Ardnish

by Angus MacDonald

  The gaugers knew there was illegal uisge beatha being distilled in the area and were determined to make a catch. Meanwhile, Ewan had a big order of whisky to go to Edinburgh. He heard that the gaugers had set up an ambush by the bridge over the Caledonian Canal at Gairlochy, but as luck would have it, the old Cameron chief had recently passed away and his funeral cortege would be going over that bridge on a certain date in early December. Sensing an opportunity, Ewan ordered the smartest carriage available from Fort William a day early, and arranged that the two carriage attendants would be kitted out in funeral attire, complete with top hats and frock coats.

  The flagons of whisky were transported down the loch at dawn, and loaded onto the carriage, in the luggage trunks on the back and under the seats. Ewan and his man ‘borrowed’ the hats and frock coats from the Fort William men, moved off down to the castle, and took some of the Lochiel party on board. As the funeral party proceeded over the canal, the gaugers were there, all lined up, hats held to their chests in respect to the dead chief. The rendezvous with the Edinburgh smuggler and his ponies took place at Corriechoillie that evening, after which the whisky was taken along the old drove road and on to the south.

  The sergeant told me this tale knowing that I was from a whisky family myself. I took great pleasure in recounting it to my friend, Donald the Younger of Lochiel, when we met up with the 51st at Bloemfontein a month or two later. He had never heard it before and was highly amused. During times like these with Sergeant Cameron, I often felt the urge to talk about the family business and its problems, but I knew I had to bite my tongue. He would not be able to resist writing home about our conversation and the news would be all over Lochaber. Donald John, on the other hand, could be counted upon to be discreet.

  We rode thirty-five miles north to Lindley, where we recuperated and waited for fresh clothes and mounts for several days. On the trek there, we twice came across areas strewn with the putrefying carcasses of horses and oxen; you could smell them long before you could see them. There was also a sprinkling of khaki army stores, some smashed-up wagons and piled-up stones marking recently dug graves. Vultures flapped into the air as we approached and jackals circled nearby, waiting for our troop to pass. After a scrap, the Boer would always come by to take what they needed; they, too, needed boots and clothing.

  There was a critical shortage of horses, reportedly around ten thousand across the army, despite those taken by us after Retiefs Nek. So many had died in battle, and not only through combat; the poor beasts succumbed to disease, broken limbs and snake bites. Our new mounts, given to us in Lindley, turned out to be in almost as bad a condition as the old, with some suffering from strangles and mange. We all competed to get one of the captured Boer horses rather than the untrained and skittish Argentinian animals that had recently arrived. Fresh clothes were desperately needed, too; our breeches were in tatters, shabby and full of holes. I confess thinking that Donald John looked quite indecent when seen from behind.

  We loved receiving post. The camp would fall silent for an entire afternoon as letters and newspapers – the Inverness Courier and Oban Times – were read and re-read. There was much consternation at a letter published in the Courier, which had been forwarded by an anxious mother, complaining of the poor food and how the Scouts were always given the dangerous jobs. Lovat immediately sat down to pen a reply rebutting the complaint. Quite a few of the men were unable to read or write, but that evening, pairs of men were seen throughout the camp composing their replies home.

  My brother Jack had written – a curt, angry letter in which he accused me of being selfish because I had decided to remain in South Africa. He raged that there were hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Imperial Army out here, and how could my role be that important? He reiterated how my help would be crucial to him. I wrote back straight away, saying that now was not the time: it was believed that with Pretoria fallen, one more big push would win the war and then, with our mission accomplished, the volunteer regiments would be the first sent home.

  We heard that President Kruger had fled from Pretoria with over a million pounds of state funds. Many of the Boer fighters considered this an abdication of the presidency, and there was rumoured to be considerable dissent amongst them. ‘Oom Paul’, Uncle Paul, as the Boer affectionately named Kruger, had proposed that the Boer should negotiate peace, which Steyn, the President of the Orange Free State, had rejected. We also heard through the rumour mill that Kruger was to be replaced by General Botha as president.

  One morning, General MacDonald summoned me. He needed an important document taken to Lord Roberts, who was based to the east of Johannesburg at Witwatersrand. I had to be back within a week with his response. With only Donald John to accompany me, we set off immediately on the three hundred-mile return journey on fresh, fast horses. We aimed to cover forty miles a day but managed to do more than that, camping at Frankfort on the first night and Bethal on the second. The only Boer we saw were at a distance. They fired a few random shots at us but didn’t attempt to give chase. It was a comfort to be in a town each night, where there was a safe garrison and food for ourselves and the horses.

  When we arrived at our destination, Lord Roberts and the High Commissioner were in a meeting with the mining magnates Cecil Rhodes and his partner Charles Rudd, along with Alfred Beit and Julius Wernher, two London magnates who dominated the finances of the Rand mining houses. I was aware that there was British pressure for De Beers and the Anglo Gold Mines and their financiers to make a significant contribution to the war. As we waited for the meeting to conclude, it was Donald John who made the connection: Rudd had bought Ardnamurchan Estate a few years ago and was rebuilding the old inn at Shiel Bridge as his main house. He had made his fortune from diamonds and gold, and was believed to be one of the richest men in the world. Donald John had seen the new house from the road not long before he came out.

  It was a popular opinion that the real reason for the war was that the British wanted to wrest control of the goldfields of Witwatersrand from the Boer, in the knowledge that they would be as lucrative as the diamond mines at Kimberley had been. And there was another big issue that the High Commissioner wanted to resolve: votes in the north were restricted to those of Dutch extraction, and neither the black South Africans nor the hundreds of thousands of white incomers – known as uitlanders – were entitled to vote.

  The meeting eventually ended, and Lord Roberts’ aide invited me into the room. General MacDonald was talking to a tall, thin man with a long black beard, Boer-style. Lord Roberts greeted me warmly – he’d heard of me from General Hector after the relief of Heilbron – and I presented the document to him. He opened it and started reading while the other man introduced himself to me as Charles Rudd. I told him I was a Lochaber man, who lived within a day’s ride from his place at Shiel Bridge, which took him by surprise.

  That evening, I dined with those involved in the discussions as Charles Rudd’s guest. It was a magnificent meal: four courses accompanied by champagne and the finest French wine. Rudd travelled with a chef who, he said proudly, used to work at Claridge’s. He told me that his house at Shiel Bridge had burned down just as he had been ready to move in and that he had recently remarried following the death of his previous wife. They had ambitious plans for the estate. He wondered whether to rebuild Shiel Bridge at all as he was now building a castle at Glenborrodale and many other estate houses. He insisted I come to visit him in Argyll, which I promised to do. He was clearly ready to retire and to live there permanently.

  As we set off at first light the following morning, I reflected on this meeting. Rudd didn’t seem to know people on the west coast, and I think he was as pleased about our introduction as I was. I declared to Donald John that I would certainly call on him, not least because I’d never dined so well in my life the night before.

  Chapter 15

  Donald John, South Africa, 1901

  We had been in the veld since May. The cold dry winter was over, and summer,
around British New Year time, was as hot as hell down there. We were now in constant engagement with the enemy. The Boer were playing hide and seek – twenty men here, a hundred there – and would snipe at us from the hills, attack at night and blow up ammunition stores and stationary trains.

  It was especially difficult for our infantry and artillery; the Boer were so mobile on their horses, our men were struggling to fight back. The Scouts would be sent on three-day reconnoitres to a hamlet or pass where the enemy had been seen and would frequently be greeted by nothing but the embers of a warm fire. Once, however, we came tantalisingly close, finding their dinner still cooking on the fire but no sign of human life. Our hungry men made short work of the delicious mutton, mealies and pomegranates.

  In a letter home I tried to explain a typical engagement with the Boer. The Highland Brigade would move from one town to another in a massive convoy of three thousand infantry – the Black Watch, Seaforths, Argylls and more – all marching in their separate battalions. Fighting Mac had around fifty mounted men and a couple of carts allocated to him. Then there would be the supply wagons pulled by ten oxen and at least thirty others spread between the infantry battalions. These would be the most vulnerable to attack, and being loaded with ammunition and food supplies, they were much sought after by the Boer. There would be about three hundred black Africans, hired to look after the supplies, and peripheral support personnel such as vets, doctors, carters and a blacksmith all with their own carts, mules and horses.

  In the event of a broken wheel or axle, the entire convoy would have to stop while it was repaired, or else the wagon emptied and abandoned. Slowest of all were the sheep or cattle which might have been requisitioned – our food for the week ahead. At least a dozen dogs would be darting around, seemingly without owners, foraging for meat from the dead horses that we sometimes came across. The convoy could be up to three miles long and it crawled along at a frustrating two miles an hour. The Lovat Scouts and a unit of African mounted troops had the role of outliers ahead, behind and on the flanks, looking out for raiding Boer parties who often dashed in and seized supplies from a lagging wagon, or galloped alongside, firing at random into the dense units of men.

  The number of Scouts available for active service had almost halved by this time as forty of our men had gone off to join the police, and we were suffering terribly from sickness, so there was talk of merging the two companies into one. Meanwhile, General Baden-Powell, we heard, was having huge arguments with everyone. General MacDonald had apparently told Lord Lovat that Baden-Powell was the most hated man in South Africa and had made a very bad start for the police by quarrelling with both High Commissioner Milner and Kitchener. He had also rejected the Lovat Scouts for being too untidy and unruly when they arrived for duty, and Lord Lovat had had to go to Pretoria where he successfully interceded on their behalf. That evening he gave our men a splendid farewell dinner, by all accounts.

  Being outliers for the Highland Brigade was energetic, exciting work, but on rare occasions we were given the more mundane job of protecting a supply convoy as it crept up-country; we Scouts considered this task very much beneath us. On the other hand, when there was a downpour on the veld, it could turn this tedious task into an enormous challenge. One time we went to Philippolis – a very pretty place when the sun was out – to help with a huge convoy of ammunition, clothing and food heading north towards Johannesburg. We were travelling in constant heavy rain and in two days managed less than five miles. At times, even forty powerful oxen couldn’t pull a wagon, the mud was so deep. Everyone was exhausted. Another time, when we were taking a crucial convoy across the Caledon river, swollen after rainfall, the officers’ mess wagon – the first across – tipped over. It was a hell of a job to right it, and as a result, it was decided that a drift would have to be dug to make a crossing point. With the banks forty feet high, this proved an enormous task, and there were more than a hundred men with shovels on each side, digging for two days solid. Everyone was caked in red mud. Then, thirty oxen, pulling an ammunition wagon, came to a halt in the middle of the river. The Africans were standing on the backs of the oxen, completely naked, cracking their whips and shouting like madmen. The Seaforths had to cross the river holding onto a rope, their kilts above their necks. Somehow we made it over without serious mishap. It took twelve hours, with only one death: a drowned ox. It was an extraordinary experience – one I’ll never forget.

  There was much talk in the camp when Queen Victoria died. The newspapers from home contained photographs of her grand funeral procession. I was asked to play the pipes at a ceremony to commemorate the passing of the old and in with the new at a parade, where Major Murray called out, ‘God bless Queen Victoria, God bless the King, King Edward.’ We all raised our hats. We were cheered by the announcement from our new queen, Alexandra, that she would raise a nursing corps for the South Africa Campaign.

  When we first arrived in South Africa, there was a policy for dealing with captured Boer fighters: on surrender of their rifle they received ten pounds. They handed over their Mausers and went home to their families for a month. It took several months for our generals to realise that: one, they didn’t have ammunition for the surrendered Mausers anyway, and two, after their family holiday, the men would just join up again – this time, armed with a captured British rifle.

  The policy was swiftly changed: the captured men were sent abroad to camps in St Helena, the island where we stopped on the ship coming down, and also in Ceylon and India.

  Lieutenant Kenny Macdonald finally rejoined us. Although he had recovered from his illness, he was horribly gaunt, and he had grown a beard which he trimmed to a point, like a Yankee. We all had full beards by then. I was startled when I caught sight of myself in the mirror at the company stores wagon – my beard was completely white yet the hair on my head remained red. Morag would not have appreciated my new look. On previous occasions when I’d tried to grow a beard, she’d always kept me at a distance until I shaved it off. We looked very like the Boer fighters by then, although they usually wore white shirts underneath their jackets and cartridge belts over the shoulder, whereas we wore khaki shirts and belts around our waist.

  We were camped at Lindley, south of Johannesburg, and John MacDonald the Boss went out alone one day to scout a kopje. He ran into five Boer, who called on him to surrender. He proceeded to shoot one and turned to flee, but his horse was shot, and so, scrambling off the animal, he threw himself down a slope, tumbling as shots rained down upon him. He was found by three of our men a couple of hours later, battered and bruised but otherwise in good shape. He was back on a horse and ready for action the next morning.

  I enjoyed being on patrol with Cammy. A Lochielside man, he’d done well in the Camerons before getting a job on Lochiel Estates. We had come to know each other through selling sheep at the auction mart in the Fort, and when Captain MacDonald was recruiting, he was an obvious choice. We were a bit unusual, the two of us. We were older than the other Scouts, in fact old enough to be the fathers of some, but I believe our similar ages brought us closer together.

  When he had wandered into our camp, having been freed after the Boer surrender at Retiefs Nek, it was as if he had been away seeing friends. He was a cool character if ever there was one – someone you’d want at your back in a fight. With him was his old friend Archie Macdonald, the Glencoe man from the Lord Strathcona’s Horse we’d met briefly at the Cape when we disembarked. Archie had been captured at Standerton fighting as part of General Buller’s force.

  During one of our patrols, as we rode side by side, Cammy told me about his time as a Boer prisoner and how he’d used Burnham’s advice about knowing your enemy. ‘You couldn’t meet a nicer group of men than the Boer,’ he said. ‘They fought hard but would do anything to help the injured. Most spoke English. Of course, they’d fought alongside the British twenty years before. In fact, I met two or three who were from England and had only been in South Africa for a few years. One became a friend.
He explained to me that the two of them had joined the Boer because the British had ridden into their farms and taken their horses and cattle. What else could they do but join up?

  ‘There was such a strong feeling of injustice about how General Kitchener was behaving towards the Boer families,’ he continued. ‘Do you know, Donald John, Afrikaners wouldn’t bite into their husks without offering you half? And they treat their horses far better than our Tommies do theirs. Great riders, they can stay in the saddle for twenty-four hours at a time. They’re heartily fed up with the war but I know they’ll fight on. They’ll never surrender.’

  I agreed.

  ‘Mind you, I was shocked at how they treated black people – rougher than they did their horses. Men would get whipped if they were lazy and they were fed half what the white men got. On no account would they be given rifles as there was considerable fear that they would rebel. Milner’s proposal to give the black population the vote after the war was another reason why the Boer were ready to fight to the end.’

  ‘So there’s a way to go yet?’

  Cammy nodded. ‘There was a council of Boer generals, where they decided to change their way of fighting. Those big forces of men with artillery and wagons would be replaced by fast-moving commando units who knew the local land, who could lie up during the day and attack at night. Food and ammunition would come from the British they attacked. Every British convoy would be harried by snipers from a distance and the railway tracks and bridges blown up.’