by Fred Stenson
The fact was that Rimington feared taking this secret to Kitchener. The Lord General was apt to organize a drive, perhaps another snail. If so, they’d be searching for Blijdschap at Christmas.
The problem of acting alone was that Rimington did not know where the farm was or how many Boers were there. He had a thousand in his column, including Damant. But what if De Wet had more?
The decision was made not by the meeting but by the sudden arrival of a patrol. It had located a women’s laager.
Rimington divided his column in two. Half would chase the women. The other half would take a different route. A known location, a farm not far from Reitz, was chosen for their rendezvous. Rimington was throwing two kinds of bait at De Wet, somewhere in the vicinity of Blijdschap.
Frank was in the half that wasn’t driving the women. They marched all night and were north of Reitz when Boer horsemen boiled out of the dawn, firing on them.
It turned into a running fight, and the biggest challenge was protecting their field guns. The Boers had no artillery but came in waves. Frank’s half of the column was trying to reach the point of reunion, not knowing that the column’s other half was also under attack. Then black clouds filled the sky and a fierce thunderstorm broke.
When the halves met, the two groups of attacking commandos also joined, and Rimington saw that he had made a serious error; perhaps as great an error as Gough’s and Benson’s. The farm they had been aiming for was close, with a few acres of tree cover. Rimington ordered all of his men to make for it as fast as possible. They would dig in and hope for relief.
Among the trees, every man with a shovel dug. They worked with lightning bolts striking close enough to paint them white. A bolt split one of the higher trees, and only by luck were men not crushed when stout branches fell.
The lightning was also their saviour. The Boers had no artillery and fired into the farm with Mausers. In the continuing storm, De Wet was reluctant to order a charge.
As the day waned, De Wet decided there was no hurry. He would wait out the weather. Perhaps by morning it would be clear and he would send a party under white flag to ask for the column’s surrender.
When it had been dark for some time—and, because of the continuing storm, it was stone dark between lightning flashes—Jeff came looking for Frank. He found him with his troopers, bailing water from their trench. Jeff said he needed Frank to come and do some scouting. The troopers got excited, imagining themselves scampering toward the Boer lines in the dark, but Jeff told them to stay where they were. He wanted only Frank.
As they picked their way in the sucking wet, Frank asked about horses, and Jeff said they were going on foot. Rimington thought the Boers encircling them were not a unified army but the various commandos De Wet had called together. Each commando would be camped separately, behind a screen of its own outposts. His hope was that between these camps might be gaps. That was what he wanted his scouts to look for.
He told them to go in pairs and carry a compass. He gave each team a compass heading, to keep them from colliding or investigating the same place. Every once in a while as Jeff and Frank walked, Jeff pulled his greatcoat over his head and struck a match over the compass face.
It was hard not to slip or stumble in the wet darkness. All they knew was that they were walking up a slow rise, seamed with bush and studded with rock piles. The Boers would be camped beyond the hill’s roof. Probably along its crest would be their outposts.
For the first half-hour, the lightning continued. It was not as rapid as earlier, but struck every minute or two. Carrying his rifle, Frank remembered a story from home about a cowboy caught in a lightning storm while hunting, how they had decided from his cooked remains that his rifle had drawn the spark.
A bloom of lightning finally did show them an outpost in a pile of rocks higher up the slope. In the flash, Frank and Jeff saw two sopping hats and two Mauser rifles. When the vision faded, Jeff gave Frank a strong shove away. This was in case the Boers had seen them too. Frank ran and so did Jeff, in opposite directions. No shots came.
Frank stopped and stood still in the dark, trying to determine how far he’d gone, and at what angle the outpost was from him now. He kept his rifle pointed there, should another plume of light expose him.
He decided that he and Jeff should pass this place and keep on looking for other outposts and how they related to the camp. Then they should move on and see if there was a wide enough gap between this camp and the next to drive the column through. This outpost had no meaning, and if they got into a shooting match here, it could give the whole show away. The Boers would figure out that Rimington was probing their perimeters. The whole Boer army would be alerted.
Frank decided to retrace his steps and find Jeff. He hurried because he did not want to be in front of the Boers when the next flash came. When he believed he had gone far enough to put him on the outpost’s north side, he still had not found Jeff. He risked whispering his name into the dark, but that did not produce him either. He worried that he himself was lost.
In a moment, lightning struck, and Frank saw that he was where he meant to be. The two Boers were south of him, facing down the hill. Then Frank saw Jeff rise behind them, his rifle bayonet raised in his right hand. In that second of light, Frank saw the blade come around one Boer’s throat—then nothing.
Frank stood, and his one leg was quivering. He expected gunfire or some other sound of fighting, but none came. There was just himself and the rain rattling the roof of his hat. The cold water running down his neck and back.
At the next flash, the little outpost looked forlorn and empty. No hats, no rifles. Frank felt something at his elbow that made his body wrench. In the instant of dying light, Jeff smiled not two feet from him. He grabbed Frank’s arm and pulled him away.
Frank let himself be led until they were in Rimington’s camp again. They went to Rimington’s tent, where they drank tea with rum in it, and Jeff told Mike about the seam between outposts—where there’d been an outpost but wasn’t now. He said nothing about the dead Boers, even though he had fresh blood on his coat.
Other scouting pairs returned and told their stories. Charlie Ross came last with Capt. Arthur Lewis. They described a hairy kloof, a deep narrow canyon crossed above by branches. It had a wagon trail in its bottom that went gradually down toward the river.
The kloof entrance was masked by brush, and the Boers must have decided the British would never find it in the storm. It had been left unguarded.
Once everyone was there, Rimington explained what they would do.
The kloof went down so slowly it was almost flat. It was deep in water, running off from the storm. The rain and thunder hid the sound of their clumsy progress. The first hours were terrifying. Such a long thin line, compressed and held within walls of stone, would have no defence if discovered. The Boers could line up on top and fire into the vale.
It was almost impossible to believe they had fooled De Wet, but when enough hours had passed, they did believe. They had left most of their wagons at the farm, loaded with provisions and ammunition in the trees. The only wagons with them now held their field pieces and artillery shells. More was left on the gravel strand before they crossed the river. Then it was flat out for Heilbron.
At first light, every man was imagining how Christiaan De Wet would wake up and discover they were gone. Looking up as someone came on the run to say that the trees were empty. Then the mad scamper to find their tracks. Later, the Boers would be looking at the discarded piles along the river strand. They would curse the English for being lucky enough to find a drift with a bottom that held their gun wagons.
From the river to Heilbron, Rimington kept up their speed, for he knew the Boers would be coming. When the Boers did attack, firing on the rearguard, relief troops from Heilbron were in sight. The Boers had to run. For the last fifteen miles, the column slowed and enjoyed itself. They were home and dry.
As he rode that final distance with his three giddy troopers
, Frank was stuck with thoughts he’d rather not have had. He kept reliving the moments in the dark above the farm and wondering what would have happened if Jeff’s act of extreme bravery had gone wrong. One awkwardly timed lightning bolt and Jeff could have been exposed ten or twenty yards from the outpost. The Boers could have emptied their magazines into him. Or Jeff would have shot them. Either way, there would have been guns going off for other outposts to hear and be alerted by.
In this version, the Boers would have stirred their camps to wakefulness, would have sent out more sentries, would have put guards at the entrance of the hairy kloof—knowing that Rimington was not waiting in the trees but trying to escape.
In that story, they did not escape, but were locked down and half drowned in their trenches when light came. Maybe, when the rain stopped, and because of their attempt to flee in the dark, De Wet would have changed his mind about asking for surrender. Prisoners were of no use to him, beyond their guns and boots. Maybe he would have decided to flourish his sjamboek and order an attack.
The boys riding beside Frank could hardly contain themselves. They kept bursting into laughter and trying to talk faster than they could. The Australians were trying to slap each other’s hats off. It was by far their most exciting night of the war.
Tafelkop, December 1901
From Heilbron, Rimington and Damant were sent southeast to protect blockhouse builders on the Wilge River near Tafelkop. On December 19, another lightning storm erupted when the two columns were on parallel roads, three miles apart. Rimington’s column was struck and suddenly three men and their horses lay dead in the rain-pocked lake of the road.
Three miles away, Damants advance guard was looking at a group of khaki riders approaching through the rain. The men were hunched over in their saddles, looking like they’d come a long way. When they were within a few hundred yards, the riders were fired upon by some Boers on the nearest ridge. They turned in their saddles and fired back. After that, they came faster and Damants guard opened up to receive them. When they were almost there, the riders threw up their rifles and fired at Damants men.
The rest of the Boer commando was on the ridge that commanded the field that Damants column was entering. In the storm, Damant had not heard the gunfire. He marched in until his whole line was exposed. Then the Boers unleashed a wall of fire.
Frank was in the column hit by lightning. After that, a rider came and told them Damant was under attack. They found Damants riddled body in the mud, and seventy-five more dead and wounded in the battlefield. Jeff Davis had been with Damant that day, and the story was that he had ridden after the enemy alone; had charged part of the Boer rearguard. These trailing Boers were guarding an ammunition wagon stuck in the slop. A witness said Jeff had tried to take them single-handedly. Just as they were turning to defend themselves, a British patrol entered the scene and Jeff was saved.
That night, in Rimington’s bewildered, demoralized camp, in the wake of many ambulances that had come and gone, Frank sat at a smoky fire with his young troopers and watched how the day affected them. The Aussies worked at being angry, and tried to convince themselves they would do something to avenge Damant and his men. Danny said nothing, and only stared at the fire that the rain kept trying to drown.
Frank guessed at Danny’s thoughts. He imagined the boy was figuring out, as Frank had done, that war was a kind of arithmetic that worked only by subtraction. Even in the moments of glory and achievement, there was always less than there had been before. Horses that had been alive were dead or ruined. Men who had been perfect in their young bodies were gone or reduced in some lasting way.
There was some noise near them in the dark. A clumsy splashing as though someone or some beast was coming on all fours. It was three men, one holding a lamp. The light showed them Charlie Ross and, at the far end of his sinewy arm, Jeff Davis. Charlie was holding Jeff by the cloth of his tunic, and Jeff was leaning and weaving so that it seemed he would fall if not held. Jeff was already covered in mud down one side. He was as drunk as Frank had ever seen him.
Charlie looked half crazy with anger. He kept snuffing as if the air was full of some stink he could not stand. He slung Jeff down beside them.
“There you go,” he said. “Your Indian sidekick. All yours.”
He stared at Frank, as if blaming him for whatever had gone on.
“I don’t want a man brave as this anywhere near me. Nothing gets you killed faster. You can tell him that from me, when he’s sober enough to understand the English language. Tell him Captain Lewis is my lead scout now. His services are no longer required.”
Charlie pointed a bony finger at Frank.
“So there you go, Corporal Adams. You wanted him. He wanted you. And now you’re happily reunited. All yours. All yours.”
Part Ten
KITCHENER’S MACHINE
Aldershot, January 1902
No one knew yet, especially not Elizabeth, but General Butler had decided to quit the army. He did not have the savings to retire, so his plans would cast his family into relative poverty. If he was going to be poor anyway, he intended to insist on being so in Tipperary, his lovely home county in Ireland. He would put England behind him forever.
The reason was a simple one: that Britain had gone insane. In every sense it had begun to remind him of Rome: the Rome of Caligula; the secret Rome described by Procopius; Rome at her most rotten and mentally enfeebled.
While British generals fought and floundered through another South African summer, Britain had decided it was absolutely necessary to mark the new century in some glorious fashion. Their choice was to celebrate the man who had forged the union between Anglo and Saxon and thus created the condition of being British. That is, they had decided to celebrate Alfred the Great, ninth-century Saxon king, with a bronze statue on a plinth at Winchester.
What Alfred actually looked like was a thing no one could know across a thousand years, but that wasn’t stopping the people of Britain from stating their opinion. Several of these far seers had consulted the new science of eugenics, brainchild of Darwin’s cousin Sir Francis Galton, so that the depiction of Alfred had slid sideways into the fabrication of The Perfect Englishman. First of all—and no one quibbled here—Alfred had to be white. He had to be free of the “effeminacy of the colonial races.” He also must be tall, straight, and manly.
Even though it was a bronze statue, colouring was argued in detail. Hair colour might resolve in the direction of blond—but wouldn’t that favour the Danes more than the Danes should be favoured? Even though many British men had black hair, black could give a Dago impression. So maybe brown.
The eyes should be either blue or grey or hazel; but, again, it was a controversy.
As for personality, Alfred must be honourable, brave, and God-fearing (though still able to put the nation’s enemies to the sword).
On and on it went: this building of the perfect Briton, a subject the British could not get enough of—even as actual British men were rioting in the streets. In mid-December, Lloyd George, the Welsh MP, the nation’s first-ranked pro-Boer, had to be rescued from a Birmingham town hall after one of his speeches so inspired the mob that they were determined to beat him to death or run him through with daggers.
Every aspect of this was inspired to idiotic heights by the South African war. A peculiar sublimation of that war. If Britain could not defeat its farmer-enemy in the battlefield with an overwhelmingly larger army, it could still imagine itself invincible and sublime through the medium of Alfred.
Butler had his own image: Alfred was tall, well over six feet. He had grey hair, brushed back. His eyes were porcelain blue, penetrating, and maudlin. His drooping moustache descended to the chin, making him look even more morose. That is, he was the spit of Horatio Herbert Kitchener. This really was what they should put on the Winchester plinth, preferably stuffed, because no one epitomized British fin de siècle lunacy better than K of K.
Heilbron
On New Year’s Eve, 1
901, Frank and Jeff were together with the three troopers and a multiple ration of the King’s rum. Earlier, there had been speeches, but when the night bore down on midnight, the five of them were alone.
Danny, Toby, and Bert were acting out events from their first year in Africa. The Australians stood and gesticulated, while Danny stayed seated and told his stories in the understated cowboy way. At one point, Danny excused himself solemnly, walked out of the fire’s light, and retched. Bert and Toby laughed so hard they fell to the ground and rolled in the mud.
Frank and Jeff were quiet as they drank. When Danny returned not too worse for wear, the three troopers left to check on a fight now in progress. Frank did talk then. He talked about Christiaan De Wet’s attack on the Groenkop, near Elands River Bridge, in the early hours of Christmas.
Groenkop was a big lump of rock with one sheer side, and the style of attack reminded Frank of Aas Vogel Kranz. At 2 A.M., Christmas morning, De Wet’s men had climbed the hill’s cliff side and were detected by an outpost only as they came to the top. The British yeoman in the main camp lower down heard firing and grabbed their rifles off the centre stook. Once outside, most ran for the hill’s top, thinking that was the safest place. They did not understand that the bullets were coming from there. When they figured it out, they threw themselves down and crawled for cover. Some clutched oat sacks, as if one of those had ever stopped a .317 calibre bullet.
Frank’s description of this Christmas tragedy was code for what he wanted Jeff Davis to know. The message was that the three young drunkards out watching other drunkards fight were important to him now. He wanted to protect them from stupid mistakes like those that had cost lives on the Groenkop. It wasn’t that he’d given up on Jeff or didn’t care. He still imagined them returning to Canada together. But Frank did not intend to tolerate Jeff’s heroics, any more than Charlie Ross had, or Casey Callaghan before him.
