By feeding them part of the 362,000 lb of horses’ rations of grain and oats, not included in the original tally. That was B-P’s first answer to the dilemma. This levelled up the ‘white’ and the ‘black’ rations exactly. ‘Dec 30: Food reinspected: of meat and groceries there are plenty … and on going into meal I found that there is 60 days for both white and natives if my present system of rations for all is strictly adhered to.’73
At the beginning of January, B-P decided on a second economy. He would slightly reduce the horses’ rations of grain (though horses were still to receive ten times the men’s ration). ‘Jan 1: By reducing the grain supply to 4lbs daily + 6 or 8 of oathay or hay, we could then ensure a month’s extra meal for whites, or nearly 4 weeks for natives.’ 74
By now, B-P was beginning to put the rationing of the Africans on a regular basis. And it was here that a new source of economy presented itself. The members of the white garrison, who could not afford to buy rations out of their own pockets, were provided with rations anyway, either on credit, or by drawing on a fund set up by the special authorities. The Africans were all made to pay, and pay handsomely, for their food, including food commandeered from their own stocks. In fact, there was a total of 2,470 natives registered on B-P’s books (most of them representing families), and only 428 received food as part of their wages, while a further 240-odd were employed on defence works; many of the others obviously could not afford to buy their rations. B-P, however, believed that there was large-scale hoarding of grain by natives.
Dec 31: In coining through the stadt we saw some very thin Matabele stripping inner bark from fresh cut wood to make into food.
Jan 1: Believe that ‘large stores of grain hiden away’ in the stadt. Closed shop [ie refused rations to all Africans] ‘to see if there is any real want’.
Jan 7: Baralong natives in stadt are getting a little suspicious of us. They want to know… why we are trying to take all the grain from them.75
By early the following month, B-P made the astonishing decision that he could stretch the ‘white’ rations, after all, right up to the third week of May – that is, a hundred and five days from 8 February. The ‘black’ rations, on the other hand, would only last thirty-four days.76 What ever had happened now?
It turned out that it was not the wretched Africans in the Stadt who were the hoarders of grain. It was the white merchants and their cronies who had been distinguishing themselves in this exercise. Weil, the main army supplier, proved to have deliberately understated his supplies in the hope of raising his prices (‘his duplicity,’ wrote B-P, ‘has been a constant source of annoyance if not danger’77). And the Army Service Corps sergeant-major in charge of rations was found to be running his own black market in food for whites who could pay the army bakers.78 However, as well as discovering that there was more food than had at first appeared, B-P had also discovered that ‘some of the mealie meal set aside for natives will be available for bread-making for whites’. The reason was that an ingenious baker had found how to grind the horses’ oats to make flour.79 As a result, B-P came to a very remarkable decision: to expel part of the garrison. In his own words:
Feb 8th: I propose therefore to try to get all the refugee and foreign natives to leave the place by laying down stock [of food] through Col. Plumer at Kanya [the British force now seventy miles away in Bechuanaland]: and stopping the sale in the town. The amount thereby saved, eked out with occasional issues of meat, should keep the local Baralongs and defence natives; the others could break out on stormy nights and make their way to Kanya.80
In effect, B-P’s ingenious solution to the problem of conserving food supplies in a beleaguered town was to say to the part of the garrison that was militarily (and politically) expendable: leave here or starve here. There was to be no other choice. Using one method or the other, he would reduce the garrison by a quarter. The two thousand ‘refugee and foreign natives’ were, in fact, mainly Baralongs who had taken refuge in the town after their kraals had been looted and burnt by the Boers, and the Shangan mine boys from the Rand who had now completed digging B-P’s defence works for him. B-P closed the grain store to these two thousand outsiders and banned all employment for them. They were to have no food at all. Some were still being smuggled into working parties, he was sorry to hear. He lectured the other Baralongs on such misplaced humanity. These local Baralongs he was prepared to allow to continue buying rations (from their own food stocks), though much smaller rations than allowed the whites. In the stock-taking of 4 March, it was decided that 113,930 lb of the horses’ oats and 279,000 lb of meat would be needed for the 1,500 whites and the 400 native combatants, which left a balance of 227,000 lb and virtually no meat (only 23,000 lb) and no vegetables for the five thousand local Baralongs and so on.81
By April, B-P discovered yet another economy which released still more oatmeal flour for white use. It was possible to use oat husks, left over after grinding the meal, to make a kind of porridge called ‘sowen’. Oat bran and mealies could also be mixed with horse-meat stew to eke out rations for the Africans fortunate enough to be allowed them.82
The leave-here-or-starve-here policy towards the Africans was not, in general, unpopular with the whites. True, the sufferings of the Africans did not pass entirely unnoticed. Two of the Press Corps, who had already fallen foul of B-P for ‘grousing’, said that this was not cricket, B-P’s drastic ration policy. Angus Hamilton of The Times thundered (though The Times was not to print this): ‘There can be no doubt that the drastic principles of economy which Colonel Baden-Powell has been practising in these later days are opposed to … the dignity and liberalism which we profess, and which enter so much into the settlement of native questions in South Africa.’83 The most graphic description of the plight of the African garrison was given by Emerson Neilly of The Pall Mall Gazette, and Neilly was apparently writing of the five thousand Africans fortunate enough to be allowed rations by B-P:
I saw them fall down on the veldt and lie where they had fallen, too weak to go on their way. The sufferers were mostly little boys – mere infants ranging from four or five upwards…. Hunger had them in its grip, and many of them were black spectres and living skeletons … their ribs literally breaking their shrivelled skin – men, women and children…. Probably hundreds died from starvation or the diseases that always accompany famine. Certain it is that many were found dead on the veldt… words could not portray the scene of misery; five or six hundred human frameworks of both sexes and all ages… dressed in… tattered rags, standing in lines, each holding an old blackened can or beef tin, awaking turn to crawl painfully up to the soup kitchen where the food was distributed.84
The other two thousand Africans, outcasts, hunted for bones on rubbish heaps, and dug up the corpses of dogs buried outside the town.85
How many of these wretched black ‘Uitlanders’ (the real helots of the Rand), expelled from Johannesburg, or of the neighbouring Baralongs expelled from their villages in Bechuanaland, died of starvation in Mafeking? How many died in attempting to break through the Boer lines and reach Colonel Plumer’s food-depot seventy miles away at Kanya? The figures will never be known. B-P’s own diary reveals that, in a census completed by 30 March, the number of natives in the garrison had been reduced by about five hundred – that is, to a total of 7,019 – and of these the Mafeking Baralongs in the Stadt, and the coloured ‘defence natives’ in the location, were receiving a pint of sowen; the others – 1,042 unlicensed natives – received no ration. The diary also records other not unconnected facts. Ninety-four unlicensed dogs had been killed during the last month; and natives were permitted to eat them. Twenty-one other natives were found dead; they had no relations to attend to them, and were buried by the authorities.86
Early in April, B-P adopted the final and most drastic solution for survival. He decided to cut by half the number of natives employed digging trenches for the defence works; by thus reducing it to 122, he achieved an economy in garrison food, and also in garrison fun
ds (always an important aim for such a careful housekeeper as B-P). He decided to try to reduce the native garrison by a further two thousand souls, by forcing the Mafeking Baralongs to abandon their homes and go to Kanya.87
The reason for this drastic new twist of policy was that, at the beginning of April, B-P had received bad news from his subordinate and would-be rescuer, Plumer. B-P himself had doubted the ability of Plumer’s Rhodesian Regiment – less than seven hundred strong, and with no proper guns – to cut its way into Mafeking. On 31 March (the same day, incidentally, as Broadwood’s disaster at Sannah’s Post), Plumer had made his run for it. He came within five miles of Mafeking. Then he was driven back. The disappointment was heavy – and so were Plumer’s losses.88
What made this especially shattering for B-P was that Plumer’s column included the élite of the young men B-P himself had raised at Bulawayo the previous year, and one of them was a handsome young captain, B-P’s lifelong friend, ‘The Boy’ McLaren. At first, the Boers said McLaren was one of the dead. Then it turned out he was alive and wounded, a prisoner in Snyman’s camp. Apart from writing daily letters to McLaren, telling him to keep his chin up, B-P was now, for many weeks more, doomed to sit tight. He had already warned Lord Roberts that if he heard no news of Plumer’s success by mid-April, they must send a larger relief column of their own. There was nothing for it but to wait for this column. And on 20 April, B-P heard mixed news from Bloemfontein, brought by native runners. His brother, Major Baden B-P, was helping to organize the relief. But owing to ‘unexpected difficulties’ (De Wet’s victory at Sannah’s Post), it might not arrive till the end of May – that is, after the last date to which B-P had originally told Roberts he could hold out, although, in fact, 12 June was the new limit.89
Meanwhile, B-P’s attempts to run more food into Mafeking and run more Africans out of Mafeking had both run into trouble. Two large parties of native ‘cattle-thieves’ (B-P’s phrase) had been sent out. A party of forty Baralongs had tried to bring in a hundred cattle on the hoof; these cattle had been sent down by Plumer, but all were captured (even at night, it was rarely dark enough to elude the Boers and their own armed Africans), and two of the Baralongs were shot. Other Africans – some of them Fingoes, some of them men of McKenzie’s ‘Black Watch’ – were caught trying to drive some of the Boer cattle into Mafeking. Snyman’s burghers shot thirty-two out of thirty-three. They had been betrayed, and were found huddled in some reeds. Mausers and a maxim gun were turned on them. Snyman sent a letter, protesting against the use of natives in the war. B-P tried to put a brave face on it: ‘I know nothing of the 32 men, they were certainly not under my orders, or as far as I was aware of my officers.’ Of course, B-P had organized the system of cattle-raiding, and McKenzie had even been accused (justly, it seems) of flogging the ‘Black Watch’ if they did not go out and fight the Boers.90
The most savage incident, however involved the Baralong women. On the night of 7 April, seven hundred of them were persuaded to try to attempt a mass exodus. Only ten got away; the rest returned. Many had been stripped naked and flogged by the Boers. On the night of 13 April, two hundred got away undetected. Then, on the 15th, a party of thirteen women was caught and nine were shot and killed. Only four returned, two of them wounded. They claimed that the Boers had deliberately finished off the rest of the wounded women. It was now B-P’s turn to protest to the Boers, and he was no doubt genuinely shocked. However, B-P’s tactic of expelling the surplus native garrison had certainly succeeded in its aim. In all, 1,210 natives reached Plumer. By the end of April, there were only sixteen hundred pints of sowen a day ‘needed’ for the Baralongs (compared to four thousand pints for the whites and the ‘defence natives’), and B-P’s diary recorded that he hoped to be able to increase white rations again.
Ap 20: Meat and meal stocks at present will last to June 12. But by forcing natives away from Mafeking we can get their share of horseflesh for whites and their sowen which would improve the [white] ration in size.91
It was, indeed, a ‘white man’s war’, as both British and Boers were so fond of saying.
Twelve days after Field Cornet Eloff had invited himself to a Sunday ‘merriment’ at Mafeking, the game took place, and not even B-P himself could have dared hope for a more sporting expedition, nor a more dashing and melodramatic finale to the siege.
It began just before four o’clock on the morning of 12 May, in the brittle, starry darkness between moonset and sunrise. Eloff, the leader, in fact already knew that Colonel Mahon and the two thousand horsemen of his relief column, sent from Kimberley by Lord Roberts, had reached Vryburg two days earlier, and were sweeping rapidly across the veld. Vryburg was only five or six days’ ride away to the south, so it was now or never. The plan of attack proposed by Eloff was so daring that his superior officer, General Snyman, was only half-convinced that it was worth attempting. As soon as the moon had set, the burghers would make a feint against the eastern lines of trenches, Fitzclarence’s forts, and the redoubts of Lord Nelson, the Wolf and the other British artillery, such as it was. Meanwhile, Eloff would break into the native Stadt with seven hundred men. The burghers would be led by some fire-eating French and German volunteers, newly arrived from Beira, and guided by friendly Kaffirs and a British trooper called Hay, who had recently gone over to the enemy.92
It was really excellent, Eloff’s plan. For the Stadt, the other Mafeking, was, in military as well as human terms, B-P’s blind spot. There was a tempting gap between two small forts called Hidden Hollow and Limestone Fort.93 Beyond these, and hidden from view in the bed of the steep and greasy banks of the Molopo River, dotted with red and yellow thatched huts and the elephant-grey stones, led a path straight to the Stadt. Once inside this, there were no defence lines, only one small, ancient, mud-caked police barracks, between the attackers and B-P’s HQ. Of course, the plan also had its weaknesses. When a small attacking party tries to surprise one part of a siege line under cover of darkness, and break into a town, its success in actually capturing the town will probably depend on its ability to receive reinforcements after daylight has come. And for this dangerous task, Eloff relied absolutely on a man, Snyman, who had shown himself the most stolid and supine of all the Boer generals in the war.
Sarel Eloff was, however, an enthusiast: one of the daring young Transvaalers whose patriotic ardours, the counterpart of British jingoism, had brought them into conflict not only with the Uitlanders but with the Boer traditionalists. Eloff had won notoriety with both groups by making an insulting comment on Queen Victoria. He had thus got into hot water with his grandfather, President Kruger. However, the President had now given him a chance to redeem himself by capturing Mafeking. And capture it he meant to, whatever the odds. With characteristic swagger, he posted up a notice in the laager that Friday evening: ‘We leave for Mafeking tonight: we will breakfast at Dixon’s Hotel tomorrow morning.’ But few burghers took up his invitation. When he counted his party, Eloff found it was only 240 men – not 700, as proposed.94
Still, the first phase of the attack succeeded brilliantly. Snyman’s large force launched the feint as soon as the moon had set. Eloff’s small force, assisted by Trooper Hay, slipped unobserved past the two forts, up the Molopo and into the Stadt. It was here they made what was probably a tactical error. To signal to Snyman, and also to strike terror into the Baralongs, Eloff’s men set fire to the densely packed huts. The flames, catching at the wood-and-mud door frames, and the piles of firewood on the flat mud roofs, soared up impressively into the darkness and sent a useful screen of smoke, sparks, and a mob of panic-stricken Baralongs flying far ahead of them.95 However, the fire was also an alarm-signal to B-P.
Before Eloff had got far, the garrison awoke. There were frantic bugle calls, and the bell on the Catholic church, beyond Dixon’s, sounded the general alert.96 Even so, Eloff’s men rushed on, without opposition, beyond the Stadt. Mistaken, in the smoky half-light of dawn, for British troops, they surrounded the Protectorate HQ staff i
n the old BSA (Chartered Company) barracks. And, with hardly a shot (one shot, in fact, for an officer’s soldier servant, called Maltuschek, who stubbornly refused to put up his hands, and paid with his life), they captured the other twenty-nine occupants, including Colonel Hore, the second-in-command after B-P and commander of the Protectorate Regiment. It was about 5.25 a.m. The sun, lemon-coloured, filtered through the eucalyptus trees by the market gardens, while in the west the Baralongs’ huts still burned fiercely, throwing up streamers of golden sparks.97 Eloff was understandably pleased. Someone picked up the telephone connecting the fort with the HQ at Dixon’s. It was still working. With a final piece of swagger, Eloff informed B-P that Hore and his fort were theirs; and they were only eight hundred yards from his HQ.98
The news can have been no great surprise to B-P. He had never had much confidence in Hore and he was already aware that the position was critical. He had been woken about four o’clock by a bullet hitting the veranda below his bed. Was the attack a feint or the real thing? B-P had taken no chances. The church bells sounded the general alarm.99 In the town, there were incongruous scenes: volunteers (including war correspondents) rushed to their posts, dressed in underclothes or pyjamas; Ben Weil handed out shot-guns from the boxes in his store; Lady Sarah Wilson climbed through the window into the locked hotel dining-room, to snatch a cup of coffee; guns were given to the prisoners in the town gaol (including Murchison, the half-mad artillery major who had murdered Parslow, and Sergeant-Major Losey, who had stolen those army rations).100
Up on his look-out post, B-P soon identified the shape of Eloff’s attack. The most successful of all B-P’s ‘specialities’ – the web of telephones connecting forts and outposts with HQ – did sterling work that morning. ‘A force of about three hundred Boers are advancing up the Molopo valley…. They are in the Stadt.’ The telephone message was confirmed, soon after, by the line of flames sweeping towards the town. B-P reacted calmly and quickly. He sent the reserve squadron of the Protectorate Regiment, under Captain FitzClarence, a party of armed railway-men, and some people from the hospital redan. This reinforcement for Godley only amounted to a couple of hundred men. He could not risk further laying bare the eastern defence lines, which might be the target of a large-scale attack by Snyman at any moment. To deal with Eloff, the main responsibility rested with Godley himself. B-P telephoned to him after 5.30. Things were ‘rather serious’. He must do his best with A and B Squadrons – and perhaps he added, ‘the niggers’ – to round up Brother Boer.
The Boer War Page 65
