With Rimington by L. March Phillipps

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WITH RIMINGTON

BY

L. MARCH PHILLIPPS

LATE CAPTAIN IN RIMINGTON'S GUIDES

SECOND IMPRESSION

LONDON

EDWARD ARNOLD

37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.

1902

_All rights reserved_

_DEDICATION_

_This book is dedicated to the memory of my friend Lieutenant Gustavus
Coulson, D.S.O., of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, who fell at
Lambrechtfontein on May 19, 1901._

_The Colonel in command writes that in that action Lieutenant Coulson
rallied some men and saved a gun from falling into the enemy's hands. He
lost his life in bringing off a wounded man from under the enemy's fire.
For this deed, the last of many deeds as brave, he was recommended for
the Victoria Cross._

_I knew him from his childhood, and on the march from Lindley to
Pretoria, and thence far south to Basutoland, we often rode together,
and talked of West Country sport and his Devonshire home and faces that
we both knew and loved there._

_A keen soldier, a cheery comrade, and a brave and kindly English
gentleman, he stands, it seems to me, the very type of those gallant
boys who in this South African war have died for England_.

PREFACE

These letters were written without any idea of publication, and it was
not until I had been home some months that suggestions from one or two
sources caused me to think of printing them. They appear much as they
were written, except that sometimes several letters dealing with the
same event have been thrown into one; and occasionally a few words have
been added to fill up gaps. In no case have I been wise after the event,
or put in prophecies which had already come off.

The parts in inverted commas are extracts from note-books which I used
to carry about in my pocket, and these passages I have left just as they
were jotted down, thinking that such snap-shots of passing scenes might
have an interest of their own.

It is unlucky from a descriptive point of view that the big actions and
fine effects should all have occurred during the first part of the war,
leaving the dulness and monotony for the later stages. During the last
six months of my service it was not my chance to see any important
action, though slight skirmishing was constant, and I find therefore
nothing in the later letters of a very exciting nature.

Such as they are, however, these letters contain a quite faithful
account of things that happened under my own eyes throughout the chief
stages of the western campaign. During the early part of the war many
things happened that were splendid to see and that it gave me great
pleasure to write about. During the later stages nothing particularly
splendid occurred, though the patience and endurance of our men were in
their way fine; but some things happened which were, as we say,
regrettable; and these things also are in their turn briefly described.

L.M.P.

15 BURY STREET,
ST. JAMES'S, S.W.

CONTENTS

LETTER PAGE

I. ORANGE RIVER CAMP 1

II. BELMONT 8

III. GRASPAN 15

IV. MODDER RIVER 22

V. THE 4.7 30

VI. MAGERSFONTEIN 34

VII. A RECONNAISSANCE 43

VIII. SCOUTING ON THE MODDER 49

IX. THE ADVANCE 59

X. RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY 63

XI. PAARDEBERG--THE BOMBARDMENT 73

XII. PAARDEBERG--THE SURRENDER 77

XIII. POPLAR GROVE 83

XIV. BLOEMFONTEIN 89

XV. MODDER REVISITED 97

XVI. JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR 104

XVII. THE MARCH NORTH 112

XVIII. PRETORIA 126

XIX. THE MARCH SOUTH 139

XX. PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER--I 151

XXI. PRINSLOO'S SURRENDER--II 165

XXII. FIGHTING AND TREKKING 173

XXIII. WRITTEN FROM HOSPITAL 185

XXIV. FIGHTING AND FARM-BURNING 192

XXV. THE SITUATION 205

XXVI. PLAIN MISTER! 217

WITH RIMINGTON

LETTER I

ORANGE RIVER CAMP

ORANGE RIVER, _November_ 18, 1899.

The sun is just rising on Orange River Camp. Our tents are pitched on
the slopes of white sand, soft and deep, into which you sink at every
step, that stretch down to the river, dotted with a few scraggy
thorn-trees. There are men round me, sleeping about on the sand, rolled
in their dark brown blankets, like corpses laid out, covered from head
to foot, with the tight folds drawn over their feet and over their
heads. A few bestir themselves, roll, and stretch, and draw back the
covering from their sleepy, dusty faces. The first sunbeams begin to
creep along the ground and turn the cold sand yellow.

I am beginning this letter in the shade of a mimosa. The whole scene
reminds me very much of Egypt; and you might easily believe that you
were sitting on the banks of the Nile somewhere between the first and
second cataract. There are the same white, sandy banks, the same narrow
fringe of verdure on each side, the same bareness and treelessness of
the surrounding landscape, the same sun-scorched, stony hillocks; in
fact, the whole look of the place is almost identical. The river, slow
and muddy, is a smaller Nile; there only wants the long snout and heavy,
slug-like form of an old crocodile on the spit of sand in the middle to
make the likeness complete. And over all the big arch of the pure sky is
just the same too.

Our camp grows larger and rapidly accumulates, like water behind a dam,
as reinforcements muster for the attack. Methuen commands. We must be
about 8000 strong now, and are expecting almost hourly the order to
advance. Below us De Aar hums like a hive. From a deserted little
wayside junction, such as I knew it first, it has blossomed suddenly
into a huge depot of all kinds of stores, provisions, fodder,
ammunition, and all sorts of material for an important campaign. Trains
keep steaming up with more supplies or trucks crowded with khaki-clad
soldiers, or guns, khaki painted too, and the huge artillery horses that
the Colonials admire so prodigiously. Life is at high pressure. Men talk
sharp and quick, and come to the point at once. Foreheads are knit and
lips set with attention. Every one you see walks fast, or, if riding,
canters. There is no noise or confusion, but all is strenuous, rapid
preparation.

Do you know Colonials? In my eight months of mining life at Johannesburg
I got to know them well. England has not got the type. The Western
States of America have it. They are men brought up free of caste and
free of class. When you come among Colonials, forget your birth and
breeding, your ancestral acres and big income, and all those things
which carry such weight in England. No forelocks are pulled for them
here; they count for nothing. Are you wide-awake, sharp, and shrewd,
plucky; can you lead? Then go up higher. Are you less of these things?
Then go down lower. But always among these men it is a position simply
of what you are in yourself. Man to man they judge you there as you
stand in your boots; nor is it very difficult, officer or trooper, or
whatever you are, to read in their blunt manners what their judgment is.
It is lucky for our corps that it has in its leader a man after its own
heart; a man who, though an Imperial officer, cares very little for
discipline or etiquette for their own sakes; who does not automatically
assert the authority of his office, but talks face to face with his men,
and asserts rather the authority of his own will and force of character.
They are much more ready to knock under to the man than they would be to
the mere officer. In his case they feel that the leader by office and
the leader by nature are united, and that is just what they want.

There are Colonials out here, as one has already come to see, of two
tolerably distinct types. These you may roughly distinguish as the
money-making Colonials and the working Colonials. The money-making lot
flourish to some extent in Kimberley, but most of all in Johannesburg.
You are soon able to recognise his points and identify him at a
distance. He is a little too neatly dressed and his watch-chain is a
little too much of a certainty. His manner is excessively glib and
fluent, yet he has a trick of furtively glancing round while he talks,
as if fearful of being overheard. For the same reason he speaks in low
tones. He must often be discussing indifferent topics, but he always
looks as if he were hatching a swindle. There is also a curious look of
waxworks about his over-washed hands.

This is the type that you would probably notice most. The Stock Exchange
of Johannesburg is their hatching-place and hot-bed; but from there they
overflow freely among the seaside towns, and are usually to be found in
the big hotels and the places you would be most likely to go to. Cape
Town at the present moment is flooded with them. But these are only the
mere froth of the South African Colonial breed. The real mass and body
of them consists (besides tradesmen, &c., of towns) of the miners of the
Rand, and, more intrinsically still, of the working men and the farmers
of English breed all over the Colony. It is from these that the fighting
men in this quarrel are drawn. It is from these that our corps, for
instance, has been by the Major individually and carefully recruited;
and I don't think you could wish for better material, or that a body of
keener, more loyal, and more efficient men could easily be brought
together.

Many of them are veterans, and have taken part in some of the numerous
African campaigns--Zulu, Basuto, Kaffir, Boer, or Matabele. They are
darkly sunburnt; lean and wiry in figure; tall often, but never fat (you
never see a fat Colonial), and they have the loose, careless seat on
horseback, as if they were perfectly at home there. As scouts they have
this advantage, that they not only know the country and the Dutch and
Kaffir languages, but that they are accustomed, in the rough and varied
colonial life, to looking after themselves and thinking for themselves,
and trusting no one else to do it for them. You can see this
self-reliance of theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger and
the way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of the carbines on their
hips, the way they hold their heads and speak and look straight at you.

Your first march with such a band is an episode that impresses itself.
We were called up a few days ago at dead of night from De Aar to relieve
an outlying picket reported hard pressed. In great haste we saddled by
moonlight, and in a long line went winding away past the artillery lines
and the white, ghostly tents of the Yorkshires. The hills in the still,
sparkling moonlight looked as if chiselled out of iron, and the veldt
lay spread out all white and misty; but what one thought most of was the
presence of these dark-faced, slouch-hatted irregulars, sitting free and
easy in their saddles, with the light gleaming dully on revolver and
carbine barrel. A fine thing is your first ride with a troop of fighting
men.

Though called guides we are more properly scouts. Our strength is about
a hundred and fifty. A ledger is kept, in which, opposite each man's
name, is posted the part of the country familiar to him and through
which he is competent to act as guide. These men are often detached, and
most regiments seem to have one or two of ours with them. Sometimes a
party is detached altogether and acts with another column, and there
are always two or three with the staff. Besides acting as guides they
are interpreters, and handy men generally. All these little subtractions
reduce our main body to about a hundred, or a little less; and this main
body, under Rimington himself, acts as scouts and ordinary fighting men.
In fact, a true description of us would be "a corps of scouts supplying
guides to the army."

One word about the country and I have done. What strikes one about all
South African scenery, north and south, is the simplicity of it; so very
few forms are employed, and they are employed over and over again. The
constant recurrence of these few grave and simple features gives to the
country a singularly childish look. Egyptian art, with its mechanical
repetitions, unchanged and unvaried, has just the same character. Both
are intensely pre-Raphaelite.

South Africa's only idea of a hill, for instance, is the pyramid. There
are about three different kinds of pyramid, and these are reproduced
again and again, as if they were kept all ready made in a box like toys.
There is the simple kopje or cone, not to be distinguished at a little
distance from the constructed pyramids of Egypt, just as regular and
perfect. Then there is the truncated or flat-topped pyramid, used for
making ranges; and finally the hollow-sided one, a very pretty and
graceful variety, with curving sides drooping to the plain. These are
all. Of course there are a few mistakes. Some of the hills are rather
shakily turned out, and now and then a kopje has fallen away, as it
were, in the making. But still the central idea, the type they all try
for, is always perfectly clear. Moreover, they all are, or are meant to
be, of exactly the same height.

Most strange and weird is this extraordinary regularity. It seems to
mean something, to be arranged on some plan and for some humanly
intelligible purpose. In the evenings and early mornings especially,
when these oft-repeated shapes stand solemnly round the horizon, cut
hard and blue against the sky like the mighty pylons and propylons of
Egyptian temples, the architectural character of the scenery and its
definite meaning and purpose strike one most inevitably. So solemn and
sad it looks; the endless plains bare and vacant, and the groups of pure
cut battlements and towers. As if some colossals here inhabited at one
time and built these remains among which we now creep ignorant of their
true character. The scenery really needs such a race of Titans to match
it. In these spaces we little fellows are lost.

Well, farewell. My next will be after some sort of a contest. There has
been a touch or two; enough to show they are waiting for us. A corporal
of ours was shot through the arm yesterday and struggled back to camp on
another man's horse. The dark-soaked sleeve (war's colour for the first
time of seeing!) was the object, you may guess, of particular attention.

LETTER II

BELMONT

BELMONT SIDING.

It is to be called Belmont, I believe, from the little siding on the
railway near which it was fought. On the other hand it may be called
after the farm which it was fought on. Who decides these things? I have
never had dealings with a battle in its callow and unbaptized days
before, and it had never occurred to me that they did not come into the
world ready christened. Will Methuen decide the point, or the war
correspondents, or will they hold a cabinet council about it? Anyhow
Belmont will do for the present.

What happened was the simplest thing in the world. The Boers took up
their position in some kopjes in our line of march. The British
infantry, without bothering to wait till the hills had been shelled,
walked up and kicked the Boers out. There was no attempt at any plan or
scheme of action at all; no beastly strategy, or tactics, or outlandish
tricks of any sort; nothing but an honest, straightforward British march
up to a row of waiting rifles. Our loss was about 250 killed and
wounded. The Boer loss, though the extent of it is unknown, was probably
comparatively slight, as they got away before our infantry came fairly
into touch with them. The action is described as a victory, and so, in a
sense, it is; but it is not the sort of victory we should like to have
every day of the week. We carried the position, but they hit us hardest.
On the whole, probably both sides are fairly satisfied, which must be
rare in battles and is very gratifying.

Our mounted men, Guides, 9th Lancers, and a few Mounted Infantry,
marched out an hour before dawn. A line of kopjes stood up before us,
rising out of the bare plain like islands out of the sea, and as we
rounded the point and opened up the inner semicircle of hills, we could
distinguish the white waggon tops of the Boer laager in a deep niche in
the hillside, and see the men collecting and mounting and galloping
about. By-and-by, as we advanced, there came a singing noise, and
suddenly a great pillar of red dust shot up out of the ground a little
to our left. "That's a most extraordinary thing," thinks I, deeply
interested, "what land whale of these plains blows sand up in that
fashion?" Then I saw several heads turned in that direction, and heard
some one say something about a shell, and finally I succeeded in
grasping, not without a thrill, the meaning of the phenomenon.

The infantry attack came off on the opposite side of the ridge from
where we were, and we could see nothing of it. But we heard. As we drew
alongside of the hills, suddenly there broke out a low, quickly uttered
sound; dull reports so rapid as to make a rippling noise. The day was
beautifully fine, still, and hot. There was no smoke or movement of any
kind along the rocky hill crest, and yet the whole place was throbbing
with Mausers. This was the first time that any of us had listened to
modern rifle fire. It was delivered at our infantry, who on that side
were closing with their enemy.

The fire did not last long, though in the short time it did terrible
damage, and men of the Northumberlands and Grenadiers and Coldstreams
were dropping fast as they clambered up the rocky hillside. But that
brief burst of firing was the battle of Belmont. In that little space of
time the position had been lost and won, and we had paid our price for
it. During the march across the flat, as I have been told since, our
loss was comparatively light; but when the climbing of the hill began,
numbers of Boers who had been waiting ready poured in their fire. All
along the ridge, from behind every rock and stone, the smokeless Mausers
cracked (it was then the fire rose to that rippling noise we were
listening to on the other side of the range), and the sleet of bullets,
slanting down the hill, swept our fellows down by scores. But there was
never any faltering. They had been told to take the hill. Two hundred
and fifty stopped on the way through no fault of theirs. The rest went
on and took it. That's the way our British infantry put a job through.

Soon, on our side, scattered bands of the enemy began to emerge from the
kopjes and gallop north, whilst right up at the top of the valley their
long convoy of waggons came into view, trekking away as hard as they
could go, partly obscured by clouds of dust. We made some attempts to
stop them, but our numbers were too few. Though defeated, they were not
in any way demoralised, and the cool way in which they turned to meet
us showed that they knew they were safe from the infantry, and did not
fear our very weak cavalry. We did not venture to press the matter
beyond long shots. Had we done so, it was evident we should have been
cut up.

Various little incidents occurred. This one amused me at the moment. We
had captured a herd of cattle from some niggers who had been sent by the
Boers to drive them in, and I was conveying them to the rear. From a
group of staff officers a boy came across the veldt to me, and presently
I heard, as I was "shooing" on my bullocks, a very dejected voice
exclaim, "How confoundedly disappointing." I looked round and saw a lad
gazing ruefully at me, with a new revolver tied to a bright yellow
lanyard ready in his hand. "I thought you were a Boer," he said, "and I
was going to shoot you. I've _got leave_ to shoot you," he added, as
though he were in two minds about doing the job anyway. I looked at him
for a long while in silence, there seemed nothing to say, and then,
still ruefully, he rode away. This, you will understand, was right up
our end of the valley, and I was driving cattle on to our ground, only I
had a soft hat on.

We have plenty of youngsters like this; brave, no doubt, but thoughtless
and quite careless about the dangerous qualities of the men they have to
meet. "They'll live and learn," people say. They'll learn if they live,
would perhaps be nearer the mark. The Boers, on the other hand, such as
I have seen yet, are decidedly awkward-looking customers, crafty, but
in deadly earnest, versed in veldt wars and knowing the country to an
anthill. Looking from one to the other, I fear there are many mothers in
England who'll go crying for their boys this campaign.

Later a troop of us penetrated into the deep recess among the hills
where they had their laager. It seemed evident, from the number of
waggons and the amount of clothing and stores left behind and littered
in every direction, that the Boers had not expected to be shifted nearly
so suddenly as they were. There were heaps of provisions, quantities of
coffee tied up in small bags, sugar, rice, biltong, _i.e._ dried strips
of flesh, a sort of bread biscuit much used by them on the march, and
made at the farms, and other things. All were done up in small
quantities in such a way that individual men could carry it. There were
waggons loaded, or half loaded, with old chests and boxes, and many
heaped about the ground. Most contained clothes, and the place was
strewn in all directions with blankets, greatcoats, and garments of all
sorts, colours, and sizes. I annexed a very excellent black mackintosh,
quite new and splendidly lined with red; a very martial and imposing
garment.

Diligent search was made for any paper or memoranda, which might show
the plans or strength of the enemy, but all we found were the
love-letters of the young Boers, of which there were vast numbers,
extremely amusing. It never seems to have occurred to any of the writers
that they could be going to get the worst of it. They seem to put the
responsibility for the management of the whole campaign into the hands
of the Deity. They are religious but practical. "God will protect us.
Here is a pound of coffee," is about what they all come to. It is the
fashion to scoff at the calm way in which our enemies have appropriated
the services of the Almighty, but all the same it shows a dangerous
temper. People who believe they have formed this alliance have always
been difficult to beat. You remember Macaulay's Puritan, with his "Bible
in one hand and a two-edged sword in the other." The sword has given
place to a Mauser now, but I am not sure that we are likely to benefit
much by the change. As to the Bible, it is still very much in evidence.
Not a single kit but contained one; usually the family one in old brown
leather. Now it is an historical fact that Bible-reading adversaries are
very awkward customers to tackle, and remembering that, I dislike these
Bibles.

More practically important than love-letters and Bibles, we found also a
lot of abandoned ammunition, shell and Mauser. Our ambulance parties
were at work in the hills. Several Boers, as they fled, had been shot
down near the laager. We found one, shot through the thigh, groaning
very much, and carried him into the shade of a waggon, and did what we
could for him. Meantime some of us had gathered bits of boxes and wood,
and made a fire and boiled water. Tea-cups, coffee, sugar, and biscuits
were found, and we made a splendid feast in the midst of the desolation.
Horrid, you will say, to think of food among the dead and wounded. And
yet that coffee certainly was very good. Somehow I believe the Boers
understand roasting it better than we do.

Before going we collected all the ammunition and heaped it together and
made a pile of wood round it which we set ablaze and then drew out into
the plain and reined in and looked back. Never shall I forget the view.
The hills, those hills the English infantry had carried so splendidly,
were between us and the now setting sun, and though so close were almost
black with clean-hacked edges against the sunset side of the sky. To
eastward the endless grassy sea went whitening to the horizon, crossed
in the distance with the horizontal lines of rich brown and yellow and
pure blue, which at sunrise and sunset give such marvellous colouring to
the veldt. The air here is exactly like the desert air, very
exhilarating to breathe and giving to everything it touches that
wonderful clearness and refinement which people who have been brought up
in a damp climate and among smudged outlines so often mistake for
hardness. Our great ammunition fire in the hollow of the hill burned
merrily, and by-and-by a furious splutter of Mauser cartridges began,
with every now and then the louder report of shells and great smoke
balls hanging in the air. But sheer above all, above yellow veldt and
ruined Boer laager, rose the hill, the position we had carried, grim and
rigid against the sunset and all black. And, with the sudden sense of
_seeing_ that comes to one now and then, I stared at it for a while and
said out loud "Belmont!" And in that aspect it remains photographed in
my memory.

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