by Peter Watt
As Fenella lingered on his words she let out a deep sigh. If only she could once again look into those serious grey eyes of Matthew Duffy. She pressed the letter to her breast as if she could embrace him.
. . . Finally we reached Marandellas which was at the top of the highlands. The country was different there. A bit like the country west of Townsville with its stunted trees and grassy plains. We constructed a base camp with the help of Mashona Kaffirs there. We built native style huts out of wattle and red mud with thatched roofs. Each hut to house fifteen men.
Sadly many of our horses died from a disease the veterinary surgeon called Blue Tongue. It seems they caught the disease on the train trip up to the highlands. A lot of my mates went down with malaria.
Finally we got the order to ride to Bulawayo as part of the Rhodesian Field Force. We were very eager to get away and go south as the rumour was we would be used in the relief of Mafeking. I have made a lot of friends with the Canadians who are fine chaps.
So here I am in Bulawayo and I am ashamed to say that all the time in Africa I have not seen any action. Many of the chaps are saying that the war will all be over by the time we get out of Rhodesia. Others are saying that the Boer might try and attack Bulawayo and we will be the only thing between him and our defeat. I do not think I am brave but I know I must face battle one day to see for myself who I am when things get tough.
I often think about you and how you came to the parade when we left from Sydney. I remember how pretty you looked and hope that one day we will meet again. I feel very bad about having lied to my mother about what I have done. I pray that she is well and not missing me too much. Soon I will write to her and tell her the truth of where I am.
There is not much else to write about so I shall close for now and will write when we leave Bulawayo. I have just heard that Mafeking has been relieved by Colonel Mahon’s column. He had a lot of Queenslanders in his force and I wonder how things might have been for me if I had been able to join the Queenslanders instead of the Citizen Bushmen’s Rifles in Sydney. I might have been in the relief of Mafeking.
Yours Sincerely,
Trooper M. Duffy.
When she had finished reading, Fenella re-read those passages where Matthew had broken away from a dialogue of travel to refer to her in romantic terms. The other girls at her school for young ladies of good breeding could not understand her obsession with following the newspaper accounts of the distant war. Fenella could not tell them of the young man barely older than herself who had enlisted to go away to fight. She had not even confided in Emily Newmarch, her best friend. Now that the letter had arrived she considered sharing her romance with Matthew Duffy. But a disturbing thought dampened her impulse. How could she explain the fact that Matthew was a Roman Catholic – a papist? Some boundaries could never be crossed and Matthew was on one side of one of those boundaries, she on the other.
Even as Fenella carefully folded the letter, Matthew lay under a blanket, shivering uncontrollably from the bitter cold of an African winter night. The fragments of slate-like rock that made up the surface of the small domed plateau bit into his back as he stared up at the shreds of clouds scudding across the southern sky. His teeth chattered and all he wanted was to see the sun rise and take away the miserable chill from his body. Matthew had travelled thousands of miles from his home to partake in the great crusade for Queen Victoria only to find himself standing guard over a great pile of bully beef tins and sacks of flour. But the depot was strategically situated on the main road between the towns of Zeerust and Rustenberg and had telegraphic communication with Zeerust. Not that the communication helped the soldiers’ lives much. No mail had arrived in over six weeks from the outside world. To add to his woes, Matthew had met up once again with Saul Rosenblum, who had seen action with the Queenslanders while Matthew had been in transit from Sydney to this godforsaken place named Elands River in the Western Transvaal.
Their surprise meeting had not been comfortable. Saul still felt guilty at not having better prevented the young man from enlisting, while Matthew feared that the Queenslander might reveal his unlawful enlistment. Both had been tasked to draw water for the supply depot, an area covering six acres on top of the almost flat mound adjoining the river. The water was drawn half a mile upstream at a crossing known as Vlakfontein Drift, covered by two small outposts where trenches had been dug to provide shelter for the troops stationed on the hills. The soldiers had exchanged a few cold words of greeting beside the water carts but little else was said.
Saul had arrived at the supply depot with a contingent of Queenslanders two weeks earlier, Matthew a week before that. Saul had been hoping to see more action against the Boer commandos further south, but instead was detached to guard the small mountain of supplies at the Elands River crossing. And the way things were going all hopes of seeing action seemed to be fading.
The bitterly cold nights came and went on the river plain and the monotony of the piquet duty on the bags of flour and tins of meat was broken by the occasional skirmish with enemy patrols. But Matthew had not even been with the patrols at the time they made contact with their adversaries. He could only sit around the cooking fires at night and listen enviously to those who told with elation of such skirmishes. It was as if God had known of his unlawful enlistment and was either punishing him – or protecting him – from battle. How could he ever return to Australia knowing that he had not seen any real action?
Matthew sighed as the first rays of the rising sun brought a soft glow to the darkness on the eastern horizon. At least the chill would soon go from his body and he could once again think about another letter he might write to Miss Fenella Macintosh, somehow disguising the monotony of his far from glorious war against the Boer commandos. He had been able to post a letter just after leaving Rhodesia, telling Fenella of his new posting. He hoped that she would receive it soon. He could hear the mules, horses and oxen stirring on the slopes of the plateau as they too sensed the coming of the dawn.
Matthew rose stiffly to his feet and stretched with a shiver, blinking away the soreness from his eyes brought on by lack of sleep. He had stood piquet duty the evening before and a shift early that morning. For now all he had on his mind, gazing around the field depot of wagons and tired, cursing men was breakfast and a mug of steaming tea to warm his insides. Already the detail whose task it was to take the wagons to the river crossing half a mile away to draw water had lumbered out. Matthew guessed it was about six-thirty as he bent to pick up his rifle and blanket, about the same time that he might have been sitting down at home to a breakfast of hot, milky coffee and bacon and eggs with buttered toast.
He was straightening when an eruption of rifle and machine gun fire drifted to him from the southern outposts overlooking the river crossing.
‘Stand to . . . stand to.’
The young soldier glanced desperately around the plateau. Men were running in all directions where seconds before they had been dragging themselves to find a campfire for breakfast. Others stood casting about as Matthew did, attempting to ascertain the threat.
Then he heard the unfamiliar sound, a soft, ominous whistling in the early morning sunlight. The noise seemed to be coming towards him and he did not know what to do. Had he been as experienced as Private Saul Rosenblum he might have flung himself to the ground and waited for the whistle to end, praying for deliverance.
The earth-shattering explosion of the well-aimed artillery shell landed square in the centre of the plateau and flung him from his feet. Almost simultaneously, a deadly hail of bullets and exploding shells raked the stony ground with pieces of hot iron. The outpost of Elands River was totally surrounded. From four sides the outgunned and outnumbered defenders came under a furious barrage that would rain down seventeen hundred high explosive shells in the first day alone.
Trooper Matthew Duffy crawled on his belly to a nearby shallow trench. He could hear men and animals screaming as their bodies were torn apart. Matthew’s innocent wish for adve
nture in war had finally come to pass but right now he felt none of the romance he once imagined, only a petrifying fear.
The defenders of the backwater of Elands River did not know it then but they were about to carve out a small piece of bloody military history against one of the greatest of Boer commanders, General De la Rey. All Trooper Matthew Duffy knew was that he had wet his pants. It was not a glorious beginning to his war.
TWENTY-SIX
The incoming artillery and rifle fire was relentless, sweeping the plateau with fragments of iron and nickel death. The terrified mules and horses on the exposed slope of the plateau adjoining the river were blasted with high explosive, ripping them apart and spilling their blood in red rivers of their own.
A horse with its front legs blasted away stumbled on its stumps into the shallow trench that Matthew had managed to crawl into. He glanced up in horror as the big horse crashed down beside him, thrashing wildly in its agony until a stream of bullets from an enemy Maxim machine gun walked a spouting path up the slope and mercifully into the body of the horse. The rapid thwacks of the bullets hitting the beast made the terrified young trooper acutely aware that, had the big animal not stumbled into the trench, then it would have been his body absorbing the stream of bullets. With a shrill whinny, the horse died. Unwisely, Matthew raised his head to glance over the body of the dead animal to see where the Maxim was firing from.
‘Get yer bloody head down, you stupid bastard,’ he heard a voice scream at him over the deafening crash of fire.
Matthew ducked his head just as an artillery round exploded in front of the trench, shredding the horse’s carcass with shrapnel.
‘Bloody bad enough yer here at all,’ the voice continued beside him.
Matthew turned, ashen-faced, to stare with wide eyes at Saul Rosenblum hugging the ground in the trench.
‘I don’t want to die,’ Matthew blurted. ‘I didn’t know it was like this.’
‘None of us did,’ Saul growled. ‘If we’d known, we wouldn’t have volunteered.’
‘Are we going to die?’ Matthew asked as he crawled closer to the older soldier who now reached out, gripping Matthew by the shoulder.
‘If we keep our heads down only a direct hit will kill us,’ Saul reassured. ‘Just stick with me, young fella.’
Matthew nodded dumbly as he stared into the eyes of the Queenslander. Across his shoulder he could see other troopers sprawled on the ground; he heard the muttered prayers of some, and the curses of others. But worse was the screaming of men badly wounded, lying on the exposed ground, caught in the open by the first shells and bullets that had raked the plateau.
The two Australians lay in the trench facing each other until Saul eased himself to a position at the lip. He lay his rifle on the edge and scanned the ground in front of the distant hills. Matthew followed his lead, not knowing why Saul was risking exposure to the shrapnel and bullets that still filled the air.
Then Saul’s rifle bucked as he fired off a shot at something in the distance. ‘Got him!’ he exclaimed.
Matthew squinted into the distance and just caught sight of a figure falling into the long grass out of sight.
‘The bastards will try to use the bombardment to get their snipers in close,’ Saul said as he eased back the bolt of his rifle, ejecting the spent cartridge and slamming it forward to chamber a fresh round from the magazine.
All along the trench, other colonial soldiers were also spotting Boer marksmen who were attempting to use the heavy shelling to close for sniper positions. Matthew caught a movement from the corner of his eye and swung the foresight of his rifle on the distant, tiny figure running in a low crouch towards the plateau. He felt his heart pounding as he realised that the tiny figure was a living man and he flicked off the safety catch and took a deep breath. The figure was still running towards them but had not attempted to zigzag. Matthew calculated that he was about four hundred yards out and a strange calmness came over him. With a conscious effort he exhaled slowly until the foresight, rear aperture and running figure all came into line. As his world shrank to all that was in his rifle sights, he squeezed the trigger until the butt of his rifle bit into his shoulder. The figure in the foresight disappeared and Matthew felt a sickening wave of horror sweep over him when he saw the man down on his knees gripping his stomach. In his mind he could hear the badly wounded soldier’s screams of despair and pain. ‘Oh God, forgive me,’ the young soldier mumbled, the impact of what he had just done hitting him as surely as a Boer bullet.
‘Finish him off!’ Saul yelled in his ear. ‘Finish him off before he goes to ground.’
Matthew reacted to the order by re-sighting on the kneeling man and pulling the trigger. But nothing happened. He had forgotten to rechamber a fresh round. Beside him Saul’s rifle jumped as he fired off a well-aimed shot and Matthew saw the wounded man’s head snap back. He seemed to sit on his heels for a long time before slowly toppling on his side.
All through the day they returned fire until the Boer marksmen finally desisted, contenting themselves with raining bullets onto the defending Australians and Rhodesians on the exposed plateau. When night came the exhausted defenders noticed with relief that the shelling had tapered off, although the incoming rifle fire continued spasmodically.
A young lieutenant moved along the trench in a low crouch, issuing orders to reinforce the defences, although he hardly needed to. Soldiers used their initiative, piling up cases of tinned meat and sacks of flour in front of their trenches as well as digging into the thin soil to remove the slabs of slate and reinforce the trench system. The white flour bags were smeared with mud to make them less conspicuous to the Boer artillery in the hills.
In some places, wagons within the encampment were dismantled and the parts used to build earth packed roofs over the trenches. From all over the plateau men dug furiously with bayonets, shovels and their hands to bury themselves as deeply as possible in the life-saving earth. Picks, in short supply, were hired from their owners for the princely sum of three pounds for half an hour’s use. But the equivalent of a week’s wages meant little to men who faced the possibility of death within hours.
The three ambulance wagons that had been brought in with Saul’s contingent of Queenslanders were used as a field hospital, located at the centre of the defensive position on the plateau where a low sanger of slate helped shield against bullets and shrapnel. A double wall of biscuit tins, with a tarpaulin sheet as a sun cover, helped build up the field hospital. The only army doctor attached to the outpost, Captain Duka, worked on the wounded, conducting surgery with the occasional stray bullet thudding into the biscuit tins around his head with a whack. The Australian medic’s first patient was a trooper whose right leg had been torn off by an exploding artillery round. He would have many more patients before the siege ended.
Near dawn of the second day, an exhausted Matthew Duffy propped his back against the wall of the now much deeper trench. Beside him, Saul gnawed listlessly on a hard army biscuit. Matthew hardly noticed the bitter cold or the periodic crack of the bullets that still came in the night to seek out unlucky victims. ‘It’s Sunday the fifth of August,’ Matthew said.
‘So what’s important about that?’ Saul asked as he swallowed the last of the biscuit and reached for his pipe.
‘My mother’s birthday.’
‘By all rights you should have been home with her,’ Saul replied with a note of disapproval. ‘Not here in this place.’ He tamped down a plug of dark tobacco into the battered bowl of the pipe with his thumb. ‘Does she know you are here?’ he asked as he lit the pipe.
‘I wrote her a letter before we rode out of Bulawayo. That was about five weeks ago. I suppose she does by now.’
‘Shit! Your mother is going to blame me for you signing up,’ Saul groaned. ‘I doubt that she will be too willing to give me a job on the Balaclava run when we get back.’
‘I wrote to her that you tried to stop me joining in Brisbane,’ Matthew said quietly. ‘It’s ju
st kind of ironic that we ended together in this place.’
A silence fell between them, punctuated by the steady crack of incoming bullets. Finally Matthew spoke. ‘You think Carrington will relieve us soon?’ he asked.
It had been a little over twenty-four hours since they sat around the campfires celebrating the news that General Carrington, with a sizeable force of one thousand men, six field guns and four pompoms, was on his way from the town of Zeerust to the Elands River outpost. There had been singing in a camp concert and their voices had echoed in the surrounding hills. But now the songs were gone and only the moans of the wounded echoed in the night.
‘If he can get through we’ll be all right,’ Saul offered as he puffed on his pipe. ‘But . . .’ He trailed away.
‘You don’t think he will get through?’
‘I know the Boers,’ the Queenslander answered dully. ‘They’ll be expecting Carrington’s column and will have planned an ambush. The Boers are tough bastards and know this country like the back of their hands. I don’t like Carrington’s chances.’
‘Which means you don’t like our chances,’ Matthew added softly. ‘I never thought I’d die like this.’
‘Yer not dead yet,’ Saul said. ‘We only have to keep the Dutchmen off this hill. It’s as simple as that.’
‘You think we can do it?’
Saul did not answer but picked up his rifle and slid back the bolt. It was time to clean the weapon which he knew was the only thing between the defenders and certain death if Carrington was ambushed. Soon the dawn would be upon them and the enemy artillery observers would have a clear view of the outpost under the African sun. Then the shelling would commence and they would lay helpless in their hastily reinforced trenches. The situation was not looking good. They were trapped. For the young Jewish stockman from Queensland death was of little consequence. He had lost the most precious thing in his life, murdered by a soldier from the British army. But Matthew cared very much about living, as his love was waiting for him in faraway Sydney.