by CL Skelton
‘What’s the fellah’s name?’
‘Major Bruce, sir.’
‘Any relation to Major-General Bruce?’
‘His son, sir.’
‘I see. Then those are General Bruce’s grandchildren in Kimberley, eh?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
Roberts drew a deep breath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You can tell your Major Bruce that he is to report to General French tomorrow evening. He can ride, I suppose?’
‘Yes, sir, he’s a good horseman.’
‘Well, he’ll need his charger. Tell him I’m attaching him to French’s force; you can spare him, I suppose?’
‘No one is indispensable, sir, not even a Maclaren.’
Roberts almost allowed himself a smile at that. ‘You can tell him that I’m doing this for Willie Bruce. Not for him, not for his mother. Tell him it’s for his father. I know him. He’s a fine soldier.’
‘Yes, sir, and thank you, sir.’
‘All right, Colonel,’ snapped Roberts, ‘now will you please get out and let me get on with my work?’
‘Sir,’ said Ian. He saluted and left the great man’s presence.
‘All right?’ asked the A.D.C. as Ian came out.
‘Fine,’ said Ian.
He went back to the battalion and arrangements were made for the bivouacking of the men. Then he sent for Gordon Bruce.
While he was waiting for Gordon, Ian started to think about the younger man. Gordon had always been self-effacing. He just got on with the job quietly and you barely knew that he was around. He had never stood out, but he had never failed in his duties. A first-class regimental officer was a fair assessment of Donald Bruce’s younger brother. Not highly imaginative, but not easily fussed. In some ways he was the very best type of officer. The sort that would obey orders and not try to do the generals’ staff work for them. He was dedicated to the regiment and to his men and no commander could ask for more than that. Ian did not want to lose him but, on the other hand, he had a great affection for his Aunt Maud and she must have suffered a lot. Her daughter-in-law dead and as for her eldest son, God alone knew what would become of Donald.
He looked up as Gordon came in.
‘I want a word with you, Gordon,’ said Ian.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Gordon, you are going to leave us for a little while.’
‘Oh, come off it, Ian,’ protested Gordon, ‘I don’t want to leave the regiment.’
‘I think you will when you’ve heard what I have to say. I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I don’t know what is happening, but I have talked with the field-marshal.’
‘Field marshal?’
‘Yes, “Bobs” is here. Do you want to go to Kimberley?’
‘Of course I do, you know that.’
‘All right, then, you are going.’
‘How? Why?’
‘Why? Because Roberts thinks that your father is a bloody good soldier and he seems to want to do him a favour.’
‘I see, but how?’
‘Details I cannot tell you because you can’t ask a busy field-marshal for details when he wants to get rid of you,’ said Ian, smiling. ‘But I gather that General French is going to get the job of lifting the siege. The C-in-C has agreed that you can be attached to French’s staff. I haven’t the faintest idea what your job will be, so don’t ask me. I think they are lying somewhere to the south of us. You’re to make your own way there, with your charger, and report to the general tomorrow evening.’
‘But I’m not a cavalryman,’ said Gordon.
‘You don’t have to tell me that and I’m damned sure that you’ll have corns on your arse by the time you get to Kimberley. Seriously, I cannot see you getting much of a job. But if, as I suspect, French is going into Kimberley, you’ll be with him.’
‘Thanks, Ian,’ said Gordon.
‘Give Aunt Maud my love when you see her and tell her …’ He paused for a moment thinking of Donald. ‘Tell her I hope that everything’s all right,’ he added lamely.
It was in the late afternoon of February tenth that Field-Marshal Roberts called his cavalry commanders together. They were briefed for what Roberts described as the greatest cavalry operation in history. He was going to send his entire cavalry division under the command of Major-General French to relieve Kimberley.
‘But gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘Kimberley is not our final objective. I am going to take my entire command into the Orange Free State and I intend to take Bloemfontein.’
General French was a man of average height who had already won some little fame as a bold and dashing cavalry commander. He had dark hair and the fashionable full curling moustache. He had raised some slight objection to having a Highland infantryman attached to his force, but did not argue when Roberts insisted. He returned to his headquarters where he found the gentleman in question waiting for him.
‘Who the devil are you, sir?’ he demanded.
‘Major Bruce, sir, Maclaren Highlanders. The field-marshal said that I was to report to you this evening.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said French abruptly. ‘You’re the fellow who wants to go to Kimberley. Is that right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Can you ride?’
‘Reasonably, sir.’
‘Well, you’re not going to be much damned good to me, but I suppose if the field-marshal wants it, you had better come along.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Can’t give you a command, you realize that.’
‘Naturally, sir.’
‘The youngest trooper in the division probably knows more about cavalry than you.’
‘I’m not a cavalryman, sir.’
‘Have you got a charger?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘All right, then,’ said French. ‘Captain Westlake!’ he called. A young hussar officer came in, not in the glory of busby and braided tunic, but wearing the same drab khaki breeches and jacket that was the mark of them all. All, that is, except Gordon who was sporting a pair of breeches in Maclaren tartan.
‘Sir?’ said Captain Westlake.
‘This is Major … er … what’s your name again? Oh, yes, I remember, Bruce. Major Bruce is riding with us. Captain Westlake,’ he added by way of explanation, ‘is a member of my staff and will be in close touch with me throughout the entire operation.’ Then, turning back to the captain, ‘I want Major Bruce to ride with you. Don’t let him go wandering off. He isn’t cavalry.’ He made it sound like an insult.
‘I understand, sir.’
‘All right, Bruce,’ said French, ‘Captain Westlake will look after you. We are to be ready to ride out at two.’
‘Tomorrow afternoon, sir?’ asked Westlake.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ said French.
It was dark as they came out of the general’s tent. Gordon had, in spite of his length of service, never been in a cavalry brigade. The smells on the darkening evening air were all so unfamiliar. The smell of horseflesh as the troopers groomed them, and the farmyard odours of their droppings, mingled with the smell of leather. The noises were different too. There was a constant chorus of horses whinnying and nickering, the stamp of a steel-shod hoof, and the rattle and clank of the harness of the draught animals which would draw the guns of the horse artillery.
‘Best thing you can do,’ said Westlake, ‘is get some sleep. It’s going to be a hard morning and a long one.’
‘Where shall I go?’ asked Gordon.
‘Have you got a bivvy?’
‘Not here.’
‘Well, you don’t want to go tramping all the way to your lines now. I’ll send my servant to collect anything you need and you had better come and share with me. It’ll be a bit of a squeeze, but we’ll manage.’
‘That’s jolly decent of you,’ said Gordon. He was beginning to like the young cavalryman.
‘Shouldn’t bother to undress, either. It’ll be boots and saddles in about five hours.’
They crept into t
he tent together and Westlake handed Gordon a blanket. ‘’Fraid that’s all I can offer,’ he said. ‘Tell you what, though, I have got the remains of a bottle of whisky if you feel like a nightcap.’
He produced a bottle of Johnnie Walker and Gordon eyed it enviously. He had not seen a dram for well over a month.
‘Light the candle, will you?’ said Westlake as he shared the last of his bottle into two equal portions in a pair of tin mugs. ‘Here you are, a taste of home. Sorry I haven’t got any soda.’
‘I’m a Highlander,’ said Gordon. ‘Only an Englishman would put soda into good whisky.’ They smiled at each other.
‘Well, that’s the last of it,’ said Westlake, draining his mug. ‘It’s a bloody awful war.’
‘What’s French like?’ asked Gordon.
‘He’s all right. He’s a bit gruff, but he knows his stuff all right. Well, we had better get some shut-eye.’
Gordon took off his Sam Browne and his sword. They helped each other off with their riding boots and lay down, Westlake on his cot and Gordon on the bare earth, wrapped in the blanket which Westlake had given him. Gordon lay there for a long time gazing at the blackness above him. He did not think that he had slept at all, but he must have because when the bugles sounded reveille at two o’clock, he woke up with a start, wondering for a moment where he was.
Westlake was yawning and stretching. ‘Get your boots on,’ he said. ‘Then you had better find your horse.’
Within fifteen minutes, Gordon was mounted and in the company of his new-found friend.
‘I shouldn’t take that with you,’ said Westlake.
‘What?’
‘Your sword. It’s excess weight and you won’t be using it.’
‘It’s rather important,’ said Gordon. ‘It belonged to my brother. He got it at Sandhurst.’
‘By George,’ said Westlake, ‘Sword of Honour, what? What happened to your brother?’
‘He … he resigned his commission and left the army. I don’t know where he is now.’
‘Ah, well, take it with you if you want to, or I’ll ask my man to put it with my baggage. It’ll be safe enough there, though you might have to wait till the war’s over before you get it back.’
Gordon acquiesced, though it made him feel a little treacherous when Watkins, Westlake’s servant, took it away.
In the bright moonlight Gordon could see the masses of cavalry as they moved out. He estimated that there could not be fewer than five thousand of them. He had never in his life seen so many horses and riders at the same time. As for himself, he rode along beside Westlake just to the rear of the general, saying little and trying as far as possible to keep out of everybody’s way.
They were on the move at a gentle trot. There were men and horses ahead and on both sides of them stretching away until they were swallowed up in the darkness. There were the guns, too, clanking and bumping along with their limbers dragging behind them. It was an awesome sight, but Gordon could not feel part of it.
They met little opposition for the first four days. There were a few minor skirmishes on the flanks, but nothing that Gordon was able to see. The principal enemy was the country itself, and the heat, and the necessity of continually finding water for the thousands of horses and men. On the morning of the fifteenth of February, shortly after they had crossed the Modder at Klip Drift, a rider came galloping into General French’s headquarters. They were within earshot of Gordon.
‘Sir,’ said the horseman, a subaltern in the lancers, ‘there are Boers in strength just ahead of us. There are quite a lot of them, though we cannot be sure about numbers. They seem to have good defensive positions. They are in a sort of semicircle of kopjes and pretty well hidden. Sir, the battalion commanders want to know what are your orders.’
French did not reply immediately. He knew that his decision at this point would make or break his military career. But his orders were plain, take Kimberley. French was a man of quick decision. It was a risk; he might be facing the main force of Cronje’s army, but he made up his mind in a matter of seconds.
‘Send out riders and tell the commanders that we are going straight through them,’ he said to Westlake. ‘I don’t want them to stop. I don’t want any battles. I want Kimberley. The lancers will go in first, and then the rest. Make it perfectly clear that not a man is to stop until we are through them.’
Westlake galloped off, leaving French with the rest of his staff looking ahead at the barren empty plain. He turned to Gordon with a smile and spoke to him for the first time since he had handed him over to Westlake.
‘Well, Major,’ he said, ‘you’re about to see a genuine cavalry charge, and if this comes off, you should be in Kimberley today.’
Within half an hour all commanders had been briefed, and standing mounted on a little rise, Gordon watched the lancers way far ahead of him looking for all the world like the toy soldiers he had played with as a child, as, with lances lowered, manes streaming, men rigid on the backs of their horses, they broke into a gallop. Then the hussars and the dragoons, and suddenly the whole five thousand of them were tearing across the plain. The dust was incredible; within half a minute it was impossible to see anything. His horse, shivering with excitement, joined in the chase, but though he could hear the sound of rifle fire and the shouting of men close to him, Gordon saw nothing else, not a Boer, not a man laid low. It was just a headlong rush through a cloud of yellow dust.
Suddenly Westlake appeared at his side.
‘We’re through them,’ he shouted at the top of his voice.
Then they emerged from the dust and there was the division halted ‒ horses covered with white steaming lather, men stooping in their saddles ‒ and Gordon realized that he, too, was exhausted.
‘What did you think of it?’ cried the elated Westlake.
‘I didn’t see a bloody thing,’ said Gordon. ‘What happens now?’
‘Now, my friend,’ said Westlake, ‘you dismount, rub your horse down, and we’ll be in Kimberley in time for afternoon tea.’
Shortly after French had moved out, Lord Roberts, with almost twenty thousand infantry, eight thousand cavalry, and his artillery, with all their services and stores, started north from his encampment below the Modder, and what future generations would always call ‘The Great Flank March’ had begun.
Chapter Nine
The man lay among the stones and the pebbles of the almost dried-up river bed. He was asleep. Not the deep sleep of one who lay in his own bed, but the sleep of the predatory animal, ready to awaken fully in less than a second with all his senses functioning. Last night he had found water. The water that had evaded him for over two days, during which time the meagre supply of his water bottle had vanished to almost nothing.
For weeks now he had been trudging across the veld. Every day had been so like the one before, blank, barren, and sweltering. The heat of the sun had bleached his hair and his beard until they were almost white, and hardened and reddened his skin, save for the white lines at the corners of his eyes which he had kept screwed up as he peered across the limitless plain, searching. The metal of his Mauser in the heat of the day had burned his hands when he touched it. He had had a horse, but over a week ago it had thrown him and trotted off towards the horizon where doubtless it would fall victim to one of the big cats which roamed the plains in search of food.
The man had shot a springbok four days ago. He had eaten the raw flesh until his belly was bursting. Then he had slung a portion of the balance of the carcass over his shoulder and trudged off ‒ to where? He did not know. The remains, over half the beast, had been left for the vultures.
The man travelled light. He carried with him only his Mauser which he had taken from a dead Boer, the Webley which he had taken from a British officer, a hunting knife, and a water bottle. In the weeks that he had spent out on the veld he had learned a lot and he had learned it quickly; that was why he was still alive. He had become accomplished in the art of the hunter. He hunted to live. He w
as the complete predator. And he also hunted for another reason. He hunted because he was a man consumed with a fierce, all-embracing hatred; not a blinding rage. There was nothing hot-blooded about his quest for revenge. His was a cold, calculating, icy lust for the blood of those who had taken the one he had lived for.
When he killed, be it man or beast, he killed quickly and he killed at dusk. He did this so that darkness would deny pursuit, or that light would give him time to find refuge for the night before other, even more accomplished killers should begin their nocturnal, never-ending quest for survival.
His mind, which had thought fine thoughts born of good reading and gentle surroundings in his youth, was now a dark, endless channel. It had narrowed until it was capable only of a single thought, and that, that they should pay. That a whole people should pay a bitter price for the loss of that one who had meant so much to him.
It had been dark when he had come upon the river, and he had hidden until dawn; until those creatures who were stronger than he had slaked their thirst and left, their night’s work over, to sleep through the heat of the day. He waited until the sun was well over the horizon, until he knew that he could go and drink from the water and rest his aching body without the fear of anyone but man.
It was well into the afternoon. The man stirred in his sleep. Instinctively his hand reached for and clutched the small cloth package made from a corner of his bush jacket and tied with string around his neck. It was all right, it was still there; the man was still rich.
It had happened about a week ago, though the man could not have told you that. Time had ceased to have meaning for him. But that was when he had found it. Found it in a river bed just like this one, except that that river had completely disappeared under the cracked, parched earth. With his knife he had dug away at the rock-hard mud, searching for the dampness which must lie below when, clawing out the bricky dust, his fingers had touched a pebble. It was smooth and cool to his touch and he felt his pulse increase as he rubbed his thumb over the soapy surface. It was translucent and white, and it was nearly as big as a hen’s egg. He knew that he had found his fortune. He knew that he was rich, for he knew all about diamonds and this was the largest that he had ever seen though he had been looking at them for many years as they were dug from the mines at Kimberley. Now that diamond represented the rest of his life to him.
