The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  That was the good news. The bad news was that the weather had become worse, and they were hungry. The rivers were torrents, the roads quagmires, and convoys meant to feed them had left Natal and never arrived.

  The country was also much rougher. Castellate and crumbling heights. Sun-baked scree. Blue-gum plantations on impossible slopes. All these planes colliding meant it was harder for the scouts to plan a route, or to guess where the enemy might hide.

  When Casey, Jeff, and Frank returned to Alderson’s column from Chrissie Lake, Frank was not offered a promotion to scout. Too much was going on—fog, rain, hunger, breakdowns—for anyone to think of it or care. Because Casey never scouted with Jeff, and no one else did, Frank was as good as partnered with Jeff anyway, without the curse of the official title.

  When they were out scouting, Frank left the Boer-hunting to Jeff, while he himself concentrated on bringing them back safely. He never raised the subject with Jeff, or Jeff with him, but he believed they both understood.

  Another such wordless understanding was about alcohol. If Jeff tracked down a rebel, captured or killed, Frank would check the man’s saddlebags and confiscate any booze found there. When they were first into a house, Jeff guarded the family in one room, while Frank went through the promising places: father’s and grandfather’s dresser drawers; any stand or cabinet on the men’s sides of bed; the meat safe—and, for some reason, the horse manger, where liquor was occasionally found under a pad of hay or straw

  Usually, they could count on at least one bottle per farm, and one time they hit a jackpot of homebrew in a root cellar that kept them for a week.

  They did their drinking in the dark, in the dependable solitude of their evenings. Jeff had always been adept at slipping away from army fraternity, the bragging and singing that Casey so liked. Now that Casey would not ride with Jeff, it was even simpler. Jeff was a regimental sergeant-major and a valued scout, but when darkness fell, the other men avoided him. Frank had no effect. He was invisible.

  Jeff seldom spoke when he drank. He would often lie with the back of his head on his saddle, studying the sky. Left to himself, Frank thought of Alma, and then of his parents and Doc. In equal measure, he thought of the past and of the hoped-for future, both at the foot of Chief Mountain.

  Sometimes his thoughts would spread to Ovide, Young Sam, and Fred Morden; Jimmy Whitford and Lionel Brooke. He wondered if the latter two were back across the Atlantic; whether Lionel had said anything to Frank’s mother, or to Marie Rose Smith.

  Frank thought of Alice Kettle’s advice, which he had resolutely gone against. Of her kindness.

  What he seldom thought about were the other scouts, at the other fires, laughing, snoring, or silent. If he did think about them, it was the question of why they had signed on and not gone home. He reckoned not one had his reason of a Boer sweetheart. But some might have a friend to avenge, an Ovide or a Fred Morden. Possibly, one or two had missing horses they were trying to find.

  Frank bet that many had no more reason than how little awaited them back home. In a sense, that was Jeff, whose loss of Ran After had stolen his future. Casey, too. Being a teamster at Maple Creek was never going to rival being a lieutenant of scouts.

  For ones like Gat Howard and Charlie Ross, there was no home, and they didn’t grieve it either. Fighting and so-called adventure were their lives. Even in a crack outfit like this one, full of good scouts, Gat was undisputed king and Charlie Ross his respected Segundo—with their histories of derring-do and their Distinguished Service Orders. Frank had heard the other men say they would follow them to hell and back, and they meant it.

  At the end of Frank’s and Jeff’s evenings, the last one holding the bottle would throw it into the bushes. Each would roll into his blanket against the falling and rising wet. Sodden inside, sodden outside.

  Derby, Transvaal

  Mid-February placed them in even more confusing country close to the Swaziland border. It kept on raining and the rivers were all in flood.

  On a particularly miserable night, Frank saw Gat Howard coming toward their smoky fire, his funny walk making him look as if both his legs were broken. His pipe was to the side, clamped in his teeth. He had his hand flat above the pipe’s bowl, to keep the rain from wetting the tobacco.

  Frank’s heart flopped because he assumed this was his promotion. How was he going to tell Gat Howard that he wanted to pass on what Gat must think the greatest honour and privilege a human could have?

  Frank thought they should at least hide their bottle, but Jeff had it strangled and did not move.

  When their major arrived, he said, “It’s my birthday. I’d like to buy you boys a drink at my fire—if you can interrupt your drinks long enough to have mine.”

  At Gat’s fire, those with waterproofs were wearing them, while those without were wrapped in groundsheets. Gat had a few bottles circulating, and then he gave a speech. Mostly, it was the familiar one about the Scouts being the cream of the crop, the only soldiers on the British side who were a match for the Boer bitter-enders. Because they were more courageous than many units, more determined to get this thing over with, they caught more bullets. But there wasn’t a decent officer in British South Africa who would dare say their high casualty rate was a failure and not about the bigger risks they took. Gat thanked them for being under his command.

  “Those other officers, even Mike Rimington, would snap you boys up in a minute, if I let it happen,” was how he concluded.

  “How old are you?” yelled someone from the back.

  Gat did not care for the question, but answered it.

  “I’m fifty-five!”

  Stone silence was the sound of astonishment: a hundred men trying not to show surprise. Gat laughed at their discomfort.

  “Ya, I know. It’s a hell of an age for a working soldier. But I don’t feel one bit different than I did ten years ago. In fact, some days I feel younger.”

  Then other men started proposing toasts and giving speeches. Charlie Ross recounted the story of Gat unclipping his red-hot Colt machine gun from its limber and running with it in his hands, to save it. Eddie Holland had done the same thing at Liliefontein, proving how inspiration worked in an army.

  An ex-Dragoon told about a reconnaissance north of Belfast when Gat got so far ahead he wound up fighting a whole Boer commando by himself. Lessard had to come back and drag him out.

  Then there was the one about a Brit officer trying to keep Gat from charging a position, and how Gat had said to him, “What’s your army here for anyway, then? To play lawn tennis?”

  Finally, Gat ordered them all to bed. Tomorrow was a big day, he said. They had been pushing these Boers for the better part of a month and now they had the bastards trapped against the Swazi frontier. A lot of rifles and ammo and wagons and livestock had been confiscated, but that didn’t mean a whole lot. Tomorrow they might find out how many Boer rebels the drive had contributed to Kitchener’s bag.

  “Damn good birthday,” he said, to close. “I don’t expect to have a better one.”

  Morning came too soon to believe, as if the bugler had made a mistake. The officers’ whistles and the sergeants’ yells, the usual hullabaloo, proved there was no error. It was always awful to crawl from damp blankets into cold drizzle in the dark, but that was the sort of morning it was.

  As they readied themselves and their horses for travel, Gat Howard was all over camp, giving an illustration of his vigour, fifty-five years old or not. Today, he was to command a forward unit that contained, besides his Scouts, parts of two horse battalions and four guns from the Royal Horse Artillery.

  The columns on either side of Alderson would be exerting pressure on the expected three hundred Boer rebels, to keep them trapped against the Swazi hills.

  They moved out at 8:30 A.M., beginning a slow and miserable slog in continuous rain. The headway was so slow they had only made eight miles by noon. The mist was thick and, in places, stood like a wall. Though there was little sniping fro
m the Boers, it was hard not to imagine them behind that milky stuff, rifles poised. When the Boers were not shooting in a situation so advantageous, it was worrisome. They might not be there, or they might be drawing you where they wanted you to go.

  The passage of hours did not change the weather, and all of the colliding planes were more confusing in the fog and downpour. When the rain paused and the veils lifted, as briefly occurred, they saw ridges with bigger ridges behind, and a filling of grey in every gap.

  In the middle of the afternoon, a decision was taken to make a push while there was still daylight. The Scouts left their support MI and moved forward at a trot. They came to a north-south ridge, and many dismounted and climbed it. Lined out in good cover, they thought they had command of the valley, but the shifting rain revealed a bigger kopje ahead. The bush-covered mass commanded them.

  Again, patrols went out, probing the area between the ridges. These had only started when firing was heard. The Scouts on the ridge stared into the confusing murk.

  Of the boys already down there, Beattie’s men saw four wagons in the direction from which the firing had come. When Beattie got within three hundred yards of that spot, his horse was riddled; killed under him before it hit the ground. More MI and Scouts approached, and artillery. They shelled the hillside and raked it with machine guns until the Boers quit sniping.

  At the wagons, they found Gat Howard dead. So was his Native guide. Howard’s orderly, Sergeant Northway, was barely alive and told them how it happened; how they’d come up to the wagons and been shot point-blank. Then Northway died too.

  It would soon be dark, and it was not possible to accommodate all of the men who wanted to look at their dead major and see where he’d fallen. Charlie Ross, now in command, wrapped the dead and got them on a cart. He ordered everybody to withdraw. No matter how many rifles and guns had fired at this kopje, it was a still a trap, a place of ambush. Two more men had already been wounded.

  Before they left, they poured gunpowder on the wagons until they got them to burn. They were just decoys—useless, empty things—but no one wanted them to exist.

  Back at camp, Charlie Ross took his Scouts and the dead away from other kinds of soldiers. They set up camp and made fires, and everyone who had liquor brought it. Though he did not drink himself, Charlie got a special rum ration from Alderson’s staff.

  When they were assembled, and the drinking men were drinking, Charlie Ross walked a track up and down. Anger filled him and spilled out with a kind of excitement that sped the fuel.

  Alone with the bodies, they unwrapped them to determine how each had died. They thought there would be more wounds in Gat Howard, for already a rumour was circulating that the Boers had stood over him, filling him with lead. There were three wounds: arm, stomach, jaw. They uncovered Richard Northway and looked him over too. He had bullets in his back and stomach. Something about his stomach wounds made Charlie call a medic to dig the bullets out. As Charlie thought, the wounds had been made by dumdums.

  Led by Charlie Ross, they pieced the story together.

  Seeing the wagons in the fog, Gat had wondered if they were full of Boer ammunition. The wisest thing would have been to wait and call for MI and artillery support. But that could never happen in the little wedge of day remaining. If Gat didn’t do something, the Boers might get away with those wagons. So he chose to go forward.

  It was hard, in this story, to give Howard credit for knowing better than the Boers. He had thought what they wanted him to think. When he came ahead, they let him get nice and close, then let him have it.

  Just last night they had been telling stories about Gat’s famous impatience, how he loved to go at anyone who wanted a fight. Any bunch of Boers who were sitting out of rifle range, he’d charge with his machine gun. But his impetuosity had killed him today.

  Charlie Ross had run his scout’s eye over the place of murder. He had seen the angles at which the dead men lay. Those Boers must have been so close to the Scouts when they started shooting that they could have just as easily taken them prisoner. If you can take someone prisoner and you shoot him, said Charlie, it’s the same as shooting a prisoner. The reason they did it was probably because Gat had a black man for a guide. That was their rule: shoot whites that use blacks to fight. If Gat’s scout had a rifle, that would have done it for sure.

  Foul murder and dumdum bullets. Northway had not said the Boers had been in khaki, but that was assumed. Maybe they were standing with their backs to Gat, in the curve of those wagons. Maybe that’s how he had been lured. When he hailed them from close up, they spun and fired.

  As the stories took on elaborate forms, the men grew angrier and angrier. They were full of the energy of hate. No one could bear to sit. They milled like cattle after a stampede. Spat tobacco juice into the flames. Cursed the Boers aloud. Bastards! Damn bastards!

  Then Charlie Ross said he had heard of outfits, other colonials, who’d had this sort of thing done to them. Some of those outfits had sworn a bloody oath. What that oath said was they would never take another Boer rebel prisoner. Charlie looked around with his black eyes sparking.

  Hadn’t Lord Kitchener himself said that Boers caught wearing khaki, Boers using dumdums, Boers abusing white flags, should be executed? Why then, when it was so clear-cut as that, should they bother to wait on some tribunal that was not even present when the deeds were done?

  “So how about it?” Charlie called, a scar on his forehead livid in the fire’s light. He looked from one to another with his black eyes. “How about it?”

  “How about what, Captain Ross?” a fellow asked. His stupidity made a few men laugh.

  “How about—in Major Gat Howard’s honour—the Canadian Scouts take that oath right now? That, after today, we will take no more Boer rebels prisoner. Who’s got a Bible?”

  A Bible was found, and Charlie took it and put his hand on it and swore the oath. Then he held the Bible out until another man took it and swore. And so on. One after another.

  The men who had already sworn stood at the edges of the fire’s glow, facing out to ensure that nobody approached and heard what they were doing.

  Frank Adams watched the oath-swearing. He saw Regimental Sergeant-Major Jefferson Davis swear it, one of the first to do so. Frank stood back. The difference he had been trying to define in his head between him and the Scouts, the one he rehearsed most every night in some translated conversation with Alma—after tonight, it would be much easier to explain. The others had taken the oath and Frank had not.

  Charlie Ross, with his scout’s eye for detail, saw Frank Adams at the edge of the light. In the lull that signified everyone else had sworn, Ross took the Good Book and walked to Frank.

  “You going to swear, Adams?”

  “Not a Scout, sir.”

  “We’ve been losing Scouts. We lost two of the best today. I have the authority vested in me to change you from a horse boy to a Scout.” He laid his hand on the Bible. “I swear I will do that.”

  Frank knew what would happen. By turning down this offer and refusing to swear, he would become the only one who had insulted Gat Howard’s memory, with the great man’s corpse just ten feet away. It was something no one would forget or forgive.

  “Fine as I am, sir.”

  “What does that mean? Fine as you are?”

  “Horse-holder for Sergeant-Major Davis.”

  “So you refuse to swear.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Others had come close enough to listen. Several heard Frank Adams say it. It would be general knowledge by morning. Frank checked where Jeff Davis was. He was sitting by the fire with his eyes closed to slits, pretending to sleep.

  Part Nine

  THE TIGER SPRING

  Aldershot

  General Butler had a friend at the War Office who kept him apprised of the rumours concerning Lord Kitchener, even the contents of some of his letters to Lord Roberts.

  At times, it was hard to believe the antics at Melrose House, K
itchener’s headquarters in Pretoria. A common starling fell from a Melrose chimney and Kitchener had it put in a cage. He became so fond of the bird that, when he returned from a foray and found that it had escaped, he insisted his entire staff stop what they were doing (running the war) to search for it. The starling was found in the park across the road, and the war was allowed to resume.

  The bird was one of the responsibilities of Kitchener’s ADC, Captain Maxwell. Kitchener was fond of Maxwell, whom he called The Brat. He allowed The Brat to tease him when no else could.

  The Brat’s serious duty was rousing Kitchener from his funks. If teasing and cajoling did not work on his depression, it was said that The Brat resorted to pageantry and costumes. To remind Lord Kitchener of happier days, Captain Maxwell would dress as a sultan or as a member of a sultan’s harem.

  At the end of February 1901, there was much of this cajoling to do, for Kitchener’s massive Swaziland drive had failed to defeat the Transvaal Boers. It had yielded women and children for the concentration camps, a great deal of livestock, and very few actual rebels.

  Fearing how long it might take to defeat his enemy, Lord Kitchener tried to make peace. He arranged a meeting with Louis Botha at Middelburg, Transvaal, at which the Boer general delivered a list of terms. When the British Government and Governor Milner saw the document, they would not accept many of its demands, and the process collapsed.

  Kitchener locked himself in his room, and not even The Brat could lure him out for days.

  What finally emerged from that room was Kitchener of Kaos, the general in his least merciful guise. If the British wanted victory at war, then the general would give it to them. He would grind Boer nationalism into sand.