamped off. ‘Now they’re at the bottom.’

‘Packed your pyjamas at the bottom of the bag instead of the top, eh?’ Dabney said cheerfully.

‘You can hardly blame the army,’ Robert snorted. ‘We’re not baggage porters.’

‘Perhaps we ought to learn to be,’ Dabney said mildly. ‘We might find it useful.’

They were still trying to sort it out when General Goff appeared. The explanations were hasty and embarrassed and his reaction was exactly the same as his younger son’s. ‘It seems to me,’ he snapped, ‘that it might be a good idea to send one or two officers to the docks in future to see how things are done.’

The furious rummaging in the ship’s holds had brought the disembarkation to a standstill. The trains to take the troops to Naauwpoort were waiting and whistling in-cessantly, and in the end a regiment of infantry was put aboard instead, grinning all over their faces and jeering and catcalling the cavalry, while the 19th were ordered to march to Sea Point where a tented camp had been set up for them.

Feeling he must visit his old regiment, General Goff put on his uniform with all his medals to review them.

‘And just see you’re pleasant to Robert,’ his wife insisted. ‘He’s your son and he’s married now to Elfrida, so you’ve got to accept it.’

In fact, Elfrida had surprised them all with her common sense but the General hadn’t yet completely forgiven her for being a Cosgro.

‘You can’t go on fighting your silly Zulu War for ever,’ Lady Goff pointed out.

‘It wasn’t so damn silly from where I was standing,’ the General growled.

‘You know very well what I mean. And Elfrida isn’t the offspring of your wretched Aubrey Cosgro. She’s Claude’s child. And she’s Robert’s wife now and we’ve got to give them the chance to be happy.’

Morby-Smith was still angry at the confusion over the regiment’s baggage and the General was in no mood to be forgiving.

‘Not exactly the most brilliant disembarkation in the world,’ he observed.

However, the men had a sleek lean look and, eager to see them, he shook his head as Morby-Smith indicated the waiting officers.

‘Men first,’ he said.

The Regiment was drawn up on foot waiting for his inspection, and he moved along the lines, remembering faces and old actions.

‘Trumpet-Major Sparks,’ he said, as a resplendent individual with four upside-down stripes under crossed trumpets snapped to attention. ‘You made it to the top, I see.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sparks agreed. ‘Twenty-five years to the day.’

‘I remember you joining. You had a black eye.’

Sparks grinned. His uncle had sounded the orders for the General’s squadron at Balaclava.

The officers were waiting in the mess tent and Dabney noticed there was a younger Morby-Smith, too, now, the Colonel’s son. Robert’s potato face flushed as he faced his father. Somehow, he’d missed both his father’s and his mother’s good looks, but he had a strong body and uniform became him, and there was a staid look about him now.

The General paused. ‘Looking forward to the war, Robert?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

To Dabney, standing alongside, the words didn’t have the eagerness his father seemed to be expecting and he saw the old man give his brother a sharp glance. Robert seemed to realise he hadn’t come up to scratch and tried to make up for it with a show of enthusiasm.

‘We’ll give the Boers pepper, sir, you mark my words.’

‘And you mark mine, my lad,’ the General said. ‘Don’t underestimate Brother Boer. One or two people are tending to. Just remember he’s crafty. Make sure he doesn’t lure you into a trap and give you a bloody nose. I can speak frankly because I’ll be going home. The army won’t want an elderly inspector general on its back.’

As it happened, it didn’t work out like that.

With Buller’s army corps broken up and sent to different parts of the country, it began to be clear that the serious fighting was not very far away.

‘Supply and transport are now running freely here, Coll,’ Buller said, as he stood with General Goff in Cape Town station alongside the train that was to carry him north. ‘I think I can now take over the armies in the field with safety. I shall head for the Tugela for the relief of Ladysmith.’

Standing behind his father with Ellesmere, Dabney watched Buller climb aboard. What Buller was being forced by circumstances to do seemed to him, despite his youth, to be entirely wrong. The war could never be run effectively from the banks of the Tugela River.

Buller’s head reappeared through the window. ‘I shall want the cavalry to go into action at once, Coll,’ he said. ‘The Boers are mobile and we shall have to be, too. I was hoping the cavalry in Ladysmith could be sent to Colenso to operate on the Boer flanks and rear but John French ought to be energetic enough to foil any attempts to advance into Cape Colony. The one thing we need, Coll, is horsemen. We don’t keep up enough of this arm in peacetime. Perhaps we could consider mounting more of the infantry. We have plenty of horses.’

‘They aren’t yet acclimatised,’ General Goff pointed out. ‘They left England in their winter coats and they’re arriving here green as grass in the heat of the South African summer after being at sea in pretty rough conditions. Now they’re being pushed before they’re ready into crowded wagons and sent to the front where they’ll be overloaded and over-marched. It takes a pretty tough horse to stand that kind of treatment. They should be kept in depots for at least a month.’

Buller frowned. ‘We can’t wait that long, Coll. Wars cost money.’

The Cape was looking forward to victories, and the army did its best to provide them.

Lord Methuen, in command in the west, worried as he clung to the railway line that ran north along the border of the Orange Free State by the shrill cries of help from Cecil Rhodes in Kimberley, clashed with the Boers at Belmont where he drove them from their position. Striking again at Graspan, he seemed to be advancing with reasonable success, though he appeared to be inflicting more casualties on his own force than upon the mobile Boers who held their position on the hills until the British had reached the foot then bolted down the other side. Then, at the end of the month, he walked into a trap on the Modder River and his men were obliged to lie in the blazing heat of the sun all day, unable to move. Despite their casualties, they were nevertheless ready to resume the fight the following morning, only to find the Boers, following their usual methods, had withdrawn. It was another pyrrhic victory.