H. W. Nevinson - Ladysmith

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[Illustration: H.W. NEVINSON]

LADYSMITH

THE DIARY OF A SIEGE

BY

H.W. NEVINSON

AUTHOR OF "THE THIRTY DAYS' WAR"

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1900

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. ON THE EDGE 1

II. AT THE BRITISH FRONT 9

III. THE FIRST WEEK'S WAR 20

IV. BATTLE OF ELANDS LAAGTE 30

V. BATTLE OF TINTA INYONI 41

VI. THE REVERSE AT NICHOLSON'S NEK 51

VII. HEMMED IN 61

VIII. TRAGEDY AND COMEDY 72

IX. INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS, AND REALITIES 83

X. ENNUI ENLIVENED BY SUDDEN DEATH 100

XI. FLASHES FROM BULLER 129

XII. THE NIGHT SURPRISE ON GUN HILL 138

XIII. THE CAPTURE OF SURPRISE HILL 156

XIV. THE SEASON OF PEACE AND GOODWILL 176

XV. SICKNESS, DEATH, AND A NEW YEAR 194

XVI. THE GREAT ATTACK 211

XVII. A PAUSE AND A RENEWAL 231

XVIII. "WITHIN MEASURABLE DISTANCE" 250

XIX. HOPE DEFERRED 265

XX. SUN AND FEVER 279

XXI. RELIEVED AT LAST 291

APPENDIX 299

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR _Frontispiece_

MAP OF LADYSMITH AND NEIGHBOURHOOD 12

GENERAL SIR GEORGE STEWART WHITE, V.C., G.C.I.E., G.C.B., G.C.S.I. 18

PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF ELANDS LAAGTE 32

LOMBARD'S KOP 56

IMPERIAL LIGHT HORSE SHELTERS 77

THE DRIFT AND WATERING-PLACE 80

BULWAN 105

HOSPITAL IN TOWN HALL AFTER A SHELL 127

BREECH BLOCK FROM GUN HILL 148

A PICTURESQUE RUIN 183

HEADQUARTERS AFTER A 96LB. SHELL 186

EFFECT OF 96LB. SHELL ON A PRIVATE HOUSE 201

SPECIMEN OF BOER SHELLS 252

INDIAN BAKERY 268

GENERAL RT. HON. SIR R.H. BULLER, V.C., G.C.B., K.C.M.G., K.C.B.
(_photograph by KNIGHT, Aldershot_) 291

SKETCH PLAN OF COUNTRY SOUTH AND WEST OF LADYSMITH 306

NOTE

This book has been reprinted, by kind permission of the Proprietors of
the _Daily Chronicle_, from the full text of the Letters sent to the
paper.

LADYSMITH

THE DIARY OF A SIEGE

CHAPTER I

ON THE EDGE

NEWCASTLE, NATAL, _Thursday, October 5, 1899_.

Late last Sunday night I found myself slowly crawling towards the front
from Pretoria in a commandeered train crammed full of armed Boers and
their horses. I had rushed from the Cape to quiet little Bloemfontein,
the centre of one of the best administered States in the world, where
the heads of the nation in the intervals of discussing war proudly
showed me their pianos, their little gardens, little libraries of
English books, little museums of African beasts and Greek coins, and all
their other evidences of advancing culture. Then on to Pretoria, the
same kind of a town on a larger and richer scale--trim bungalow houses,
for the most part, spread out among gardens full of roses, honeysuckle,
and syringa. But at the station all day and night the scene was not
idyllic. Every hour train after train moved away--stores and firewood in
front, horses next, and luggage vans for the men behind. The partings
from lovers and wives and children must be imagined. They are bad enough
to witness when our own soldiers go to the front. But these men are not
soldiers at all. Each of them came direct from his home in the town or
on some isolated farm. They rode up, dressed just in their ordinary
clothes, but for the slung Mauser and the full cartridge belt over the
shoulder or round the waist. Except for a few gunners, there is no
uniform in the Boer Army. Even the officers can hardly be distinguished
from ordinary farmers. The only thing that could be called uniform is
the broad-brimmed soft hat of grey or brown. But all Boers wear it. It
is generally very stained and dirty, and invariably a rusty crape band
is wound about the crown. For the Boer, like the English poorer classes,
has large quantities of relations, and one of them is always dying.

By the courtesy of the Pretorian Government I had secured room in the
guard's van for myself and a companion, who was equally anxious to
cross the Natal frontier before the firing began, and that was expected
at any moment. In the van with us were a score of farmers from
Middleburg way, their contingent occupying four trains with about 800
men and horses. For the most part they were fine tall men with shaggy
light beards, reminding one of Yorkshire farmers, but rougher and not so
well dressed. Most of them could speak some English, and many had Scotch
or English relatives. They lay on the floor or sat on the edge of the
van, talking quietly and smoking enormous pipes. All deeply regretted
the war, regretted the farm left behind just when spring and rain are
coming, and they were full of foreboding for the women and children left
at the mercy of Kaffirs. There was no excitement or shouting or bravado
of any kind. So we travelled into the night, the monotony only broken by
one violent collision which shook us all flat on the floor, while arms
and stores fell crashing upon us. In the silent pause which followed,
whilst we wondered if we were dead, I could hear the Kaffirs chattering
in their mud huts close by, and in the distance a cornet was playing
"Home, Sweet Home," with variations.

It must have been the next evening, as we were waiting three or four
hours, as usual, for the line to clear, that General Joubert came up in
a special train. A few young men and boys in ordinary clothes formed his
"staff." The General himself wore the usual brown slouch hat with crape
band, and a blue frock coat, not luxuriously new. His beard was quite
white, but his long straight hair was still more black than grey. The
brown sallow face was deeply wrinkled and marked, but the dark brown
eyes were still bright, and looked out upon the world with a kind of
simplicity mingled with shrewdness, or perhaps some subtler quality. He
spoke English with a piquant lack of grammar and misuse of words. When I
travelled with him next day, almost the first thing he said to me was,
"The heart of my soul is bloody with sorrow." His moderating influence
on the Kruger Government is well known, and he described to me how he
had done his utmost for peace. But he also described how bit by bit
England had pushed the Boers out of their inheritance, and taken
advantage of them in every conference and native war. He was
particularly hurt that the Queen had taken no notice of the long letter
or pamphlet he wrote to her on the situation. And, by the way, I often
observed what regard most Boers appear to feel for the Queen personally.
They constantly couple her name with Gladstone's when they wish to say
anything nice about English politics. As to the General's views on the
crisis, there would be little new to say. Till the present war his hope
had been for a South African Confederacy under English protection--the
Cape, Natal, Free State, and Transvaal all having equal rights and local
self-government. He knows well enough the inner causes of the present
evils. "But now," he said, "we can only leave it to God. If it is His
will that the Transvaal perish, we can only do our best."

At Zandspruit, the scene of the old Sand River Convention, the whole
Boer camp crowded to the station to greet the national hero, and he was
at once surrounded by a herd of farmers, shaking his hands and patting
him warmly on the back. It was a respectful but democratic greeting. The
Boer Army--if for a moment we may give that name to an unorganised
collection of volunteers--is entirely democratic. The men are nominally
under field cornets, commanders, and the General. But they openly boast
that on the field the authority and direction of officers do not count
for much, and they go pretty much as they please. The camp, though not
in the least disorderly, was confused and irregular--stores, firewood,
horses, cattle, and tents strewn about the enormous veldt, almost
haphazard, though the districts were kept fairly well separate.
Provisions were plenty, but the cooking was bad. It took three days to
get bread made, and some detachments had to eat their meat raw. I think
there were not more than 10,000 or less than 7,000 men in the camp at
that time, but the commandeered trains crawled up every two or three
hours with their new loads.

By a piece of good fortune we succeeded in crossing the frontier in an
open coal-truck. The border-line runs about six miles north of Majuba
and Laing's Nek, the last Boer village being Volksrust, and Charlestown
the first English. The scenery changes rapidly; the high, bare veldt of
the Southern Transvaal is at once left behind, and we enter the broad
valley of Natal, sloping steadily down to the sea and becoming richer
and more tropical as it descends. All regular traffic had stopped three
days before, but now and then a refugee train came up to the frontier
and transhipped its miserable crowd. Fugitives of every nation have been
hurrying to the railway in hopes of escape. The stations far down into
Natal are constantly surrounded with patient groups, waiting, waiting
for an empty truck. Hindoos from Bombay and Madras with their golden
nose-rings and brilliant silks sit day and night waiting side by side
with coal-black Kaffirs in their blankets, or "blue-blooded" Zulus who
refuse to hide much of their deep chocolate skin, showing a kind of
purple bloom like a plum. The patient indifference with which these
savages will sit unmoved through any fortune and let time run over them,
is almost like the solemn calm of nature's own laws. The whites are
restless and probably suffer more. Many were in extreme misery. Three or
four young children died on the journey. One poor woman became a mother
in the train just after the frontier, and died, leaving the baby alive.
At the border I found many English and Scotch families, who had driven
across the veldt from Ermelo, surrendering all their possessions. All
spoke of the good treatment the Boers had shown them on the journey,
even when the waggon had outspanned for the night close to the Boer
camp. I came down to Newcastle with a Caithness stonemason and his
family. They had lost house, home, and livelihood. They had even
abandoned their horses and waggon on the veldt. The woman regretted her
piano, but what really touched her most was that she had to wash her
baby in cold water at the lavatory basin, and he had always been
accustomed to warm. So we stand on the perilous edge and suffer
variously.

CHAPTER II

AT THE BRITISH FRONT

LADYSMITH, NATAL, _Wednesday, October 11, 1899_.

Ladysmith breathes freely to-day, but a week ago she seemed likely to
become another Lucknow. Of line battalions only the Liverpools were
here, besides two batteries of field artillery, some of the 18th
Hussars, and the 5th Lancers. If Kruger or Joubert had then allowed the
Boers encamped on the Free State border to have their own way, no one
can say what might have happened. Our force would have been outnumbered
at least four to one, and probably more. In event of disaster the Boers
would have seized an immense quantity of military stores accumulated in
the camp, and at the railway station. What is worse, they would have
isolated the still smaller force lately thrown forward to Dundee, so as
to break the strong defensive position of the Biggarsberg, which cuts
off the north of Natal, and can only be traversed by three difficult
passes. Dundee was just as much threatened from the east frontier beyond
the Buffalo River, where the Transvaal Boers of the Utrecht and Vryheid
district have been mustered in strong force for nearly a fortnight now.
With our two advanced posts "lapped up" (the phrase is a little musty
here), our stores lost, and our reputation among the Dutch and native
populations entirely ruined, the campaign would have begun badly.

For the Boers it was a fine strategic opportunity, and they were
perfectly aware of that. But "the Old Man," as they affectionately call
the President, had his own prudent reasons for refusing it. "Let the
enemy fire first," he says, like the famous Frenchman, and so far he has
been able to hold the most ardent of the encamped burghers in check. "If
he should not be able!" we kept saying. We still say it morning and
evening, but the pinch of the danger is passed. Last Thursday night the
1st Devons and the 19th Hussars began to arrive and the crisis ended.
Yesterday before daybreak half the Gordons came. We have now a mountain
battery and three batteries of field artillery, the 19th Hussars (the
18th having gone forward to Dundee), besides the 5th Lancers (the "Irish
Lancers"), who are in faultless condition, and a considerable mixed
force of the Natal Volunteers. Of these last, the Carbineers are perhaps
the best, and generally serve as scouts towards the Free State frontier.
But all have good repute as horsemen, marksmen, and guides, and at
present they are the force which the Boers fear most. They are split up
into several detachments--the Border Mounted Rifles, the Natal Mounted
Rifles (from Durban), the Imperial Light Horse, the Natal Police, and
the Umvoti Mounted Rifles, who are chiefly Dutch. Then of infantry there
are the Natal Royal Rifles (only about 150 strong), the Durban Light
Infantry, and the Natal Field Artillery. As far as I can estimate, the
total Natal Volunteer force will not exceed 2,000, but they are well
armed, are accustomed to the Boer method of warfare, and will be watched
with interest. Unhappily, many of them here are already suffering from
the change of life and food in camp. That is inevitable when volunteers
first take the field.

But Ladysmith has an evil reputation besides. Last year the troops here
were prostrated with enteric. There is a little fever and a good deal
of dysentery even now among the regulars. The stream by the camp is
condemned, and all water is supplied in tiny rations from pumps. The
main permanent camp is built of corrugated iron, practically the sole
building material in South Africa, and quite universal for roofs, so
that the country has few "architectural features" to boast of. The
cavalry are quartered in the tin huts, but the Liverpools, Devons,
Gordons, and Volunteers have pitched their own tents, and a terrible
time they are having of it. Dust is the curse of the place. We remember
the Long Valley as an Arcadian dell. Veterans of the Soudan recall the
black sand-storms with regretful sighs. The thin, red dust comes
everywhere, and never stops. It blinds your eyes, it stops your nose, it
scorches your throat till the invariable shilling for a little glass of
any liquid seems cheap as dirt. It turns the whitest shirt brown in half
an hour, it creeps into the works of your watch and your bowels. It lies
in a layer mixed with flies on the top of your rations. The white ants
eat away the flaps of the tents, and the men wake up covered with dust,
like children in a hayfield. Even mules die of it in convulsions. It was
in this land that the ostrich developed its world-renowned digestive
powers; and no wonder.

[Illustration: MAP OF LADYSMITH AND NEIGHBOURHOOD]

The camp stands on a barren plain, nearly two miles north-west of the
town--if we may so call the one straight road of stores and tin-roofed
bungalows. Low, flat-topped hills surround it, bare and rocky. But to
understand the country it is best to climb into the mountains of the
long Drakensberg, which forms the Free State frontier in a series of
strangely jagged and precipitous peaks, and at one place, by the
junction with Basutoland, runs up to 11,000 feet. Last Sunday I went
into the Free State through Van Reenen's Pass, over which a little
railway has been carried by zigzag "reverses." The summit is 5,500 feet
above the sea, or nearly 2,000 feet above Ladysmith. From the steep
slopes, in places almost as green as the Lowlands or Yorkshire fells, I
looked south-east far over Natal--a parched, brown land like the desert
beyond the Dead Sea, dusty bits of plain broken up by line upon line of
bare red mountain. It seemed a poor country to make a fuss about, yet as
South Africa goes, it is rich and even fertile in its way. Indeed, on
the reddest granite mountain one never fails to find multitudes of
flowering plants and pasturage for thinnish sheep. Across the main
range, Van Reenen's is the largest and best known pass. The old farmer
who gave it the name is living there still and bitterly laments the
chance of war. But there are other passes too, any of which may suddenly
become famous now--Olivier's Hoek, near the gigantic Mont aux Sources,
Bezuidenhaut, Netherby, Tintwa, and (north of Van Reenen's) De Beer's
Pass, Cundycleugh, Muller's, and Botha's, beyond which the range ends
with the frontier at Majuba. Three or four of these passes are crossed
by waggon roads, but Van Reenen's has the only railway. The frontier,
marked by a barbed wire fence across the summit of the pass, must be
nearly forty miles from Ladysmith, but from the cliffs above it, the
little British camp can be seen like a toy through this clear African
air, and Boer sentries watch it all day, ready to signal the least
movement of its troops, betrayed by the dust. Their own main force is
distributed in camps along the hills well beyond the nine-miles' limit
ordained by the Convention. The largest camp is said to be further north
at Nelson's Kop, but all the camps are very well hidden, though in one
place I saw about 500 of the horses trying to graze. The rains are late,
and the grass on the high plateau of the Free State is not so good as
on the Natal slopes of the pass. The Boer commandoes suffer much from
want of it. When all your army consists of mounted infantry, forage
counts next to food.

At present the Van Reenen Railway ends at Harrismith, an arid but
cheerful little town at the foot of the great cliffs of the Plaatburg.
It boasts its racecourse, golf-links, musical society, and some
acquaintance with the German poets. The Scotch made it their own, though
a few Dutch, English, and other foreigners were allowed to remain on
sufferance. Now unhappily the place is almost deserted, and Burns
himself would hardly find a welcome there. In the Free State every
resident may be commandeered, and I believe forty-eight hours counts as
"residence." You see the advantage of an extended franchise. The penalty
for escape is confiscation of property, and five years' imprisonment or
L500 fine, if caught. The few British who remained have had all their
horses, carts, and supplies taken. Some are set to serve the ambulance;
a few will be sent to watch Basutoland; but most of them have abandoned
their property and risked the escape to Natal, slipping down the railway
under bales or built up in the luggage vans like nuns in a brick wall.
In one case the Boers commandeered three wool trucks on the frontier.
Those trucks were shunted on to a siding for the night, and in the
morning the wool looked strangely shrunk somehow. Yet it was not wool
that had been taken out and smuggled through by the next train. For Scot
helps Scot, and it is Scots who work the railway. It pays to be a Scot
out here. I have only met one Irishman, and he was unhappy.

But for the grotesque side of refugee unhappiness one should see the
native train which comes down every night from Newcastle way, and
disappears towards Maritzburg and safety. Native workers of every
kind--servants, labourers, miners--are throwing up their places and
rushing towards the sea. The few who can speak English say, "Too plenty
bom-bom!" as sufficient explanation of their panic. The Government has
now fitted the open trucks with cross-seats and side-bars for their
convenience, and so, hardly visible in the darkness, the black crowd
rolls up to the platform. Instantly black hands with pinkish palms are
thrust through all the bars, as in a monkey-house. Black heads jabber
and click with excitement. White teeth suddenly appear from nowhere. It
is for bread and tin-meats they clamour, and they are willing to pay.
But a loaf costs a shilling. Everything costs a shilling here, unless it
costs half-a-crown; and Natal grows fat on war. A shilling for a bit of
bread! What is the good of Christianity? So the dusky hands are
withdrawn, and the poor Zulu with untutored maw goes starving on. But if
any still doubt our primitive ancestry, let them hear that Zulu's
outcries of pain, or watch the fortunate man who has really got a loaf,
and gripping it with both hands, gnaws it in his corner, turning his
suspicious eyes to right and left with fear.

The air is full of wild rumours. A boy riding over Laing's Nek saw 1,000
armed Boers feeding their horses on Manning's farm. The Boers have been
seen at a Dutch settlement this side Van Reenen's. Yesterday a section
of the Gordons on their arrival were sent up to look at them in an
armoured train. It is thought that war will be proclaimed to-day. That
has been thought every day for a fortnight past, and the land buzzes
with lies which may at any moment be true.

Half the Manchesters have just marched in to trumpet and drum. When I
think of those ragged camps of peasants just over the border the pomp
and circumstance seem all on one side.

_Friday, October 13, 1899._

So it has begun at last, for good or evil. Here we think it began
yesterday, just at the very moment when Sir George White arrived. Late
at night scouts brought news of masses of Boers crossing the Tintwa
Pass, and going into laager with their waggons only fifteen miles away
to the west. The men stood to their arms, and long before light we were
marching steadily forward along the Van Reenen road. First came the
Liverpools, then the three batteries of Field Artillery with a mountain
battery, then the Devons and the Gordons. The Manchesters acted as
rear-guard, and the Dublin Fusiliers, who were hurried down from Dundee
by train, came late, and then were hurried back again. The column took
all its stores and forage for five days in a train of waggons (horses,
mules, and oxen) about two miles long. When day broke we saw the great
mountains on the Basuto border, gleaming with snow like the Alps. Far in
front the cavalry--the 5th Lancers and 19th Hussars with the Natal
Volunteers--were sweeping over the patches of plain and struggling up
the hills in search of that reported laager. But not a Boer of it was to
be seen. At nine o'clock, having advanced eight or nine miles, the
whole column took up a strong position, with all its baggage and train
in faultless order, and went to sleep. About one we began to return, and
now just as the mail goes, we are all back again in camp for tea. And so
ends the first day of active hostilities.

[Illustration: GENERAL SIR GEORGE STEWART WHITE, V.C., G.C.I.E., G.C.B.,
G.C.S.I.]

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST WEEK'S WAR

LADYSMITH, _Thursday, October 19, 1899_.

It is a week to-day since the Boers of the Transvaal and Free State
began their combined invasion of Natal. So far all action has been on
their side. They have crept down the passes with their waggons and
half-organised bands of mounted infantry, and have now advanced within a
short day's march of the two main British positions which protect the
whole colony. It will be seen on a map that North Natal forms a fairly
regular isoceles triangle, having Charlestown, Majuba, and Laing's Nek
at the apex, the Drakensberg range separating it from the Free State on
the one side, and the Buffalo River with its lower hills separating it
from the Transvaal on the other. A base may be drawn a few miles below
Ladysmith--say, from Oliver's Hoek Pass in the Drakensberg to the union
of the Tugela River with the Buffalo. Newcastle will then lie about
thirty miles from the apex of the triangle, nearly equi-distant from
both sides. Dundee is about twelve miles from the middle point of the
right side, and Ladysmith about the same distance from the middle point
of the base. Evidently a "tight place" for a comparatively small force
when the frontiers to right and left are openly hostile and can pour
large bodies of men through all the passes in the sides and apex at
will. That is exactly what the Boers have spent the week in doing, and
they have shown considerable skill in the process. They have occupied
Charlestown, Newcastle, and all the north of Natal almost to within
reach of the guns at Dundee on the west and Ladysmith on the east and
centre. Yet as far as I can judge they have hardly lost a man, whereas
they have gained an immense amount of stores, food and forage, which
were exactly the things they wanted. "Slim Piet" is the universal
nickname for old Joubert among friends and enemies alike, and so far he
has well deserved it. For the Dutch "slim" stands half way between the
German "schlimm" and our description of young girls, and it means
exactly what the Cockney means by "artful." Artful Piet has managed
well. He has given the Boers an appearance of triumph. Their flag waves
where the English flag waved before. The effect on the native mind, and
on the spirits of his men is greater than people in England probably
think. Before the war the young Boers said they would be in Durban in a
month, and the Kaffirs half believed it. Well, they have got nearly a
third of the way in a week.

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