Dear Oliver

by Peter Wells

  Sidney’s first letter, published in both Wellington’s Evening Post on 7 February 1900 and Napier’s Daily Telegraph on 15 February, opens with a classic line of Kiwi understatement: ‘We have had some rough times lately.’ His contingent had been ‘putting in 44 hours’ hard work in a blazing sun and with very little sleep’. The men were fighting in desert-like conditions. They and their horses often moved on long marches at night as a way to evade the heat. Two squadrons of cavalry and two guns had advanced into the desert near Stensberg to locate the Boers and had come under heavy fire. Only one horse was killed and one artilleryman wounded, but back at camp they were aroused at daybreak by the firing of big guns. (This was the Long Tom Gun, a cannon with a much deeper range than anything the British had.)

  This went on until nightfall and resumed the next afternoon. Sidney wrote: ‘We are quite used to getting up early and usually start out at about 2.30 or 3 o’clock [at night], and have to get up at 1 oclock to feed and saddle the horses. We have had as much as seventeen hours in the saddle at once, and in a hot country like this it counts up … I have never done harder work in my life than now, but am in good health and rather enjoy it … We are camped in the middle of the great Karoo desert, and it is a desert — nothing to be seen for miles.’

  ‘On account of the hard work we have just gone through’, Sidney and other New Zealanders were left to guard the camp. It was during this time that Sidney ‘had the pleasure’, as the Evening Post put it, ‘of a short talk with General French’: ‘Northe was on guard of the railway line, and about 2 am the General and his staff came by, Northe ordered them to halt and give the [code word], which on that night was “Manchester”.’12

  Sidney took up the story. The general and his entourage did not know the password, ‘so I blocked the way with rifle loaded and bayonet fixed’. An orderly was sent to the camp for the necessary password ‘and subsequently the General congratulated me on having done my duty. I felt a little proud of myself.’ This was celebrity news, a close-up view of a commander whose behaviour in the circumstances was gracious. ‘Our General French,’ as Sidney called him, ‘is a good sort and is very careful of his men, and seldom loses any in action’ — a marked contrast to British attitudes to New Zealand troops in the First World War.

  When Sidney comments, ‘My mare is one of the best in the contingent, and much admired. She is a good feeder, takes things quietly, and looks very well,’ it is possible he is commenting on a horse his wealthy uncle had given him. John McVay’s flourishing Napier saddlery business employed thirty people. Individuals could use their own horses in South Africa, for which the government paid compensation. It is hard to see how else a private who had recently been bankrupt could afford ‘one of the best’ horses in the New Zealand contingent — one, moreover, which is ‘much admired’.

  Sid Northe was soon to go on to fight in important battles — the relief of Kimberly, the battles of Paardeberg, Diamond Hill and Driefontein. But in this letter (and two subsequent ones) he concentrates on two familiar topics for soldiers away from home: food and letters. At this early stage of the campaign, he thought ‘[t]he way the commissariat is managed is wonderful — there is never a shortage of anything. Water is brought up by train every day … but we pay very dear for anything we want. We go in very heavy for jam and bread, for although well enough fed by the Govt we like a change.’

  As for letters: ‘We’re delighted when we hear of a mail being in, and awfully disappointed if we do not get anything … We start to write sometimes but one never knows how long we may have, as the order is given to saddle up suddenly and in about five minutes we are riding out. Our time is terribly broken up by alarms of this sort.’

  Towards the end of the letter, Sidney ruminates on possibly staying in South Africa after the war. ‘I expect I will stay here for a bit and see what Johannesburg is like. Carpenters before the war got £1 per day, and that ought be increased after the war. Living at a pub was 30 shillings per week, washing included, so there is a good chance to get on, I think.’ The key words here go to the heart of that typical immigrant anxiety: how to ‘get on’, which translates as ‘how do I improve my circumstances and upwardly mobilise so I never have to experience the powerlessness of poverty (or in his case bankruptcy and shame) again?’ He was clear-eyed about what he wanted. The war in South Africa was providing him with mobility and an experience of another society. Would he do better here than where he came from? Sidney Northe was a first-generation New Zealander, so his loyalty was not fixed. About South Africa’s complex racial situation, he made no comment.

  THE FOLLOWING TWO LETTERS, both of which merited headlines of ‘News from the Front’ and a subheading ‘A Letter from Trooper Northe’, looked at the dirty business of war which naturally includes sudden death. A New Zealander named Booth, from Ōamaru, ‘a quiet, decent chap’, was killed by a shell ‘dropping right in among a group of horses held by two of our men’. Other Australians ‘fell into a nasty trap’, and two were killed and twelve taken prisoner. They were buried ‘in a rather bare position on the side of a hill’. There is a feeling in the letter that the war is intensifying into unremittingly hard combat.

  Sidney had not seen anything of the Queen’s chocolate (tinned boxes of chocolate ostensibly sent to troops by Queen Victoria), but when it arrived he had an idea for making money: ‘I intend to buy all I can … it will be very valuable, as only a limited number of tins of … are being made.’ He was a man with an eye on the main chance, one might say. Or was this how he made sense of the jumpy, erratic, life-and-death nature of military life?

  His final letter was published on 7 April 1900 in the Daily Telegraph, following the Relief of Kimberly. By now the letters are all about combat and war. Fatalities have risen — ‘we lost about 50 killed and wounded’ — and he has joined a march which began at dusk and went on all night. ‘We have gone as much as 24 to thirty hours over a burning sand, and, my word, it is hot.’ He joined the rest of the army of about 23,000 men, ‘and such a large lot of men and wagons I have never hoped to see’.

  It was in fact the largest British mounted division in history. But he was under orders ‘to go away at three o’clock tomorrow morning. We do not know where, but expect to march on either Bloemfontein — the Boer capital — or Mafeking, which is still besieged. If you do not hear of me for a few weeks, do not be anxious, as it is seldom we get time to write, and once in the enemy’s country there will be no chance of post or receiving letters. We have not had a mail for about three weeks now, and do not know anything of the outside world.’

  There were no further published letters in the Napier or Wellington papers. Why not? Was he finding it difficult to conceptualise how to tell the story of his war? Or did he find writing letters to his mother and the nation at the same time too much of a juggling act? There are cadences in his last letter that sound as if mediated for a public readership: ‘We have relieved [Kimberly] now, and my word the people are glad.’ He had gone to South Africa as a ‘crusader for honour’, as the Hawke’s Bay Herald of 21 October 1899 called it, but the realities of a bitter guerrilla warfare in a desert environment had yet to take shape.

  War distorts human nature as much as it ennobles. And the guerrilla war as fought by the Boers and the British became increasingly ugly. Food dried up as the men went deeper into enemy territory. The horses began to suffer from the heat and the absence of fodder; increasingly, they were shot, even eaten. Three hundred and fifty thousand horses from the ‘British side’ died in Southern Africa. We do not know what happened to Sidney’s splendid steed, but we can assume it died in the heat. Very few horses came home.

  In June 1900, however, Sidney was offered what seemed an out. The troops had limped into Pretoria ‘dirty, ragged, badly mounted and short of just about everything’.13 The authorities thought the Boers were in such retreat that the war was all but over and the New Zealand troops could soon return home. However, the imperial authorities required military police to keep ord
er among the conquered Boers in Pretoria. They were to be known as the Transvaal Constabulary. If soldiers did not want to return home, they could take a three-month contract as mounted policemen, getting paid two and a half times the amount they had as soldiers. (That is, ten shillings a day, but paid in golden krugers.)

  The city was divided into sections, and the constables would patrol on horseback for four hours at a time. ‘Owing to the nature of the duties … only the most reliable and steady men should be recommended … A knowledge of the Dutch language [is] a great advantage but not compulsory’.14 It would be rough work. No beds were supplied and the men would be on constant rotation, sleeping on the floor with only a blanket. The golden krugers also tended to vanish in betting — gambling was an occupational hazard.

  In practice, the work of patrolling conquered Boer territory broke down under the constant need for vigilance against guerrilla attacks. The mounted police were needed in field operations and duty on blockhouse lines. They weren’t used as ‘protection’ of the settled population, as envisaged, but ‘rather as part of the army involved in sweeping the country’.15 Lord Kitchener’s ‘scorched-earth policy’ came into effect. Initially it meant burning down houses that were obviously used for combat. Gradually it became more general. Crops were destroyed; women and children moved into what at first were termed ‘refugee camps’. It was only slowly that the word changed, as words have a habit of doing, into a harder definition: they became ‘concentration camps’. It had become an unremittingly ugly war.

  It fell to New Zealand soldiers to implement this policy because Kitchener wished to maintain the high reputation of British regiments. There was not much to write home about here. Or not much you could put into letters to your mother. This was probably not what Sidney Northe thought he had signed up for. Soon enough Trooper Northe was on his way home.

  THE MOANA, CARRYING THE TROOPS back to New Zealand, did not dock in Wellington until 6 p.m. on 12 December 1900. A vast crowd had been waiting on the wharf ‘for most of the afternoon’. The Garrison Band played ‘the moving strains of “Home, Sweet Home”’ as the boat came closer, and ‘rounds of hearty cheering’ from the crowd were returned by the ‘boys in khaki’ and other passengers.

  The soldiers disembarked to a goods shed, filled immediately by ‘throngs’ of people, but the official party — the mayor of Wellington and others — could not make themselves heard over a ‘running fire of cheering’. The men, after being welcomed fulsomely, were told the government had arranged for them to have free use of the telegraph service to ‘communicate with friends and family’.

  They then marched in formation, led by the band, to the perhaps rightly named Empire Hotel. Here, after toasts to the Queen, an ‘excellent dinner’ was served, then at half-past eight the men marched in formation to an event at the Opera House. Thousands of people lined the streets and ‘the scene was one of the greatest enthusiasm and excitement’. It was hard to move through the crowd ‘and some found it hard to get away from the embraces of excited women’.16

  The troopers entered the dress circle just as the first act of Tess was finishing. They were played into their seats to the tune of ‘Soldiers of the Queen’ by the Garrison Band — this was then taken up by the orchestra, and finally the spectators sang, giving way, after the men were seated, to the National Anthem. At this point everyone rose to their feet and roared out the old tune. A member of the company then sang a specially composed song, ‘For their Queen and Union Jack’, after which the entire cast came forward in a tableau and called for cheers for ‘our boys who have returned’. Nothing could have been be sweeter. And naturally enough the historic occasion was registered in a photograph, taken looking back from the stage at the entire opera house filled with soldiers. Trooper Sidney Northe is one of them.

  What did Trooper Northe think as he was feasted, applauded, loved and adored? Was it all unreal, or was it a banquet of unparalleled magnificence? Could he at long last relax, or was his mind already thousands of miles away, in South Africa? Did he have a relationship back there? A darling? The ‘Em’ to whom he sent a note from South Africa, along with kisses, does not feature again — she may have been married or engaged in his absence. But it is impossible not to feel the flow of approval which came from the New Zealand public. It was as if the roar of the crowd which accompanied the Waiwera as it left for South Africa was picked up by the same crowd when the Moana returned, specially chartered so the men could be home by Christmas. They had been away just over a year.

  But by then Trooper Northe had made a decision: he would slip the noose of New Zealand and return to what appeared to be richer pickings. He had hardened, too. That jejeune, narrow-shouldered youth sitting shyly before the camera in 1899 has been replaced by a man who displays the almost unconscious loucheness of a military cavalier. The hat is worn with panache, and he appears as someone other, someone made different by experience. He is already, although he is back ‘home’, somewhere else. Like all returned soldiers, a part of him never comes home.

  ‘A most hearty reception was accorded to Troopers Catherall and Northe on their arrival in Hastings last night by the express train. Soon after six o’clock the approach to the railway stations began to be crowded,’ the Daily Telegraph’s Hastings correspondent reported, on 15 December 1900, ‘and when the Town Band marched into position opposite the station, followed by the Church Lads’ Brigade, … the Hastings Rifles Volunteers, … the Fire Brigade … and the HB Mounted Rifles, under Captain A. H. Russell, a very pretty picture was presented. The town was gay with flags and bunting, and the evening being a bright one, the effect was particularly striking and appropriate.’

  The two returning troopers, Catherall and Northe, were welcomed by the mayor, then by Captain Russell (the local MP) and Major Chicken from Napier.17 They were escorted to a special vehicle fitted out for the occasion, followed by a landau — a ceremonial carriage — in which Catherall’s wife and her party followed to a point just opposite the post office where ‘amidst cheers from the large crowd assembled there, the Mayor ascended the vehicle in which Troopers Northe and Catherall were sitting’.

  Did the town seem familiar or just smaller than they remembered? Now they had been to bigger cities, did Hastings seem a version of ‘Hicksville’ (Hastings’ original name)? Or was it a lovely, familiar setting to which they were thrilled to return?

  The mayor noted that the boys had been gone a long fourteen months. Just as in future wars, everyone had made the fundamental mistake of thinking the fighting would be over quickly, only ‘to find that they had to encounter trial and trouble and danger hardly reckoned on. They had shown that they were possessed of grit and courage and that they were worthy sons of the great British Empire.’ His words, the Telegraph reported, were followed by three cheers given ‘most lustily’.

  The next speaker was particularly interesting and insightful. This was Captain Andrew Russell, who would go on to be one of the great New Zealand generals of the First World War. He was a leader notable for his skilful strategy amid the carnage and for his concern and care for his men. He was committed to conserving life instead of senselessly sending New Zealand or ‘colonial’ men forward to be slaughtered.18

  Russell spoke of the ‘two Hastings lads who had been to South Africa to fight for Queen and country and be a credit to their native land … Hardly anyone had been prepared for the universal chorus of praise which had come from the Commander-in-chief down to every officer, but almost from every newspaper in England and the world, about the manner in which the colonial contingents had conducted themselves, and they had more than cause to be proud of them. And especially of the boys who left Hastings, who would be heroes here for the rest of their lives. (Loud and prolonged cheering.)’ The last sentence has a particularly poignant ring, as every hero knows. Legends do not often last longer than a decade. Memory is short. Life can be brutally long.

  Troopers Catherall and Northe then moved in a triumphant procession up Heretaunga S
treet to Avenue Road, where Catherall lived, and Sidney Northe was taken to the home of a third trooper, Maddison.19 ‘Each of the men, at the end of their journey, returned brief but hearty thanks for their reception.’

  This, however, was but the beginning of a roundelay of receptions. The Hastings Fire Brigade entertained Troopers Catherall and Northe ‘at a social’, and both men were given valuable jewellery: ‘the ladies provided Trooper Northe with a set of gold studs and sleeve links’. At the Hastings Presbyterian church, Trooper Northe was ‘presented with a gold chain with greenstone pendant’, lauded to the skies and told about ‘the value of the Northe family to the church.’20 And at the end-of-year prizegiving for Hastings District School the chairman of the school committee commented that ‘he was sure every boy and girl must feel proud of Troopers Catherall and Northe, who were both educated at their school’.

  They had become that dangerously ambiguous thing: role models. But all along Sid Northe had made it very plain he was not going to stay. The Evening Post report of the Wellington welcome ended with a short paragraph: ‘Trooper Sydney [sic] Northe … was so enamoured of South Africa that he purposes returning as soon as he is discharged from service, and taking a younger brother with him. Both are carpenters by trade.’21

  The return home for Sidney Northe was really in the nature of a farewell visit. Such visits tend to be bitter-sweet.

  THERE WAS, OF COURSE, no reportage of Trooper Northe’s departure back to South Africa — no bands, no farewelling crowds. It would have been a much more modest, private farewell in Wellington, with his parents (who had shifted to Petone) now separated from their wider Northe and Northey families back in Hawke’s Bay. We do not know how Sid Northe moved from Transvaal and the Orange Free State to Rhodesia, but it was in Salisbury that his brief life ended.