With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train by Ernest N. Bennett

E >> Ernest N. Bennett >> With Methuen\'s Column on an Ambulance Train

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

The Author's share of the profits arising from the sale of this book
will be given to Lady Lansdowne's Fund for the Widows and Families of
Officers.

WITH METHUEN'S COLUMN ON AN AMBULANCE TRAIN

by

ERNEST N. BENNETT
FELLOW OF HERTFORD COLLEGE, OXFORD

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM.
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1900

PREFACE.

When I returned from South Africa I had no intention of adding to the
war literature which was certain to be evoked by the present campaign.
But I now publish this simple narrative because it was suggested to me
by a friend that the sale of such a book might perhaps serve to augment
in some measure the Fund established by the patriotism and energy of
Lady Lansdowne and her Committee. Lady Lansdowne has cordially approved
of the suggestion; so I trust that the profits derived from this little
volume may be enough to justify its existence.

ERNEST N. BENNETT.

WITH METHUEN'S COLUMN ON AN AMBULANCE TRAIN.

The first view of Capetown from the sea is not easily forgotten. We
sailed into the bay just as the sun was rising in splendour behind the
cliffs of Table Mountain. The houses of the town which fill the space
between the hills and the sea were still more or less in shadow, picked
out here and there by twinkling lights. On the summit rested a fleecy
cloud which concealed the pointed crags and hung from the edges of the
precipice like a border of fine drapery. On the right, groups of
buildings stretched onwards to Sea Point, where the surf was breaking on
the rocks within a few feet of the road; on the left were the more
picturesque suburbs of Rosebank, Newlands and Claremont nestling amid
their woods and orchards; and still further on lay Wynberg, with its
vast hospital, already become a household word in English homes. The
dreary flats of Simon's Bay, where British war-ships lay at anchor, shut
in the view.

Pleasing as the picture is when seen from the deck of a Castle Liner,
disappointment generally overtakes the voyager who has landed. Capetown
itself has little to boast of in the way of architecture. Except
Adderley Street, which is adorned by the massive buildings of the Post
Office and Standard Bank, the thoroughfares of the town offer scarcely
any attractions. The Dutch are not an artistic race, and the fact that
natives here live not in "locations" but anywhere they choose has
covered some portions of the town's area with ugly and squalid houses.
Nor, as a matter of fact, does the general tone of thought and feeling
in Cape Colony naturally lend itself to aesthetic considerations. Even
the churches fail to escape the influence of a spirit which subordinates
everything else to practical and utilitarian considerations. Can two
uglier buildings of their kind be found in the civilised world than the
English and Dutch cathedrals at Capetown?

Another unpleasant feature of life in Capetown is the misfortune, not
the fault, of the inhabitants in being frequently exposed to the full
fury of the south-east wind. Sometimes for whole days together the Cape
is swept by tremendous blasts, which tear up the sea into white foam and
raise clouds of blinding dust along the streets of the town.

Nevertheless the kindness and generosity of the people are not in any
way lessened by these unpleasant features in their surroundings. The
warmth of colonial hospitality is acknowledged by all travellers, and
may be partly due to that love of the mother country which survives in
the hearts of Englishmen who have never left South Africa, and yet
recognise in the visitor a kind of tie, as it were, between themselves
and old England. Such hospitality blesses him that gives as well as him
that takes, and the host listens with deepest interest to his guest's
chatter about London, or perhaps the country town or village where he or
his forefathers lived in days gone by. Any one who is accustomed in
England to the conventional "Saturday to Monday" or the "shooting week"
in a country house opens his eyes with wonder when he receives a warm
invitation from a colonial to spend a month with him at his house on the
Karroo. And such invitations, unlike those which the Oriental traveller
receives, are uttered in earnest and meant to be accepted.

Capetown is by far the most cosmopolitan of all our colonial capitals.
Englishmen, Dutchmen, Jews, Kaffirs, "Cape boys" and Malays bustle about
the streets conversing in five or six different languages. There is a
delightful freedom from conventionalism in the matter of dress. At one
moment you meet a man in a black or white silk hat, at another a
grinning Kaffir bears down upon you with the costume of a scarecrow; you
next pass a couple of dignified Malays with long silken robes and the
inevitable _tarbush_, volubly chattering in Dutch or even Arabic. These
Malays form a particularly interesting section of the population. They
are largely the descendants of Oriental slaves owned by the Dutch, and,
of course, preserve their Moslem faith, though some of its external
observances, _e.g._, the veiling of women, have ceased to be observed. I
did my best during a few days' stay at Somerset West to witness one of
their great festivals called "El Khalifa". At this feast some devotees
cut themselves with knives until the blood pours from the wounds, and a
friend of mine who had witnessed the performance on one occasion seemed
to think that in some cases the wounding and bleeding were not really
objective facts, but represented to the audience by a species of
hypnotic suggestion. As, however, my visit to Somerset West took place
during the month of Ramazan there was no opportunity of witnessing the
"Khalifa," which would be celebrated during Bairam, the month of
rejoicing which amongst Moslems all the world over succeeds the
self-mortifications of Ramazan. Even if their external observances of
the usages of Islam seem somewhat lax, the Cape Moslems, I found,
faithfully observe the month of abstinence, and I remember talking to a
most intelligent Malay boy, who was working hard as a mason in the full
glare of the midday heat, and was touching neither food nor drink from
sunrise to sunset.

All around were signs and tokens of the war. Large transports lay gently
rolling upon the swell in every direction, and it was said that not less
than sixty ships were lying at anchor together in the bay. H.M.S.
_Niobe_ and _Doris_ faced the town, and further off was stationed the
_Penelope_, which had already received its earlier contingents of Boer
prisoners. It is very difficult, by the way, to understand how some of
these captives contrived later on to escape by swimming to the shore,
for, apart from the question of sharks, the distance to the beach was
considerable.

On land the whole aspect of the streets was changed. Every few yards one
met men in khaki and putties. This cloth looks fairly smart when it is
new and the buttons and badges are burnished; but, after a very few
weeks at the front, khaki uniforms become as shabby as possible. No one
who is going into the firing line has any wish to draw the enemy's fire
by the glint of his buttons or his shoulder-badges, and so these are
either removed or left to tarnish. Nor does khaki--at any rate the
"drill" variety--improve its beauty by being washed. When one has
bargained with a Kaffir lady to wash one's suit for ninepence it comes
back with all the glory of its russet brown departed and a sort of limp,
anaemic look about it. And when the wearer has lain upon the veldt at
full length for long hours together in rain and sun and dust-storm his
kit assumes an inexpressible dowdiness, and preserves only its one
superlative merit of so far resembling mother earth that even the keen
eyes behind the Mauser barrels fail to spot Mr. Atkins as he lies prone
behind his stone or anthill.

As our lumbering cab drove up Adderley Street to the hotel a squadron of
the newly raised South African Light Horse rode past. The men looked
very jaunty and well set up with their neat uniforms, bandoliers and
"smasher" hats with black cocks' feathers. There has never been the
slightest difficulty in raising these irregular bodies of mounted
infantry. The doors of their office in Atkinson's Buildings were
besieged by a crowd of applicants--very many of them young men who had
arrived from England for the purpose of joining. A certain amount of
perfectly good-humoured banter was levelled against these brand-new
soldiers by their friends, and some fun poked at them about their
riding. Occasionally, for instance, a few troopers were unhorsed during
parade and the riderless steeds trotted along the public road at
Rosebank. But certainly the tests of horsemanship were severe. Many of
the horses supplied by Government were very wild and sometimes behaved
like professional buckjumpers; and it is no easy task to control the
eccentric and unexpected gyrations of such a beast when the rider is
encumbered with the management of a heavy Lee-Metford rifle. Since the
day on which I first saw the squadron in question it has passed through
its baptism of fire at Colenso. The Light Horse advanced on the right of
Colonel Long's ill-fated batteries, and was cruelly cut up by a
murderous fire from Hlangwane Hill.

Capetown is not well furnished with places of amusement. There is, it is
true, a roomy theatre, whose manager, Mr. de Jong, sent an invitation
to the staff of the "Pink 'Un" to dine with him and his friends at
Pretoria on New Year's Day! How the Boers must have laughed when they
read of this cordial invitation! During the few days which elapsed
before our ambulance train started for the front we paid a visit to the
theatre, but we found the stage tenanted by a "Lilliputian Company," and
it is always tiresome and distressing to watch precocious children of
twelve aping their elders. One feels all the time that the whole
performance scarcely rises above an exhibition of highly-trained cats or
monkeys, and that the poor mites ought all to be in bed long ago.
Nevertheless, this dreary theatre was, in default of anything better,
visited again and again by British officers and others. A friend of mine
in the Guards told me with a sigh that he had actually watched the
performances of these accomplished infants for no less than seven
nights.

There are several music halls in Capetown. I have visited similar
entertainments in Constantinople, Cairo, Beyrout and other towns of the
East, but I never saw anything to match some of these Capetown haunts
for out-and-out vulgarity. There was, it is true, a general air of
"patriotism" pervading them--but it was frequently the sort of
patriotism which consists in getting drunk and singing "Soldiers of the
Queen". On one occasion I remember a curious and typical incident at one
of these music halls. Standing among a crowd of drunken and half-drunken
men was a quiet and respectable-looking man drinking his glass of beer
from the counter. One of the _habitues_ of the place suddenly addressed
him, and demanded with an oath whether he had ever heard so good a song
as the low ditty which had just been screamed out by a painted woman on
the stage. The stranger remarked quietly that it "wasn't a bad song, but
he had certainly heard better ones," when the bully in front without any
warning struck him a violent blow in the face, felling him to the
ground. A comrade of mine, a Welshman, who was standing near the victim,
protested against such cowardly behaviour, and was immediately set upon
by some dozen of the audience, who savagely knocked him down and then
drove him into the street with kicks and blows. These valiant
individuals then returned and were soon busy with a hiccuping chorus of
"Rule, Britannia". How forcibly the whole scene recalled Dr. Johnson's
words: "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of a scoundrel".

The Uitlander refugees were numerous in Capetown, and the principal
hotels were full of them. Those whom I happened to meet did not seem at
all overwhelmed by their recent oppression, and some of them contrived
out of their shattered fortunes to drink champagne for dinner at a
guinea a bottle. I do not think that the average Johannesburg Uitlander
impresses the Englishman very favourably. Mining camps are not the best
nurseries for good breeding or nobility of character, and one could not
help feeling sorry that gallant Englishmen were dying by hundreds while
some of these German Jews wallowed in security and luxury. Quite
recently an officer overheard a "Jew-boy" loudly declaring in a shop
that "after all, British soldiers were paid to go out and get shot,"
etc., and in a fit of righteous indignation the Englishman seized the
Semite and threw him out of the door.

English visitors to the Cape who, like myself, wished to contribute our
humble share towards the work of the campaign had several directions in
which to utilise their energies. The Prince Alfred's Field Artillery was
raising recruits, and on the point of leaving for the front for the
defence of De Aar. The Duke of Edinburgh's Rifle Volunteers enlisted men
on Thursday, drilled them day and night, and sent them off on the
Tuesday. This fine corps has, much to its vexation, been almost
continuously employed in guarding lines of communication and protecting
bridges and culverts from any violence at the hands of colonial rebels.
The South African Light Horse has already been mentioned. For those of
us who found it impossible to pledge ourselves for the whole period of
the war, owing to duties at home which could not be left indefinitely,
and who possessed some knowledge of ambulance work, an excellent opening
was found in one of the ambulance corps originated by the Red Cross
Society under Colonel Young's able and energetic management.

Having volunteered for service on one of the ambulance trains and been
accepted, I set off with a corporal to Woodstock Hospital to secure my
uniform and kit. The quartermaster who supplied me was justly annoyed
because some mistake had been made about the hour for my appearance, and
when he rather savagely demanded what sized boots I wore, I couldn't for
the life of me remember and blurted out "nines," whereas my normal
"wear" is "sevens". Instantly a pair of enormous boots and a
correspondingly colossal pair of shoes were hurled at me, while, from
various large pigeon-holes in a rack, bootlaces, socks, putties and
other things were rained upon me. I couldn't help laughing as I picked
them up. Here I was equipped from head to foot with two uniform suits of
khaki--which mercifully fitted well--shirts, boots, shoes, helmet,
field-service cap and other minutiae, and the entire equipment occupied
some four minutes all told. What a contrast to the considerable periods
of time often consumed at home over the colour of a tie or the shape of
a collar!

Shouldering the waterproof kit-bag containing my brand-new garments, and
saluting the irritated officer, I marched off to ambulance train No. 2,
where I speedily exchanged my civilian habiliments for her Majesty's
uniform. The "fall" of my nether garments was not perfect, but on the
whole I was rather pleased with the fit of the khaki, relieved on the
arm with a red Geneva Cross.

One of the two ambulance trains on the western side is manned entirely
by regulars, the other (No. 2) is in charge of an R.A.M.C. officer, but
the staff under him is composed almost wholly of volunteers. This staff
consists of a civilian doctor from a London hospital attached to the
South African Field Force, two Red Cross nurses from England, a staff
sergeant, two corporals, a couple of cooks and ten "orderlies" in charge
of the five wards.

Introductions to my comrades followed. We were certainly one of the
oddest collection of human beings I have ever come across. Our pursuits
when not in active service were extremely varied--one of our number was
an accountant, another a chemist, a third brewed beer in Johannesburg, a
fourth was an ex-baker, and so on. We were, on the whole, a very
harmonious little society, and it was with real regret that I left my
comrades when I returned to England. At least four of our number were
refugees from Johannesburg, and very anxious to return. These
unfortunates retailed at intervals doleful news about well-furnished
houses being rifled, Boer children smashing up porcelain ornaments and
playfully cutting out the figures from costly paintings with a pair of
scissors, and grand pianos being annexed to adorn the cottages of Kaffir
labourers. Another member of our little society had a very fair voice
and good knowledge of music, for in the days of his boyhood he had sung
in the choir of a Welsh cathedral; since that time he had practised as a
medical man and driven a tramcar. The weather was very trying sometimes
and J----, our Welsh singer, had acquired an almost supernatural skill
in leaping from the train when it stopped for a couple of minutes,
securing a bottle of Bass and then boarding the guard's van when the
train was moving off. On one of these successful forays I saw J---- send
three respectable people sprawling on their backs as he violently
collided with them in his desperate efforts to overtake the receding
train. The victims slowly got up and some nasty remarks about J---- were
wafted to us over the veldt. We had a couple of cooks. One of them was
an American who had served in the Cuban war, the other a big Irishman
called Ben. The American _chef_, being the only man out of uniform on
the train, had access to alcoholic refreshments at the stations, which
were very properly denied to the troops, and he rejoiced exceedingly to
exercise his privilege. He could sleep in almost any position, and
generally lay down on the kitchen dresser without any form of pillow, or
slept serenely in a sitting posture with his feet elevated far above his
head.

We steamed away from the Capetown station in the afternoon. The regular
service had to a large extent been suspended, and here and there
sentries with fixed bayonets kept watch over the government trains as
they lay on the sidings. If it was thought prudent to guard trains from
any injury in Capetown itself, one can realise the absolute necessity of
employing the colonial volunteers in patrolling the long line of some
600 miles from the sea to Modder River.

"Queen Victoria's afternoon tea"--as we called it--was served about
five. The two orderlies for the day brought from the kitchen a huge
tea-urn, some dozen bowls, and two large loaves. We supplemented this
rudimentary fare with a pot of "Cape gooseberry" jam, the gift of a
generous donor, and improved the quality of the tea with a little
condensed milk. Fresh from the usages of a more effete civilisation I
did not feel after two cups of tea and some butterless bread that
"satisfaction of a felt want"--to quote Aristotle--which comes, say,
after a dinner with the Drapers' Company in London, and for two nights I
tore open and devoured with my ward-companion a tin of salmon which I
bought from a Jew along the line. But, strange to say, after a few days
of this _regime_, which in its chronological sequence of meals and its
strange simplicity recalled the memories of early childhood, my
internal economy seemed to have adapted itself to the changed
environment, and after five o'clock with its tea and bread I no longer
wished for more food. Exactly the same experience befalls those
inexperienced travellers in tropical countries who, at first, are
continually imbibing draughts of water, but soon learn the useful lesson
of drinking at meal-time only, and before long do not even take the
trouble to carry water-bottles with them at all.

Our destination was supposed to be De Aar, but nobody ever knew exactly
where we were going or what we were going to do when we got there.
During a campaign orders filter through various official channels, and
frequently by the time they have reached the officer in charge of a
train others of a contradictory purport are racing after them over the
wires. This sort of thing is absolutely unavoidable. Between the army at
the front and the great base at Capetown stretched some 700 miles of
railway, and over this single line of rails ran an unending succession
of trains carrying troops, food, guns, and last, but by no means least,
tons upon tons of ammunition. The work of supplying a modern army in the
field is stupendous, and the best thanks of the nation are due to the
devoted labours of the Army Service Corps. The officers and men of the
A.S.C. work night and day, they rarely see any fighting, and are seldom
mentioned in the public press or in despatches; yet how much depends
upon their zeal and devotion! Amateur critics at home have frequently
asked why such and such a general has not left strong positions on the
flank and advanced into the enemy's country further afield. Quite apart
from the fearful danger of exposing our lines of communication to attack
from a strong force of the enemy, these critics do not seem to possess
the most elementary idea of what is involved in the advance of an army.
How do they suppose hundreds of heavily laden transport waggons are to
be dragged across the uneven veldt, intersected every now and then by
rugged "kopjes" and "spruits" and "dongas"? Ammunition alone is a
serious item to be considered. Lyddite shells, _e.g._, are packed two in
a case: each case weighs 100 lb., and I have frequently seen a waggon
loaded with, say, a ton of these shells, and drawn by eight mules, stuck
fast for a time in the open veldt; the passers-by have run up and shoved
at the wheels and so at last the lumbering cart has jogged slowly on.
This load would probably in action disappear in half an hour; and when
one reflects that in one of our recent engagements each battery fired
off 200 shells, it is easy to understand the enormous weight of metal
which has to follow an army in order to make the artillery efficient,
and to realise how unwilling a general is to leave a railway behind him,
and attempt to move his transport across the uncertain and devious
tracks of an unmapped African veldt. Lord Kitchener's successful march
upon Omdurman was only rendered possible by the fact that the army kept
continuously to the railway and the Nile.

The railway journey northwards is full of interest. Between Capetown and
Worcester the country is well watered and fields of yellow corn
continually meet the eye, interspersed with vines and mealies. Yet here
and there that lack of enterprise which seems to characterise the Dutch
farmer is easily noticeable. Irrigation is sadly neglected and hundreds
of acres which with a little care and outlay would grow excellent crops
are still unproductive.

Soon after leaving Worcester the line rises by steep gradients nearly
2,500 feet. Right in front the Hex River Mountains extend like a vast
barrier across the line and seem to defy the approaching train. But
engineering skill has here contrived to surmount all the obstacles set
up by Nature. The train goes waltzing round the most striking curves,
some of them almost elliptical. Tremendous gradients lead through
tunnels and over bridges, and the swerving carriages run often in
alarming proximity to the edge of precipitous ravines. What a splendid
position for defensive purposes! Had the present war been declared three
weeks earlier De Aar would have been quite unable to stand against the
Boers, and thus the enemy might with his amazing mobility have made a
swift descent along the railway and occupied the Hex River pass. Out of
this position not all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men would
have dislodged him without enormous loss. With the armed support of all
the Dutch farmers from Worcester to the Orange River, a Boer occupation
of this strong position would have been a terrible menace to Capetown
itself. As it is, shots are occasionally fired at trains as they run
northward from Worcester, and as a few pounds of dynamite would wreck
portions of the Hex River line for weeks the government patrols in this
locality cannot be too careful.

Our first passage through the Karroo was by night, but during the busy
days of service which followed we frequently saw this dreary expanse of
desert in daylight. Some mysterious charm, hidden from the eyes of the
unsympathetic tourist, dwells in the Karroo. The country folk who
inhabit these vast plains all agree that to live in them is to love
them. Children speak of the kopjes as if they were living playmates, and
farmers grow so deeply attached to their waggons and ox teams that Sir
Owen Lanyon's forcible seizure of one in distraint for taxes appeared a
kind of sacrilege in the eyes of the Boers.

At times nothing can be more unlovely than the stony, barren wilderness
of the Karroo. The Sudan desert with its rocky hills and the broad Nile
between the yellow banks is infinitely more picturesque than this vast
South African plain. Still, at certain periods of the day and year the
Karroo becomes less forbidding to the view. Sometimes after heavy rain
the whole country is covered with a bright green carpet, but in summer,
and, indeed, most of the year, the short scrub which here takes the
place of grass is sombre in tint. Nevertheless cattle devour these
apparently withered shrubs with avidity and thrive upon them. Again,
when the warm tints of the setting sun flood the whole expanse of
desert, there is a short-lived beauty in the rugged kopjes with all
their fantastic outlines sharply silhouetted against the glowing sky.
The farms on the Karroo, and, in fact, generally throughout the more
northern parts of the colony, are of surprising size. It is quite common
to find a Dutchman farming some 10,000 acres. Arable land in the Karroo
is of course very rare, and one would think that the "Ooms" and the
"Tantas" and their young hopefuls would have their time fully occupied
even in keeping their large herds and flocks within bounds. One
continually sees half a dozen ostriches stalking solemnly about a huge
piece of the veldt, with no farm-house anywhere in sight, and it is
difficult to understand how these people contrive to catch their
animals.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6