Fire Across the Veldt

by John Wilcox

  The army HQ was Melrose House, a two-storey, wooden dwelling near the centre of the town, fringed by a conventional African veranda or stoep and whose only clue to its militaristic role was the presence of a flagpole bearing a Union Jack, and the constant toing and froing of uniformed men at its entrance. Fonthill presented his card and was asked to wait in an anteroom.

  The wait was short and Simon was ushered into a much larger room. He absorbed a quick impression of map-covered walls and tables holding what seemed to be objets d’art of an eclectic variety and he recalled reading somewhere that the soldier was a collector of such things. Then he was confronted by Kitchener himself, who strode towards him, hand extended, seeming to fill the room.

  Fonthill regarded him intently. In a very short time, Kitchener had come to represent the imperial age in a manner that had even eluded such eminent military leaders as Wolseley and Roberts. Perhaps it was the great moustache, which thrust across the man’s upper lip, oiled, clipped yet luxurious and slightly tilted upwards at the end so confidently. He was tall but surprisingly narrow-shouldered, and quite slim. The face behind the moustache was bronzed with purple, heavy jowls and hair slicked back either side of a central parting. It was the eyes, however, which drew the gaze. They were set far apart and there was a curious cast in the right eye. And they were china blue, exuding a kind of intensity that was compelling.

  ‘Good of you to come so quickly, Fonthill,’ said the general. He grasped Simon’s hand in a firm grip. ‘Do sit down.’ Kitchener strode back to his chair but remained standing, holding his visitor’s card in his hand. He indicated it. ‘C.B. eh? Order of the Bath. That was for Khartoum, I seem to remember?’

  ‘Yes, General. Came up with the rations.’

  ‘I’m sure it didn’t. Getting through the Mahdi’s lines, being captured and then escaping was quite a feat. Didn’t your man get a DSM?’

  ‘Yes. Jenkins, the Distinguished Service Medal. That certainly didn’t come up with the rations. Couldn’t have done a thing without him.’

  ‘And is he still with you?’

  ‘Yes, he’s here now. We’ve been together, one way or another, for more than twenty years.’

  ‘Splendid. We can use him, too. Now then. You must be wondering what I have in mind, eh? Don’t suppose my letter helped much?’ Fonthill noted that Kitchener never seemed to smile. His face remained set, despite the modulations of his voice. It was as though it was that of an icon.

  ‘No, sir. But I am anxious to help.’

  ‘Good. The C-in-C assured me you would.’

  Fonthill marvelled at this. The last time he had met the famous “Bobs”, the general had distinctly taken umbrage at Simon’s refusal to rejoin the army. He kept silent now. It was up to Kitchener to do the talking.

  ‘Yes. Quite. You must have been quite a bit out of touch in China with things here in South Africa? Yes?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘Very well. A bit of background is necessary. Come over here.’

  The two men approached the biggest of the maps, which almost covered one wall of the room. It was a large-scale ordnance of the whole of South Africa. It was studded with pins, red and blue.

  ‘Disregard the flags,’ said Kitchener. ‘Look here. This is where the war really started, here on the Natal border.’ He indicated the right-hand side of the Southern African continent. ‘This is where the Boers made their first thrust, while we were outnumbered and before Buller arrived with reinforcements. That bloody fool Sir George White …’ He looked up sharply. ‘Fonthill, I am treating you as a senior officer and speaking freely to you. I presume I can rely on your discretion?’

  ‘Absolutely, General.’

  ‘Good. Well, White got himself cooped up here in Ladysmith with a goodly portion of his Natal command and remained stuck there. Same thing happened to a smaller degree at Kimberley where your old friend Rhodes stayed with his mines, squealing to be rescued, and to an even smaller degree here in the north-west at Mafeking. Now, when General Buller arrived with his army he felt that his main priority had to be to relieve Ladysmith – not least because White had got a large unit of our cavalry stuck there doing nothing; and cavalry, I don’t need to tell you, Fonthill, is worth its weight in gold in this country.’

  Simon nodded.

  ‘Trouble is that Buller got himself into an awful hole here on the Tugela and was savagely mauled by the Boers, firing from entrenched positions under the Boer general, Botha, at Colenso. Same thing had happened to the west on the Modder, where Methuen tried to get through to Kimberley and was soundly defeated. Shortly afterwards, Buller caught it again at Spion Kop, another bloodbath. It was a terrible time and that’s when it was realised back home that we were fighting a savagely determined foe, equipped with the latest weapons.’

  Kitchener regarded Fonthill with his icy stare. ‘Not Afghans with muskets nor Dervishes with spears. But marksmen, with Mauser rifles that could outrange us and extremely modern Creusot and Krupps artillery from Europe. This had become a war where the range of the modern rifle had spread the battlefield over five or ten miles. Conventional scouting was made impossible over the flat ground of the veldt, where the best scouts in the world could be picked off by the enemy more than a mile away.

  ‘What’s more,’ Kitchener went on, speaking quietly, ‘our artillery turned out to be useless, as I expected. All our field guns were originally twelve-pounders, they were then bored out to make them fifteen-pounders, with the result that they could be used only with reduced charges.’ The general smoothed upwards the edges of his moustache and his voice took on a confidential air, as though breathing confidences to a friend. ‘Do yer know, Fonthill, we had become virtually the laughing stock of Europe. We had sent overseas the biggest British army in history to overcome one of the world’s smallest nations – although to be fair, most of the army had not yet arrived. Even so, we were ridiculed, with Germany leading the laughter. The Boers were saying that our command was so incompetent that they would court-martial any of their men who killed a British general.’

  A silence hung in the air for a moment and then the general continued. ‘So Roberts was sent out to take command, with me as his chief of staff and with a vast number of reinforcements. You will remember, of course, from Afghanistan that the field marshal knows what he is doing and his grasp of the situation and the increased size of the army soon produced results. He outflanked the enemy and relieved Kimberley and then we cornered a large section of the Boer army here,’ he tapped the map, ‘at Paardeberg and Cronje was forced to surrender with some five thousand men.’

  Simon nodded. ‘The turning point?’

  ‘In terms of conventional warfare, yes. I was able to throw out the Boer commandos who were trying to foment rebellion in the Cape Colony and in the north there were further successes when we beat Botha at Diamond Hill, here, near Pretoria, and even better when we were able to relieve Mafeking and then take Johannesburg, with its important mines, and the Transvaal capital here. Importantly, Buller – a falsely maligned general, in my view – was able, at last, to break through to relieve Ladysmith and the Boers were unrolled all across the map, with President Kruger fleeing through Mozambique in the east here to take ship to Holland.’

  For the first time, a faint smile crept across Kitchener’s broad face. ‘War over, then, eh?’

  Fonthill returned the smile. ‘Except that it wasn’t.’

  ‘Quite so, except that the chief, Field Marshal Roberts, is more or less convinced that it is. You may have heard that Wolseley is retiring as head of the army at the Horse Guards?’

  ‘Ah, no. I had not.’ A faint pang of regret shot through Fonthill at the news. He and Jenkins had served under the field marshal – guyed by W.S. Gilbert as ‘the very model of a modern major general’ on the London stage – in campaigns on the Mozambique border, in the conquest of Egypt and then in the abortive attempt to relieve Gordon, and he had great respect for the little man.

  ‘Yes. Bobs will
return to England very shortly to take up the post and I will take over here. I think the chief believes that he will be leaving me with just a bit of clearing up to do. But I knew it wouldn’t be as easy as that and that is why I sent for you. Now, come and sit down and I will explain.’

  The two strode back and Fonthill looked across at the tall soldier now with a growing regard. No one had greater respect for the Boers than Simon. He had seen, in the Transvaal War, how competent they had been in outmanoeuvring a conventional army in the field and then defeating it in a pitched battle at Majuba. But to hear a British general give an ‘amateur army’ credit was new to him. From Isandlwana (‘let the Zulus come – we’ll give them a bloody nose’) to the Sudan (‘the Dervishes are not disciplined, they will never break a British square’) he had heard British officers pour scorn on their opponents. The change was refreshing. He sat on the edge of his chair listening carefully to the tall man opposite.

  Kitchener leant forward. ‘We were told that the Boers would run away. Well, they ran away very often, but they always came back again. We were told that they would never hold together in any cohesive formation but I fully believe that there is no one more self-confident of his own individual opinions than the Boer. They have subordinated themselves to their leaders and have worked together with discipline. We have seen them courageous in attack and in retreat. They have always shown an ability to give lessons to us all.’

  Fonthill opened his mouth to speak but the general held up his hand. ‘There is another characteristic they have displayed which, if we are true descendants of our forefathers, we ought to be most capable of fully appreciating. I refer to that wonderful tenacity of purpose, that “don’t know when you are beaten” quality which they are prominently displaying in this war. There may be individuals among them whose characteristics and methods we do not like but, judged as a whole, I maintain that they are a virile race.

  ‘Now, this was underlined about six months ago, when we were rolling ’em back all along what we then thought was the front in the north, and the Boer leaders held a meeting – they call it a krijgsraad or council of war – about a hundred and thirty miles north of Bloemfontein just a few days after the fall of the Free State capital. They seemed to have lost the war. It was Christiian de Wet, the new commandant of the Free State army, who had a different idea. Guerilla warfare. Take to the veldt.’

  The general was now almost animated and made a slashing motion with his arm. ‘Cut out the cumbersome wagon trains so beloved of the Boers from the Great Trek and which trapped Cronje. No more fighting “at the front”. Instead, adopt a raiding strategy behind the British lines, attacking our lines of communications, which, Fonthill, are damned long and vulnerable, swooping down on our flanks, hitting and riding off again, hitting us where it hurts. Riding swiftly and carrying little provisions—’

  Fonthill interrupted. ‘Just a bag of flour, a parcel of tea and a few strips of biltong on the saddle bow.’

  Kitchener frowned. ‘What? How do you know that?’

  ‘I saw it.’ And he explained his party’s brush with de Wet on the Free State veldt.

  The general blew out his cheeks and leant back in his chair. ‘Well bless my soul, Fonthill. You’re not in this damned country five minutes and you meet one of the enemy’s leading generals, raid his camp and steal back your horses from him.’ The glare softened into a grin that seemed to sit ill at ease beneath the great moustache. ‘Well done, my dear fellow. And you say he betrayed his intention to invade the Cape Colony?’

  ‘So he let slip to my wife. She is here to write for the Morning Post, you know. She seized her opportunity to interview him.’

  ‘Ah yes. The formidable Miss Griffith.’ A brief look of embarrassment flashed across Kitchener’s face. ‘Yes, excuse me, Fonthill. Fact is, I don’t have much time for the Fleet Street scribblers who are out here. Neither does Roberts. He … ah … of course remembers your wife from the second Afghan War, you know.’

  Fonthill stifled a smile. Alice had infuriated Roberts by reporting on and attacking in print his policy of destroying Afghan villages. To say that they had clashed would be an understatement.

  Then that unfamiliar smile crept back across the general’s fierce countenance. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘if she’s writing for the Morning Post that should get that arrogant young pup Winston Churchill off my back. He can’t make up his mind whether he’s is out here as a politician, a serving officer or a journalist. Perhaps your wife will knock him off his perch.’

  ‘Perhaps so, sir. But you were saying …?’

  ‘Yes. The Cape Colony. I would be grateful if your wife could come in here as soon as possible and tell me exactly what de Wet said. If they are going south again, I need to be prepared. Milner – he’s the high commissioner in the Cape, don’t yer know – is in a constant funk about rebellion there.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Right. Now back to you. Apart from our long and vulnerable lines of communication, the army’s problem out here is that it is slow and ponderous. We are even worse than the Boers with their wagon trains and women and children. We can’t stray more than eight miles from the railway lines before we get into trouble. Enteric fever is growing and we are burdened with the need to look after this huge army and feed it. We can fight all right, but we can’t pin down these Boer commandos to oppose us. Very selfish of them. It’s not just de Wet in the Free Province. Botha has reorganised his fighting men to do the same thing in the Transvaal and there’s de la Rey there, too, another good man. Hit and run. It has only just started but it will get worse.’

  Fonthill frowned. He thought he could see which way Kitchener’s mind was working. ‘So,’ he said, ‘fight them at their own game …?’

  ‘Exactly.’ The general had tilted his chair backwards but now it came thudding down to give emphasis to his words. ‘Two things.’ He held up one surprisingly slim finger and slammed it into his other palm. ‘Firstly, I aim to cut off these commandos’ source of supply. So destroy the farms that supply them …’

  Simon had a momentary memory of Afghan villages burning high up in the Hindu Kush and his wife’s tears and fury at the sight. Here, he thought, trouble could lie.

  But Kitchener was continuing. The second finger crashed into the palm. ‘Secondly, as you perceptively say, fight ’em at their own game.’ He leant back in his chair again. ‘The key to doing that, of course, is cavalry and horses. And both have been in short supply in this war. But now we are getting horses from all over the Empire and I am beginning to form flying columns that can move like the Boers do – live out on the veldt on horseback without a supply train, picking up information, tracking down the enemy and leading our men to them. Pinning them down before they can take flight again. I want you, Fonthill, to lead one of those columns. Not one of the heavier groups that will confront the Boers but an irregular unit – a scouting force with a bit of depth – that will catch ’em, perhaps pin ’em down until the larger column comes up. What do you say?’

  Fonthill frowned. ‘What do you mean, General? Back in the army, formally, after all these years?’

  ‘Yes. Rank of colonel, a special service officer. Your man as senior warrant officer. At home, all sorts of chaps are rallying round to the colours and shipping out here. Which is fine. But, my dear fellow, I particularly need you. Someone who can think outside the framework of conventional soldiering. Someone not – what shall I say – bogged down by years of regimental command. I hear that it was you who laid out Wolseley’s plan of attack on the bPedi camp on the Mozambique border back in the eighties. Brilliant piece of thinking. Roberts warns me that you will never rejoin the regular ranks. But I think he is wrong. The point is, Fonthill, your country needs you.’

  The china-blue eyes penetrated his own.

  Fonthill shifted in his seat. ‘As I say,’ he said eventually, ‘I am anxious to help, but I do not wish to take up a commission again. I am – what shall I say – uneasy at the thought of conforming�
�’

  But Kitchener interrupted. ‘That’s the whole point. You won’t conform. You will be out on your own, with your men, breaking the damned rules if you have to. Only reporting to John French, who commands my cavalry, when you have to, and getting provisions and that sort of thing. Very much your own command, Fonthill, after all these years.’

  Simon seized on the point. ‘Ah, cavalry, General.’ His mind recalled stiff-backed Hussars and Lancers with their pennanted spears, the gallant arme blanche of the army, charging with raised swords to a bugle call and led by brave and quite stupid officers – all that was wrong with the regular army. ‘What you describe would not be a task for the cavalry,’ he said. ‘It must be mounted infantry. Good horsemen but no sabre rubbish. They must be excellent shots but able to dismount and deploy in a second and—’

  He was interrupted again by what sounded like a chuckle from the general – except that his face hardly seemed to move. ‘Absolutely, my dear fellow. Couldn’t have described it better myself. So you will accept?’

  Fonthill thought quickly. ‘How many men do you see in this command?’

  Kitchener leant forward. ‘Not many. Not a conventional battalion or anything like that. Perhaps about a hundred men, maybe a few more. Suck it and see. Find out how many you need in practice. Not so many that you are strewn out across the veldt but enough to frighten a commando when you surprise them. I will get you some of the best horses newly arrived from home.’

  ‘No.’ Fonthill spoke quickly. ‘No cavalry mounts. They would be too big for this job – too difficult to feed and too large a target for the Mausers. We would need local mounts happy out on the veldt, used to feeding on what pasture there is, even in winter. Basuto ponies would be best. They are what the Boers use. What about men?’