1999 - Ladysmith

by Giles Foden

  Before our confinement, I went out on a few patrols, joining in a chase after some cattle and sheep and a Boer laager. We captured some hundreds of sheep on one and drove them into town, your humble having to walk as I fell off my horse—necessit. a third remount on return—and having some new boots on I blistered my feet very badly on the way back and had to go into hospital which prevented me joining in some of the later actions. I lost myself on the veld for a while and only rejoined my unit after a trying time in which I got on the wrong side of a bog in the company of some lads from the Leicesters.

  It turned out that Johnny Boer was waiting for us to get bogged, so that he could have us at his mercy. The bullets came much too close to be comfortable. So we lay down in the reeds and returned the salute, and by covering one another’s retreat, we got clear of the bog.

  Thank God.

  In the emergency hospital (the Town Hall) I discovered a relative of ours. Mrs Frinton, she was a Miss Parker, the same family as our cousins, and her father once kept the White Lion at Southam. She knew Mrs Oram and her brothers well. She herself is a widow, her husband having died of a snake-bite some years ago. I have also seen an Irish girl at the Royal Hotel whom I rather like the look of. I hope to meet with her soon. I have made a new chum as well, a gunner from the Naval Brigade called Foster. A seaman in the veld, I hear you ask? The reason is that they rushed up a detachment of naval guns from Durban (I think they came off HMS Terrible, or Powerful, or Tartar, or something like that) at the start of the war, on account of our lack of artillery here in Ladysmith. Anyway, this Foster, a bearded bluejacket, has his eye on the sister of my girl.

  On another patrol we came upon an abandoned Boer farmhouse and burnt the whole lot to the ground. We had a jolly time in it before it was burned, there was a splendid piano and a pile of music mostly in Dutch. The whole lot was burnt of course. It was very hot that day and we were deceived in our water supply. The stream where we should have halted had run dry.

  My first real action was at Elandslaagte (a Boer name said as, Elands-lockty), where our infantry and artillery triumphed and we mopped up after together with the 5th Lancers. The pigstickers, as we call them. Some shells fell among us beforehand, but we took it well. On the way in a funny thing happened, a pointer bitch, prob. a Boer gun dog, attaching herself to us and taking a great deal of interest in the shell-holes as they came. She didn’t like the vapours much as they came out of the hole, drawing her nose away sharply, but still looked in every one. She even followed us back into town, but I don’t know where she is gone now. I was surprised how these shell-bursts do not kill everything near around, often just going directly into the ground with a thud. Once the explosion has died down, the melinite vapours start to emerge from the hole—as if from the bowl of a pipe, only smelling much worse!

  To get through at Johnny Boer we had to cut the wire on either side of the railway line, which Captain Mapping did. The ground was bad, but Boer ponies are no match for our horses at close quarters (though the enemy are often better riders and their mounts have much more stamina) and we overhauled those trying to escape and gave them the points of our swords or speared them with lances, as the case may be. It is quite hard charging over a mile in near darkness, flashes of guns and rifles going off all the while. That night we bivvied at the railway station, making fires with coal from the mines and eating tinned meat and biscuits.

  The following morning, we found ourselves next to a farmhouse in which a Boer woman was hiding. When we got to her, she was crouched in a shed with her arms round a goose. Seeing us approach, she buried her head in its feathers and started crying. As we surrounded her, she kept repeating something in Dutch. An African scout who spoke the language said what she was saying was: “Leave me my man-goose! Do not take my man-goose! Do not hurt my man-goose!” We had to take her in of course, but we let her keep the goose. As she was a farmer, I felt sorry for her, but they have plenty of our fellows in Pretoria, so there. Although they have released some injured and let them come to the hospital.

  After we had taken the Boer woman and her goose into captivity, in a shower of rain we went over the ground we had charged, searching for wounded; but the ambulances had done a good job, as we found only disembowelled ponies, wagons, and dead oxen, one with its head blown clean off. There were also, still alive, riderless ponies and some Africans wandering about sadly. We took them all back to town and also the breech-blocks of two guns we had captured. We got a bit of personal loot as well, my friend Bob and I, including a Mauser and bandolier, some ostrich feathers and a jackal-skin rug, the last two of which I intend to send to you, assuming you have no need of a pistol!

  And that is more or less it, as I must lay my weary head before night sentry duty. I had a letter from Arthur and a parcel, but no sign of the note money you sent me, worst luck. I had my belt stolen with £8 in it the day I came back from hospital, with three others also losing theirs with more or less in it.

  Tell Ma and Pa and brother Arthur I am all right, except for the fact of being shut up here. It’s not so bad, until it rains, which oddly brings on my toothache. Otherwise, I am in good health and feel honoured to have seen—before the siege began—something of a grand country. It is the blooming season here (diff. to home of course) and the blossoms on the trees look splendid. The flowers growing on the veld also put most of our garden flowers in the shade. The corn here has just got well into ear and until the siege began we were cutting it all off.

  I suppose you are prepared for Winter at home now. I wonder how the ferreting will prosper. I suppose Arthur will lessen the rabbits as usual. Is he as ardent a sportsman as ever? I myself should like a bit of shooting out here of the animal, rather than human, kind. There is, or was until we became townbound, lots of game of all descriptions. On the way up here we saw thousands of deer and springbuck running along in front of us and in the distance they looked like a lot of mounted men, which gave us a scare. I haven’t seen any rabbits like English ones. They are like a cross between a rabbit and a hare. Everything here is different like that: it makes you feel that the world is a much bigger place than Radford Semele, I can tell you.

  I hope Aunt is keeping well and yourself and all the rest at Radford. Shall write again soon, if I have time. It is uncomfortable writing while sitting on the ground. You try it.

  Your loving brother,

  Tom

  PS: My remount is a handsome colt, whom I have named Bashful in honour of Perry. Did he get himself a girl before coming away? No news of him, sadly, but expect he will be here to rescue me soon.

  Eight

  Muhle Maseku had no illusions about being rescued. Ilanga, the sun, had risen seven times since he had been brought into the Boer camp with his injured leg. He was a big man, and it had taken three of the Boers’ servants to carry him. They were Xhosa, and at night in the black quarters as he lay there on his pallet, he had listened to horses’ hooves, the noise of sticks being broken: their click-click language. Now it was morning, and they had gone out to work, and still he lay there, immobile, powerless.

  Outside, beyond the makeshift straw huts in which he and the other Africans stayed, were the guns and wagons of General Joubert’s camp. Through the opening in the hut, Muhle could see Dr Sterkx, the man who had helped him. When the Boer guards had found him lying on the ground the morning after the accident, they had been ready to shoot him, convinced he was a spy. Eventually, he had persuaded them that in fact he was there because he had been pulling the guns, and they had turned to go off—leaving him lying there on the slope of Bulwan, half naked (he had lost his kaross and his cooking pot), nursing his injured leg. Only the intervention of this doctor, who had ordered that he be brought into camp, had saved him. In the days that followed, Sterkx had come into the hut from time to time to rebind his ankle and to give him some food. Muhle had gathered from the doctor that the splints would have to stay on for at least a month.

  This morning was the same. Sterkx—a small, stooping man wit
h gold-rimmed glasses and thinning hair—came in and bent over him in the semi-darkness, readjusting the pieces of wood and wrapping the bindings ever more tightly.

  Muhle gasped at the pain. “Why are you helping me?”

  Sterkx pulled at the fabric again. “The week before we found you, the British burned my farm—the wagons, the house, the furniture, everything gone…They even burned my piano and music…”

  The doctor stood up, and looked out through the oval gap that served as the hut door. His voice was strained with feeling. “But that was nothing, for they also took my wife into Ladysmith as a prisoner. I fear for her safety there, and thought of her when I saw you lying there on Bulwan.”

  Muhle didn’t understand. “But I am a black man. You don’t usually give us charity.”

  Sterkx turned towards the pallet, and looked down at him. “You are God’s creature. Since my Frannie was taken from me, I have been full of anger and bitterness. And then a calm came, and I prayed to the Lord, and I realized that I must offer kindness to others, in the hope that the same will be offered to Frannie in the town there.”

  “My family…” said Muhle, and then paused.

  “What?”

  “My family are missing also.”

  “Then you know what I am feeling, in spite of being a kaffir. Here, have some biltong.”

  Sterkx reached into his pocket and, pulling out a long strip of the dried meat, handed it to him. “This war is a terrible thing. Even though we are on the side of right, even though the Germans and the French and the Americans are on our side also against the English oppressor, I regret it, for whatever happens it will come to no good…”

  Muhle sat up and chewed on the tough meat. He felt its goodness seep into him as the Dutchman talked on, and he reflected that never before had one of this race talked to him man to man—that is, as if he too were a man—and then, as Sterkx continued, he slowly understood that this Dutchman was really talking to himself, wrestling with his own pain even as Muhle’s ankle throbbed on the bed beneath him. And yet he was also kind, saying that he would have one of the Xhosas bring him a pot of water…

  “And once the bone has set, I suppose we can get some crutches fixed up for you too.”

  “Thank you, nkosi,” said Muhle.

  The Dutchman turned to go.

  “Wait,” Muhle said. “When I am able to walk, they will let me look for my family, yes?”

  Sterkx stopped by the doorway. “I am sorry. I do not think we can let you go now—in case you fell into the hands of the British, you see.”

  “But you understand—about my wife and my son. I must find them!”

  “I am sorry,” said Sterkx. “They would not let me.” And then he left.

  Muhle stared at the oval of light in the doorway. The ragged edges of it, where the straw stuck out, represented to him the pain and anger he felt—pain in his ankle, anger at being forced to stay here, a prisoner of his body and the hateful Boers. For even the good doctor had become hateful now, as did everything he saw through that hole, from the horsemen, as they came and went, to the guns looming behind them.

  In the days that followed, the commando in which he was held fought a number of battles with the British. The rattle of Maxims, the crackle of Mausers and other small arms could be heard in the hills around the camp, underlaid by the deeper echo of field artillery. Going out, the Boer horsemen were an impressive sight: the men cool in the saddle, bandoliers of ammunition across their chests (the beards of the older ones flowing down over the belts of shining cartridges), Mausers in rifle buckets on their saddles or slung over their backs, boots of soft hide pushed into their stirrups, and assorted kit—bedding rolls, tin pots for cooking—strapped to their saddles. Their clothes were mostly grey or brown, home-made, except for those of the officers, who favoured more formal black suits: coats with claw-hammer tails, and half top hats.

  Coming back in after an engagement, officers and men alike looked sorry creatures: slumping in the saddle, soaked with rain and blood and mud, the wounded piled up in ox carts behind. In other carts came the dead, their staring eyeballs fixing on Muhle through the ragged gap. He saw in those eyes images of Nandi and Wellington, and knew more deeply than ever that as soon as he was able, he would flee this place and find them.

  In the meantime, the oval of light played on: from where he lay, Muhle could see the big gun he had helped pull up the hill. Its spoked wheels were huge, glittering with steel plate and rivets; in between, the dark grey of the barrel stretched up high against the sky. In front of the gun, Boer and African diggers had built up a great mountain of earth, to protect it from British fire. Soon, Sterkx had said, they would start the bombardment of Ladysmith.

  “And then,” the doctor had said, “God preserve my Fran-nie and any other innocent shut up in that town.”

  Around the emplacement scurried the gunners of the Staats Artillerie, their blue uniforms and gold epaulettes sharply different from the country clothes of the ordinary horsemen. Now and then, Muhle would also see striding around the tall, broad-shouldered figure of General Joubert, his iron-grey hair and white beard making him a natural man of authority. His headquarters was a large marquee in the middle of the camp, over which fluttered the vierkleur of the Transvaal. As the Zulu gazed silently upon the flag, wagons crossed to and fro, obscuring his field of vision. From these, as the oxen snorted and moved about in the shafts, men unloaded sacks of sugar and coffee and corn, all brought in from the surrounding farms. The sight of the food made Muhle feel hunger again: the biltong Sterkx had given him had taken the edge off it, but he craved some maize porridge, something to fill him up. Thought of maize made him wish he was at home, back at his kraal, watching the fields of bright green ears swaying in the wind, or watching Nandi drying the kernels on a mat, or Wellington shooting at a chicken with his sling, to frighten it away from the glossy white pile on Nandi’s mat.

  But these were all lies. These were images of his own childhood. Since Wellington had been a young boy, Muhle had worked down the mines in Johannesburg, sweating and cursing with the others in the galleries, swinging pick against rock, sparks flying up, or pulling gouts of red clay out of the wall with the big hoes. Then every night back to the dreadful shanty with its stinking water and thousands of inhabitants from all over southern Africa. Every day, in the mines, he had longed to be back in Natal; every evening, in the shanty, Nandi had said to him how she hated their life and he had promised to bring her back as soon as they had saved enough money. Now, by force of circumstance, they were in Natal, but apart, and far from home.

  Later on in the week, once Sterkx had brought him his crutches—home-made, they were little more than two branches of thorn tree—Muhle was able to get up and move around the camp. It was important, he knew, that he get himself fit enough to slip past the sentries one night. He was often challenged about why he was wandering round the camp, but usually his explanation—that he was an injured labourer—was sufficient to allay any suspicion. He was wise to be wary, however, since the Boers were shooting any African who had worked for the British: already he had seen some twenty killed by firing squad after having been captured at the battle of Elandslaagte, had watched the Xhosas go to bury them where they lay in a heap afterwards. From their appearance, it was clear that many of the dead were also Xhosa, and one man from the hut let out a terrible wail when he saw that a relative was among the corpses. It was a sound that cut Muhle to the core, as he thought about his own family, and where they might be.

  Once during his wanderings, on the morning of a great battle, Muhle encountered his saviour.

  “I have to go and wait for the wounded by the ambulance,” Sterkx said. “Why don’t you come with me? You ought to keep that leg moving.”

  But there were few wounded—few Boer wounded—in that battle, and for most of it the ambulance wagon stood idle. Together they watched, black man and white, from the high hill. On the plain below, men moved like ants, sweeping hither and thither in wave
s, great clouds of dust and flame spurting up as shells dropped among them. Sterkx let Muhle use his spyglass to watch for a while, and on the ridge beyond the plain (its English name was Nicholson’s Nek) the Zulu saw the Boer sharpshooters creeping on their bellies, and the British soldiers lifting their heads cautiously above their fortifications. Nearly always, a Boer bullet found them. Dead soldiers lay behind every earthwork or pile of rock.

  Sterkx took back his glass and Muhle lay next to him, his crutches at his side. He listened to the Boer’s exclamations—Geluk hoor! Los jou ruiters!—and prayed that wherever they were, Nandi and Wellington weren’t in the middle of it.

  “The English are bringing up their guns,” said Sterkx.

  Muhle looked again, and sure enough the British gunners had limbered up and were riding in a column down towards the main site of battle.

  “Surely they can’t come any closer?” Sterkx said, this time as much to himself as to the Zulu. “They will be cut to pieces.”

  Even without the spyglass, Muhle could see that the column was too close to the hidden lines of Boer riflemen, who lay everywhere in the grass, some with their horses lying quietly next to them, as they had clearly been trained to do. The sixteen-gun column came on. Its horses, by comparison, were nervous and jumped in their traces as the crack of the Mauser bullets grew ever closer. Still they came on, and then the horses began to fall in their own tracks and the column became a jumble as guns and limbers jack-knifed; even from up here, the noise of the bullets striking the gun barrels was audible. It sounded as if a crazed blacksmith were at work down there on the plain. The horses and men around the column—there was no noise as the bullets found these targets—fell into a mess of harness and trace, wheel-spoke and steel. In the face of the onslaught, the column jerked and writhed like a wounded animal, and then, soon enough, lay lifeless.