Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1593 page)

Another six miles over the great plain. Here is a small convoy, with an escort of militia, only a mile or two out from Brandfort. They are heading wrong, so we set them right. The captain in charge is excited.

“There are Boers on that hill! “The hill is only half a mile or so away on our left; so we find the subject interesting. “Kaffirs! “we suggest.

“No, no, mounted men with bandoliers and rifles. Why, there they are now.” We see moving figures, but again suggest Kaffirs. It ends by our both departing unconvinced. We thought the young officer jumpy over his first convoy, but we owe him an apology, for next morning we learned that the Mounted Infantry had been out all night chasing the very men whom we had seen. It is likely that the accidental presence of the convoy saved us from a somewhat longer journey than we had intended.

A day at Brandfort, a night in an open truck, and we were back at the Café Enterique, Boulevard des Microbes, which is our town address.

CHAPTER XVIII. FINAL EXPERIENCES IN SOUTH AFRIC
A

Military Jealousies — Football — Cracked Ribs — A Mutiny — De Wet — A Historian under Difficulties — Pretoria — Lord Roberts — With the Boers — Memorable Operation — Altercation.

MILITARY men are more full of jealousies and more prone to divide into cliques than any set of men whom I have met. South Africa was rent with their quarrels, and one heard on every side of how General This was daggers drawn with General That. But the great cleavage of all was between the Roberts men and the Buller men. The former were certainly very bitter against the reliever of Ladysmith, and the comments about the difference between his evening telegrams and those of next morning were painful to hear. I had, however, less sympathy, as Buller was a coarse-fibred man, though a brave soldier. Several authentic anecdotes pointed to this want of perception. When, for example, he entered Ladysmith the defenders saved up a few cakes and other luxuries for the day of their release. These they laid before Buller at the welcoming lunch. “I thought you were a starving city,” said he, looking round at them. This story I heard from several men who claimed to speak with knowledge as well as bitterness. It would have been sad had Buller’s long meritorious, hard-fighting career gone down in clouds, but it cannot be denied that in the French, or I think in any other service, he could not have survived Colenso. The strange speech which he made at a London luncheon after the war proved, I think, that his mind had lost something of its grip of realities. Roberts, as usual, played the noblest possible part in this unhappy controversy. “I shall handle Buller with all possible tenderness,” he said to one of his Staff, and he lived up to his words.

I found the hospital on my return to be in a very improved condition. I fell ill myself, however, though it was not serious enough to incapacitate me. I still think that if I had not been inoculated I should at that time have had enteric, and there was surely something insidious in my system, for it was a good ten years before my digestion had recovered its tone. My condition was not improved by a severe bruising of the ribs caused by a foul in one of the inter-hospital football matches which we had organized in order to take the minds of the men from their incessant work. Charles Gibbs strapped me up with plaster, as in a corset, but I was getting too old for rough handling which I could have smiled at in my youth.

One quaint memory of those days rises before me.

There was a sharp quarrel between Drury, our Military C.O. representing routine discipline, and our cooks and servants representing civilian ideas of liberty. It was mishandled and had reached such a point when I returned from the army that the men were on absolute strike, the work was disorganized and the patients were suffering. Drury was breathing fire and fury, which only made the men more obdurate. It really looked as if there might be a considerable scandal, and I felt that it was just such a case as Mr. Langman would have wished me to handle. I asked leave of Major Drury, therefore, that I might take the matter up, and he was, I fancy, very glad that I should, for he was at the end of his resources, and a public exposure of a disorganized unit means also a discredited Commander. I therefore sat behind the long mess table, and had the six ringleaders before me, all standing in a line with sullen mutiny in their faces. I talked to them gently and quietly, saying that I was in some sense responsible for them, since several of them had been enlisted by me. I sympathized with them in all they had gone through, and said that all our nerves had been a little overstrained, but that Duty and Discipline must rise above our bodily weakness. No doubt their superiors also had been strained and some allowance must be made on both sides. I then took a graver tone. “This matter is just going forward for court martial and I have intervened at the last instant. You clearly understand your own position. You have disobeyed orders on active service in the presence of the enemy. There is only one punishment possible for such an offence. It is death.” Six pairs of eyes stared wildly in front of me. Having produced my effect I went into their grievances, promised that they should be considered, and demanded an apology to Major Drury as the condition for doing anything further. They were six chastened men who filed out of the marquee, the apology was forthcoming, and there were no more troubles in the camp.

An anxiety came to us about this time from a very unexpected cause, for Archie Langman, who had been my good comrade in my visit to the army, went off again, trekking up country with the Imperial Yeomanry and ran right into the arms of De Wet, who had just raided the line and won a small victory at a place called Roodeval. The famous guerilla leader was stern but just, and he treated the hospital men with consideration, so that Archie returned none the worse for his adventure. But there was a bad day or two for me between our learning of his capture and of his release.

The army had got forward with little fighting, and Pretoria was in our hands. It seemed to all of us that the campaign was over and that only cleaning-up remained to be done. I began to consider my own return to Europe, and there were two potent influences which drew me, apart from the fact that the medical pressure no longer existed. The first was that I had during all this time continued to write the History of the War, drawing my material very often from the eye-witnesses to these events. But there was a good deal which could only be got at the centre, and therefore if my book was to be ready before that of my rivals it was necessary for me to be on the spot. The second was that a political crisis and a general election were coming on, and it was on the cards that I might be a candidate. I could not, however, leave Africa until I had seen Pretoria, so, with some difficulty, I obtained leave and was off on the much-broken and precarious railway on June 22.

That journey was certainly the strangest railway journey of my life. From minute to minute one never knew what would happen. I was in the good company of Major Hanbury Williams, Lord Milner’s Secretary, who allowed me to share his special carriage, and we had with us a little alert man named Amery, then unknown to fame, but now deservedly in the seats of the mighty. There were others but I have forgotten them. When the train stopped in the middle of the veldt, which it continually did, one never knew whether it was for five minutes or for five hours, as did actually occur, and as it went on again without warning one had to sit tight. We met a down train with its windows shattered and heard that twenty folk had been injured in a Boer ambuscade. Every hour we expected to be attacked. Once during one of our long halts we saw a horseman come cantering over the great green expanse. We got out to see and interview him. He was a tall, slab-sided fellow, unarmed, but with a rakish debonair look to him. He said he was a loyal British farmer, but I had no doubt in my own mind that he was a Boer scout who wanted to see what our train was carrying. He sat easy in his saddle for some little time, chatting with us, and then suddenly wheeled his grey horse round and galloped away. Some way further down the line we saw a farm burning, and a fringe of our irregulars riding round it. I was told that it was one of De Wet’s farms and that it was a punishment for cutting the line. The whole scene might have been the middle ages — say a company of Moss troopers on a raid over the English border.

When we came to the place of the Roodeval disaster, where our Derbyshire militia had been sadly cut up by De Wet, the train had to stop, for the line was under repair, and we were able to go over the ground. The place was littered with shells for the heavy guns taken from some looted train. Then there were acres covered with charred or partly charred letters, blowing about in the wind, for De Wet had burned the mail bags — one of his less sportsmanlike actions. Napoleon went one better, however, on a certain occasion when he published an Intercepted British mail, which led to a British reprisal of the same sort, not at all conducive to the peace of families. I picked up one letter which fluttered up to me, and I read in rough handwriting, “I hope you have killed all them Boers by now,” with many x (kisses) underneath. Among other things were some of the band instruments, across which De Wet had driven his heavy wagons.

It gave me a strange thrill when I looked out early one morning at a deserted platform and saw the word Pretoria printed upon a board. Here we were at last at the very centre of all things. The Transvaal Hotel was open and for several days it was my head-quarters while I examined men and things. One of my first tasks was to see Lord Roberts, who desired to interview me on account of some sensational articles by Burdett-Coutts which had appeared in the London Press upon the state of the hospitals. Of course that state had in many cases, possibly in all, been awful, but the reason lay in the terrible and sudden emergency. Every one had done his best to meet it and had met it to a surprising degree, but cases of hardship were numerous all the same. This I explained to Lord Roberts — and also to the Royal Commission in London. As an unpaid independent volunteer my words may have had more weight than those of some far greater authority who was personally involved. I can see Roberts now as he sat behind a small desk in his room. His face looked red and engorged, but that was due no doubt to his life in the sun. He was urbane and alert, reminding me at once of our former meeting in London. His light blue eyes were full of intelligence and kindness, but they had the watery look of age. Indeed, I can hardly remember in all military history a case where a man over seventy had been called out from retirement to conduct so arduous a campaign, and it was his conception of the fine flank march to Paardeburg which had actually beaten the Boers, however long they might keep up appearances of resistance. We had a short vivid talk and I never saw him again until he came to my own house at Hindhead to inspect my rifle range in 1902.

Of Lord Kitchener I saw nothing at Pretoria, but on one occasion a big man on a huge bay horse went past me at a hand gallop on the veldt, and as he passed he waved his hand, and I knew it was the famous soldier. He had been under a cloud since Paardeburg, and indeed it is hard to see how his tactics can be justified, since he attacked the Boers and lost some 2,000 men, when they were headed off and were bound to surrender in any case. There may be reasons unknown to a civilian, but I have heard soldiers speak warmly about it, for some of the attackers were mounted troops who had to gallop to the edge of the donga, and could do nothing when they got there. Colonel Hannay actually registered some protest before obeying the orders in which he and many of his men met their death. However, it was to Kitchener that all men turned now when the organization of the lines of communication was the vital point, and that rather than actual battle was his forte. I have been told by some who have been in action with him that he became nervously restless and impatient in a fight, while Roberts, on the other hand, became cooler and more quiet the greater the danger grew. In organization, however, Kitchener was inhuman in his cool accuracy. “Regret to report great dynamite explosion. Forty Kaffirs killed,” was the report of one officer. “Do you need more dynamite? “was the answering telegram from Lord Kitchener.

There was a bench outside my hotel on which a group of old bearded burghers used to smoke their pipes every day. I went down and sat among them with my Boer pipe filled with the best Magaliesburg. I said nothing, so soon they began to make advances, speaking excellent English in rough guttural fashion. Botha was not far from the town, and it was notorious that spies took him out the news every night. These old fellows were clearly a collecting station, so I thought it would be useful to give them something to ponder. After conversational remarks one of them said: “Tell us, Mister, when are we to have peace? “They were under the impression that the whole British nation was longing for peace, and it was this which encouraged the resistance. “Oh,” said I, “I hope not for a long time yet.” They all looked at each other, and then the spokesman said: “Why do you say that, Mister?”

“Well, it’s this way,” said I. “This country, you see, is going to be a British Colony. It would be very awkward for us to have a Colony which was full of dangerous men. We couldn’t kill them then, could we? They would be fellow-citizens and under the law’s protection, the same as we. Our only chance is to kill them now, and that’s what we will do if we have the time.” The old fellows all grunted and puffed furiously at their pipes, but they could find no answer. Possibly some version of the matter may have reached the point I was aiming at.

Our longest excursion from Pretoria was to Waterval, whither Bennett Burleigh took me in his Cape cart. Once we got quite close to a Boer patrol, about a dozen horsemen. Burleigh could not believe that they were actually the enemy until I pointed out that several of the horses were white, which was hardly ever known in our service. He then examined them with his glass, and found I was right. They were clearly on some quest of their own, for they took no notice of us, though they could easily have cut us oft. Our drive took us to the great prison camp where so many British and Colonial soldiers had a humiliating experience. The prisoners had only got free a week or two before, and the whole place, many acres in size, was covered with every sort of souvenir. I contented myself with a Boer carbine which had been broken by a British prisoner, a band triangle, a half-knitted sock, the knitting needles being made from the barbed wire, and a set of leg fetters from the camp gaol. A tunnel had been bored just before the general delivery by some captive Hussars. It was a wonderful work, considering that it was done chiefly with spoons, and it had just been finished when relief came. I descended into it, and was photographed by Burleigh as I emerged. I daresay many of my friends have copies of it still, with my inscription: “Getting out of a hole, like the British Empire.”