by CL Skelton
As they moved they saw lyddite shells starting to burst inside the laager.
‘The poor bastards,’ said Corporal MacTavish.
‘Aye,’ said Sergeant Leinie, who was just behind him. ‘There’ll be women and bairns in there; they always take them wi’ them.’
‘Mair bloody fools them,’ said Corporal Anderson unfeelingly.
They were less than a thousand yards from the first of the trenches when the firing started. Each and every one of them had a compelling urge to shoot back.
‘Don’t fire,’ shouted Ian, ‘unless you are sure of your target. Maintain open order.’ He was fighting against the instinct of the men to bunch together.
By the time they were within two or three hundred yards of the Boer lines, several of their men had fallen and Ian decided that the moment had come to take stock of the situation.
‘Take cover,’ he called.
Within a couple of seconds the whole battalion was lying prone. At that moment, the most valuable thing that any man could find was a tuft of dried grass or a large rock, anything which could give him concealment while he got his breath back, waiting for the next order.
Ian dragged his field glasses from their case and looked carefully along the dark line of the Boer trenches. Suddenly he stopped scanning and concentrated on a point on his right near the river.
‘Sergeant-Major,’ he called.
Frankie Gibson was at his side. ‘What is it, sir?’
‘Take these and have a look at that,’ he said pointing to the Boers’ left flank.
Frankie took the glasses and did as he was bid. ‘It’s a Maxim, sir,’ he announced.
‘We’ll have to do something about that before we go in,’ said Ian. ‘Get Captain Maclaren over here.’
Frankie snaked away across the brown dusty earth and returned with Robert.
‘There’s a ‒’
‘There’s a machine gun on their left flank,’ said Robert. ‘I’ve seen it.’
‘Well?’
‘Let me take half a dozen men and we’ll knock it out. They don’t know that we know that it’s there or they would have used it before now. They must be waiting for a point blank target.’
Ian looked up at his brother. Not the gay young cavalier, the man about town, that was not what he saw; not the debutantes’ delight, not the indolent, well-dressed young officer who would lounge in the anteroom of the mess with his feet impudently placed on the C.O.’s favourite leather armchair. That wasn’t the real Robert; the real Robert was a real soldier. As good a soldier as Gordon Bruce, but in Robert’s case flamboyant with it. Robert had little time for the petty restrictions of army life and showed his contempt for them by flouting most of them. But when it came to the job, when it came to real soldiering and doing the work for which they existed, Ian believed that there was none better than Robert Maclaren. Ian knew all this and Ian knew that what Robert had said was right and Ian knew the risks which Robert would be taking and Ian loved his brother.
‘I don’t want you to go, Robert.’
‘Because I’m your brother or because I’m not good enough?’
‘Because you’re a company commander,’ replied Ian, but he knew that that was not true.
‘No, Ian. It’s got to be me. I’ve seen it and I’m as good as the next man and you know it.’
‘What’s the matter? Are you after a bloody medal?’ snapped Ian.
‘Yes,’ said Robert smiling, though that was not true, either.
‘All right, go, damn you. We can’t spend all day arguing about it.’
‘I’ll go, too, sir,’ said Frankie Gibson.
The brothers looked at him. There was no doubt about Frankie’s ability. If any man could get close to that gun unobserved, it had to be him.
‘I’ll get three mair men,’ he continued. ‘Wi’ Captain Maclaren and meself, we’ll dae it.’
Ian could not argue. ‘Very well, Sergeant-Major,’ he said, and then added, ‘Would my revolver be more use to you than your rifle?’
‘They’re daft wee things,’ replied Frankie, ‘but this time it could be. And dinna worry, Master Ian, I’ll look after yon.’
‘Thanks, Frankie.’ He passed him his Webley. ‘Leave me your rifle. We’ll go in as soon as you engage them.’
‘We’re no going tae engage them, sirr, we’re going tae slit their throats.’
‘Thanks anyway, Frankie,’ said Ian. ‘Good luck, Bob.’
They crept away and picked up their three ‘volunteers’. Corporal Anderson was one, not because anybody liked him, but because he was fearless and brutal and he would enjoy the killing. Two other men from Strathglass, Privates Robertson and Fraser, both of B Company, made up their number.
They backtracked a little away from the battalion and then scrambled down the sandy bank until they were almost at the water’s edge. There was more cover here. Quite a lot of tall grass, shrubs, rocks and one or two trees. They turned towards their objective. Only twelve feet above them there were a thousand of their comrades waiting to do battle, yet the five of them seemed isolated and alone. It was silent and they could smell the damp earth by the water’s edge. Now and then the silence was broken by the crump of a shell as it landed in the laager, as if to remind them of the task in hand.
They moved slowly forward, locating the next bush or rock large enough to give them shelter before they abandoned the present cover. If they spoke they spoke in whispers and each man felt the tension building within him as they drew nearer to the target.
Robert and Frankie led with the others bringing up the rear.
‘How many do you think there will be?’ whispered Robert.
‘Four, five at the most, sirr,’ replied Frankie.
They moved on. They were still at the riverside when Frankie whispered again, ‘Stop them noo, sirr.’
‘Where are we?’ asked Robert, waving the others down into the tall grass and reeds.
‘Yon gun,’ said Frankie, ‘is just up there.’ He pointed up the bank on their left. ‘If you’ll all wait here, I’ll tak’ a wee lookie.’
Robert watched as Frankie crawled away, full of admiration for the man. He seemed to turn into a khaki snake as he slithered away.
Frankie did not hurry. A man does not hurry when he’s out on the hill stalking a fine stag, and this was the same game. He examined every piece of ground before he put his weight on it, removing any twig or loose stone gently in case it would make a noise as he passed over it. At the top of the bank he carefully eased himself up by a small shrub, peered over for less than a second, and then allowed his body weight to take him back out of sight. As slowly as he had gone up there, he started his return.
‘Well?’ asked Robert.
‘We outnumber them,’ replied Frankie with a grin. ‘There’s only four o’ them. It’s a Maxim, all reight. I coonted three rifles in there as weel.’
‘How do you suggest we go about it?’ said Robert, accepting without question a subordinate role.
‘Weel, sirr, we’re all reight until we get tae the top o’ the bank. But at the top o’ the bank, there’s aboot ten yards and nae cover before we get tae the pit. Yon pit’s only aboot another ten yards frae a trench, but they’ll be there, all reight.’
‘They’ll be keeping their heads down,’ said Robert.
‘They’re nae lookin’ towards us,’ continued Frankie, ‘so we’ll awa’ up tae the top o’ the bank and then it’s a matter o’ gettin’ tae them before they spot us and dealing wi’ them before they can grab their rifles and open fire.’
‘Right,’ said Robert. ‘We’ll do it your way.’ He knew better than to argue with the expert. ‘This is it. Come on, lads, and good luck.’
‘Listen,’ said Frankie addressing the other three, ‘this is no game. When we get in there, we’ve got tae kill the lot o’ them. We’re in nae position tae tak’ prisoners. Then we use their gun to cover oor lads as they come in.’
Corporal Anderson replied with an evil grin throu
gh his blackened teeth.
It seemed to Robert that it took hours, though it was only a couple of minutes, before they reached the top of the bank. They were all watching Frankie, who had taken upon himself the mantle of leadership as easily and as naturally as if he had been born to it.
They peered over the top and there they could see the four Boers alert and watching, but looking the wrong way, towards the ground where they knew the battalion lay.
It seemed incredible to Robert that his little band was still unobserved, but it was. Frankie slipped a vicious-looking dirk from its sheath; he was wearing this in preference to the R.S.M.’s sword to which he was entitled. With Ian’s Webley in his left hand and the dirk in his right, he looked around to assure himself for the last time that they were all ready. The three soldiers lay waiting, with bayonets fixed, as the tension mounted. Robert cocked his revolver and glanced towards Frankie. Frankie nodded.
‘Now,’ said Robert, rising to his feet.
They rose from the bank and hurled themselves across the ten yards which separated them from the Boer machine-gun emplacement. They had only gone a couple of paces when a hoarse shout from the pit signalled that they had been seen.
They opened fire as they ran forward, but at the speed they were travelling it was impossible to take aim, and they scored no hits. Four of them made it to the emplacement. Private Robertson fell on the way there. One Boer had his rifle in his hands; he must have been the one that got Robertson. One was trying to swing the Maxim around and the other two were grabbing for their rifles. Frankie Gibson sprinted around to the side of the pit and slid into it with the wall at his back, grabbed the nearest Boer around the throat, and all but sliced his head off with his dirk.
Robert gave forth an almighty yell and jumped into the pit, firing as he went straight on to the bayonet of one of the Boers. Corporal Anderson shot the man as he was trying to free his weapon from Robert’s body, and then died himself, a dumdum through his kidneys which splattered his entrails all over the pit. Frankie, using the body of the dead Boer as a shield, calmly picked off the two remaining.
By now they could hear the clatter of men and weaponry coming from the trench which was only yards away, and there were only Frankie Gibson and Private Fraser left standing in the pit.
The Maxim was ready cocked with a full belt of ammunition. Frankie grabbed it and swung the unwieldy weapon around to bear on the trench. Fraser, who had been picked for his knowledge of machine guns, knelt at the side of the gun and fed the belt into it as Frankie opened fire.,
The Boers in the trench scuttled back behind a bend leaving several of their number writhing on the ground. Every time a head popped up, Frankie fired a burst and soon the Maxim was steaming.
‘It’s boiling!’ yelled Fraser.
‘Then piss on it, man!’ Frankie shouted back.
Fraser did as he had been bid, and while he was at it, Frankie shouted to him.
‘Here they come!’ he yelled.
Up from the yellow-brown earth the Maclaren Highlanders rose as a man, like a moving wave of khaki. For a moment there was silence, and in it Frankie was sure that he heard Ian Maclaren.
‘Maclaaaaarens CHAAAAAARGE!!!’ shouted the voice.
As one man they started running for the trenches, and the charge and the killing had begun.
Frankie kept up a stream of bullets low over the top of the trench, but it was still a horrifying spectacle. The Highlanders were swatted down in their dozens long before they were within fighting range of the trench. But at last they were there, leaping in on top of the Boers, stabbing and jabbing the guts out of one another with their bayonets, and within five minutes the trench was taken. Already the Gordons were tearing across the open ground. They leapt across the trench, now occupied by the Maclarens, and on to the Boers’ second line of defence. A bloody hand-to-hand struggle ensued in which quarter was neither asked nor given. But it could not last. The Maclarens had been decimated. The Gordons had suffered heavily, and Kelly-Kenny knew that he could not commit his Canadians without the risk of losing his entire force.
In a lull in the fighting the plaintive notes of the bugle could be heard calling the retire.
‘What dae we dae noo, sirr?’ asked Fraser.
‘We get tae hell oot of here,’ said Frankie. ‘We gan back.’
‘What aboot yon?’ Fraser indicated the Maxim. ‘We canna carry it.’
‘Awa’ you go, I’ll deal wi’ it,’ said Frankie.
‘Sir, you’ve been hit,’ said Fraser, seeing blood oozing down Frankie’s leg.
‘Aye,’ said Frankie, ‘I got a wee nick in the arse. Noo awa’ wi’ ye.’
Fraser climbed out of the pit and headed back the same way that they had come. Frankie found a large stone in the pit and smashed the Maxim’s breech mechanism.
He was just about to leave the pit when a sound made him whip around. It was Robert. He was not dead, not yet, though with a bayonet wound which had entered him around the navel and come out of his back through his lungs, he had not long to go. Frankie knew a dead man when he saw one and there was no mistaking the pallor on Robert’s face. He went over to him.
‘I’ll bide wi’ ye, sir,’ said Frankie.
Robert managed a negative motion of his head, and then, ‘Please ‒’ He barely breathed the word, and a stream of blood oozed out of his mouth. ‘End it, ahaaah ‒’
Frankie lifted up Ian’s Webley. ‘Ye mean?’
There was no word but the head nodded ever so slightly.
Frankie knew what Robert was asking him to do, and he knew that he would do it, but it did not stop the tears welling in his eyes. ‘Guidbye, sirr,’ he murmured and pressed the trigger.
After one last look around the carnage, he slipped out of the pit and headed for the rear of his own lines.
Once in the rear he sought out what was left of the battalion, who were exhaustedly trudging into reserve, leaving the Canadians to hold the forward positions. Almost the first man Frankie encountered was Corporal MacTavish.
‘Are you all right, jock?’ he called. MacTavish had a crude bandage around his head.
‘Och, I’m fine, sirr. But no many on them made it,’ was the reply.
‘Is the colonel ‒?’
‘He’s all rights I’ve seen him. He’s been hit but it doesna look tae bad. He got one in the arm or the shoulder or something.’
‘I’ve got tae find him,’ said Frankie. ‘His brother’s deed.’
‘Captain Robert?’ said MacTavish.
‘Aye.’
‘It’s a bloody awfu’ war.’
Frankie continued in his search for Ian and eventually found him propped against a rock with a medical orderly binding up his shoulder.
‘Where’s Bob?’ said Ian as soon as their eyes met, but the look on Frankie’s face gave him the answer.
‘There’s only me and Fraser left,’ he said. ‘Captain Maclaren’s no coming back, sir.’
‘You’re sure he’s dead?’
‘Aye, sir, he’s deed.’ Frankie could not tell him the rest.
Ian’s lips trembled, but only for a moment. This was all part of the game. This was all part of being a soldier. Robert had gone. Robert was his brother whom he loved. But so far as he knew, most of his men had gone, and nearly all his officers. It seemed to Ian unfair that he should still be alive.
‘Call the roll, Sergeant-Major,’ he said.
‘De ye mind if I get ma bum fixed up first, sir?’ asked Frankie.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Ian.
‘Och, I got a wee nick in it and it’s bleedin’ a bittie.’
‘Of course, Sergeant-Major,’ replied Ian, smiling in spite of his feelings. And as Frankie was about to go: ‘Mr Gibson, that was a magnificent job you did today. You will hear more of it.’
‘I’d rather forget it, sir,’ said Frankie grimly, and he moved on in search of a medic.
Kitchener was determined that he would take Cronje’s laager by a frontal assau
lt, but it was proving extremely costly in the lives of the men under his command. The Maclarens’ four companies had been reduced to only two companies of fit men. The rest were casualties, dead or wounded.
When he heard of the situation at Paardeberg, Lord Roberts left his sickbed and came straight up to the front to take personal command of the operation. Without criticizing him, he gave Kitchener another job and decided to pound Cronje into submission with his artillery. It came as a shock to Roberts when he discovered that there were many women and children in the laager and he promptly offered the Boers the chance to send them out to a place of safety. Cronje refused this out of hand, and so the slow process of shelling him into submission continued.
It was not until the twenty-seventh of February that General Cronje finally surrendered. This was a most significant day as it was the anniversary of the defeat which the Boers had inflicted on the British many years before at Majuba.
During the time of the shelling an increasing danger made itself felt, more deadly than the bullets of the Boers. The water of the Modder River, which was their only supply, was becoming increasingly polluted. Dysentery was rife throughout the British camp and, in its own insidious way, the water caused many more casualties than Kitchener’s attempt to storm the laager.
When Roberts moved on towards Bloemfontein, the Maclarens did not go with him. The remnants of the battalion were transferred to Kimberley for garrison duties. There, with the approval of Kelly-Kenny, Ian submitted a written report to Lord Roberts telling him of the part played by his brother and R.S.M. Gibson in that first attack on the laager at Paardeberg. Of course, communication being what it was, it took some time for Ian to receive a reply, but when it did come in the middle of March, Ian had a conversation with his R.S.M.
‘Sergeant-Major,’ he said, ‘I have no doubt that you will be delighted to hear that you have been awarded the Victoria Cross.’
‘Aye,’ said Frankie, as imperturbable as ever, and ever the practical Scot, ‘I believe there’s a wee pension goes wi’ it.’
‘Yes,’ said Ian, smiling. ‘As a matter of fact there is. I’m not sure what it is, about ten pounds a year, I think. And I believe that only noncommissioned ranks get the money.’
