To Chase the Storm: The Frontier Series 4 (11 page)

His tough little mount endured the same conditions of searing heat by day and bitter cold by night. If they were not sweating they were shivering. Not even the summer storms that came to lash the seemingly endless miles of rolling plains gave comfort to the soldiers advancing relentlessly towards the Boer
capital in the Orange Free State under the command of General Lord Roberts.

The regular swish of the horses’ legs through the tall grasses was suddenly drowned by the shattering crack of Mauser rifles firing from the
kopje
ahead of the flanking outriders of the Queensland Mounted Infantry. Private Rosenblum was wrenched from dreams of a decent beef stew, a hot bath and clean sheets as his mount reared, the deadly rounds plucking at her body. She crashed to the ground, flinging her rider free.

‘Into ’em, boys!’ Saul heard Major Duffy roar amidst the terrifying crash of the high velocity rifle fire. He crawled painfully away from his horse as she thrashed helplessly on her side in the tall grass, her terrible dying whinnies of confusion and pain adding to the trooper’s fear. Although he still clutched his rifle in his hands despite the heavy fall, he realised that the bandolier of Lee Metford rounds slung diagonally across his chest had been flung away from him when he hit the ground.

Desperately feeling around for the precious ammunition, Saul soon found it a few feet away. Around him, horses’ hooves pounded the earth as the rest of the flanking party charged the knoll of rocks. A lethal hail of Boer bullets plucked the tips of the grass around him and Saul hugged the ground as if trying to be absorbed by the very earth itself. He knew from past experience that the Dutch farmers could be deadly accurate with their modern German rifles, so he dared not raise his head above the concealment provided by the tall grasses. But as quickly
as the incoming rifle fire had rent the hot air, it tapered off into a spasmodic sound of distant shots. He guessed the Boers had employed their ruse of harassing fire and then escaped down a reverse slope to their waiting mounts. There was no hope of catching the expert horsemen as they galloped away to do the same further up the track. Their own horses had been pushed far too long and were in no state to gallop after the Boer skirmishers.

Major Duffy appeared above him astride his mount and glanced down with an expression of concern on his face. ‘You’ve been hit, Private Rosenblum?’ he asked with a note of concern.

Saul eased himself into a sitting position and reached for his broad-brimmed hat. ‘No, boss. But it looks like old Nelly copped it.’

As Patrick reached down to help Saul to his feet the trooper gazed across to the rocky knoll at the rise of the undulating grassy
veldt.
With bayonets fixed, his comrades were on foot, searching amongst the rocks. Although Saul could not hear them, he guessed they were cursing the elusive Boer guerillas, who refused to stand and fight a pitched battle.

‘Anyone else injured?’ Saul asked the special services officer who had been attached to his unit of Queensland Mounted Infantry.

The QMI rode to a battle like cavalry men but fought on foot like infantry whilst their horses were held in the rear by a handler. On the seemingly endless plains of the South African campaign this strategy proved highly effective against an enemy that used the mobility of the horse to strike at the
less mobile British army which was hampered by a cumbersome logistics system.

‘We were lucky – this time,’ Patrick replied. ‘Lost a couple of horses and Private Grady hit in the leg. Not serious. Wasn’t one of those damned explosive bullets of theirs. You can take Grady’s horse.’

‘Thanks, boss,’ Saul replied as he chambered a round to put his own horse out of her misery.

She no longer whinnied but lay on her side snorting in laboured breaths, blood oozing from five holes in her broad chest. Her big brown eyes rolled in pain as Saul levelled the rifle at her head and fired. She jerked at the impact and then relaxed. The pain was gone. Major Duffy turned sharply and cantered towards the knoll to rally the flanking party and take stock of what they may have found for intelligence purposes.

Saul limped across to Grady’s horse grazing quietly on the grass. The rider was sitting beside his mount holding his leg and pulling a face as he gritted his teeth but making no audible complaint. Saul knew Grady from Brisbane where he was renowned as a rugby player. He was also an easygoing soldier liked by his comrades.

‘I’ll get you down to the medical wagons, Harry,’ Saul said, bending over to give his comrade a sip from his water canteen. ‘The boss has given me your horse.’

Grady grinned up at him when he had swallowed the warm water. ‘Better a bullet than to die of the shits,’ he said, knowing that enteric fever and dysentery had taken a terrible toll on the expeditionary force since it had arrived.

‘Yer not going to die of that wound, Harry. Probably get sent home to boast about how yer got it in the charge against the Dutchmen.’

‘Trouble is I didn’t. I went down before I even heard the shots. Never got a chance to follow Major Duffy up the hill. I suppose if he hadn’t given the order so quick we might all be lyin’ out here dead,’ Grady reflected grimly. ‘Didn’t give them Dutchmen a chance to pick us all off. Just straight into ’em before they knew what was comin’.’

Saul nodded. Although he did not have direct command over them, Major Duffy was extremely popular amongst the men of the unit. Major Duffy’s posting was more like a liaison role between the British staff of the column and the colonial soldiers. But he had a habit of spending his time wherever he thought the bullets might fly and his cool courage and competence had earned him the enviable title of ‘boss’ rather than the formal ‘sir’ that the British officers insisted on.

‘You able to get on yer horse?’ Saul asked as he helped his colleague get to his feet.

Grady nodded, wincing when he placed weight on his leg where the bullet had lodged in his thigh. The rest of the troop were filing down from the
kopje
as Saul helped haul Grady astride his mount. Four months was more like four years, Saul thought as he doubled with O’Grady and reflected on his time in South Africa. All he had to do was survive another eight months and he would be free to go home. War was not as romantic as it had been portrayed by the cheering crowds in Brisbane when
they had departed. It was just downright dirty, dull and dangerous.

General Roberts’ strategy was to thrust north along the axis of the vital railway track to Bloemfontein and hence the capital of the Boers, Pretoria. He planned to capture the seats of Boer government and in turn force the Boer armies to abandon their sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking, names that had become rallying points of patriotism for the people of the British Empire. But in doing so he was forced to march his column at a relentless pace. To advance the required ten miles a day meant rations of only three hard biscuits, a quart of tea and half a pound of tinned beef per man, with little fodder for the horses and mules. The column’s route was marked by the carcasses of hundreds of horses and mules which had simply died of exhaustion and starvation. To the men of the colonial contingent the pitiful sight of brave animals dead and dying was heartbreaking. These were men who valued the horse as a companion, men who had traversed the great Outback of Australia’s colonies prospecting for gold, mustering sheep and cattle, or riding the boundaries where the horse is often the best means of staying alive in a hostile land.

But Roberts, bestowed with the Victoria Cross at Kandahar many years earlier, knew that his strategy might bring the war to a close and so the men of the column marched and rode with a desire to fulfil his aim and go home.

It had not all ended by Christmas 1899 as many had predicted, however, with the Boer armies inflicting
some of the worst defeats in recent history on the British army in the closing days of the century. And now in the dawn of a new century, Private Saul Rosenblum faced the terrifyingly quick-firing guns known as pompoms, which threw explosive shells almost as fast as a machine gun. When the explosive projectiles burst open they would shower an area of ground with red hot fragments of iron shrapnel. He had also faced the barrages of the larger artillery guns of the Boer army which shook the earth under him as he hugged it, hearing it tear through men’s bodies and inflict terrible, ragged wounds of smashed muscle and bone. He had seen men and animals disembowelled, limbs torn from bodies, and heads smashed to pulp by the effects of the heavier shrapnel fired on them from the big field artillery pieces. These were sights that would haunt him for as long as he lived. Often he despaired of ever seeing the wide, sun-baked plains of the Queensland Outback again but, like all soldiers, he did not admit his fears to those who rode with him. What counted was that he did not let his mates down when they needed his courage and skill in battle.

Saul squatted by the small wood fire he shared with two other troopers of his squadron. They collected sticks of dry timber as they advanced across the
veldt
and the precious supply was pooled every evening. Around them other Queenslanders were doing the same. On the fire, an old pot recovered from a deserted Boer farmhouse boiled water for tea. Stirring in the tiny black leaves with the end of a twig taken from the fire, Saul sat back to reflect on
how close he had come to dying earlier that afternoon, an introspection on life and death that had become all too frequent for him. But the trooper who sat opposite broke his silent mood as he noticed the big major moving amongst the resting soldiers.

‘Hey, boss! You want a cuppa?’ he called to Patrick.

‘Wouldn’t mind one, thanks, Private Berry,’ he replied and sat down beside the fire.

Berry called for a spare cup and poured from the steaming billy. He handed the mug to Patrick.

‘You think the Boers will put up a fight for Bloemfontein?’ he asked, as Patrick sipped his hot tea.

‘I think so,’ Patrick frowned. ‘There’s a range of hills just four miles outside of the town they could easily fortify with trenches.’

‘Means the buggers will give us a hot time,’ Saul said quietly.

‘Maybe more for the poor bloody English infantry who will no doubt be used to engage their front while we outflank the Dutchmen’s positions,’ Patrick replied, turning to Saul. ‘We might just frighten them off the high ground. Their tactic of not allowing themselves to be trapped on any position will mean they will fall back without much of a fight. They can’t afford to lose men. But, in our present condition, I doubt that we would have the ability to cut off their escape.’

Berry nodded in agreement. The major knew so much because he worked with General Roberts’ staff headquarters. What’s more, he kept the men of the
colonial contingent up to date, and to know what was really going on was important to even the lowliest private.

Berry excused himself suddenly as the dysentery he suffered hit him with stomach cramps. He hurried away into the night. Then the other trooper rose to retire for some badly needed sleep. Saul and Patrick were left alone by the gently burning fire in the shallow hollow.

Patrick was pleased for the opportunity to speak with Saul privately. He had learned of the soldier’s relationship with his Aunt Kate in a rare letter that he had just received.

‘I believe you know my aunt, Kate Tracy, Private Rosenblum,’ he said.

Saul glanced at Patrick with an expression of surprise. ‘How did you know that, sir?’ he questioned.

‘She wrote to me just after you went south to enlist in Brisbane,’ Patrick replied, poking the fire with a twig. ‘About the same time young Matthew took off. Do you know anything of his mysterious disappearance?’

Saul flinched under the question. The major had a way about him that did not invite untruths. At least his conscience was clear as he had sabotaged the boy’s attempt to join up.

‘I first met Mrs Tracy when I was a kid and the old man sent us to Townsville during the trouble with the Kalkadoon around the ’curry way. Only other time I saw Mrs Tracy was when I was on my way through town to tell her of the old man’s death.’

‘And you met Matthew then?’

Saul squirmed and avoided the officer’s piercing green eyes. ‘He came with me to Brisbane of his own accord. When he tried to join up I made sure he didn’t get in. I knew he was only about fourteen or fifteen.’

‘Fifteen now,’ Patrick sighed. ‘But his mother hasn’t seen him since.’

Saul glanced up sharply. ‘I know for sure he didn’t get in. I missed the first contingent as they were only taking men with military experience. I had to wait for the second lot and didn’t leave Queensland until January. He wasn’t on the
Maori King
when we sailed.’

Patrick’s expression in the flickering firelight reflected uncertainty. He stared into the gentle flames that were dancing their fiery ballet and sipped at the black tea. ‘How did he expect to get in at his age?’ Patrick mused more than questioned.

‘He’s a big lad for his age,’ Saul said between sips of tea. ‘A bit like you, boss–in looks and build. And he had a forged birth certificate in the name of Matthew Duffy. He . . .’

Saul was taken aback by the expression that suddenly clouded the major’s face. It was almost the stricken look of a man who knew he was dying.

‘He came to Sydney and we met!’ Patrick exclaimed as the truth dawned on him. ‘I suppose I was thrown because he was not under his birth name of Tracy and at the time I met him I had a lot on my mind. He certainly fooled me. What an idiot I am. He’s probably going to try and enlist in Sydney under the Duffy name.’

‘Be buggered!’ Saul exclaimed. So the little bastard had not been deterred! ‘You think he might get in?’

Patrick pulled a face. ‘If he is anything like the stories I have heard of his father . . . and he has Duffy blood through his mother . . . he’s likely to succeed. Excuse me, I have some letters to write and dispatch as quickly as possible.’

Patrick rose and quickly downed the precious tea before thanking Saul and striding towards the column’s headquarter wagons.

Saul sat alone, cursing himself. He could have told the major about Matthew a long time ago if only he had known of the family connection. The last thing he wanted on his conscience was the possible death of Matthew Tracy. But four months had now passed. Other contingents had been raised in the Australian colonies for service in the campaign. Maybe it was too late.