1999 - Ladysmith

by Giles Foden

  “Jesus!” shouted the Irishman, doubling over and dropping the packet.

  The papers scattered, some of them falling into Muhle’s lap. Almost purple with rage, MacBride drew his revolver and shot the Zulu in the thigh. At such close quarters the report was impossibly loud, and the force of the bullet hit him like a hammer. Muhle shrieked and clutched at his leg; and then the pain started, a searing sensation that circled outward from the centre of the wound and then enveloped him, leaving him teetering on the edge of consciousness. Suddenly, all he was aware of was the warm wetness on his hands.

  The rest of it he could only recall vaguely, or heard later from the doctor as he lay delirious with pain: Sterkx himself coming over and falling into an argument with Major MacBride’s Irishmen…The doctor demanding by what right they would make the execution…Joubert being summoned and the case being put before him…Sterkx cutting away some of his trouser leg and applying a tourniquet…

  Nineteen

  The Biographer sipped a scalding cup of black tea outside his tent, and looked about him. Estcourt at dusk: a mean little town of two or three hundred corrugated-iron houses. The drift of dust and dirt to which the place amounted was quickly becoming hidden by night. A portion of Buller’s army was now at the town, having driven the Boers further up the line. Atkins and Churchill had been here for a week or so, but the latter had now gone and got himself captured in a foolish incident in which the Boers had ambushed and derailed an armoured train. Only days before, he had been mocking the name of the thing, laughing at the idea of ‘a locomotive disguised as a knight-errant’ and now it had proved the instrument of his imprisonment. Reports said that he had conducted himself heroically in trying to resist the capture of the train, however, and his case had been taken up with gusto by the remaining correspondents. He was said to be in gaol in Pretoria. The Biographer couldn’t quite summon up the fervour with which everyone else was bruiting the ignominy of Churchill’s situation, and felt that it served him right. Then he chided himself for allowing such an ungracious thought to pass through his head.

  From a professional point of view, it was a shame that the train had been captured. With the use of the engine and a flat car, Biograph panorama runs of the camp and columns on the move had been proving very effective—in spite of there being some danger of vibration, owing to the car’s want of decent springs. But another engine was being brought up. Soon, he hoped, there would be real action to photograph in any case. The Boers were only five miles away, and the guns around Ladysmith could be clearly heard. Now, taking advantage of the ripening darkness, the signallers were streaking the sky with searchlights, making dots and dashes against the horizon. The signal light here was powered by a dynamo and consisted of a 15-inch mirror and a slatted shutter worked by a lever. It threw a great, epic beam into the sky; the one at Ladysmith was less advanced and sent out much feebler signals. Last night, the Biographer had stayed up too late trying to decipher them, but the intricacies of the code and the faintness of the beam made it impossible. Determined not to make the same mistake tonight, he turned in to get some sleep.

  The noise of the new train woke him in the morning. Summoning the Zulu rickshaw runner, whom he had taken on as a servant back at the Cape, he loaded the cart and made preparations to travel to Frere: the end of the line since the Boers had blown up the bridge over the Tugela, thus preventing further rail traffic towards Ladysmith and beyond. With great difficulty, the cart was levered on to an open truck and lashed down. The ride was an exciting one, and the Biographer found himself, at every turn of the track, expecting to suffer the same fate as Churchill, but the journey passed off without mishap.

  Frere was much busier than Estcourt: as far as the eye could see were tents and soldiers. Many were concerned with the repair of the broken bridge, in which labour they were helped invaluably by hundreds of Africans, who chanted rhythmically to keep time as they worked. To the Biographer it seemed a natural scene to record, but when he unloaded the equipment and set the big iron tripod in position, the natives stopped working, thus depriving him of the very movement the Biograph was uniquely qualified to register. He was none too pleased, and nor was the sapper officer in charge of the work, who sent him away in disgrace for holding up proceedings.

  Instead, he contented himself with filming some troopers as they ate their lunch—if the leathery, indestructible trek ox they were consuming could be favoured with such a name. Among them was Perry Barnes, and he and his mates were much taken with the Biograph.

  “Hey, Perry, come and see your face,” said one. “There’s a looking glass in this here machine.”

  The young farrier regarded his unshaven, sunburned face in the mirror of the camera’s distance finder.

  “What would Mother think of me now?” he said, and laughed.

  The company kindly shared their food with the Biographer who, not being attached to any particular regiment, was having great difficulties in this regard—not that anyone was eating particularly well, the lines of supply being both irregular and badly organized. As Perry Barnes said mournfully, “We might just as well be under siege ourselves.”

  The Biographer had been reduced to foraging in abandoned Boer farms. In one looted house he had found a half-eaten joint of beef and some bread and jam. This had proved a great feast, although its grandeur was much undone by the state of the place. It had been discovered that the men of the house had gone off to join the enemy, so the troopers had taken violent revenge, sending the wife and daughter off the place while they smashed it up. Each room was littered with torn books and letters and the glass of broken pictures. Some of the soldiers had defecated in corners of the house, with the result that there were flies everywhere. But the Biographer was so hungry that he had eaten the food none the less.

  Otherwise, he was forced to subsist on the same mealie meal that his Zulu ate every day. As for water, every drop in the camp was guarded, and he had to send the Zulu two miles to fill his water bucket each morning. Often he would return with the bucket empty, having been stopped by soldiers on the way, who took advantage of his being a native and drank the water, ignoring his protestations.

  This business of securing grub for man and beast, and fetching water for the same, got very much in the way of photography, as did the constant interruption of sentries asking for passes. “Halt! Who goes there?” the cry would come, and he would reply, ‘Friend’, and then give the password, which was ‘Aldershot’, and show his pass. To his great irritation, the Biographer discovered that the petition signed by Buller was not good for passing between stations. He had to get other, more detailed passes for this purpose, such was the worry about spies. Perry Barnes afforded him every assistance in his dealings with the army in this matter, and as the column waited for the order to advance, via Colenso, on Ladysmith the two of them became friends.

  The order never seemed to come and they were left with a deal of time on their hands. One afternoon, after going out on a sortie with units from Lord Dundonald’s cavalry brigade, the Biographer was lying in his tent, too exhausted to do anything except read. He heard a slight scratching sound, and on looking up saw an immense tarantula crawling across the canvas. With a yell he leapt up and dealt it a crushing blow with his book. It fell down stunned, and disappeared among the bedding and equipment. The Biographer’s shout alerted the Zulu and Barnes, and it was only after much turning up of linen and clothing in the tent that the creature was found—lurking under the Biographer’s satchel. Seeing it there, twirling its hairy antennae, it struck the Biographer that the tarantula would make a good picture in close-up. He suggested this to Barnes, and the brave farmer’s son held the spider down with the flap of the satchel while the Biographer fetched a bottle in which to imprison it.

  “Tell you what, sir,” said Barnes afterwards, as the two of them regarded the creature scurrying about in the bottle. “If you got yourself a scorpion you could put the two of them together and take a picture of a duel.”

  I
n spite of the fright he had had, the Biographer thought this a good idea, and the word was put around camp that he wanted to make a collection of fearsome insects. By that time the next afternoon, there had been brought to him two trapdoor spiders, another tarantula, a fair-sized scorpion, two small, flat, black-headed snakes and a large number of common centipedes. Sometimes they came in bottles, but most often the specimens were proffered between the ends of two sticks, held by a cheerful soldier exclaiming, “We heard you were collecting these things.”

  News of the pet picture spread through the camp and the day for which it was arranged saw a large enthusiastic audience gathered round a table covered with a sheet. It was mooted that a battle en masse would provide the greatest entertainment, but the Biographer thought it would be better to have just two contestants, thereby enabling him to focus on them closely—which image, he hoped, would be enlarged to mythic proportions when presented on a large screen. The first bout was between the scorpion and one of the tarantulas, which were decanted amid cheers from the surrounding soldiery. Nothing occurred to begin with, as the gladiators just remained motionless at each end of the table; but with the aid of a poking stick they warmed to their work, to the effect that the scorpion was devoured entire and the tarantula greatly increased in size.

  The next set-to, between a snake and the rotund tarantula, was not so successful, since the reptile simply slid off the edge of the table and moved quickly across the ground, causing consternation amongst the audience before it disappeared into some grass. A search was made, but the desire for entertainment being greater than the concern for safety, another battle was clamoured for and prepared, this time between the two trapdoor spiders. They obliged most heartily, displaying satisfactory cannibalistic tendencies and issuing noxious yellow fluid from their wounds.

  The daily fights became a feature of camp life, until the Biographer sickened of them, and took to refusing the tide of creatures that was brought to his tent—except for a kitten that had been found in a deserted Zulu kraal. Her antics provided great pleasure during the long wait for the order to advance, and fearful of losing her the Biographer made her a collar and wrote on it: “Biograph is my name. Please take me home.”

  Human voices were saying much the same; or, at least, let battle commence and this quarrel be sorted. The weeks passed—until, at long last, the order came. Under a broiling sun, the column finally moved up to Colenso and the big guns began firing at the Boers. Smoke and yellow-green lyddite fumes obscured the kopjes—and the enemy—from view. Many good shots of the effects of recoil and concussion were taken, but owing to the haze and dust it was impossible to focus the lens properly on anything far away. One single sequence—of a great column of earth, stones and men going up in the air—was taken, however, and this pleased the Biographer greatly. However, the deadly fire sent back by Boer sharpshooters and quick-firing guns soon began to cause great discomfort, with some wounded men being forced to tear at the earth to hide their heads from bullets. Still the British troops tried to batter a passage across the river, fighting their way to the south bank, there to be forced to take cover from the withering fire. Some even got across, wading with their rifles above their heads, but those who were not shot down were driven back.

  The battle turned, and seemed to be going the Boers’ way. Some guns up ahead were lost to them. Buller himself rode up the lines. The advance crawled forward, seeming to achieve nothing except allow the Boer artillery to burst closer to the Biographer’s cart, which was situated among the Red Cross wagons at the rear of the column. Suddenly, the British forces seemed to be in crisis. It appeared they had walked into a trap, made by Boers they could not see, never mind kill. Even Buller himself was put in danger, his staff surgeon being killed beside him and a piece of the shell casing bruising his own side. He just sat down on the ground and ate some sandwiches, to the Biographer seeming the very picture of a broken man.

  At one stage, a shell exploded right in the middle of the ambulances. The effect of this was to prick the Biographer’s conscience, and he went to help with the wounded. Their gasps and groans curdled his blood: many had been shot through the head or stomach. While doing what he could for them, he discovered Gandhi and his Indian friends—the ‘body-snatchers’ as Perry called them—to be among those carrying the injured men away to field hospitals, or down to the train for transport back to the general hospital tents.

  “Come on you,” shouted the Indian, looking entirely different in his khaki uniform. “We need as many hands as we can get. Why don’t you help me carry this fellow?”

  “Very well,” replied the Biographer meekly, and bent down to pick up the broom-handle ends of the stretcher. The occupant’s face had been torn by shrapnel; even to a close friend or relative he would have been unrecognizable. Only his mouth was visible, under a mask of oozing blood. Every now and then, as the two men jogged with the stretcher, the mouth opened and a low moan emerged from its white-toothed, red-flanged aperture. The sight and sound of it was almost too much for the Biographer to bear.

  “This is hardly biographing,” he huffed, to Gandhi’s back.

  “It is true suffering and misery,” came the serene voice, seemingly untroubled by breathlessness. “And do not believe that the Boers are suffering any less. I have been on the battlefield and seen it for myself. It is because of such things that I have resolved my metaphysic.”

  “What?”

  “In my language it is called satyagraha, which is the opposite of force and imperialism. It means truth-fervour, or the conquest of one’s adversary by suffering in one’s own person.”

  The Biographer could not believe that even this sage, unearthly-seeming man was saying such things, at such a time. “Well, you are hardly doing that now, satya-whatever, are you?” he said, snidely. “Helping the British Army.”

  “In spite of my opposition to the Empire, I still believe in the British Constitution,” said the wise-sounding voice. “I would vie with any Englishman in loyalty to the throne. But this is not really about that. It is about the saving of life, and the ending of all violence. Anyway…enough. We are here.”

  They had reached the field hospital. The man was taken inside a tent for his wounds to be dressed, in which task the Biographer watched Gandhi assisting the surgeon with great care and attention. Afterwards, with bandages over all parts of his face except for his mouth and two small holes for his nose, the man looked like a mummy. Still the slow, low moans came out of that disembodied mouth, even when Gandhi tried to feed him some Bovril through it, with the effect that the warm brown liquid bubbled horribly back.

  “I doubt he will survive,” he said to the Biographer, quietly. “I believe that a piece of shell has opened up his brain.”

  The Biographer went outside to be sick. On coming back in, he found the Indian recording the soldier’s injuries in a ledger and writing down his name from the tag on a cord round his neck.

  “My, but you are a strange revolutionary,” he said.

  Gandhi looked up at him briefly, but said nothing and continued with his note taking.

  In the morning, an armistice was called to allow the two sides to gather up their dead. The Biographer went on to the field with his cart, and what he saw was harrowing: everywhere were men—dead men and the pieces of men, their khaki stained, soaked with blood, and their faces black and swollen from the sun. Between the human corpses lay those of horses and mules, their sides opened up to reveal cleaved bone, ripped flesh and marbled layers of fat. Already great swarms of flies hung over the place, and to protect himself the Biographer tied over his face a sieve he had found in one of the looted Boer houses. This beekeeper’s mask did not prevent the smell, however, which was terrible, especially that of the mules, which seemed to become rank quicker than anything else; and the mask had to be taken off whenever he wanted to film. This he did, albeit with little satisfaction, since he suspected such horrors as filled his lens could never be shown to the British public.

  T
he news, if not the images, did become public property. That week, there had been other battles, at Stormberg and Magersfontein, and together with casualties from Colenso, the butcher’s bill came to over three thousand. Britain had never seen the like, and this humiliating Black Week, as it became known, produced great displays of patriotism and indignation at home. As each tragic episode in the drama of the relief of Ladysmith unfolded, a sort of madness seized people, and there was a rush to join the army. The other colonies contributed millions of pounds to the war effort, as well as more than forty thousand volunteers, frightened by the constant stream of bad news and the support for the Boers shown by Germany, Russia and France.

  Chief among this bad news was the message that the dispirited Buller was reported to have heliographed into Ladysmith:

  I tried Colenso yesterday, but failed. The enemy is too strong for my force, except with siege operations, which will take one full month to prepare. Can you last so long? If not, how many days can you give me to take up defensive position, after which I suggest your firing away as much ammunition as you can, and making the best terms you can. I can remain here if you have alternative suggestions, but unaided I cannot break in…Whatever happens, recollect to burn your cipher and decipher and code books and any deciphered messages.

  It was the time of the popular press, and every day the papers were full of ‘the news from the Cape’. Even in the rural seclusion of the Barnes family’s Warwickshire farm, the minutest details of the campaign were discussed and analysed. Lizzie and the rest of the family waited for letters from the two brothers and, receiving them, saw beyond the shrieking stories of, on the one hand, the heroic defenders of Ladysmith and, on the other, the town’s blundering relievers.