Frere, Tuesday, November 1899.

Friday, November 24th, was the day after the Willow Grange engagement. The railway line north and south of Estcourt was still in the enemy’s hands; the action had not helped us to join hands with the force at Mooi River; in short, Estcourt was still cut off from the world, and seemed even more likely than before to be shelled instantly by the enemy. Men were raising their eyes up to the surrounding hills, and already some of the railway staff, thinking the first shells would be directed to the station, had built themselves bomb-proof retreats. Neighbouring farmers, surprised and rendered homeless by the sudden march of events, were gathered in Estcourt and lectured us all on the futility of non-colonial strategy, cursed their loyalty, or reckoned their losses by the cattle straying on a thousand hills, and destined to be driven north by the Boers. Any time the next two days the dead and wounded were still being discovered and brought in by searching parties on the scene of the fight; the tinkling bell of the little church tolling the dead to their graves was a frequent sound, and the slow, dismal funeral procession, with the weird appearance which is imparted to it by the rifles carried butt-end first was a common sight.

Some of the wounded were brought in after they had been treated by the Boers. They seemed well pleased with their treatment in the enemy’s camp where, one who smacked his lips told me, they had had chicken broth. On the other hand, a few seemed to have been managed ignorantly by the Boer doctors, and I saw one of these poor fellows who was dying quite unnecessarily of gangrene.

A word about the dishonourable or inhuman behaviour attributed by some of the newspapers on each side to the other side. I see in some Pretoria papers “atrocities” charged to the British arms; so far as I have seen the treatment of Boer prisoners the charges are quite ludicrously untrue, and from what I have seen of the spirit of British troops in this campaign I should say that they would not cease to be so. In like manner misbehaviour has sometimes been ludicrously charged to the Boers. At the action of Brynbella Hill I heard a man lying on Beacon Hill say, “They’re firing at the ambulances again,” and one of his comrades replied, “Oh, they ain’t particular.” At that moment shells were certainly falling near the ambulance waggons, but the waggons were moving along at the back of Beacon Hill where they were completely hidden from the Boers, and so far as I know the Boers are not less unable than ourselves to see through a hill, nor is it more incumbent upon them than upon us to cease firing upon something which is a fair prey, because ambulance waggons drive into the zone of danger. One thing in any case might be done to lessen danger. It is hard at the long range possessed by modern weapons to distinguish things quickly and accurately, and I think the red cross on the ambulance waggons should certainly be painted larger. Why, instead of being a small cross in one place, should it not be painted over the whole length and breadth of the white hood? As it is, I should not accuse myself of short-sight if, at two or three miles distance, I mistook most of our ambulance waggons for ammunition waggons.

Again, I heard it said on Beacon Hill that the Boers had hoisted a white flag and were still firing. It was some time before I could get evidence as to the spot where the white flag was, and when it was pointed out to me I found that it was a white horse which had been lying dead all the morning on the side of Brynbella. On the other hand there seems to be no doubt that at Ladysmith the Boers sent an officer of artillery into the town disguised as the driver of an ambulance waggon. In any case camp gossip, and camp “shaves,” are the gospel of Tommy, and it were almost a cruelty to deprive him of them, especially when one sees that his credulity can, with charming lack of logic, run side by side with the straightest and manliest convictions to the contrary, based on his own experiences. The wounded men who had been treated in the Boer camp were all agreed that their captors “meant to be very decent chaps,” and the proof of this was that they had offered their prisoners cigarettes and had been sedulous in shaking hands with them. “It’s not you fellows we want to shoot,” one of the Boers had said, “it’s the officers.” The mortality among the officers proves the remark true enough, and the absence of casualties amongst officers at Brynbella was perhaps due to the fact that there the officers, or most of them, modified their distinctive marks and sank their identity in the ranks by carrying rifles. Wisdom in South African warfare will perhaps spread from so brave and trusted a mentor as Colonel Baden-Powell, and will in time overcome the proud but costly tradition of the British officer.

To return to my wounded men—one of them was astonished rather than resentful at having been examined as to his religious beliefs. “Are you a Christian?” a Boer asked him. “No,” said Tommy, the brazen infidel. “Then you can never win battles,” said his captor. Tommy thought that an odd sequence, but the philosopher will see that a conviction, or even a superstition, of that quality is after all a concrete weapon which the serious calculator must set against guns and ammunition in his reckoning. One man confident is better than two without confidence of whatever origin; and the spirit of, say, one hundred men who have made themselves victors by prayer must be met by (let one say) an extra field piece with a range of at least 6,000 yards. When one comes to think of it, there is a curious contrast in this war—the Boer with his simple system of commando, his lack of conventional military rigour, his obedience, when all has been said, to one man; and ourselves, to whom war has become, by the traditions of a class, a sort of service game with medals and kudos for prizes. It is kudos versus Kruger in one, perhaps not the deepest, of its aspects.

The two days after Brynbella were certainly a gloomy time in Estcourt. I know of only one incident that tempered them and that was due, characteristically, to the Dublin Fusiliers. When Estcourt came to be shelled, as we expected it would be, we should have no gun with which to match that extraordinary long-range weapon of the Boers which had appeared at Brynbella. Therefore the Dublin Fusiliers thought that this forty-pounder, as it was supposed to be, would be better out of the way. They sent a formal “requisition” to the General demanding that they should be allowed to capture it, and the General answered that he would allow them to try if he saw a good opportunity. Here was a spirit indeed—after all the losses and hardships of the fighting north of Ladysmith, after becoming kitless and homeless, after losing nearly a whole company in the armoured train disaster, after having their number reduced to about 630, formally to requisition the General that they should be allowed to sacrifice themselves in an assault on the great gun! In war the Dublins may easily be forgiven the military eccentricities which are the sorrow of their officers in peace. A fatalist or a fanatic is a hard man to beat in battle, but perhaps the man of unquenchable high spirits is harder.

How could one correct or extinguish the spirit of the hero in this little narrative?—An officer saw a private of the Dublins riding into Estcourt on a Boer pony, to which, as the officer suspected, with a penetration that was not likely to err in the circumstances, the rider had no right. Obviously the rider had never been on a horse before. The officer thought there was good reason to stop him.

“What are you doing with that horse? Where did you get it?”

“If you plaze, sorr,” was the answer, “I met a gintleman, I think he was a Boer, an’ the gintleman, he sez, ‘ Ye’ll have to come along wid me, young man,’ an’ I sez, ‘ All right, sorr; ’ but me roifle happened to be loaded, an’, if you plaze, sorr, it wint off furrst!”

“And where are you taking the horse to now?” the officer demanded.

“I’m going to join the mounted infanthry,” said the man.

And was it not a member of the same regiment into whose hands a Boer officer fell after the battle of Dundee? The Boer, about to be looted, thought to save his property by pleading his dignity.

“I’m a field-cornet,” he said.

“An’ if ye were a field-thrumpet it would make no difference at all,” said the Irishman; “ye’ll have to shell out, ould man.”

On Saturday, November 25th, I accompanied a party of cavalry who made a reconnaissance westward from Estcourt. On all sides the scouts had told us that the Boers were trekking north, and the cavalry marched towards Ulundi—not the Ulundi of the Zulu War, of course—in the hope of cutting off some of the waggons and cattle.

A party of the enemy was seen, but was considered too powerful to be attacked, and the cavalry returned without doing anything. That night there was no longer a doubt about the movement of the enemy; they were moving bodily north with their guns and waggons, and driving before them all that they needed of the sleek cattle of Natal.

And so Estcourt was not to be shelled after all; by the act of the enemy the relieving force was relieved.  The Boers had discovered, what we had not yet proved to them, that the position they occupied between the 6,000 odd men of Estcourt and the 8,000 odd men of Mooi river was too precarious. Also, as we discovered from dispatches taken on Boer prisoners, they were being drawn back by news of the British advance from Cape Colony.

Now what was this force of Boers which had raided Natal, chosen its own routes, selected its cattle, hauled guns which outranged ours on to almost impregnable hills, cut off in Estcourt part of the force which was meant to relieve Ladysmith, and caused the pickets of Mooi river to fall back closely on to the village? I do not know that our scouts were ever able accurately to determine the numbers, but I have the evidence of a well-known and intelligent farmer who stayed in his home near Weenen after the district had been occupied by the Boers. He kept his cattle, saved his home, and conversed daily with the Boers. His evidence was this: that the party of the enemy which had passed west of Estcourt towards Willow Grange a week before was, roughly, 650, and that the body which had passed east of Estcourt through Weenen was, roughly, 3,000. The two bodies after skirting Estcourt had joined near Willow Grange. For myself, I should say that the Boers who passed west of Estcourt were certainly more than 650; let me say at the outside, however, 2,000. As to those who passed by his own home, through Weenen, he must be allowed to know better. The conclusion is that the Boers who raided Natal south of Ladysmith numbered at the most about 5,000 men.

At dawn on Sunday, November 26th, there was but one story—the Boers had vanished; the hills were empty; Estcourt was safe; forward, by grace of the enemy, forward! Already troops were dropping in from Mooi River; in a few hours the line was reopened and the wires mended; and along all the road north towards Frere moved one long, slow line of cavalry, troops, guns, waggons, teams of sixteen oxen, teams of mules ten-in-hand (often enough ten-out-of-hand), equipment, the pantries and the kitchens of an army, bakers, cooks, farriers, followers of all sorts, doctors, bearers, ambulance waggons—the wonderful dusty spectacle of an army moving. Forward! The tide had turned; you could see it in men’s faces. And to signalise the turn some one of importance arrived the next morning quite unexpectedly—some one who had come to find out just what had been happening in Natal all this time.

Sir Redvers Buller was in Pietermaritzburg.