Pretoria: November 24, 1899.
The position of a prisoner of war is painful and humiliating. A man tries
his best to kill another, and finding that he cannot succeed asks his enemy
for mercy. The laws of war demand that this should be accorded, but it is
impossible not to feel a sense of humbling obligation to the captor from
whose hand we take our lives. All military pride, all independence of spirit
must be put aside. These may be carried to the grave, but not into
captivity. We must prepare ourselves to submit, to obey, to endure. Certain
things—sufficient food and water and protection during good behaviour—the
victor must supply or be a savage, but beyond these all else is favour.
Favours must be accepted from those with whom we have a long and bitter
quarrel, from those who feel fiercely that we seek to do them cruel
injustice. The dog who has been whipped must be thankful for the bone that
is flung to him.
When the prisoners captured after the destruction of the armoured train
had been disarmed and collected in a group we found that there were
fifty-six unwounded or slightly wounded men, besides the more serious cases
lying on the scene of the fight. The Boers crowded round, looking curiously
at their prize, and we ate a little chocolate that by good fortune—for we
had had no breakfast—was in our pockets, and sat down on the muddy ground to
think. The rain streamed down from a dark leaden sky, and the coats of the
horses steamed in the damp. 'Voorwärts,' said a voice, and, forming in a
miserable procession, two wretched officers, a bare-headed, tattered
Correspondent, four sailors with straw hats and 'H.M.S. Tartar' in gold
letters on the ribbons—ill-timed jauntiness—some fifty soldiers and
volunteers, and two or three railwaymen, we started, surrounded by the
active Boer horsemen. Yet, as we climbed the low hills that surrounded the
place of combat I looked back and saw the engine steaming swiftly away
beyond Frere Station. Something at least was saved from the ruin;
information would be carried to the troops at Estcourt, a good many of the
troops and some of the wounded would escape, the locomotive was itself of
value, and perhaps in saving all these things some little honour had been
saved as well.
'You need not walk fast,' said a Boer in excellent English; 'take your
time.' Then another, seeing me hatless in the downpour, threw me a soldier's
cap—one of the Irish Fusilier caps, taken, probably, near Ladysmith. So they
were not cruel men, these enemy. That was a great surprise to me, for I had
read much of the literature of this land of lies, and fully expected every
hardship and indignity. At length we reached the guns which had played on us
for so many minutes—two strangely long barrels sitting very low on carriages
of four wheels, like a break in which horses are exercised. They looked
offensively modern, and I wondered why our Army had not got field artillery
with fixed ammunition and 8,000 yards range. Some officers and men of the
Staats Artillerie, dressed in a drab uniform with blue facings, approached
us. The commander, Adjutant Roos—as he introduced himself—made a polite
salute. He regretted the unfortunate circumstances of our meeting; he
complimented the officers on their defence—of course, it was hopeless from
the first; he trusted his fire had not annoyed us; we should, he thought,
understand the necessity for them to continue; above all he wanted to know
how the engine had been able to get away, and how the line could have been
cleared of wreckage under his guns. In fact, he behaved as a good
professional soldier should, and his manner impressed me.
We waited here near the guns for half an hour, and meanwhile the Boers
searched amid the wreckage for dead and wounded. A few of the wounded were
brought to where we were, and laid on the ground, but most of them were
placed in the shelter of one of the overturned trucks. As I write I do not
know with any certainty what the total losses were, but the Boers say that
they buried five dead, sent ten seriously wounded into Ladysmith, and kept
three severely wounded in their field ambulances. Besides this, we are told
that sixteen severely wounded escaped on the engine, and we have with the
prisoners seven men, including myself, slightly wounded by splinters or
injured in the derailment. If this be approximately correct, it seems that
the casualties in the hour and a half of fighting were between thirty-five
and forty: not many, perhaps, considering the fire, but out of 120 enough at
least.
After a while we were ordered to march on, and looking over the crest of
the hill a strange and impressive sight met the eye. Only about 300 men had
attacked the train, and I had thought that this was the enterprise of a
separate detachment, but as the view extended I saw that this was only a
small part of a large, powerful force marching south, under the personal
direction of General Joubert, to attack Estcourt. Behind every hill, thinly
veiled by the driving rain, masses of mounted men, arranged in an orderly
disorder, were halted, and from the rear long columns of horsemen rode
steadily forward. Certainly I did not see less than 3,000, and I did not see
nearly all. Evidently an important operation was in progress, and a
collision either at Estcourt or Mooi River impended. This was the long
expected advance: worse late than never.
Our captors conducted us to a rough tent which had been set up in a
hollow in one of the hills, and which we concluded was General Joubert's
headquarters. Here we were formed in a line, and soon surrounded by a
bearded crowd of Boers cloaked in mackintosh. I explained that I was a
Special Correspondent, and asked to see General Joubert. But in the throng
it was impossible to tell who were the superiors. My credentials were taken
from me by a man who said he was a Field Cornet, and who promised that they
should be laid before the General forthwith. Meanwhile we waited in the
rain, and the Boers questioned us. My certificate as a correspondent bore a
name better known than liked in the Transvaal. Moreover, some of the private
soldiers had been talking. 'You are the son of Lord Randolph Churchill?'
said a Scottish Boer, abruptly. I did not deny the fact. Immediately there
was much talking, and all crowded round me, looking and pointing, while I
heard my name repeated on every side. 'I am a newspaper correspondent,' I
said, 'and you ought not to hold me prisoner.' The Scottish Boer laughed.
'Oh,' he said, 'we do not catch lords' sons every day.' Whereat they all
chuckled, and began to explain that I should be allowed to play football at
Pretoria.
All this time I was expecting to be brought before General Joubert, from
whom I had some hopes I should obtain assurances that my character as a
press correspondent would be respected. But suddenly a mounted man rode up
and ordered the prisoners to march away towards Colenso. The escort, twenty
horsemen, closed round us. I addressed their leader, and demanded either
that I should be taken before the General, or that my credentials should be
given back. But the so-called Field Cornet was not to be seen. The only
response was, 'Voorwärts,' and as it seemed useless, undignified, and even
dangerous to discuss the matter further with these people, I turned and
marched off with the rest.
We tramped for six hours across sloppy fields and along tracks deep and
slippery with mud, while the rain fell in a steady downpour and soaked
everyone to the skin. The Boer escort told us several times not to hurry and
to go our own pace, and once they allowed us to halt for a few moments. But
we had had neither food nor water, and it was with a feeling of utter
weariness that I saw the tin roofs of Colenso rise in the distance. We were
put into a corrugated iron shed near the station, the floors of which were
four inches deep with torn railway forms and account books. Here we flung
ourselves down exhausted, and what with the shame, the disappointment, the
excitement of the morning, the misery of the present, and physical weakness,
it seemed that love of life was gone, and I thought almost with envy of a
soldier I had seen during the fight lying quite still on the embankment,
secure in the calm philosophy of death from 'the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune.'
After the Boers had lit two fires they opened one of the doors of the
shed and told us we might come forth and dry ourselves. A newly slaughtered
ox lay on the ground, and strips of his flesh were given to us. These we
toasted on sticks over the fire and ate greedily, though since the animal
had been alive five minutes before one felt a kind of cannibal. Other Boers
not of our escort who were occupying Colenso came to look at us. With two of
these who were brothers, English by race, Afrikanders by birth, Boers by
choice, I had some conversation. The war, they said, was going well. Of
course, it was a great matter to face the power and might of the British
Empire, still they were resolved. They would drive the English out of South
Africa for ever, or else fight to the last man. I said:
'You attempt the impossible. Pretoria will be taken by the middle of
March. What hope have you of withstanding a hundred thousand soldiers?'
'If I thought,' said the younger of the two brothers vehemently, 'that
the Dutchmen would give in because Pretoria was taken, I would smash my
rifle on those metals this very moment. We will fight for ever.' I could
only reply:
'Wait and see how you feel when the tide is running the other way. It
does not seem so easy to die when death is near.'
The man said, 'I will wait.'
Then we made friends. I told him that I hoped he would come safely
through the war, and live to see a happier and a nobler South Africa under
the flag which had been good enough for his forefathers; and he took off his
blanket—which he was wearing with a hole in the middle like a cloak—and gave
it to me to sleep in. So we parted, and presently, as night fell, the Field
Cornet who had us in charge bade us carry a little forage into the shed to
sleep on, and then locked us up in the dark, soldiers, sailors, officers,
and Correspondent—a broken-spirited jumble.
I could not sleep. Vexation of spirit, a cold night, and wet clothes
withheld sweet oblivion. The rights and wrongs of the quarrel, the fortunes
and chances of the war, forced themselves on the mind. What men they were,
these Boers! I thought of them as I had seen them in the morning riding
forward through the rain—thousands of independent riflemen, thinking for
themselves, possessed of beautiful weapons, led with skill, living as they
rode without commissariat or transport or ammunition column, moving like the
wind, and supported by iron constitutions and a stern, hard Old Testament
God who should surely smite the Amalekites hip and thigh. And then, above
the rain storm that beat loudly on the corrugated iron, I heard the sound of
a chaunt. The Boers were singing their evening psalm, and the menacing
notes—more full of indignant war than love and mercy—struck a chill into my
heart, so that I thought after all that the war was unjust, that the Boers
were better men than we, that Heaven was against us, that Ladysmith,
Mafeking, and Kimberley would fall, that the Estcourt garrison would perish,
that foreign Powers would intervene, that we should lose South Africa, and
that would be the beginning of the end. So for the time I despaired of the
Empire, nor was it till the morning sun—all the brighter after the rain
storms, all the warmer after the chills—struck in through the windows that
things reassumed their true colours and proportions.
