| Winston in embryo—Army’s opinion of him—More feared than liked—His brush with General French—The world’s greatest advertiser—Ability and swagger—Relief of Kimberley—Rhodes and Kekewich were quarrelling—French makes a speech—Alexander of Teck as an officer. |
In that way I got to know such celebrities as Lord Roberts, French, Haig, Winston Churchill and Kipling, and I attained a status in the army that I would never have reached as a correspondent. The horse may be the natural enemy of man, as some people think, but he is the key to more valuable acquaintanceships and good friendships than either rank or riches. I acquired more merit in the army by putting a cavalry regiment on to back the Australian horse The Grafter, in the City and Suburban, than by the finest dispatches that I ever sent to Reuter’s. Generals, as a rule, were “off” correspondents. If they were civil to them it looked as though they were trying to advertise, and if they treated them roughly—well, the correspondents had their own way of getting back at them. One miscreant, a correspondent for an obscure Cape paper, was stopped by a railway staff officer, named King Hall, from going somewhere or other. Probably King Hall was quite right—but look what the correspondent did to him!
He printed an article in his sausage-wrap of a paper to say that, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, from his immaculately-fitting tunic to his beautifully-cut riding-pants and his spotless boots, King Hall was beau sabreur, the sartorial ideal of a British officer.
How did the army eat it up!
Wandering generals would get off the train, poke their heads into King Hall’s office and say: “Well, how’s the beau sabreur to-day?” Colonels on lines of communication, having little else to do, would ride up to the railway station and inquire of King Hall who made his breeches. Even subalterns, who dared not “chip” a senior officer, would look meaningly under the table at those boots, as they departed with their railway warrants. If King Hall had been made press censor, every correspondent in South Africa would have been sent home by the next day’s boat—unless there was one leaving earlier.
Not that all the correspondent fraternity were casteless in the eyes of the army. The Times staff, headed by Lionel James, were persons of consequence. With the English passion for regimentation, they all wore a tooth-brush stuck in the band of their hats, as a sort of caste mark. If you were a Times man you wore a tooth-brush; if you were not a Times man you didn’t dare do it. No, sir!
Winston Churchill (afterwards to be, well, pretty well everything in British governments) was over as correspondent for the Morning Post. With his great social influence, his aggressiveness and undoubted ability, he was a man to be feared if not liked. He would even take a fall out of General French; and that, for a correspondent, was about equal to earning the V.C. twice over. One day, when something had gone wrong and Johnnie French was in a particularly bad temper, Churchill said to me:
“Come along up to H.Q. I am going to give French a turn. He was very rude to me last time we met.”
On that particular day I would as soon have faced a Hyrcanian tiger, and said so. But Churchill insisted. So off we went, Churchill striding along in front with his chin well stuck out, while I shuffled protestingly behind. Arrived at headquarters, Churchill saluted and said:
“General,” he said, “I want to ask whether I am to report to-day’s operations as a success or a failure?”
FRENCH (choking down a few appropriate words that he would have liked to say): “Well, Churchill, that depends on how you look at it.”
CHURCHILL: “I am afraid that my point of view would not carry much weight, sir. What I want to know is, whether from your point of view, the affair was a success or a failure?”
FRENCH (very dignified): “If you apply to Major Haig, he will let you see the official report. Good morning.”
It was a victory for the Press, but one felt that a few such victories would mean annihilation. Churchill was not then in parliament—in fact, he had been hooted and badly defeated at his only attempt; but he expounded his plan of campaign.
“This correspondent job,” he explained, “is nothing to me; but I mean to get into parliament through it. They wouldn’t listen to me when I put up for parliament, because they had never heard of me. Now,” he said, “I am going to plaster the Morning Post with cables about our correspondent, Mr Winston Churchill, driving an armoured train, or pointing out to Lord Roberts where the enemy is. When I go up for parliament again, I’ll fly in.”
All of which things he did. Persons burdened with inferiority complexes might sit up and take notice.
Churchill was the most curious combination of ability and swagger. The army could neither understand him nor like him; for when it came to getting anywhere or securing any job, he made his own rules. Courage he had in plenty, as will be shown later on; but, like the Duke of Plaza Toro, he felt that he should always travel with a full band. As one general put it:
“You never know when you have got Churchill. You can leave him behind in charge of details and he’ll turn up at the front, riding a camel, and with some infernal explanation that you can’t very well fault.”
Even his work as a correspondent jarred the army to its depths. When there was nothing doing at the front, he always managed to get himself into the news. The Duke of Norfolk’s horse fell with him in an ant-bear hole (everybody’s horse fell with him in an ant-bear hole at some time or other) and the matter was too trivial for comment. But the Morning Post, when it arrived, had a splash heading: “Our Mr Winston Churchill saves the Duke of Norfolk from being crushed by his horse.” As the Duke of Norfolk was the great Catholic peer, Churchill no doubt reckoned that this would be worth thousands of Catholic votes to him at the next election.
Churchill and his cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, each drank a big bottle of beer for breakfast every morning—an unholy rite that is the prerogative of men who have been to a certain school or college. It was like The Times tooth-brush or the I Zingari colours—only the elect dare use it.
Marlborough, by the way, was just as retiring as Churchill was aggressive. He could not get much higher than the House of Lords, so he had no necessity to advertise himself; but he was a duke, so he had to act up to it when under public observation. He was riding one day on the flank of an Australian patrol, when it was found that the Boer bullets, fired at extreme range, were just about able to reach the patrol. The common or garden Australians swerved hurriedly out of danger; but the Duke rode on impassively, while the bullets whipped up the sand in front of and behind his horse. Said an Australian trooper:
“If I had that bloke’s job, I wouldn’t do that.”
Churchill, on the other hand, had such a strong personality that even in those early days, when he was quite a young man, the army were prepared to bet that he would either get into jail or become Prime Minister. He had done some soldiering; but he had an uncanny knack of antagonizing his superior and inferior officers. As he said himself:
“I could see nothing in soldiering except looking after the horses’ backs and the men’s mess-tins in barracks. There’s not enough wars to make soldiering worth while.”
The soldiers tried to retaliate by stirring him up in their own crude way. Once, when he went as a subaltern in charge of some expedition, they sent him a wire:
“Don’t make a bigger fool of yourself than you can help.” But, trying to get through the hide of the pachydermatous Churchill with a telegram, was like shooting “old man rhinossyhoss” with paper darts.
Here are some extracts from a diary of this march:
At the Modder River—There was a camp of tents extending for miles and miles, as far as one could see for the dust. The horses were dying of cold and of dust on the lungs, and the men were dying of enteric. Left this place and joined in with French’s force on the march to Kimberley. We passed seven miles of mule- and bullock-wagons. A staff captain—a V.C. man at that—came up and said he had lost touch of the whole of the supply-wagons for a certain brigade. We asked him how many wagons there were.
He said: “There ought to be a few miles of it. There are three thousand five hundred mules, besides a lot of bullock-wagons.” This trifling item was absolutely lost and swallowed up in the mass of mounted men, wagons and guns.
Passed some infantry that had been on the march for days and were pretty well exhausted. It was pitiful to see them, half delirious with heat and thirst, dropping out of the ranks and throwing themselves down in the sun, often too far gone to shelter their heads from the sun, but letting their helmets roll off and lie beside them.
Crossed Reit River and camped, moving off at eight next morning. Here we dropped all infantry, all transport, and all convoys. This was French’s force for the relief of Kimberley, a force of five thousand, all cavalry and horse artillery, all the squadrons moving abreast across the open veldt. We had three days’ rations; no horse feed; and no chance of getting water at the end of the march, unless we could drive the Boers away from the Modder River, which we were to strike at the end of the day. The Boers had fired the grass, and we moved through smoke and dust and blinding heat. The Scot’s Greys were next to us and were well mounted; but their big English horses were not standing it as well as our leathery walers. The gun-horses were dropping in their harness. Every here and there along the line a pistol-shot rang out, telling where some good horse had been dispatched to put him out of misery. Horses and men were about all in, when we reached the Modder; and there was no need to order the troops to clear the Boers off the crossing. The horses just simply bolted for the water; if the Boers had tried to stop them they would have run over them.
Next day we moved on for Kimberley. Very strict orders—no transport to accompany troops. Our two mule-wagon Kaffirs, Henry and Alick, with teams of six mules each, had somehow managed to dodge the provost marshal on the first day, and joined us in camp. For the second day the quartermaster told them that they must not accompany the troops, but that they could follow us to Kimberley if they liked. Hardly had we moved off, when we saw Henry and Alick hustling along with the best, shoving their teams in before the R.H.A., or the Household Cavalry, or anybody else.
Henry is very black. His principal points are a pair of black puttees and a broken ostrich-plume, which he wears in his hat. The white plume in the helmet of Navarre was not watched with half as much interest as the ostrich-feather of Henry, the Kaffir, on this march. If Henry could keep up, we might have something to eat next day; if not, or if the provost got him, we might have to do a perish for two or three days. Whether we trotted or cantered, Henry, with his team of six little game mules, was scuttling along at our heels.
When the artillery halted on a rise to breathe their horses, Henry swung his team in among them, and the provost must have seen him. Just at that moment, however, the Boers opened on that ridge with a very big gun. Squadrons wheeled right and left, and the gunners swung round like machines. But nothing on the ridge swung round quicker than Henry and Alick swung their respective teams, and nothing got out of danger faster. The quartermaster said:
“I was afraid the guns or the cavalry would run over those boys; but nothing in the army would run over them with guns behind them.”
That march to Kimberley was a sort of baptism of fire for my future career as a remount officer, as I saw all sorts of troop and transport animals thoroughly tried out. It was the first time I had seen muleteams in any number, but later on I was to have thousands of mules through my hands. Luckily, I didn’t know it.
After the march, I asked Colonel Haig (afterwards Field-Marshal and Commander-in-Chief in France, of whom more anon) which lot of horses had come out of the test with the greatest percentage of efficients.
“Of all people,” he said, “who do you think have the most horses fit to move on again if wanted?—The Tinbellies.”
The Tinbellies are the Life Guards, whose magnificent black horses are seen on sentry duty outside the palaces in London, and the general estimate of the Tinbellies was that they were chocolate soldiers; they were too decorative to be very destructive: and yet they had come out on top, after one of the most trying marches in history. It was incredible. I told him I thought their horses were too big and too pampered to stand this sort of job.
“Well,” he said, “anyone would think so. But they’re in great condition, and they’re very strong—they can hump the weight. Anyhow, there you are. If I have to send a squadron to clear the Boers off the hills, I’ll have to send Her Majesty’s Life Guards after them. Bit of a compliment to Johannes Paul Kruger, isn’t it?”
French and Haig would have made good poker players. Neither success nor defeat wreathed any smiles on their mask-like faces, or cut any lines on their brows. Here at Kimberley, with a howling, shrieking, cheering crowd, almost pulling them off their horses, and trying to kiss their very boots, as they rode along, everything looked set for a bit of theatricals. But it turned out that Kekewich, the military commander, and Cecil Rhodes, the civilian despot, had quarrelled bitterly and had gone out in separate directions to meet French and get in first with their hard-luck stories.
French was officially received by a Jewish gentleman, who probably owned a diamond-mine, and his opening sentence was: “Veil, general, vy didn’t you come before?”
French was never a good mixer at any time and, according to all reports, he was particularly unenthusiastic about the un-lost tribes. Like the great Duke of Marlborough, his troubles through life had been mostly female and financial. It must be admitted that the world owes a great deal to the Jewish race; French at one time and another had owed them a good deal, too. He made a brief, halting speech, punctuated with sips of champagne:
“Very glad to be here (sip); had a hard march (sip); hope everything will go well now (sip); must go and see about refitting (sip); when Colonel Kekewich comes back, let me know.” With that he finished the fizz and bolted off.
One pauses to think how differently Baden Powell would have handled such an opportunity.
Kimberley—Day after relief. Went round and saw the wreckage of transport and troop animals. Horses that have collapsed through heat and overwork are being shot in all directions. The people here have been living on horseflesh and thousands of starving Kaffirs are hanging round the lines. When a horse is shot, they fling themselves on it like a crowd of vultures, and in ten minutes there is not a scrap left. My friend, the Duke of Teck, will have to step lively to keep this column supplied with horses, as they have to be led up, and there is every chance of their being cut off by the enemy. I never knew there was a remount service before this war. It has its hands full now.
Our mule-drivers, Henry and Alick, are the only two boys to get up with their officers’ wagons, as the English cavalry officers obeyed orders strictly and would not let their boys come along. We are the only officers’ mess that have food and blankets. Prince Alexander of Teck, a subaltern with the Inniskillings, didn’t even have an overcoat. He wouldn’t take anything from us, as he said it wasn’t playing the game to take anything while his mates were doing a perish. Later on, he was attached to our Australian Lancer squadron and was a good soldier. One of our newly-arrived Australian officers asked him what he would do and what orders he would give, if he found his command surrounded by Boers.
“I would lie flat down on my guts,” he said. There was no theatricalism about Alexander of Teck.
Henry and Alick are the heroes of the local Kaffir population. They drew some money to-day, and as Henry was on duty he gave his share to Alick to buy some dop, a very villainous kind of Cape brandy. Alick fell in with a crowd of hero-worshippers, and among them they drank all Henry’s dop. Alick also lost all Henry’s money playing the Kaffir equivalent for baccara. At lunch-time the quartermaster heard a fearful row in the lines and arrived just in time to prevent Henry (much the bigger man) from choking Alick to death. He had them separated and put to work at different ends of the line, Alick with tears streaming down his face, saying: “One more chance, quartermaster, one more chance. He kickit my mules.” In ten minutes they were at it again and a sentry with a loaded rifle had to be put over Henry, while Alick was sent out of the lines. Henry, crying with rage and sobriety, begged the sentry to shoot him right through the heart, otherwise nothing would stop him from killing Alick at the first opportunity.
By nightfall they were firm friends again. Handling native transport drivers is one of the things they don’t teach in the books.
July 28th, 1900—Caledon Valley, South Africa—Day of Prinsloo’s surrender. The men we caught were like sheep without a shepherd. They had moved up the valley, hoping to get out at Naauwpoort Nek, and when we blocked them they fell into a disorganized rabble. Each commandant took his own course. They had forced their guns and wagons up rocks and down fathomless abysses, along sidelings and across gullies till they could not extricate themselves. They had thousands of cattle and sheep with them, and the winding road—if road you could call it—for miles up the valley was one long bewildering string of ex-wagons, Cape carts, cattle, sheep, horses, armed men, women, children and Kaffirs. They couldn’t get off the road. They could go neither backward nor forward without our permission. They could have left their wagons and gone over the mountains on horseback, but, as Roux, the fighting parson, put it—the Boers love their wagons more than their fatherland.
All the first day the fighting men trooped in, and they brought a fair number of Cape carts with them, in fact we were surprised to see that each commando had as many private carts as one of our crack cavalry regiments. The next day we found out that, on the previous day we hadn’t, comparatively speaking, seen any carts at all.
On the second day we saw miles and miles of carts—driven by fat old Rip Van Winkles, with white hair streaming down their backs; driven by dandified young Boers with peaked braids and tailor-made clothes; driven by grinning Kaffirs: some drawn by horses, some by mules, and some by oxen. Hour after hour, they streamed in, till we began to think that the Boers must be driving them through our camp round the hill and back again, like a pantomime army in a theatre.
I had an interview with the fighting parson, Roux. He blamed Prinsloo for surrendering. Said that, at the very time the fight was going on, an election was being held to decide whether he or Prinsloo should be commandant!
Well, we did some silly things ourselves, but nothing quite as bad as that.