by Fred Stenson
Out of this came a Flying Column, an army of twelve-hundred that would sweep south from Belfast and hammer the Boer commandos in their hideouts around Carolina. These were the laagers from which the Boers were launching their guerilla attacks. Smith-Dorrien wanted them rooted out and the land scorched behind them.
Because the Canadian mounted infantry battalions were down to their last month or two in the war, the Flying Column was a source of great excitement. For anyone still wanting to make his mark or win chest decorations, this was the time. Major Sanders, whose splinter wound had healed, was to lead the Mounted Rifles in the column, and Colonel Lessard would lead the Dragoons. Wherever those two officers went in the final days before the march, men practically did somersaults to get their attention. The last thing most troopers wanted was to be left in a dull garrison while the boys rode off for a last shot at glory.
Lieutenant Davidson was furious with Frank Adams when he returned from Bankfontein. This was an army, he said, an army at war. It was not a ranch—he pronounced it rawnch—where a fellow could bugger off when he pleased. Davidson’s portrayal of Frank as a child of privilege was so inaccurate, it was pleasing. He let it stand.
Abraham and Nandi were delighted to have Frank back. They had preserved a bottle of distillery-made rum for the occasion. The ruckus of their party after lights out did not improve Davidson’s mood.
Then, everything at Aas Vogel Kranz changed. Davidson was chosen to lead a troop in Smith-Dorrien’s Flying Column. He went around camp in soaring good spirits and never thought of Frank Adams again.
All of Aas Vogel’s good soldiers were chosen to go. Other soldiers were sent in to replace them. It was not hard to figure out that the incoming fellows were not the cream of anyone’s crop. The new camp commander was an old New Zealand lieutenant whose white moustache seemed to pour out of his drink-blackened nose. His second-in-command, who actually outranked him, was an Englishman who treasured an ostrich egg and carried it in a biscuit tin wherever he went. There was also a well-born corporal from an African tea-planting family who would not sit tailor-style. At each meal, he would dig a hole for his legs, so he could dine in the upright seated position.
If Aas Vogel Kranz lacked discipline before Smith-Dorrien’s Flying Column, it became a disgrace after. The slackness verged on mutiny. Cossack posts were asleep more often than awake. Patrols went out undermanned and came back when they felt like it. The soldiers knocked off when they pleased for swims and games of cricket. Lieutenant Cropton, the Kiwi camp commander, would come out of his tent until something disgusted him. Then he would return inside for a consoling libation.
Nowadays, the beach on the Klein Oliphant was lined with men, and the pool at the curve was dense with bathers—crocodiles be damned! Someone had carved a proper cricket ball out of African hardwood, and the stock of a ruined Mauser served as the bat. Those who did not play cricket or swim often angled with bent pins where the two streams joined. A flat fish could be caught there whose size was perfect for their dixies.
The day’s entertainments were occasionally disturbed by the roar of a field gun. Aas Vogel’s good Armstrong had been taken for the Flying Column and only a bruised Creusot was left. The French gun had been seized from the Boers in the moment they were attempting its destruction with explosives. The only gunner left at Aas Vogel claimed the sights were buggered, and his daily shots were attempts to compensate for the gun’s injuries. He thought he should be able to land his shells on the right hill at least, and had a ways to go to achieve that.
Someone made the joke that Aas Vogel Kranz should be renamed Sitting Duck, but it did not catch on because no one seriously believed the Boers would bother with this old berg. Smith-Dorrien’s column was beating its way south through the rains and mists, and surely all the Boers had gone there to fight against them.
In his glee about leaving, Davidson had not thought to tell Lieutenant Cropton why Frank Adams should be limited to horse duty. As a result, the new commander looked at the white man working so diligently on the horse lines and considered it an error. Compared to the rabble he had inherited, Adams was one of the steadier, healthier men. He resolved to try him elsewhere.
The first attempt was not successful. The lieutenant sent Adams on a four-man patrol, and the privates pinto kicked another horse so hard a shoulder was broken and the horse had to be destroyed. After that, no one would go with Adams, and Cropton had to keep him in camp. He suggested Adams get a different horse but the private seemed wedded to the crazy one he had.
The best remaining alternative was to put Adams in an outpost close to home, and Cropton’s choice was the “shanz on the kranz”: the one that overlooked the curve in the Klein Oliphant. Cropton had been using three Australians at that post. Most things in the British army were done in fours, and these three had made themselves awkward by driving off a succession of fourth men. That and general insolence accounted for their being at Aas Vogel. If Adams, the even-tempered Canadian, could stick with the Australians, the safety of the camp would improve.
The minute the Aussies received Adams, they started the usual round of bullying and cruel jokes. They could not get the slightest rise out of the dull bugger and proceeded quickly to savagery and violence. But Adams’ response to even the most inhumane antics was bovine passivity.
They might have beaten him to death just to end the frustration except it occurred to them that he was valuable. While they persecuted him, Adams had stuck to the morbid duties of a sentry with hilarious dedication. As they either slept or threw dice by the light of an illegal fire, Adams kept staring and listening into the dark, hour after hour. Having figured out that this willing slave was keeping them from court martial, they stopped twisting his goolies, pissing in his mess tin, and shitting on his hardtack. They let him do his duties and good riddance.
As for the private’s ugly-tempered gelding, they let Adams know that one nick out of any of their horses and that ridgling’s one-nut career was over. They tied their mounts close together in the trees, while Adams knee-haltered his above the cliff.
Six days into November, in cold and rainy weather, Fat Campbell rolled into Aas Vogel Kranz. He had news about the Flying Column. Its flight had been slow as a snail, weighed down with guns and supplies. It had been further impeded by searching every farm and burning the rebel ones. Another new practice was collecting Boer women and children and putting them in special camps. There was one at Irene and others planned for Balmoral and Middelburg. There had to be guards on the wagons that carried them back, to keep the Boer rebels from reclaiming their families.
As the Flying Column inched along, the rebels assembled on the ridges out of rifle range. If the officers got mad enough to call for field guns, the Boers had ample time to retreat out of range while the guns were unloaded and dug in. The only thing that could make the Boers run was if Gat Howard or Eddy Holland took a gallop at them with their machine guns.
But the biggest problem was the weather, the dense mists in which the Boers could so easily hide. It turned every place into a potential ambush. In a big meadow that was somewhat clear, a sniper felled Corporal Schell’s horse. Schell tried to jump clear but the weight of the horse landed on his ankle. Sergeant Tryon and Major Sanders raced back. Tryon dismounted and put Schell on his horse; gave it a slap and sent it home.
Major Sanders opened a stirrup and told Tryon to jump on with him. Half standing, half leaning over the withers, Tryon stayed with Sanders as the horse charged back. But Charlie’s weight on the stirrup was too much and turned the saddle. It spun and both men were hurled to the ground. While they tried to find their wind, Sanders took a bullet. He could not run at all now but staggered into some rocks. He waved for Tryon to run back on his own, which the sergeant finally did.
Sanders’ friend Captain Chalmers was now in charge. He was getting a rescue together. A group of gallopers started out, while Sanders waved frantically for them to go back. The Boers unleashed such a barrage that Scizzors had to o
bey.
But Scizzors could not leave his friend out there and arranged a group to try to retrieve him on foot. They went in stages. Rock to anthill, they worked themselves across until they were in a trench not far from Sanders’ rock pile.
There was some kind of dispute. Chalmers wanted Sanders to come to the trench. Sanders did not want to. They lost time. Suddenly, and it was bad luck for everyone, Cpl. Sheldon Herchmer rode into the field of battle from the side. He did not know what was going on, and was right in the line of Boer fire. Captain Chalmers jumped up and ran at the corporal, waving him back.
The Boer snipers opened up. The men who were there said old Scizzors’ long arms and legs flew strangely when the bullets hit, completing their motions unmanned.
Aas Vogel Kranz, November 1900
After the Flying Column returned to Belfast, bedraggled if not completely defeated, General Smith-Dorrien insisted they go back. As quickly as possible, he wanted the Flying Column reorganized, resupplied, and sent.
That same night, the night before the Canadians in the Flying Column would fight a famous battle at Liliefontein, Frank Adams was in his post atop Aas Vogel Kranz with the three cruel Australians. The Aussies had gambled themselves to sleep, and Frank was alone with the night sounds: rain pelting on his oil sheet and the occasional howl of a hyena biting through the wet night.
An hour before daylight, the ridgling started staggering around in his knee-halter, whittering. Thinking it had to do with the hyena or maybe the leopard who’d left the flower prints in the sand below, Frank told his horse to be quiet and thought no more about it.
When the first light of morning drooled through the mists, Frank heard the sound of an incoming shell. He knew it would be close. He was watching for where it would land when it struck beside him. The explosion lifted the ground and blew the shanz wall on top of him.
Frank had no way of knowing how long he lay there, out cold. His return to sense was frightening, for his head was a blossom of pain, and his eyes could only see rough-edged blocks of dark, pierced by blazes of bloody gold. It took longer than a minute to figure out that he was not blind nor his sight deformed but that rocks were packed tight around his head. His whole body was imprisoned in rock, and he was about to panic, thinking of Ovide’s final resting place, when he put his energy into thrusting one leg and it burst into the lightness of air.
Pushing with an arm, he felt a limb that gave no answering sensation. He thought he must have a dead arm, maybe a severed one. But then he moved all of his parts and they were there. He rolled back rocks until he found the staring eyes of one of the Australians. He shifted more rock, but the other Aussies were gone.
The air had a burnt smell. One of the posts bracing the shanz had been on fire and was still smoking. Frank noticed that blood was dripping through whatever he looked at. It seemed to come from a gash on his forehead and from another wound in his hair.
The shell’s explosion had tossed up a shelf of sandy rock. Farther from the cliff edge, it had flipped over a tree so the clay-packed roots stood perpendicular to the earth. Tied to a branch of this felled tree was one of the Australian horses. It lay flat with a red opening in its side that gaped and closed like a gill.
Frank walked toward the horse and it thrashed at him with its hooves. He left the gelding alive because it was still acting like a horse and might survive.
Looking farther up the slow rise to the hill’s crest, he saw spirals of smoke where other shells had exploded. From that direction, he realized he could still hear the rick-rack of a rifle battle. Each of these facts came to him slowly, like rocks skipping from a lake’s far shore.
Then he thought of the ridgling. He thought the horse might have been blown off the cliff but found him on his front knees crowded into a thorn bush. The ridgling quivered as if covered in ants.
When Frank moved toward the ridgling, he saw past the packed tree root. A man was lying there dead. The Boer was face down with his arms stretched out ahead of him. Just beyond his curled fingers was a Mauser rifle. A full bandolier crossed his back, and the bloody hole of the departing bullet had cut part of the ammunition belt. The soldier’s long beard folded beside his unseen face like the edge of a pillow he was sleeping on.
Frank talked to the ridgling. Once the animal’s eyes cleared, he jumped onto three feet. He balanced on two and kicked out at the thorns that were piercing him. Frank went closer and untied the knee halter.
A thought was forming. Frank wasn’t sure what that thought was exactly, or if he would act on it. He went looking for his rifle. It was among the rocks, and the front sights had been knocked off. The dead Australian’s rifle was bent. He went over to the dead Boer and his Mauser looked unharmed. Frank unbuckled the bandolier and hauled it out from under the body. It came away with a wet red stripe along it. He buckled it onto himself.
He tightened the ridgling’s girth and exchanged the halter for the bridle. The pinto took the bit greedily as if to say, Let’s get the hell out.
Before leaving, Frank considered two things. He asked himself where the other two Australians were. They must have been well enough to leave. Maybe they had checked their friend and saw him dead. Maybe they saw Frank in the rocks and figured he was dead too. Or maybe they did not think of him at all.
The other thing Frank considered were the trails away. The main trail to the river below would have a team of black horse-holders at its bottom, and a Boer rebel left in charge. In the other direction, past the wounded brumby, was an animal trail. Frank knew it came out on the little creek and was blocked with wire. He bent low and led the ridgling into it. They went slowly and, when they came to the wire, he clipped the coils with cutters from his saddlebag.
At the little stream, curling through the turf, Frank led the pinto up-current. He stayed within the fringe of brush that tracked the water, and after they had made several crooked miles, Frank’s head brought him to his knees and made him puke. He fell over sideways and had no choice but to stay like that.
The last thing he looked into was the ridgling’s strange eye. He felt its nose snuffing on his shirt. The horse was loose and Frank could not do anything about that. Though each word he spoke hurt him, he said aloud to the horse that he hoped he would not run off and try to fuck something; that he hoped he would not kick him in the head for some remembered sin. For now, though, the ridgling was on his own.
Liliefontein
The Battle of Liliefontein was a rearguard action. The Canadians had been sent ahead to scout, but went from front to rear when General Smith-Dorrien decided he must retreat again to Belfast. All the previous day, the Canadian gunners had been scoring against the Boers. Now that the Canadians were a rearguard, the Boers were looking at the same guns and meant to have them.
All day, the Boers fought them. They came at a gallop and fired from the saddle, sometimes face-on and sometimes flowing up the Canadian flanks and shooting from the side. There was no time when the Canadians controlled the fight; when they were sure what would happen.
Lieutenant Turner—the same one who had crossed the Vet River at Coetzee Drift—was already wounded in the arm when he called his men together and told them to hide in a brush-masked trench. The trench was close to Eddy Holland’s machine gun and, hungry for that gun, the Boers came galloping. When the Canadians opened fire, two of the Boer leaders were shot in the head.
During the skirmish, Turner was shot again, in the throat this time. Still not felled, he rode to Lessard for reinforcements.
The Boers kept after Eddy Holland’s machine gun. When it jammed, he did what Gatling Howard had done once before: grabbed the red-hot barrel in his hands, lifted the gun from its limber, and ran.
When the Battle of Liliefontein was over, two Canadians were dead, seven badly wounded, but not one gun lost. Many would call it Canada’s best day of the war.
Cape Town, December 1900
After four days of farm-burning in the Steelpoort Valley, the Canadian MI battalions were in I
rene, their war more or less over.
Of the eight hundred horses they had brought from Canada, fifty had survived, and the boys marvelled at this. Considering the carnage, that number seemed high. The owners of the surviving horses were told they must give them to other units who were staying on. It was said that some men signed back on rather than give up horses that had carried them through a year of war.
This story was attached to Casey Callaghan and Jeff Davis, both of whom left the Mounted Rifles to join the Canadian Scouts. A letter about the Canadian Scouts had come to camp in late November, bearing the signature of General Kitchener. Anyone wanting in had to sign right away. The Canadian Scouts would be led by Arthur Howard—promoted to major for that purpose. Despite the name, the Scouts were part of the British army. For his second-in-command, Gat Howard lured Charlie Ross out of retirement. Gat had arranged things so every scout had the rank of sergeant or higher, which meant minimum pay was $1.75 a day.
When Casey Callaghan and Jeff Davis signed up, no one heard either say it was for the sake of their horses. In Jeff’s case, people may have said it because they could not believe a Halfbreed would be more patriotic than they were.
In Irene camp, the Canadians who were leaving waited for a train. Around their fires, it was natural to recap their battles and remember their dead. For the Mounted Rifles, the driver Bradley had been first: drowned in a dam on the Great Karoo. At the other end was Captain Chalmers, good old Scizzors, killed trying to save Sanders and warn off Sheldon Herchmer.
Taylor and Frost. Morden and Kerr. Ovide Smith’s death was surely the strangest and most foolish.
The Canadian Dragoons were thinking about their men killed at Liliefontein. They also thought about the British infantry officer whom they asked for help that day, and who would not order a single volley in their defence.