Books: Notes of a War Correspondent

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> Notes of a War Correspondent

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A few minutes later the last of the three hills was mounted by the
West Yorks, who were mistaken by their own artillery for Boers, and
fired upon both by the Boers and by their own shrapnel and lyddite.
Four men were wounded, and, to save themselves, a line of them stood
up at full length on the trench and cheered and waved at the
artillery until it had ceased to play upon them. The Boers continued
to fire upon them with rifles for over two hours. But it was only a
demonstration to cover the retreat of the greater number, and at
daybreak the hills were in complete and peaceful possession of the
English.

These hills were a part of the same Railway Hill which four nights
before the Inniskillings and a composite regiment had attempted to
take by a frontal attack with the loss of six hundred men, among whom
were three colonels. By this flank attack, and by using nine
regiments instead of one, the same hills and two others were taken
with two hundred casualties. The fact that this battle, which was
called the Battle of Pieter's Hill, and the surrender of General
Cronje and his forces to Lord Roberts, both took place on the
anniversary of the battle of Majuba Hill, made the whole of Buller's
column feel that the ill memory of that disaster had been effaced.

II--THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH

After the defeat of the Boers at the battle of Pieter's Hill there
were two things left for them to do. They could fall back across a
great plain which stretched from Pieter's Hill to Bulwana Mountain,
and there make their last stand against Buller and the Ladysmith
relief column, or they could abandon the siege of Ladysmith and slip
away after having held Buller at bay for three months.

Bulwana Mountain is shaped like a brick and blocks the valley in
which Ladysmith lies. The railroad track slips around one end of the
brick, and the Dundee trail around the other. It was on this
mountain that the Boers had placed their famous gun, Long Tom, with
which they began the bombardment of Ladysmith, and with which up to
the day before Ladysmith was relieved they had thrown three thousand
shells into that miserable town.

If the Boers on retreating from Pieter's Hill had fortified this
mountain with the purpose of holding off Buller for a still longer
time, they would have been under a fire from General White's
artillery in the town behind them and from Buller's naval guns in
front. Their position would not have been unlike that of Humpty
Dumpty on the wall, so they wisely adopted the only alternative and
slipped away. This was on Tuesday night, while the British were
hurrying up artillery to hold the hills they had taken that
afternoon.

By ten o'clock the following morning from the top of Pieter's Hill
you could still see the Boers moving off along the Dundee road. It
was an easy matter to follow them, for the dust hung above the trail
in a yellow cloud, like mist over a swamp. There were two opinions
as to whether they were halting at Bulwana or passing it, on their
way to Laing's Neck. If they were going only to Bulwana there was
the probability of two weeks' more fighting before they could be
dislodged. If they had avoided Bulwana, the way to Ladysmith was
open.

Lord Dundonald, who is in command of a brigade of irregular cavalry,
was scouting to the left of Bulwana, far in advance of our forces.
At sunset he arrived, without having encountered the Boers, at the
base of Bulwana. He could either return and report the disappearance
of the enemy or he could make a dash for it and enter Ladysmith. His
orders were "to go, look, see," and avoid an action, and the fact
that none of his brigade was in the triumphant procession which took
place three days later has led many to think that in entering the
besieged town without orders he offended the commanding general. In
any event, it is a family row and of no interest to the outsider.
The main fact is that he did make a dash for it, and just at sunset
found himself with two hundred men only a mile from the "Doomed
City." His force was composed of Natal Carbiniers and Imperial Light
Horse. He halted them, and in order that honors might be even,
formed them in sections with the half sections made up from each of
the two organizations. All the officers were placed in front, and
with a cheer they started to race across the plain.

The wig-waggers on Convent Hill had already seen them, and the
townspeople and the garrison were rushing through the streets to meet
them, cheering and shouting, and some of them weeping. Others, so
officers tell me, who were in the different camps, looked down upon
the figures galloping across the plain in the twilight, and continued
making tea.

Just as they had reached the centre of the town, General Sir George
White and his staff rode down from head-quarters and met the men
whose coming meant for him life and peace and success. They were
advancing at a walk, with the cheering people hanging to their
stirrups, clutching at their hands and hanging to the bridles of
their horses.

General White's first greeting was characteristically unselfish and
loyal, and typical of the British officer. He gave no sign of his
own in calculable relief, nor did he give to Caesar the things which
were Caesar's. He did not cheer Dundonald, nor Buller, nor the
column which had rescued him and his garrison from present starvation
and probable imprisonment at Pretoria. He raised his helmet and
cried, "We will give three cheers for the Queen!" And then the
general and the healthy, ragged, and sunburned troopers from the
outside world, the starved, fever-ridden garrison, and the starved,
fever-ridden civilians stood with hats off and sang their national
anthem.

The column outside had been fighting steadily for six weeks to get
Dundonald or any one of its force into Ladysmith; for fourteen days
it had been living in the open, fighting by night as well as by day,
without halt or respite; the garrison inside had been for four months
holding the enemy at bay with the point of the bayonet; it was
famished for food, it was rotten with fever, and yet when the relief
came and all turned out well, the first thought of every one was for
the Queen!

It may be credulous in them or old-fashioned; but it is certainly
very unselfish, and when you take their point of view it is certainly
very fine.

After the Queen every one else had his share of the cheering, and
General White could not complain of the heartiness with which they
greeted him, he tried to make a speech in reply, but it was a brief
one. He spoke of how much they owed to General Buller and his
column, and he congratulated his own soldiers on the defence they had
made.

"I am very sorry, men," he said, "that I had to cut down your
rations. I--I promise you I won't do it again."

Then he stopped very suddenly and whirled his horse's head around and
rode away. Judging from the number of times they told me of this,
the fact that they had all but seen an English general give way to
his feelings seemed to have impressed the civilian mind of Ladysmith
more than the entrance of the relief force. The men having come in
and demonstrated that the way was open, rode forth again, and the
relief of Ladysmith had taken place. But it is not the people
cheering in the dark streets, nor General White breaking down in his
speech of welcome, which gives the note to the way the men of
Ladysmith received their freedom. It is rather the fact that as the
two hundred battle-stained and earth-stained troopers galloped
forward, racing to be the first, and rising in their stirrups to
cheer, the men in the hospital camps said, "Well, they're come at
last, have they?" and continued fussing over their fourth of a ration
of tea. That gives the real picture of how Ladysmith came into her
inheritance, and of how she received her rescuers.

On the morning after Dundonald had ridden in and out of Ladysmith,
two other correspondents and myself started to relieve it on our own
account. We did not know the way to Ladysmith, and we did not then
know whether or not the Boers still occupied Bulwana Mountain. But
we argued that the chances of the Boers having raised the siege were
so good that it was worth risking their not having done so, and being
taken prisoner.

We carried all the tobacco we could pack in our saddle-bags, and
enough food for one day. My chief regret was that my government,
with true republican simplicity, had given me a passport, type-
written on a modest sheet of notepaper and wofully lacking in
impressive seals and coats of arms. I fancied it would look to Boer
eyes like one I might have forged for myself in the writing-room of
the hotel at Cape Town.

We had ridden up Pieter's Hill and scrambled down on its other side
before we learned that the night before Dundonald had raised the
siege. We learned this from long trains of artillery and regiments
of infantry which already were moving forward over the great plain
which lies between Pieter's and Bulwana. We learned it also from the
silence of conscientious, dutiful correspondents, who came galloping
back as we galloped forward, and who made wide detours at sight of
us, or who, when we hailed them, lashed their ponies over the red
rocks and pretended not to hear, each unselfishly turning his back on
Ladysmith in the hope that he might be the first to send word that
the "Doomed City" was relieved. This would enable one paper to say
that it had the news "on the street" five minutes earlier than its
hated rivals. We found that the rivalry of our respective papers
bored us. We condemned it as being childish and weak. London, New
York, Chicago were names, they were spots thousands of leagues away:
Ladysmith was just across that mountain. If our horses held out at
the pace, we would be--after Dundonald--the first men in. We
imagined that we would see hysterical women and starving men. They
would wring our hands, and say, "God bless you," and we would halt
our steaming horses in the market-place, and distribute the news of
the outside world, and tobacco. There would be shattered houses,
roofless homes, deep pits in the roadways where the shells had burst
and buried themselves. We would see the entombed miner at the moment
of his deliverance, we would be among the first from the outer world
to break the spell of his silence; the first to receive the brunt of
the imprisoned people's gratitude and rejoicings.

Indeed, it was clearly our duty to the papers that employed us that
we should not send them news, but that we should be the first to
enter Ladysmith. We were surely the best judges of what was best to
do. How like them to try to dictate to us from London and New York,
when we were on the spot! It was absurd. We shouted this to each
other as we raced in and out of the long confused column, lashing
viciously with our whips. We stumbled around pieces of artillery,
slid in between dripping water-carts, dodged the horns of weary oxen,
scattered companies of straggling Tommies, and ducked under
protruding tent-poles on the baggage-wagons, and at last came out
together again in advance of the dusty column.

"Besides, we don't know where the press-censor is, do we?" No, of
course we had no idea where the press-censor was, and unless he said
that Ladysmith was relieved, the fact that twenty-five thousand other
soldiers said so counted for idle gossip. Our papers could not
expect us to go riding over mountains the day Ladysmith was relieved,
hunting for a press-censor. "That press-censor," gasped Hartland,
"never--is--where he--ought to be." The words were bumped out of him
as he was shot up and down in the saddle. That was it. It was the
press-censor's fault. Our consciences were clear now. If our papers
worried themselves or us because they did not receive the great news
until every one else knew of it, it was all because of that press-
censor. We smiled again and spurred the horses forward. We abused
the press-censor roundly--we were extremely indignant with him. It
was so like him to lose himself the day Ladysmith was relieved.
"Confound him," we muttered, and grinned guiltily. We felt as we
used to feel when we were playing truant from school.

We were nearing Pieter's Station now, and were half-way to Ladysmith.
But the van of the army was still about us. Was it possible that it
stretched already into the beleaguered city? Were we, after all, to
be cheated of the first and freshest impressions? The tall lancers
turned at the sound of the horses' hoofs and stared, infantry
officers on foot smiled up at us sadly, they were dirty and dusty and
sweating, they carried rifles and cross belts like the Tommies; and
they knew that we outsiders who were not under orders would see the
chosen city before them. Some of them shouted to us, but we only
nodded and galloped on. We wanted to get rid of them all, but they
were interminable. When we thought we had shaken them off, and that
we were at last in advance, we would come upon a group of them
resting on the same ground their shells had torn up during the battle
the day before.

We passed Boer laagers marked by empty cans and broken saddles and
black, cold campfires. At Pieter's Station the blood was still fresh
on the grass where two hours before some of the South African Light
Horse had been wounded.

The Boers were still on Bulwana then? Perhaps, after all, we had
better turn back and try to find that press-censor. But we rode on
and saw Pieter's Station, as we passed it, as an absurd relic of by-
gone days when bridges were intact and trains ran on schedule time.
One door seen over the shoulder as we galloped past read, "Station
Master's Office--Private," and in contempt of that stern injunction,
which would make even the first-class passenger hesitate, one of our
shells had knocked away the half of the door and made its privacy a
mockery. We had only to follow the track now and we would arrive in
time--unless the Boers were still on Bulwana. We had shaken off the
army, and we were two miles in front of it, when six men came
galloping toward us in an unfamiliar uniform. They passed us far to
the right, regardless of the trail, and galloping through the high
grass. We pulled up when we saw them, for they had green facings to
their gray uniforms, and no one with Buller's column wore green
facings.

We gave a yell in chorus. "Are you from Ladysmith?" we shouted. The
men, before they answered, wheeled and cheered, and came toward us
laughing jubilant. "We're the first men out," cried the officer and
we rode in among them, shaking hands and offering our good wishes.
"We're glad to see you," we said. "We're glad to see YOU," they
said. It was not an original greeting, but it seemed sufficient to
all of us. "Are the Boers on Bulwana?" we asked. "No, they've
trekked up Dundee way. You can go right in."

We parted at the word and started to go right in. We found the
culverts along the railroad cut away and the bridges down, and that
galloping ponies over the roadbed of a railroad is a difficult feat
at the best, even when the road is in working order.

Some men, cleanly dressed and rather pale-looking, met us and said:
"Good-morning." "Are you from Ladysmith?" we called. "No, we're
from the neutral camp," they answered. We were the first men from
outside they had seen in four months, and that was the extent of
their interest or information. They had put on their best clothes,
and were walking along the track to Colenso to catch a train south to
Durban or to Maritzburg, to any place out of the neutral camp. They
might have been somnambulists for all they saw of us, or of the Boer
trenches and the battle-field before them. But we found them of
greatest interest, especially their clean clothes. Our column had
not seen clean linen in six weeks, and the sight of these civilians
in white duck and straw hats, and carrying walking-sticks, coming
toward us over the railroad ties, made one think it was Sunday at
home and these were excursionists to the suburbs.

We had been riding through a roofless tunnel, with the mountain and
the great dam on one side, and the high wall of the railway cutting
on the other, but now just ahead of us lay the open country, and the
exit of the tunnel barricaded by twisted rails and heaped-up ties and
bags of earth. Bulwana was behind us. For eight miles it had shut
out the sight of our goal, but now, directly in front of us, was
spread a great city of dirty tents and grass huts and Red Cross
flags--the neutral camp--and beyond that, four miles away, shimmering
and twinkling sleepily in the sun, the white walls and zinc roofs of
Ladysmith.

We gave a gasp of recognition and galloped into and through the
neutral camp. Natives of India in great turbans, Indian women in gay
shawls and nose-rings, and black Kaffirs in discarded khaki looked up
at us dully from the earth floors of their huts, and when we shouted
"Which way?" and "Where is the bridge?" only stared, or pointed
vaguely, still staring.

After all, we thought, they are poor creatures, incapable of emotion.
Perhaps they do not know how glad we are that they have been rescued.
They do not understand that we want to shake hands with everybody and
offer our congratulations. Wait until we meet our own people, we
said, they will understand! It was such a pleasant prospect that we
whipped the unhappy ponies into greater bursts of speed, not because
they needed it, but because we were too excited and impatient to sit
motionless.

In our haste we lost our way among innumerable little trees; we
disagreed as to which one of the many cross-trails led home to the
bridge. We slipped out of our stirrups to drag the ponies over one
steep place, and to haul them up another, and at last the right road
lay before us, and a hundred yards ahead a short iron bridge and a
Gordon Highlander waited to welcome us, to receive our first
greetings and an assorted collection of cigarettes. Hartland was
riding a thoroughbred polo pony and passed the gallant defender of
Ladysmith without a kind look or word, but Blackwood and I galloped
up more decorously, smiling at him with good-will. The soldier, who
had not seen a friend from the outside world in four months, leaped
in front of us and presented a heavy gun and a burnished bayonet.

"Halt, there," he cried. "Where's your pass?" Of course it showed
excellent discipline--we admired it immensely. We even overlooked
the fact that he should think Boer spies would enter the town by way
of the main bridge and at a gallop. We liked his vigilance, we
admired his discipline, but in spite of that his reception chilled
us. We had brought several things with us that we thought they might
possibly want in Ladysmith, but we had entirely forgotten to bring a
pass. Indeed I do not believe one of the twenty-five thousand men
who had been fighting for six weeks to relieve Ladysmith had supplied
himself with one. The night before, when the Ladysmith sentries had
tried to halt Dundonald's troopers in the same way, and demanded a
pass from them, there was not one in the squadron.

We crossed the bridge soberly and entered Ladysmith at a walk. Even
the ponies looked disconcerted and crestfallen. After the high grass
and the mountains of red rock, where there was not even a tent to
remind one of a roof-tree, the stone cottages and shop-windows and
chapels and well-ordered hedges of the main street of Ladysmith made
it seem a wealthy and attractive suburb. When we entered, a Sabbath-
like calm hung upon the town; officers in the smartest khaki and
glistening Stowassers observed us askance, little girls in white
pinafores passed us with eyes cast down, a man on a bicycle looked
up, and then, in terror lest we might speak to him, glued his eyes to
the wheel and "scorched" rapidly. We trotted forward and halted at
each street crossing, looking to the right and left in the hope that
some one might nod to us. From the opposite end of the town General
Buller and his staff came toward us slowly--the house-tops did not
seem to sway--it was not "roses, roses all the way." The German army
marching into Paris received as hearty a welcome. "Why didn't you
people cheer General Buller when he came in?" we asked later. "Oh,
was that General Buller?" they inquired. "We didn't recognize him."
"But you knew he was a general officer, you knew he was the first of
the relieving column?" "Ye-es, but we didn't know who he was."

I decided that the bare fact of the relief of Ladysmith was all I
would be able to wire to my neglected paper, and with remorses
started to find the Ladysmith censor. Two officers, with whom I
ventured to break the hush that hung upon the town by asking my way,
said they were going in the direction of the censor. We rode for
some distance in guarded silence. Finally, one of them, with an
inward struggle, brought himself to ask, "Are you from the outside?"

I was forced to admit that I was. I felt that I had taken an
unwarrantable liberty in intruding on a besieged garrison. I wanted
to say that I had lost my way and had ridden into the town by
mistake, and that I begged to be allowed to withdraw with apologies.
The other officer woke up suddenly and handed me a printed list of
the prices which had been paid during the siege for food and tobacco.
He seemed to offer it as being in some way an official apology for
his starved appearance. The price of cigars struck me as especially
pathetic, and I commented on it. The first officer gazed mournfully
at the blazing sunshine before him. "I have not smoked a cigar in
two months," he said. My surging sympathy, and my terror at again
offending the haughty garrison, combated so fiercely that it was only
with a great effort that I produced a handful. "Will you have
these?" The other officer started in his saddle so violently that I
thought his horse had stumbled, but he also kept his eyes straight in
front. "Thank you, I will take one if I may--just one," said the
first officer. "Are you sure I am not robbing you?" They each took
one, but they refused to put the rest of the cigars in their pockets.
As the printed list stated that a dozen matches sold for $1.75, I
handed them a box of matches. Then a beautiful thing happened. They
lit the cigars and at the first taste of the smoke--and they were not
good cigars--an almost human expression of peace and good-will and
utter abandonment to joy spread over their yellow skins and cracked
lips and fever-lit eyes. The first man dropped his reins and put his
hands on his hips and threw back his head and shoulders and closed
his eyelids. I felt that I had intruded at a moment which should
have been left sacred. {5}

Another boy officer in stainless khaki and beautifully turned out,
polished and burnished and varnished, but with the same yellow skin
and sharpened cheek-bones and protruding teeth, a skeleton on horse-
back, rode slowly toward us down the hill. As he reached us he
glanced up and then swayed in his saddle, gazing at my companions
fearfully. "Good God," he cried. His brother officers seemed to
understand, but made no answer, except to jerk their heads toward me.
They were too occupied to speak. I handed the skeleton a cigar, and
he took it in great embarrassment, laughing and stammering and
blushing. Then I began to understand; I began to appreciate the
heroic self-sacrifice of the first two, who, when they had been given
the chance, had refused to fill their pockets. I knew then that it
was an effort worthy of the V. C.

The censor was at his post, and a few minutes later a signal officer
on Convent Hill heliographed my cable to Bulwana, where, six hours
after the Boers had abandoned it, Buller's own helios had begun to
dance, and they speeded the cable on its long journey to the
newspaper office on the Thames Embankment.

When one descended to the streets again--there are only two streets
which run the full length of the town--and looked for signs of the
siege, one found them not in the shattered houses, of which there
seemed surprisingly few, but in the starved and fever-shaken look of
the people.

The cloak of indifference which every Englishman wears, and his
instinctive dislike to make much of his feelings, and, in this case,
his pluck, at first concealed from us how terribly those who had been
inside of Ladysmith had suffered, and how near to the breaking point
they were. Their faces were the real index to what they had passed
through.

Any one who had seen our men at Montauk Point or in the fever camp at
Siboney needed no hospital list to tell him of the pitiful condition
of the garrison. The skin on their faces was yellow, and drawn
sharply over the brow and cheekbones; their teeth protruded, and they
shambled along like old men, their voices ranging from a feeble pipe
to a deep whisper. In this pitiable condition they had been forced
to keep night-watch on the hill-crests, in the rain, to lie in the
trenches, and to work on fortifications and bomb-proofs. And they
were expected to do all of these things on what strength they could
get from horse-meat, biscuits of the toughness and composition of
those that are fed to dogs, and on "mealies," which is what we call
corn.

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