by CL Skelton
The word veld means field. If it was a field, it was the largest, the most arid field that any of the men now marching through it had ever seen. The thin, sparse topsoil barely covered the hard ancient rocks which lay at the most inches beneath its surface. Thousands upon thousands of square miles of vast nothingness. There was little to look at; it seemed that they existed on a world deserted by all living things except for the insects which, by day and night, fed upon their bodies. Occasionally there would be a patch of red grass, shrivelling and browning in the summer sun, or an area consisting almost entirely of small drought-resistant shrubs, acacias, and the like, with thorns inches long that would pierce a man’s spats and hose if he did not watch carefully where he put his feet.
Man had lived on the veld for two million years at least. There were those who would refer to it as the birthplace of humanity, though to the soldiers whose boots pounded the hard earth for interminable miles, why humanity, with all of the world, should choose this God-forsaken hole, was a mystery. Every now and then the rocks broke through, forming kopjes, hillocks and rands, many of which were flat topped and capped with hard basaltic rock. Wherever the men looked, be it before them, to the side, or behind them, there was this vast, empty, unchanging horizon. Always above them, rising out of the uttermost limit of their vision, the deep blue of the unchanging South African sky.
The land through which they were trudging lay between two and four thousand feet above sea level. By day they sweated until their clothes were wringing wet. By night they shivered miserably when the sudden chill came with the setting of the sun.
If it was not the largest, it was certainly one of the largest armies that Britain had ever put into the field.
Buller had arrived at Pietermaritzburg, and with his usual caution and solicitude for the well-being of his men he had, before giving the order to march, seen to it that all the stores and baggage trains that they could possibly need were assembled and ready to move off with them. The men knew it, and in consequence Redvers Buller was probably the most loved soldier in the whole of the British army.
It was December, but not the sort of December that the Maclaren Highlanders had become accustomed to in their native glens and mountains. It was the height of the African summer on a latitude of twenty-five degrees south.
As Commander-in-Chief, Buller was, theoretically at least, not responsible for the tactical handling of the operation. That was General Clery’s job. But Buller was a man who could not stay away when the troops under his command were marching into battle to fight and die because he had ordered it. There had been much talk during the voyage from Cape Town to Durban, and during the rail journey beyond Durban and into the interior. Everyone now knew that Ladysmith and Kimberley were besieged and there had been much speculation as to which of these towns was to be relieved. Of course, Ian Maclaren, commanding the Maclaren Highlanders which formed part of General Hart’s brigade, had hoped that it might be Kimberley, where both Maud and Donald were. But now the answer was obvious to any of them who could read a map or who was privy to information from those in high places. Not that it mattered to people like Private Maclaren: there was going to be a fight and young Alasdair Maclaren, like most of the men marching with him, neither knew nor cared where it was. Their sole interest was to be alive at the end of it.
It was to be Ladysmith, where General White had been holding out, ringed in by the Boer forces.
Between them and Ladysmith itself must be the Boers, who were led by a man called Louis Botha. Botha, though he was not yet forty and was inexperienced in command, possessed a fine tactical brain. Also, he had the native knowledge of the Boer, and the terrain was the sort of land that he had known for most of his life.
In the British camp, so-called experts spent hours poring over maps which were not remarkable for their accuracy, and tried to decide where they were likely to encounter the main opposition. They had, after much deliberation, decided that the most probable place would be the Tugela, a river which ran in great looping curves near the small township of Colenso.
Colenso included a very few houses, all tin roofed, and a railway station, and precious little else.
Between the approaching British force and their objective, the country was flat. It consisted in the main of a huge open plain which undulated only slightly but sufficiently to give cover to a man, providing he was not mounted. Kopjes, small hills, were dotted around Colenso and offered excellent cover for small groups of men, and there was little doubt that the enemy would make full use of them. Buller had made no attempt at concealment. It would have been a waste of time with a force as large as he had under his command; but it was known to those in his confidence, and this included Ian Maclaren, that he was uncertain as to whether the best course would be a frontal attack or whether he should swing around out into the open veld where he would, hopefully, outflank his enemy and be able to continue on to Ladysmith with his force intact. On the face of it the second seemed to be the better alternative, but this would leave the enemy force intact to fight another day. If he took the first, he would, he believed, destroy the enemy in the field and thus hasten the end of hostilities.
It was the afternoon of the fourteenth of December 1899 when they bivouacked not more than five miles from Colenso. The whole force was spread out on either side of the railway line which ran from Durban, through Pietermaritzburg, to Ladysmith. Beyond them and to their right stood Hlangwene, a mountain which towered three thousand feet above the veld, commanding the whole of the plain around it. Before them, though not in view, lay the Tugela River, Colenso, and, twelve miles beyond that, Ladysmith itself.
For the men there was little respite. Weapons which had become dust encrusted had to be cleaned, ammunition checked, canteens filled, and so on. They did have good food, however, thanks to General Buller’s foresight. Field kitchens were set up and soon the smoke from their fires was rising on the still air. The guns were brought in and then moved out again, most of them to the right flank in readiness for the morrow. As the short tropical twilight gave place to darkness, scouts went out to reconnoitre and returned with the information that Botha was lying in force just beyond the river.
The Maclarens were on the left of the line and among those regiments which comprised their brigade were the Dublin Fusiliers, the Inniskillin Fusiliers, the First Connaught Rangers and the Border Regiment, two Scottish, two Irish, and one English battalion.
Sentries were posted as the darkness came and the flicker of campfires began to spread throughout the camp, fitfully revealing the drawn faces of the men who huddled in little groups fighting against the chill and the darkness. By one of those campfires sat a group of senior N.C.O.S of the Maclaren Highlanders, including Frankie Gibson and Colour-Sergeant Peter Leinie. They were finishing off their ration of mutton stew and bread and cheese. As soldiers have done throughout history, cocooned in their own little corner of the military machine and knowing nothing of the deliberations of the high-ranking officers who next day would send them into battle, and possibly to their deaths, they philosophized about the morrow.
‘I can tell ye that tomorrow’s the day,’ said Leinie.
‘I dinna think that there’s a muckle o’ doot aboot that,’ said Frankie. ‘They’ve been moving the guns up and there’s a squadron o’ dragoons as have just camped awa’ oot there.’ He made a sweeping motion with his left hand. ‘Ye ken what that means, laddie?’
‘What?’
‘It means that we are the end o’ the line and if yon Boers get roond us, then the Maclarens ha’ lost the battle.’
Frankie was right, though he did not know it. For Buller had finally made up his mind and decided on a frontal assault. It would be costly now, but if he succeeded, then it would save many lives in the future.
‘Ye ken what this minds me o’?’ said Leinie.
‘No, what?’
‘It minds me o’ that time in the Sudan. Being here wi’ you.’
‘Ye niver got as guid a supper a
s youse had tonight in the Sudan. What time are ye talkin’ aboot, anyway?’
‘No the first time. I mean the time when Captain Bruce saved ma life. Ye ken that I’m lucky tae be still alive. I learned sense that day. Anyhow, there’s nae mair o’ the damned squares. We’ll all be crawlin’ aboot the groond on oor bellies taemorrow.’
‘I would nae be sae sure o’ that,’ replied Frankie. ‘Dinna forget we’ve got General “No Bobs” Hart.’
‘Why dae they call him that?’
‘Because in thirty-five years naebody has ever seen him bob doon when he was under fire.’
‘Then he’s a guid man.’
‘A brave yin, there’s nae doot aboot that. But that doesna make a guid general. I heard only the ither day that he was complaining aboot these new tactics.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said that the infantry, that’s us, should always be in square because it had always been done that way.’
‘Ach, mannie,’ said Leinie, ‘I’m only a sergeant, but even I can see that ye canna bunch up taegether over country like this. Especially when the other fellow has at least as guid a rifle as you hae thanks to the bloody Germans.’
‘Aye,’ said Frankie, ‘and he’s got plenty o’ them an’ all. Mausers.’
‘Are they as guid as the Lee-Metford?’
‘Better,’ said Frankie.
‘Hoo mony o’ them dae ye think there are?’ asked Peter Leinie.
‘Twa million.’
‘Dinna be daft.’
‘Weel, hoo the hell dae I know? I’ll bet ye that there’s mair o’ us than there are o’ them. We ought tae be able tae eat them up in aboot half an hour unless somebody does something bloody stupid.’
They were silent for a while.
‘I wish I had a dram,’ said Frankie.
‘Aye,’ said Peter Leinie, long and slow, as he conjured up the thought of the delicious amber liquid, ‘I could dae wi’ a woman, too.’
‘No, you couldn’t,’ said Frankie. ‘You’re just a bittie scairt. Like me, like everybody. I would nae mind being hame and having ma wee Molly cooking me a fine venison stew on a chilly Highland night. Bugger Africa.’
‘I wonder hoo Captain Bruce is getting on,’ said Peter.
‘Major Bruce, ye mean.’
‘No, I dinna. I mean Captain Donald. He’ll always be Captain Donald tae me. I heered that he was in Kimberley.’
‘Aye,’ replied Frankie. ‘That’s right. He’s in Kimberley.’
The siege of Kimberley had begun on October the fifteenth. The population had been informed of its commencement by the banshee wail of the sirens and hooters of the mines. When this happened, the Boers could be seen on the horizon. Bands of horsemen. The railway which linked them with the Cape and the south had been cut. What livestock they possessed was mostly on the outskirts of the town where the enemy in a series of raids had either taken it, or, what they could not carry away, had slaughtered.
Kimberley was not defenceless; regular troops and volunteers amounted to a not inconsiderable force of nearly four thousand. The non-regulars consisted of a small number of Cape police, some mounted infantry, and a body of volunteers who called themselves the Kimberley Light Horse. The town itself was, of course, a great prize. Acre for acre, Kimberley was possibly the most valuable part of the whole British Empire.
The population, once the town had been besieged, steeled itself for the assault which they felt sure would come. It did not come. The Boers, always careful of their resources, had no intention of suffering the casualties which an assault would inevitably bring upon them. They were content to sit and wait until nature forced the surrender. The town was surrounded and cut off from all hope of relief; they were content to wait.
The inhabitants of Kimberley dug rifle pits and, sweating under the merciless summer sun, kept a perpetual watch for raiding parties. October gave way to November, and it was not until the seventh of that month that the civilian populace was subject to their first taste of the war.
The Boers brought up nine nine-pounder guns and commenced to bombard the town. For two whole weeks, until the twenty-first, they poured an average of fifty shells into the centre every day. Though this was naturally a most frightening experience, especially for the women and children, the amount of damage done was minimal and casualties were light. This was in the main due to the fact that the mines within the perimeter of the defences provided excellent and almost impregnable cover.
The main problem was not the shelling, which was more of a nuisance than a danger, but food. In the beginning everyone believed that relief could not be more than days, or, at the most, a week or two away. As a result, though rationing started almost immediately, it was by no means rigorous. The major problem was the almost complete absence of fresh milk. What little there was was reserved for the children. But there was very little even for them.
When the bombardment started, Brenda Bruce found this absence of milk for her three little ones more worrying than either the shelling or the proximity of the enemy.
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Kekewich commanded the garrison. This was comprised of the non-regular and volunteer forces and a number of British regulars. The Northumberland Fusiliers, half of the North Lancashires of whom Colonel Kekewich was the commanding officer, a few Royal Engineers, the Munster Fusiliers, and the Ninth Lancers comprised Kekewich’s force. Kekewich was a busy man; he was a good and very experienced soldier of some twenty-five years’ service. He was of average height, bull necked and bidding, with a drooping moustache and broad shoulders. Those shoulders of his had to carry not only the problems of the defence of Kimberley, but also the irritation of constant interference from Rhodes, who did not think much of soldiers. All of this made his job that much more difficult, and it was not without a feeling of irritation that he agreed to see two ladies, both by the name of Mrs Bruce, on the morning of the tenth of November.
Colonel Kekewich glanced up warily as the pair were ushered into his office by his orderly. He rose from behind his desk.
‘Good morning, ladies.’ The elder of the two, he estimated, would be about his own age, and the younger, well, she could be anything. She was one of those indeterminate young women. Still, they were probably related in some sort of way. ‘Er ‒ won’t you sit down,’ he added.
‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Maud.
‘Now then,’ he said when they were all seated, ‘what can I do for you?’ He was well aware that most people wanted to see him in order to gain some sort of favour. He had declared the town under martial law, primarily to give himself power to deal with Rhodes, but it brought with it other responsibilities, as it made him the virtual ruler of everything; consequently many people came to him with odd little requests. But he was a fair-minded man and not in the habit of granting favours. He steeled himself for yet another ‘No!’
‘We have come,’ said Maud, and she suddenly stopped as a shell whined overhead and landed with a ‘crump’ somewhere beyond them. ‘It’s about that, really,’ she continued calmly. ‘The shelling.’ She waited. Brenda had agreed to let Maud do all the talking.
‘Continue, madam.’
‘This is my daughter-in-law, Mrs Donald Bruce, and we thought that it might be a good idea if we ladies ‒ I include others apart from our two selves ‒ were to form some sort of hospital or first-aid station in case the shelling might produce a sudden large number of casualties.’
‘Ah, well,’ thought the colonel. This was different, at any rate. They were not after something; they were actually trying to help.
‘We have our own doctors, you know,’ he said.
‘Any large number of casualties may stretch their resources and we would be there to help if needed.’
‘Have you any nursing experience?’ he asked.
‘Formally? No,’ replied Maud. ‘But my husband is a soldier.’
‘Indeed, madam?’
‘You may know him. General Bruce. He has retired now, of course.’
The colonel was impressed. ‘General Willie Bruce, that would be?’
‘The same.’
‘I don’t know him personally. But, of course, I know him by reputation.’
‘So,’ said Maud, ‘at least I am an army wife and I have lived with the army long enough to realize some of their needs and some of the needs of people who are in action. After all, a casualty is a casualty whether or not he is wearing the Queen’s uniform.’
‘That is a very kind offer,’ said Kekewich, ‘but I think that I should have a little time to think this matter over.’
‘I do not agree,’ said Brenda, joining the conversation for the first time. ‘A shell has just fallen in Kimberley. The next one could quite easily fall among a group of children. I think the sooner we get started, the better.’
‘Indeed!’ said the colonel. ‘And what does your husband think about this? I suppose that he is in Kimberley.’
‘Yes, he is in Kimberley.’
‘Serving with one of the volunteer forces, I presume?’ Brenda looked a little embarrassed by that remark and Maud replied, ‘No, he is not with one of the volunteer forces. My son does not believe in killing. He is a pacifist. Now, please don’t tell me what you think about pacifists. I can guess. But I do know that if we were given permission to form our little hospital, my son would help in that to the utmost of his ability. As for ourselves, we would appreciate it if we could possibly have an immediate answer.’
‘What about premises?’
‘We would have room enough for fifteen beds in the offices below our apartment,’ said Brenda.