Lord Roberts as Hospital Visitor.
It was while I was visiting the sick and suffering laid, of course without beds, on the bare floor of this extemporised House of Healing that our ever busy commander-in-chief called on a similar errand of pitying kindliness. Fortunately for all concerned the master-mind of the whole campaign is of a devout as well as kindly type.Lord Robertsnot only encouraged to the uttermost all army temperance work, being himself the founder of the A.T.A., but like Lord Methuen took a lively interest in the spiritual welfare of the troops. Yet never was a general more loved by his men, or more implicitly trusted. They reposed so much the calmer confidence in his generalship because of their instinctive belief in his goodness, and as an illustration of that belief the following testimony sent by a certain bombardier appeared in a recent report of Miss Hanson's Aldershot Soldiers' Home:—
"Lord Roberts! Well, he's justa father. Often goes round hospital in Bloemfontein, and it's 'Well, my lad, how are you to-day? Anything I can do for you? Anything you want?' and never forgets toseethe man has what he asks for. Goes to the hospital train—'Are you comfortable? Are yousureyou're comfortable?' Then it's 'Buck up! Buck up!' to those who need it. But when he sees a man dying, it's 'Can I pray with you, my lad?' I've seen him many a time praying, with not a dry eye near,—tears in his eyes and ours. It don't matter if there is a clergyman or anyone else present, if he sees a man very ill he will pray with him. Heisa lord!"
Whether in this story there is any slight touch of soldierly imaginativeness, I cannot tell, but happy is the general about whom his men write in such a fashion; and happy is the army controlled by such a head!
President Steyn's Sjambok.
On the Friday evening, a few hours before our arrival, President Steyn stood in the drift of the Kroonstad stream, sjambok in hand, seeking to drive back the fleeing Boers to their new-made and now deserted trenches; but the President's sjambok proved as unavailing as Mrs Partington's heroic broom. The Boer retreat had grown into a rout; and the President's own retirement that night was characterised by more of despatch than dignity. He is reported to have said, "Better a Free State ruined than no Free State at all." For its loss of freedom, and for its further ruin, no living man is so responsible as he. But for his sympathy and support the Boers would have made less haste in the penning of their Ultimatum, and war might still have slept.Steyn's ambition awoke it!
Whilst its President-protector fled, Kroonstad that night found itself face to face with pandemonium let loose. The great railway bridge over the Valsch was blown up with a terrific crash. The new goods station belonging to the railway, recently built at a cost of £5000, and filled with valuable stores, including food stuffs, was drenched with paraffin by theBoer Irish Brigade, and given to the flames; while five hundred sacks of Indian corn piled outside shared the same fate. No wonder that, as at Bloemfontein, the arrival of the Guards' Brigade was welcomed with ringing cheers, and the frantic waving by many a hand of tiny Union Jacks. Our coming was to them the end of anarchy.
It is however worthy of note that the Boers who thus gave foodstuffs to the flames, and strove continually totear up the rails along which food supplies arrived, yet left their wives and children for us to feed. About that they had no compunctions and no fear, in spite of the fabled horrors ascribed to British troops. They knew full well that even if those troops were half starved, these non-combatants would not be suffered to lack any good thing. Even President Kruger, though careful to carry all his wealth away, commended his wife to our tender keeping. Some of us would rather he had taken the wife and left the wealth; but concerning the scrupulous courtesy shown to her, no voice of complaining has ever been heard. When we ourselves were famished we fed freely the families of the very men who set fire to our food supplies; and their children especially were as thoughtfully cared for as though they were our own. War is always an accursed thing, but even in this dread sphere the Christ-influence is not unfelt.
A Sunday at last that was also a Sabbath.
To my intense delight after so many Sabbathless Sundays, I found myself privileged to conduct a well-attended parade service for the Nonconformists in the Guards' Brigade at 9A.M., and for the men of General Stephenson's Brigade at a later hour. In the afternoon I paid a visit to the native Wesleyan church which has connected with it about twelve hundred members in and around Kroonstad. The building, which is day school, Sunday school and chapel all in one, is already of a goodly size, but it was about to be enlarged when the war began. I found a capital congregation awaiting my appearing, the women sitting on one side, the men on the other. There werethree interpreters who translated what I said into Kaffir, Basuto and Dutch; an arrangement which gives a preacher ample time to think before he speaks; though once or twice I fear I forgot when number two had finished that number three had still to follow. I noticed when the collection was taken, there seemed almost as many coins as worshippers, and all the coins were silver, excepting only two. Yet this was a congregation of Kaffirs!
At night, assisted by the Canadian chaplain, I took the service in the Wesleyan English church, where the singing and the collection were both golden. So also was the text; and delightsomely appropriate withal. "The Most High ruleth the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever He will." Of the sermon based upon it however it is not for me to speak. So ended my first Sunday in Kroonstad, where I was the favoured guest of Mr and Mrs Thorn, late of Bristol, and still Britishers "to the backbone the thick way through."
Military Police on the march.
This memorable march from the Valsch to the Vaal was, in consequence of the transport difficulties already described, one of the hungriest in all our record. To all the other miseries of the men there was added an incessant pining for food which it was impossible for them to procure in anything like satisfying quantities, and I have repeatedly watched them gather up from the face of the veldt unwholesomenesses that no man could eat; I have seen them many a time thus try with wry face to devour wild melon bitter as gall, and then fling it away in utter disgust, if not despair.
Yet at the head of the Brigade there marched a strong body of Military Police whose one business it was to see that these famished men looted nothing. When a deserted house was reached no pretence at protecting it was made. Such a house of course never contained food, and our men sought in it only what would serve for firewood, in some cases almost demolishing the place in their eagerness to secure a few small sticks, or massive beams. Nothing in that way came amiss.
But if man, woman or child were in the house a cordon of police was instantly put round the building. The longing eyes and tingling fingers passed on, and absolutely nothing was touched except on payment. Tom Hood in one of his merry poems tells of a place:—
"Straight down the crooked laneAnd right round the square,"
where the most toothsome little porkers cried "Come eat me if you please." That, to the famine-haunted imagination of the troops, was precisely what many a well-fed porker on the veldt seemed to say, but as a rule say in vain. After thousands of troops had gone by, I have with my own eyes seen that lucky porker still there, with ducks of unruffled plumage still floating on the farmhouse pond, and fat poultry quite unconscious how perilous an hour they had just passed. Yet the owner of the aforesaid pig and poultry was out on commando, his mauser charged with a messenger of death, which any moment might wing its way to any one of us. No wonder if the famished soldiers could not quite see the equity of the arrangement which left him at liberty to hunt for theirlives but would not allow them to lay a finger on one of his barndoor fowls. It would be absurd to suppose that, in the face of such pressure, the vigilance of the police was never eluded; and our mounted scouts were always well away from police control. As the result their saddles became sometimes like an inverted hen-roost; heads down instead of up; but they were seldom asked in what market they had made their purchases or what price they had paid for their poultry.
It would require a clever cook to provide a man with three savoury and substantial meals out of a mugful of flour, about a pound of tough trek ox, and a pinch of tea. Yet occasionally that was all it proved possible to serve out to the men, and their ingenuity in dealing with that miserable mugful of flour often made me marvel. They reminded me not unfrequently of the sons of the prophets, who, in a day of dearth went out into the fields to gather herbs and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds and shred them into the pot and they could not eat thereof. Violent attacks of dysentery and kindred complaints only too plainly proved that occasionally in this case also, as in that ancient instance, there was apparently ample justification for the cry, "Oh thou man of God, there is death in the pot." Nevertheless, and notwithstanding the lynx-eyed vigilance of the police, the smell from the pot was sometimes astonishingly like unto the smell of chicken-broth; which clearly shows what good cooking can accomplish even on the barren veldt.
A General's glowing eulogy of the Guards.
This amazing ability of the Guards to face long marches with short rations was triumphantly maintained,not for a few months merely but to the very end of the campaign. In the February of 1901 it fell to the lot of the Scots Guards, for instance, to accompany General French's cavalry to the Swaziland border. They took with them no tents and the least possible amount of impedimenta of any kind. But for three weeks they had to face almost incessant rain, and as they had no shelter except a blanket full of holes, they were scarcely ever dry for half a dozen hours at a time. The streams were so swollen that they became impassable torrents, and the transport waggons were thus left far behind, with all food supplies. For eight or ten days at a stretch men and officers alike had no salt, no sugar, no tea, no coffee, no jam, no flour, bread or biscuits; no vegetables of any kind; but only one cupful of mealies or mealie meal per day, and as much fresh killed meat as their rebellious stomachs could digest without the aid of salt or mustard. Yet the only deaths were two by drowning; and at the close of the operations the general addressed them as follows:—
General French's farewell speech to the 1st Brigade, Scots Guards at Vryheid, on April 1st, 1901:—
Major Cuthbert, officers, N.C.Os. and men of the Scots Guards. The operations in the Eastern Transvaal are brought to a close, and I have had the opportunity of addressing the Royal Horse and Field Artillery and Cavalry; but, although you were with me in the Western Transvaal, this is the first time I have had the pleasure of addressing you on parade. The operations from Springs to Ermelo, and from Ermelo to Piet Retief, were conducted under the most trying circumstances and severe hardships. Lying on the ground, which was under water, with no shelter, with very short rations andfor sometime none at all, you had to exist on the meagre supplies of the district, which were very poor. At one time it caused me the deepest anxiety, as in consequence of the weather all communications were temporarily suspended; but the cheery manner and disposition of this splendid battalion did a great deal to disperse this anxiety. What struck me most forcibly was your extraordinary power of marching. I have frequently noticed that when the cavalry and mounted infantry were engaged (happily very slightly) in these operations, I have been surprised on looking round to see this splendid battalion close behind and extended ready to take part in the fighting, and have wondered how they got there. Another important item I wish to remark upon is the magnificent manner in which this battalion performed outpost duty and night work. On several occasions news has come to me through my Intelligence Department of a meditated attack on the camp of this column, but owing to the skilful way in which the outposts were thrown out and the vigilance of the sentries the attack was never developed.Another thing I noticed was the highly disciplined state of the battalion. It is not always in fighting that a soldier proves his qualities. Though at the commencement of the campaign you had hard fighting and heavy losses, the past few weeks stand unsurpassed, I believe, for hardships in the history of the campaign! I thank every officer and N.C.O. for the great assistance given to me during these operations. Should your services be required elsewhere, or further hardships have to be endured, I know you will do as you have done before. I wish you all good-bye.
Major Cuthbert, officers, N.C.Os. and men of the Scots Guards. The operations in the Eastern Transvaal are brought to a close, and I have had the opportunity of addressing the Royal Horse and Field Artillery and Cavalry; but, although you were with me in the Western Transvaal, this is the first time I have had the pleasure of addressing you on parade. The operations from Springs to Ermelo, and from Ermelo to Piet Retief, were conducted under the most trying circumstances and severe hardships. Lying on the ground, which was under water, with no shelter, with very short rations andfor sometime none at all, you had to exist on the meagre supplies of the district, which were very poor. At one time it caused me the deepest anxiety, as in consequence of the weather all communications were temporarily suspended; but the cheery manner and disposition of this splendid battalion did a great deal to disperse this anxiety. What struck me most forcibly was your extraordinary power of marching. I have frequently noticed that when the cavalry and mounted infantry were engaged (happily very slightly) in these operations, I have been surprised on looking round to see this splendid battalion close behind and extended ready to take part in the fighting, and have wondered how they got there. Another important item I wish to remark upon is the magnificent manner in which this battalion performed outpost duty and night work. On several occasions news has come to me through my Intelligence Department of a meditated attack on the camp of this column, but owing to the skilful way in which the outposts were thrown out and the vigilance of the sentries the attack was never developed.
Another thing I noticed was the highly disciplined state of the battalion. It is not always in fighting that a soldier proves his qualities. Though at the commencement of the campaign you had hard fighting and heavy losses, the past few weeks stand unsurpassed, I believe, for hardships in the history of the campaign! I thank every officer and N.C.O. for the great assistance given to me during these operations. Should your services be required elsewhere, or further hardships have to be endured, I know you will do as you have done before. I wish you all good-bye.
Good news by the way.
Among those who, like myself, on October 21st left England in the same boat as General Baden-Powell's brother, the most frequent theme of conversation was the then unknown fate of Mafeking. Its relief was the news most eagerly enquired for at St Vincent's, and we were all hugely disappointed when on reaching the Cape we learned that the interesting event had not yet come off. Some toilsome and adventurous months brought us to May 21st, our last day at Kroonstad; and it proved a superbly satisfactorysend-off on our next perilous march to learn that day that the long-delayed but intensely welcome event had at last actually taken place just four days before. It filled the whole camp with pardonable pride and pleasure, though the sober-sided soldiers on the veldt scarcely lost their mental balance over the business as the multitudes at home, and as all the great cities of the empire seem to have done. We know it was a tiny town defended by a tiny garrison of for the most part untrained men; and therefore in itself of scant importance; but we also know that for many a critical week it had held back not a few strong commandoes in their headlong rush towards the Cape; it had for weary months illustrated on the one hand the staying power of British blood, and on the other the timidity and impotence of the Boers as an attacking force. Not a single town or stronghold to which they laid siege had they succeeded in capturing; the very last of the series was safe at last, and after all that had been said about British blunderings, this event surely called for something more than commonplace congratulations. Hereward the Wake was wont to say, "We are all gallant Englishmen; it is not courage we want: it is brains"; but at Mafeking for once brains triumphed over bullets. A new Wake had arisen in our ranks, and so Mafeking has found a permanent place among the many names of renown in the long annals of our island story.
It was an admirably fitting prelude to another historic event of that same week. On the last anniversary we shall ever keep of our venerable Queen's birthday, on May 24th, the Orange River Colony was formally annexedto the British Empire, and Victoria was proclaimed its gracious sovereign. That empire has grown into the vastest responsibility ever laid on the shoulders of any one people, and constitutes a stupendously urgent call to the pursuit and practice of righteousness on the part of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. It is a superb stewardship entrusted to us of God; and "it is required in stewards that they be found faithful."
Over the Vaal at last.
All that week the Guards continued in hot pursuit of the Boers without so much as once catching sight of them. Repeatedly, however, we scrambled through huge patches of Indian or Kaffir corn, enough, so to say, to feed an army, but all left to rot and perish uncut. It was one of the few evidences which just then greeted us that war was really abroad in the land, and that they were no mere autumn manœuvres in which we then were taking part. Some of the rightful owners of that corn were probably among our prisoners of war at St Helena, spending their mourning days in vainly wondering how long its hateful unfamiliar waves would keep them captive. Others had, perchance, themselves been garnered by the great Harvester, who ever gathers his fattest sheaves hard by the paths of war.
Occasionally we came, in the course of our march, on a recently-deserted Boer camp, with empty tins strewn all about the place and the embers of camp fires still glowing, but never so much as a penny worth of loot lying on the ground. Either they had little to leave, or else they so utilised the railway in assisting to get their belongingsaway that in that respect they had the laugh of us continually. This final service rendered, the Boers made haste to prevent the rail being used by us; and so far as time or timidity would permit, they blew up every bridge, every culvert, as soon as their last train had crossed it. Fortunately of the long and beautiful bridge across the Vaal we found only one broad span broken.
About nine o'clock on Sunday morning the troops reached Val Joen's Drift, the terminal station on the Orange Free State Railway. This drift it was that President Kruger had once resolved to close against all traffic in order the more effectually to strangle British trade in the Transvaal. Another mile or two through prodigiously deep sand, brought us to the Vaal River coal mines, with their great heaps of burning cinders or other refuse, which brought vividly to many a north countryman's remembrances kindred scenes in the neighbourhood of busy Bradford and prosperous Sunderland.
Then came the great event to which the laborious travel of the last seven months had steadily led up, the crossing of the Vaal, and the planting of our victorious feet on Transvaal soil. Here we were assured the Boers would make their most determined stand; and the natural strength of the position, together with the urgent necessities of the case, made such an expectation more than merely reasonable. Yet to our delighted wonderment not a single trench, so far as we could see, had been dug, nor a solitary piece of artillery placed in position. From the top of a cinder heap a few farewell mauserbullets were fired at our scouts, and then as usual our foemen fled. Once in a Dutch deserted wayside house I picked up an "English Reader," which strangely opened on Montgomery's familiar lines:—
"There is a land of every land the pride;Belov'd by Heaven o'er all the world beside.Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?Art thou a Man, a Patriot? Look around!Oh thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"
"There is a land of every land the pride;Belov'd by Heaven o'er all the world beside.Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?
Art thou a Man, a Patriot? Look around!Oh thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,That land thy country, and that spot thy home!"
Boer patriotism we had supposed to be not merely pronounced, but fiercely passionate; and "a Dutchman," said Penn, "is never so dangerous as when he is desperate"; yet when the Guards' Brigade stepped out of the newly-conquered Free State into the about to be conquered Transvaal, scarcely a solitary Dutchman appeared upon the scene to dispute our passage, or to strike one desperate blow for hearth and altar and independence. In successive batches we were peacefully hauled across the river on a pontoon ferry bridge; and as I leaped ashore it was with a glad hurrah upon my lips; a grateful hallelujah in my heart![Back to Contents]
A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS
Whilst our narrative pauses for a while beside the Vaal which served as a boundary between the two Republics, it may be well to devote one chapter to a further description of the work of the chaplains with whom in those two Republics I was brought into more or less close official relationship. Concerning the chaplains of other Churches whose work I witnessed, it does not behove me to speak in detail; I can but sum up my estimate of their worth by saying concerning each, what was said concerning a certain Old Testament servant of Jehovah:—"He was a faithful man and feared God above many."
Of Wesleyan acting-chaplains, devoting their whole time to work among the troops, and for the most part accompanying them from place to place, there were eight; and to the labours of three of them—the Welsh, the Australian and the Canadian—reference has already been made. A fourth, the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, represented the Wesleyan Church in the Omdurman Campaign and was officially present at the memorial service for General Gordon; but in this campaign he was unfortunately shut up in Ladysmith, so that we never met. His story however has been separately told in "Chaplains at the Front." There remain three whomI repeatedly saw, and who reported to me from time to time the progress of their work—viz. the Revs. M. F. Crewdson, T. H. Wainman, and W. C. Burgess, each of whom in few words it will now be my privilege to introduce.
A Chaplain who found the Base became the Front.
Mr Crewdson, who had for some years been my colleague in England, at the commencement of the war was compelled to leave Johannesburg, and became a refugee minister at the Cape, where on my arrival he was one of the first to welcome me. Possessed of brilliant preaching abilities and uncontrollably active, a life of semi-indolence soon became to him unendurable; and presently his offer was accepted of service with the troops, but instead of being sent as he desired into the thickest of the fray, he found himself detailed for hospital and other homely duties, at De-Aar Nauwpoort and Norval's Pont. Here for over twelve months he rendered admirable, though to him monotonous, service; when, lo, suddenly the Boers doubled back upon their pursuers, and attempted not unsuccessfully though unfruitfully, a second invasion of Cape Colony. The base became the front, and this vast region of hospitals and supply depôts became the scene of very active operations indeed, in which the Guards' Brigade, now recalled from Koomati Poort, took a prominent part. Mr Crewdson found himself at last not where wounds are healed merely, but where wounds are made, and for the moment, being intensely pro-British, found in that fact a kind of grim content.
Pathetic scenes in Hospital.
Few chaplains in the course of this campaign have had so extensive an experience in hospital work as Mr Crewdson, and in the course of his correspondence he relates many pathetic incidents that came under his own personal observation. At De-Aar he found a lance-corporal with a fractured jaw and some twenty other slight or serious wounds, all caused by fragments of a single shell. "I was one of seven," he said, "entrenched in a little sangar on a hill. Hundreds of Boers and Blacks came up against us. One of the seven disappeared, four others were killed; so to my one surviving comrade I said, 'Look here, corporal, we'll stick this out till one of us is wounded then the other must look after him.'" Presently that unlucky shell made a victim of this plucky fellow; but a hero it could not make him. He was that already.
A company of the West Yorkshire Mounted Infantry only twenty strong had sustained, in storming a kopje, no less than ten casualties. The lieutenant, shot through the base of the skull, lay in that hospital in utterly helpless, if not hopeless, collapse; and near to him was his sergeant who, while bandaging the wounds of a comrade, was shot through the bridge of the nose, and his eye so damaged it had to be removed; whilst yet another of this group, shot through the shoulder, with characteristic cheerfulness said, "Oh, it's nothing, sir. I'll be at it again in a week." Some of them would say that, brave fellows, if their heads were blown off—or would try to!
Writing from Colesberg at a somewhat later date MrCrewdson informed me that going the round of hospitals,—where he met representatives from Ceylon, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom,—had filled much of his time during the previous fortnight. "I cannot tell the sweet brave things I have heard from tongues that had almost lost their power to speak. One was a Canadian lad, who had passed through his course as a student for the ministry, and being refused as a chaplain had volunteered as a trooper, and when the chaplain tenderly asked, 'How are you, old man?' he received in a kind of gasp this reply: 'Trusting Jesus!' Another, now nearly convalescent, said, 'I have been a Christian for twenty years, but the weeks spent in hospital have taught me more of God, and of the wonders of His grace, than years of health.' His eyes glistened and then dimmed as with faltering voice he added, 'I want to say, that it was good for me that I was afflicted.'"
A battlefield scene no less pathetic.
In the course of these incessant hospital rounds Mr Crewdson found an Australian whose leg had been shattered by an explosive bullet and who told him this strange tale. When thus wounded he fell between two rocks and found himself unable to move, but while lying there a young well-dressed Boer discovered him, and with a perfect English accent said, "Are you much hurt, old fellow?" The Australian, suspecting treachery, turned white and trembled in spite of the stranger's kindly tone.
"Oh, don't be afraid of me, you are hurt enough already.Shall I get you some water?" was the instant Boer rejoinder to the Australian's signs of suspicion. The water was soon produced; and next there came forth from the pocket of that young Boer a couple of peaches, which were offered to the sufferer, and thankfully accepted.
"You must be faint with this fierce sun beating on you," said this strange foeman; and thereupon he sat upon a rock for over an hour in such a position that his shadow sheltered the wounded man, and surely, as in Peter's story, that shadow must have had grace and healing in it. Ultimately an ambulance arrived, and this chivalrous Transvaaler crowned the helpfulness of that eventful hour by tenderly lifting the crippled Australian on to a stretcher, with an expression of hope that he would soon be well again.
At the close of this unnatural conflict it is our best consolation to be divinely assured that the brotherliness which thus presented peaches to a wounded foe will ultimately triumph over the bitterness which winged the explosive bullet that well-nigh killed him.
Look on this picture—and on that.
While it is undeniable that cases of chivalrous courtesy such as this occurred repeatedly in the course of the campaign, it is equally undeniable that the Boers sometimes deliberately set aside all the usages of civilized war. Mr Crewdson, for instance, says that after the Slingersfontein fight he met at least a dozen men who declared that the Boers drove up the hill in front of them hundreds of armed Kaffirs, and then themselves crept up on hands and knees under cover of this living moving wall. Such strategy is exceedinglyslim; but they who make use of semi-savages must themselves for the time being be accounted near akin to them. One word from the Queen would have sufficed to let loose on the Boers the slaughterous fury of almost all native South Africa, but had that word been spoken there could have been found no forgiveness for it in this life or in the life to come. Yet Slingersfontein was not the only sad instance of this sort, for Sir Redvers Buller in his official report concerning Vaalkrantz solemnly declares that then also there were armed Kaffirs with the Boer forces, and that there also the Red flag was abominably abused, for he himself and his Staff saw portions of artillery conveyed by the Boers to a given position in an ambulance flying the Geneva flag. The loss of honour is ever out of all proportion to the help such treachery affords.
A third class Chaplain who proved a first-rate Chaplain.
It was at Waterval Boven I first met my assistant-chaplain, the Rev. T. H. Wainman, and found him all that eulogising reports had proclaimed him to be. Seventeen years ago he accompanied the Bechuanaland Expedition under Sir Charles Warren, and then acquitted himself so worthily that the Wesleyan Army and Navy Committee at once turned to him in this new hour of need, resting assured that in him they had a workman that maketh not ashamed. At the time he received the cable calling him to this task he was a refugee minister from Johannesburg, residing for a while near Durban. There he left his family and at once hurried to report himself in Chieveley Camp, where a singular incident befell him.
Running in the wrong man.
A few hours before his arrival an official notice was issued that a Boer spy in khaki was known to be lurking in the camp, and all concerned were requested to keep a sharp look-out with a view to speedy arrest. Mr Wainman's appearance singularly tallied with the published portraiture of the aforesaid spy, and all the more because after his long journey he by no means appeared parson-like. He was just then as rough looking as any prowling Boer might be supposed to be. When, therefore, he was challenged by the sentinel as he approached the camp, and to the sentinel's surprise gave the right password, he was nevertheless told that he must consider himself a prisoner, and was accordingly marched off to the guard-room for safe keeping and further enquiry. It was a strange commencement for his new chaplaincy. More than one of our chaplains has been taken prisoner by the Boers, but he alone could claim the distinction of being made a prisoner of war, even for an hour, by his own people, till a yet more painful experience of the same type befell Mr Burgess; nor did ill-fortune fail to follow him for some time to come. He was attached to a battalion where chaplains were by no means beloved for their own sake; and though one of the most winsome of men, he was made to feel in many ways that his presence was unwelcome.
A Wainman who was a real waggoner.
Presently, however, there came an opportunity which he so skilfully used as to become the hero of the hour, and in the end one of the most popular men in the whole Brigade. When on the trek one of the transportwaggons stuck fast hopelessly in an ugly drift, and no amount of whip-leather or lung-power sufficed to move it. One waggon thus made a fixture blocks the whole cavalcade, and is, therefore, a most serious obstruction. But Mr Wainman had not become an old colonist without learning a few things characteristic of colonial life, including the handling of an ox team. He therefore volunteered to end the deadlock, and in sheer desperation the Padré's offer was, however dubiously, accepted. So off came his tunic; this small thing was straightened, that small thing cleared out of the way, then next he cleared his throat, and instead of hurling at those staggering oxen English oaths or Kaffir curses, spoke to them in tones soothing and familiar as their own mother tongue. Some one at last had appeared upon the scene that understood them, or that they could understand. Then followed a long pull, a strong pull, a pull altogether, and lo as by magic the impossible came to pass. The waggon was out of the drift! "Brave padré," everybody cried. His name means "waggoner," and a right good waggoner he that day proved to be. This skilful compliance with one of the requirements of the Mosaic laws helped him immensely in the preaching of the Gospel. He became all the more powerful as a minister because so popular as a man. In many ways his mature local knowledge enabled him to become so exceptionally useful that he received promotion from a fourth to a third class acting chaplaincy, and the very officers who at first deemed his presence an infliction combined to present him with a handsome cigarette casein token of uttermost goodwill. You can't tell what even a chaplain is capable of till you give him a chance.
Three bedfellows in a barn.
When Mr Wainman first reached his appointed quarters, the wounded were being brought in by hundreds from the Colenso fight; later on he climbed to the summit of Spion Kop, "The Spying Mountain," to search for the wounded, and to bury the dead that fell victims to the fatal mischance that having captured, then surrendered that ever famous hill; and at night he slept in a barn with a Catholic priest lying on one side of him and an Anglican chaplain on the other—a delightful forecasting that of the time when the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The Christian Catholicity to which this campaign has given rise is one of its redeeming features.
While the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins, the Wesleyan chaplain from Crete remained shut up in Ladysmith, Mr Wainman remained with the relieving force, ultimately accompanied General Buller into the Transvaal, where I frequently met him, and finally, on the approaching conclusion of the war, resumed charge, like Mr Crewdson, of his civilian church in Johannesburg. No man learns to be a soldier by merely watching the troops march past at a royal review; neither did Mr Wainman acquire his rare gifts for such rough yet heroic service while sitting in an easy chair. He endured hardness, as every man must who would serve his generation well according to the will of God.
A fourth-class Chaplain that was also a first-rate Chaplain.
The Rev. W. C. Burgess was a refugee minister from Lindley, in the Orange River Colony, and like Mr Wainman, was early chosen for service among the troops, joining General Gatacre's force just after the lamentable disaster at Stormberg. He was attached to the "Derbys," and found among them a goodly number of godly men, as in all the battalions and batteries that constituted that unfortunate column. Some of these were Christian witnesses of long standing, including no less than five Wesleyan lay preachers, and some were newly-won converts. Hence, at the close of Mr Burgess's very first voluntary service, one khaki man said to him, "I gave my heart to the Lord last Sunday on the line of march before we met the enemy"; while many more, though not perhaps walking in the clear shining of the light of God's countenance, yet spoke freely of their religious upbringing and relationships. It was possibly one such who, at the close of a little week-night service, where nearly all the men were drenched with recent rain, suggested the singing of "Love divine, all loves excelling." The character of that man's upbringing it is not difficult to divine. Another said, "I have a wife and four children who are praying for me"; while yet another added, "For me an aged mother prays." It would be strange indeed if such confessors were not themselves praying men. They were to be found by hundreds, probably by thousands, among the troops sent to South Africa. Never was an army so prayed for since the world began; and seldom, if ever, has anarmy contained so many who themselves were praying men.
A Parson Prisoner in the hands of the Boers.
Nearly four months after the Stormberg tragedy, but only four days after that at Sanna's Post, Mr Burgess found himself, with three companies of the Irish Rifles and two of the Northumberland Fusiliers, cooped up on a kopje about three miles long not far from Reddersburg. With no water within reach, with no guns, and an almost exhausted store of rifle ammunition, this small detachment found itself indeed in evil plight when De Wet's commando of 3200 men put a girdle of rifle barrels around it, and then began a merciless cannonade with five guns. That cannonade indeed was merciless far beyond what the rules of modern war permit, for it seemed to be directed, if not mainly, certainly most effectually, on the ambulances and hospital tents, over which the Red Cross flag floated in vain. In the vivid description of the fight which Mr Burgess sent to me, he says that several of the ambulance mules were killed or badly wounded, and it was a marvel only one of the ambulance men was hit, for in one of their tents were four bullet holes, and a similar number in the Red Cross flag itself. Some of the occupants of the hospital were Boer prisoners, some were defenceless natives, so all set to work to throw up trenches for the protection of these non-combatants, and among the diggers and delvers was the Wesleyan chaplain with coat thrown off, and plying pick like one to the manner born. To that task he stuck till midnight, and oh, that I had been there to see! A chaplain thusturning himself into a navvy is probably no breach of the Geneva Convention, but all the same it is by no means an everyday occurrence; and those Boer prisoners would think none the worse of that Wesleyan predikant's prayers after watching the work, on their behalf, of that predikant's pick.
The defence of Reddersburg was one of the least heroic in the whole record of the campaign, and the troops early next morning surrendered, not to resistless skill or rifle fire on the part of the Boers, but to the cravings of overmastering thirst. A relieving force was close at hand when they ran up the horrid white flag, and had they been aware of that fact we may be sure no surrender would have taken place. It requires scant genius to be wise after the event, and still scantier courage to denounce as lacking in courage this surrender of 500 to a force six times as large. That was on April 4th, and among those taken captive by De Wet was the Wesleyan chaplain. His horse, his kit, and all his belongings at the same time changed hands, and though he was solemnly assured all would be restored to him, that promise still awaits redemption.
Caring for the Wounded.
Mr Burgess, though stripped of all he possessed, except what he wore, received De Wet's permission to search for the wounded as well as to bury the dead; and in one of his letters to me he tells of one mortally wounded whom he thus found, and who, in reply to the query, "Do you know Jesus?" replied, "I'm trusting Jesus as my Saviour"; then recognising Mr Burgess as his chaplain, he added, "Pray for me!" so, amid onlooking stretcher-bearers and mounted Boers,the dying lad was commended to the eternal keeping of his Saviour. It is this element which has introduced itself into modern warfare which will presently make war impossible, except between wild beasts or wilder savages. Prayer on the battlefield, and the use on the same spot of explosive bullets, is too incongruous to have in it the element of perpetuity.
The number of soldiers that thus die praying, or being prayed for, may be comparatively small; but even the unsaintly soldier, when wounded, often displays a stoicism that has in it an undertone of Christian endurance. A lad of the Connaughts at Colenso, whom a bullet had horribly crippled in both legs, shouted with defiant cheerfulness to his comrades—"Bring me a tin whistle and I will play you any tune you like"; and a naval athlete at Ladysmith, when a shell carried away one of his legs and his other foot, simply sighed, "There's an end of my cricket." Pious readers would doubtless in all such cases much prefer some pious reference to Christ and His Cross in place of the tin whistle and cricket; but even here is evidence of the grit that has helped to make England great, and it by no means follows that saving grace also is not there. The most vigorous piety is not always the most vocal.
After nearly four and twenty hours of terrific pelting by shot and shell, Mr Burgess tells me our total loss was only ten killed and thirty-five wounded. Not one in ten was hit; and so again was illustrated the comparative harmlessness of either Mauser or machine-gun fire against men fairly well sheltered. This war thus witnessed astrange anomaly. It used the deadliest of all weapons, and produced with them a percentage of deaths unexampled in its smallness.
How the Chaplain's own tent was bullet-riddled.
Late on in the campaign Mr Burgess was moved, not to his own delight, from near Belfast to Germiston, but was speedily reconciled to the change by the receipt of the following letter from an officer of the Royal Berks:—
"Truly you are a lucky man to have left Wonderfontein on Monday; and it may be that it saved your life, for the same night we were attacked. It was a very misty night; but we all went to bed as usual, and at midnight I was awakened by heavy rifle fire. Almost immediately the bugle sounded the alarm, and everybody ran for their posts like hares. From where I was it sounded as if the Boers had really got into camp; but after two hours of very heavy firing they retired. Yesterday morning, when I went over the ground,the first thing I saw was six or eight bullet holes through your tent; and one end of our mess had twenty-three bullet marks in it. Nooitgedacht, Pan and Dalmanutha were all attacked the same night at exactly the same hour, causing us a few casualties at each place."
It may perchance be for our good we are sometimes sent away from places where we fain would tarry.
A sample set of Sunday Services.
The following typical extract is taken from Mr Burgess's Diary:—
"Sunday, January 20th.—Rode out to Fort Dublin for church parade at 9A.M.Held parade in town church at 11. Then rode out to surrendered burghers' laager and held service in Dutch, fully a hundred being present. Conducted service for children in town church at 3.30P.M., and at 4.30 rode out to Hands Up Dorp; two hundred present and ten baptisms. Managed to ride back to town just in time for the evening service in the church at 6.30, which was well attended.""Oh, day ofrestand gladness!"
"Sunday, January 20th.—Rode out to Fort Dublin for church parade at 9A.M.Held parade in town church at 11. Then rode out to surrendered burghers' laager and held service in Dutch, fully a hundred being present. Conducted service for children in town church at 3.30P.M., and at 4.30 rode out to Hands Up Dorp; two hundred present and ten baptisms. Managed to ride back to town just in time for the evening service in the church at 6.30, which was well attended."
"Oh, day ofrestand gladness!"
As the war was nearing its close, I sent Mr Burgess tolabour along the blockhouse lines of communication, which have Bloemfontein for their centre. Here the authorities granted to him the use of a church railway van, in which he travelled almost ceaselessly between Brandfort and Norval's Pont, or beyond; and thus he too for a while became chaplain to part of the Guards' Brigade.[Back to Contents]
THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY
In addition to the eight Acting Chaplains referred to in previous chapters, some forty-five or fifty Wesleyan ministers were appointed "Officiating Clergymen." These, while still discharging, so far as circumstances might permit, their ordinary civilian duties, were formally authorised to minister to the troops residing for a while in the neighbourhood of their church. Many of the local Anglican clergy were similarly employed, and supplemented the labours of the commissioned and acting Anglican chaplains sent out from England. Their local influence and local knowledge enabled them to render invaluable service, and great was their zeal in so doing. While the regular chaplains who came with the troops as a rule went with the troops, these fixtures in the great King's service were able not only to make arrangements for religious worship, but for almost every imaginable kind of ministry for the welfare of the men. They were often the Army Chaplain's right hand and in some cases his left hand too. It would be a grievous wrong, therefore to make no reference to what they attempted for God and the Empire, though it is impossible here to do more than hurriedly refer to a few typical cases that in due course were officially reported to me.