With Steyn and De Wet by Philip Pienaar
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Philip Pienaar >> With Steyn and De Wet
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In the afternoon the same band returned, several on foot, and carrying
someone in a blanket. What was my surprise to find that this was no
other than poor Harry C----!
The native had misled them, and the surprise had been the other way
about. My friend had received a bullet through the stomach, a wound
which appeared necessarily fatal. He was laid down in a tent. Theron
bent over him, his eyes filling with compassionate tears. "How now,
Harry?"
"Awful pain, captain."
To break the news gently we wired home that he was only slightly
wounded. This turned out to have been wiser than we knew, for, to our
joy, Harry lingered on, rallied, and finally recovered, a triumph of
medical skill.
PLATRAND
In Natal itself the situation was satisfactory, but the course of events
elsewhere made the speedy capture of Ladysmith imperative. It was
accordingly decided to make an attack on Platrand, or Waggon Hill, as
the British call it. If we could gain this hill the town would be at our
mercy.
The plan of attack was simple in the extreme. The Free Staters would
climb one side, the Transvaalers the other, and Louis Botha himself ride
over from Colenso with a reserve of three hundred men.
Our chief determined to view this fight, and agreed to take me along. It
had been arranged that the attack should take place on the 6th of
January. In the afternoon of the 5th we took the road to Ladysmith,
travelling in a light mule-waggon, our horses tied alongside.
Near Nelthorpe a small commando passed us. Knowing very well what errand
they were bound upon, we yet thought fit to ask them where they were
off to. "Oh, nowhere particular," was the answer. "Out for exercise,
that's all." This discretion was most commendable, for in our mixed
forces spying must have been easy and frequent.
We pitched tent for the night, and at three the next morning saddled our
horses and followed the spoor of the commando. Presently, encountering a
Kafir holding half a dozen horses, we asked him where the owners were.
He pointed to a hill near by, where we found the gallant Villebois, the
kindly Oberst von Braun, and ill-fated von Brusewitz. Little did we
think at the time that the latter would meet his death a few weeks later
on Spion Kop and the former shortly fall at Boshof!
It was growing light, and we could see, lying on our right, the neutral
camp; further away, on Bulwana, our biggest gun, where we knew General
Joubert was standing, his wife by his side.
Straight before us lay the key to Ladysmith--Platrand, whence now and
again came the sharp rat-tat of the Metford, followed by the Mauser's
significant cough.
Through our glasses we espied six helmeted men slowly retreating up the
mountain, pausing at every dozen yards to fire a volley at some
invisible enemy. Three of them reached the top. The sentries were being
driven in.
General Botha now arrived with the reserve force. All dismounted.
"Put your horses out of sight," were his first words to his men, "they
will draw the enemy's fire."
Scarcely had he spoken when a shrapnel shell burst overhead, and three
horses were lying on their backs, snorting and kicking. Then came
another and another. Both went wide. The animals were quickly led behind
the hill, and the three wounded put out of their pain.
Taking the best shelter possible, we gazed upon the drama being unfolded
before us.
The attack was now in full swing. The grating British volleys, the
ceaseless mill of independent firing, the sharp flash of the British
guns, the fierce whirr of our French shells, the deep boom of Long Tom
resounding through the valleys. Who can describe it all?
Yet hardly a single combatant could be discerned. Attacked and attackers
alike were invisible. One soldier only stood in plain view on the crest
of the hill, signalling with a flag. Our men reached the crest, and the
soldier disappeared. Whether in response to his signals or not,
reinforcements presently reached the hill.
In long, thin lines of yellow they ran across the plateau to the crest,
hoping to drive the Boers back the way they had come. As it approached
the line grew thinner and thinner, until there was nothing of it left.
And so on, for hour after hour, the yellow lines of gallant men flung
themselves into the open, only to fall beneath the raging fire poured
upon them from the sternly held mountain crest.
Down the hill our wounded dribbled, thirsty men, pale men, men covered
with blood and weeping with rage. How grim must be the fire they have
just passed through! One man is brought down lying across a horse. His
face hangs in strips, shattered by a dum-dum bullet. Thank goodness,
some of ours are using buckshot to-day!
A Boer mounts on a waggon.
"Who will take in ammunition?"
No response.
I turn to my chief. "Do you advise me to try?"
"I cannot; you must decide for yourself."
Throwing a sack of cartridges over my horse's back, I set off. No sooner
in the open, than whizz, whizz, went the bullets past my ear. The pony
stopped, confused. I struck the spurs into his flanks, and on we flew,
the rapid motion, the novelty of the affair, and the continual whistle
of the bullets producing in me a peculiar feeling of exaltation.
Then the sack tumbled off. I sprang down, hooked the bridle to a tree,
rushed back for the bag, and started forward again. The firing now
became so severe that I raced for a clump of trees, hoping to find
temporary shelter there. Some of our men were here, lying behind the
slender tree-trunks and taking a shot at the enemy now and then.
"Absolutely impossible to live in the open," they said. "Better wait
awhile and see how things go."
I laid myself down under the trees and listened to the bullets as they
sang through the branches.
The very heavens vibrated as the roar of artillery grew ever fiercer,
and the loud echoes rolled along from hill to hill and died away in an
awful whisper that shook the grass-tops like an autumn wind.
What were those lines of Bret Harte's about the humming of the battle
bees?... I could not remember.
My eyelids grew heavy and presently I was fast asleep.
"Wake up! They're coming round to cut us off. We must clear!" And away
went my friend.
Knowing their horses would soon out-distance my heavily laden pony, and
trusting to get away unobserved, I took his bridle and led him away. For
about twenty yards all went well. Then suddenly there broke loose over
us the thickest storm of lead I ever wish to experience. Whether it was
a Maxim or not I could not say, but it seemed to me as if the whole
British army was bent on my destruction. Like raindrops on a dusty road
the bullets struck around me. The pony snorted, shivered, and sometimes
stood stock still. I jerked the bridle savagely and struggled on,
without the slightest hope of escaping, and thinking what a cruel shame
it was that I should be shot at like a deer. Finally the shelter of a
dry watercourse was reached. Following this for some distance, I
encountered another party of our men, to whom I handed my charge, too
shaken to repeat the experiment. The firing now slackened off, and I
returned to my chief, full of mortification over my failure.
It was evident the hill would not be taken that afternoon, so we
returned to our tent, intending to come back the next morning. Late that
evening, however, Colonel Villebois passed and told us our forces had
been withdrawn, General Botha being ordered to Colenso, where Buller had
made a feint attack to help Ladysmith.
Our struggle was therefore a failure, but it had not been made in vain,
since it proved once again that we also could storm a fortified hill,
and fight a losing fight--the hardest fight of all.
SPION KOP
Something peculiar began to be observed about the British camp at
Chieveley. The naval guns still flashed by day, the searchlight still
signalled to Ladysmith of nights, the tents still glistened in the sun,
but the soldiers, where were they?
Marching somewhere up the river. Buller meant to try his luck once more.
More than one of our present leaders had in former days fought by
Buller's side against the Zulus. They knew him tenacious, able; no mere
theorist. It was here in Natal, under their eyes, that he had gained his
Victoria Cross--the same priceless bit of bronze that young Roberts had
just died to win; and they felt that to ward off his second blow would
ask all our energy and cost many useful lives.
The commandoes on our side of the river were extended to keep pace with
the enemy's movements on the other. The distance between the different
laagers lengthened considerably, and a speedy and certain method of
communication soon became a necessity. To obtain this use was made of
the vibrator, an instrument so sensitive that the most faulty line will
carry sufficient electricity to work it. Having received orders to
accompany the construction party, I said good-bye to my comfortable
quarters, and found myself in the veld once again.
While the two waggons loaded with wire, etc., went on by road we struck
across country, myself on horseback, a vibrator strapped to the saddle,
the others on foot. Half a dozen Kafirs accompanied us, carrying rolls
of "cable," wire about the thickness of the lead in a pencil and covered
with gutta percha. A wooden "saddle" holding one roll of wire was
strapped on the back of one of the natives, one end of the wire joined
up to the instrument in the office; the native marched forward, the wire
unrolling as he went, and the other boys placing stones upon it here and
there in order to prevent its being dragged about by cattle. In this
manner we went forward, establishing an office at every laager on the
way, with the result that every commando was always fully informed as to
the situation of all the others, and the enemy's every movement
immediately known to the entire forces, enabling reinforcements to be
sent anywhere at any time.
This system was an easy one to learn, and it has been said that some of
our generals became so fond of it that the slightest movement of the
enemy was the signal for a request for reinforcements. This is, no
doubt, a frivolous exaggeration.
The first day of laying the cable we had gone about fifteen miles, when
communication with the office suddenly ceased. Telling the others to go
on, I turned back and carefully tested the line, eventually finding the
fault at sundown. Reporting my whereabouts to the office, I was ordered
to follow the working party as rapidly as possible, the chief adding
that it was especially desired to have communication the same night with
the Standerton laager, where the others would have arrived by this time.
I therefore pushed on, following the wire. It was pretty dark when I
reached the foot of a mountain. Right across the cable led me--rather a
difficult matter tracing it in the dark--but at last an open plain on
the other side was reached; a few miles further I found one of our men
stretched out in the grass by the side of the cable.
"Where's the Standerton laager?"
"This is where it was. Shifted yesterday; don't know where to. Others
gone to find out. Got a blanket?"
I had not. We had no idea where the waggons were. We lay down to
shiver, not to sleep, for the intense cold made the latter impossible
and the former obligatory. In the middle of the night we moved round to
the other side of the antheap, thinking it _must_ be warmer there. But
it wasn't.
At sunrise the others returned, saying that the Standerton laager had
moved much higher up, and that the Johannesburg laager was the next on
the list. They accordingly marched in that direction, laying the cable
as they went, past precipices and over mountain gorges. I followed on,
testing and repairing, very tedious work in the burning sun. Fortunately
I was able to buy a little fresh milk from a native, which refreshed me
immensely. The waggons were still missing, so we had very little food.
At midnight the cable led me up a high hill, so steep that the pony
almost fell over backwards as I led him up the face of it. Right on the
top lived an old native, who, hearing the barking of his dogs, rushed
out armed with an assegai, ready to defend his eyrie against all comers.
I persuaded him to take me straight to the Johannesburg laager, where a
good night's rest made all right again.
The next morning communication was established with headquarters, and I
had the pleasure of eating a decent breakfast with Ben Viljoen, then
commandant, now general, whose acquaintance I had made during the
Swaziland expedition.
A fiery politician and a reckless writer, his pet aversions were
Hollanders and Englishmen, and it was hard to say which he detested the
most. Brave and straightforward, he was most popular amongst his men,
but the official, non-fighting, salary-pocketing element bore him no
love. General in charge of these positions was kind-hearted, energetic
Tobias Smuts, of Ermelo.
During the night Louis Botha arrived here, accompanied only by his aide
and his secretary. He, Smuts, their staffs, all slept in one small tent
on the hard ground, and with hardly room enough to turn round in. Truly
our chiefs were anything but carpet knights!
For a couple of days my office was under a waggon, then my tent arrived,
and soon everything was in full swing. One afternoon I was honoured by a
visit from a Hollander Jew and Transvaal journalist, whose articles had
more power to sting the Uitlanders than almost anything one could
mention on the spur of the moment.
We drank tea together and discussed the probability of our camp being
bombarded, standing, as it did, in full view of the hill whereon the
British cannon had been dragged a few days before. He had just raised
the cup to his lips when a well-known sound was heard--the shriek of an
approaching shell. Nearer and louder it came, till finally--bang!--the
shell burst not a hundred yards away. A young lineman, who had been
listening with all his soul and ever wider stretching eyes, now gave an
unearthly yell and almost sprang through the top of the tent, knocking
over the unhappy journalist and sending the hot tea streaming down his
neck. The youth's exit was somewhat unceremonious.
The office was hastily removed to the high bank of the adjacent stream.
Whilst this operation was going on the instrument buzzed out a message
ordering me to leave immediately for the Spion Kop office. I at once
said au revoir, handing over to my assistant the charge of the office,
river bank and all, as well as the task of dodging the shells, which
continued to fall around.
Riding along the steep bank for about two hundred yards, I found a
footpath leading down one side and up the other. No sooner had I started
down this than I heard a loud explosion. It did not sound quite so near,
but on gaining the opposite bank I saw floating over the spot just
quitted by me a small cloud of smoke, showing that a shell had been
fired at me with marvellous accuracy. Then a couple burst near the
general's tent, and the laager was immediately shifted behind the hill.
I reached Spion Kop, took charge of the office, and was kept so busy
that for a week there was no time to have a decent wash.
The hill next ours was daily bombarded with the utmost enthusiasm,
shells falling there at the rate of fully sixty a minute, while we
escaped with only an occasional bomb. Looking down upon the plain before
us, we could see the British regiments drilling on the bank of the
river, about two thousand yards away, probably to draw our fire, but in
vain was the net spread.
The ground of operations was somewhat extensive. For some days the
enemy's infantry had been harassing our right wing, attacking every day,
and drawing a little nearer every night. Louis Botha was almost
continually present at this point, only coming into camp now and then
for a few hours' sleep.
One evening his secretary said to me, with genuine emotion, "It has all
been in vain! Our men are worn out. They can do no more!"
He was a Hollander, and also a gentleman; that is to say, he was not one
of those Hollanders who lived on the fat of the land, and then turned
against us in our adversity; rather was he of the rarer stamp of Coster,
who glorified his mother country by nobly dying for that of his
adoption.
"Cheer up!" I replied. "There are other hills."
"To-morrow will tell," he said, as he bade me good-night.
And the morrow did. In the grey dawn two hatless and bootless young men
came stumbling down into the laager.
"The British have taken the hill!"
Startled, we gazed at Spion Kop's top--only five hundred yards away, but
invisible, covered by the thick mist as with a veil. The enemy were
there, we knew it; they could not see us as yet, but the mist would soon
clear away, and then....
Our guns were rapidly trained on the spot, our men placed in position,
and we waited.
I ran into the tent to telegraph the news to Colenso. No reply to my
hasty call. The wire is cut!
"Go at once," said the chief, "and repair the line."
As I rode off the mist cleared, and a few minutes later the fight had
begun. The cable ran about a thousand yards behind our firing line, and
as I went along, my eyes fixed on the wire, the noise of the battle
sounded in my ears like the roar of a prairie fire. Jagged pieces of
shell came whizzing past, shrieking like vampires in their hunt for
human flesh.
Searching carefully for the fault, my progress was slow, and it was
afternoon when the Johannesburg laager was reached. Here I found a
despatch-rider, who said that reinforcements had arrived at Spion Kop
early in the morning, that our men had immediately climbed the hill, and
that, the issue being very, uncertain, we might have to retreat during
the night.
The line was still interrupted, although I had repaired several faults.
I accordingly rode back to Spion Kop early the next morning. When I
entered the laager it was to find that all the waggons had already
retreated, and the tents standing deserted. Not quite deserted, for in
one of them half a dozen bodies were lying. The enemy had unexpectedly
retired during the night, and the entire commando was now on the hill,
gazing at the plentiful harvest reaped by our Nordenfeldts. Thither I
also went.
British ambulance men were busy collecting corpses. It was a mournful
sight; it seemed to me as if war really meant nothing else than
butchering men like sheep, quietly, methodically, and without any pomp
or circumstance.
"A sad sight!" I remarked to the British chaplain.
"They only did their duty," was his unfeeling reply. Duty! Is it any
man's duty to kill and be killed without knowing why? For what did these
poor Lancashire lads know or care about the merits of the war?
"What do you think the confounded English have had the cheek to do?"
asked a friend. "You know they always keep our wounded as prisoners when
they get the chance. Well, this morning their ambulance came here and
coolly carted away all their wounded! Louis Botha says they might have
asked permission first. I should have turned a Maxim on them!"
We went down to the laager, found the line in order, and wired the news
of the victory to Pretoria. I had not been able to get into
communication the day before because the chief had taken a hand in the
fighting instead of attending to the instrument.
Believing that Warren would make another attempt, this time more to our
right, we shifted the office a few miles in that direction and pitched
our tent next to a farmhouse, which was being utilised as a hospital.
GLORIOUS WAR
Late that evening I heard someone outside the tent asking where the
hospital was. It was my father. We had no idea of meeting each other
here, as I had parted from him in Johannesburg before the war began,
when he had no intention of going to Natal. He himself had been under
the impression that I was still at Ladysmith.
He told me he had come to see my young cousin, Johannes, who had been
wounded on Spion Kop the day before. We walked over to the hospital. The
wounded lad, a frail boy of fifteen, looked terribly exhausted lying
there on the floor, his left arm completely shattered.
"We were two together," he said, "myself and another boy. We crept
closer and closer to one of the small sangars, firing into it as we
crept, until there was only one Englishman left alive in it. He called
out 'Water!' and I ran to give him my flask. When I got close to him he
pointed his gun at me and fired. I sprang aside, and the bullet
ploughed up my arm. My chum then shot him dead. Our doctor was too busy
with the English officers to attend to me, so I fear I shall lose my
arm."
Poor child! his fear was only too well founded. His arm was amputated,
after which he went to his uncle's farm to recuperate. When the British
arrived there he would not surrender, but took his gun and went on
commando. Three days later he was brought in, shot through the lungs.
That is the last I have been able to hear of him.
A few days after the battle of Spion Kop we moved forward and opened
another office on our right wing. The British soon after retired from
the vicinity, and this wing was withdrawn. The office remained, however,
being utilised by scouts and patrols for the transmission of urgent
reports.
One day Oberst von Braun called, accompanied by two Boers. I asked him
what had become of his lieutenant.
"Ah, poor von B----!" he said. "The fighting on Spion Kop was almost
over, and he had just risen and walked forward a few steps, when a
chance bullet crashed into his forehead, and he fell a corpse."
This was the same lieutenant who had caused a great sensation in Germany
a few years before by killing an unarmed civilian in a moment of
provocation. It may seem a just retribution that he should have met
with such a tragic fate, but those who knew him in Natal felt nothing
but regret for his loss. Oberst von Braun was taken prisoner a few days
after, and the British reported that his mind was unhinged. This did not
appear improbable to us, for we knew how much he had been affected by
the loss of his companion.
I stayed here for three weeks, without much occupation except wasting
ammunition on turtle doves and hoping that the next patrol would not be
a British instead of a Boer one.
The deserted houses in the neighbourhood had all been visited in turn by
both British and Boer patrols, and between the two enormous damage had
been wrought. It must be pointed out, however, that the mischief done by
our men was in no way authorised--was, in fact, against express orders,
whereas the British now burn our houses to the joyful fiddling of the
London _Times_, and with a righteous unction eminently national.
A small but remarkably severe engagement took place about this time, in
which a portion of Viljoen's men suffered heavily.
This detachment, about forty in number, was guarding a Nordenfeldt
stationed in an advanced position on an isolated hill. One afternoon a
large body of the enemy suddenly attacked the hill. Ben Viljoen, who,
as usual, was on the spot, is not what may be called an excessively
pious man, but he rose to the occasion and inspired his little band by
asking them if they did not fear God more than the British. Thus
encouraged to stand firm, they bravely held the hill till fully half
their number were killed. There was no hoisting of the white flag,
however, our men at that time generally preferring almost certain death
to surrender. This instance was no exception. Every man got out as best
he could, Commandant Viljoen himself racing out with the gun.
Our cannon now shelled the hill furiously. The British ambulance tried
to reach our wounded, but the fire was too hot. This bombardment kept on
for two days, when the enemy retired, whereupon we again took possession
of the hill. Two or three of our wounded were found to be still alive,
but with their wounds in a terrible state of putrefaction. Imagine their
sufferings during those two awful days of heat, thirst, and exposure, to
say nothing of the shells continually exploding around them. They were
brought into camp and ultimately recovered. For all I know, they may be
fighting still. This little affair is known to the British as the battle
of Vaalkrantz.
When they heard that their son had gone safely through the battle of
Spion Kop an old Free State farmer and his wife came down to pay him a
visit The son then accompanied his mother home, the old man taking his
place for a few days. One day some artillerists were engaged in their
favourite pastime of burning out unexploded lyddite shells, when one of
the shells burst, killing three men. As fate would have it, the old
father in question was one of the three.
Another peculiar accident happened on Spion Kop, whilst the rifles of
the killed and wounded soldiers were being collected. One of the rifles
lay under a corpse. Seizing the weapon by the muzzle, a young Boer
attempted to draw it toward him. The charge went off and lodged in his
stomach, inflicting a fatal wound. The soldier had been killed in the
act of taking aim, and his finger had stiffened round the trigger. The
young fellow thus killed by a dead man was the only son of his widowed
mother.
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