It is strange to me that I should feel compelled to begin a
journal only on the eve of my departure from this
God-forsaken place where, truth be told, no civilized man
should ever have made his home (and increasingly, I fear,
none did). How can I explain myself ? Let me just say that
this conflict has not lacked for chronicles and, for my part,
I have been paralysed by the most peculiar funk.
Although I make no claims to valour, many have been
made on my behalf. So, should my words be read at some
future time by Mother, Father, Catherine or, God willing,
my child or grandchild, it is important that they – that is to
say, ‘you’ – should not consider me coward either, for this is
not that sort of confession. You must believe that I have
served Queen and country as I always meant to, with every
muscle in my body, every facet of my wit and wholehearted
passion. Ask any who served under me and they will tell you
the same. Indeed, examine my record and you will see I was
offered invalid’s passage home three months since, but
refused it that I might take up this grim post at Standmere.
For my actions at Paardeberg, some called me a hero. But
they were not true military men who know the chaos of
battle and the unpredictability of the desperate human spirit.
Find a dozen sweats to tell you about a hero and you may be
surprised to hear as many different descriptions. One may
tell you about a fine fellow who was one of the first to fall to
a Mauser’s bullet; another, a reckless type who hadn’t the
imagination to think himself a fool. But, should you ask a
real old fundi, he’ll tell you that bravery is short-lived, fear a
constant companion and that the greatest challenge facing
any hero is to leave heroism behind, to reject coarse lusts in
favour of the subtle sympathies prerequisite in a man of
God, science and peace.
For my part, of course, I can only tell you what I know,
which is this: he is a hero who confronts the truth honestly,
off the battlefield as well as on it, who looks terror squarely
in the eye and is man enough to recognize the face that
stares back at him as none other than his own. It would be
remiss, and render this journal unworthy, therefore, if I did
not admit that I have been fearful, impotent even, to record
the true horror of this place and the dark reflection it throws
upon myself, my superiors and the whole of Her Majesty’s
great Empire. To do so now is my only hope of respite and
redemption.
My initial intention for this journal is simply to record
some of what I have witnessed. Perhaps that is all I will
manage. My wound is festering and Nurse O’Brian – a fine
Irish lass but no medic – fears the infection may spread with
fatal consequence before I can reach a Cape surgeon. I must
confess I am not unduly perturbed by this and I am prepared
to abandon myself to Fate (for there’s no evidence of our
Lord’s presence here) – such is my mind. Indeed, I have
come to regard the state of my gammy leg as metaphoric of
this whole bloody mess. As my wound is to me, so is this
war to the Empire. It was initially painful but no more than
that. Now, through a lack of care, competence and
conscience, it may yet threaten life itself.
If Fate does indeed spare me, however, and carries me
home on the breath of its mockery, I believe I must use this
journal to begin a thorough investigation of the English
nature. It was Kipling who wrote, ‘What should they know
of England who only England know?’ Never before have I
felt the import of a general question so personally.
I am a proud subject of a great nation, a nation that has
built the widest Empire man has seen and brought
civilization, Christianity and prosperity to every territory it
touches. Such achievements would surely not have been
possible without the distinctive attributes of the English
character: singularity of purpose, rigour of planning,
compassion for the unfortunate and humility before God.
And yet here at Standmere, I see no evidence of purpose,
planning, compassion or humility, only chaos and inhumanity.
In my despair, I have spent some time considering the
customs of the kaffir. For all his savagery and heathenism,
there is much to admire. His society, for example, is
organized on a principle he calls ‘umbuntu’, which means, I
am told, ‘we are people through each other’. I cannot
express how painful it was for me to hear such simplicity!
For I fear that in this place we have become less than
human, less even than the Negro.
When I return home, therefore, I will –
[Fire damage has rendered the following two pages of the
journal illegible]
– but it was the thirst that was most terrible.
I have always been the hardy sort and I managed better
than many, though my throat was painfully parched and my
tongue cracked and blistered. But some of my men were
awfully afflicted with blindness and fever and some even
took to drinking their own water, a copper-brown colour
and noisome too.
If you thought about it an instant, this battle swiftly
highlighted the absurdities of human conflict. There were
Cronje´’s Boers on one bank of the Modder and here were we
on the other, both sides half crazed with thirst as a thousand
gallons passed between us every second beneath the crack of
the guns.
By the evening of 20 February it was insufferable. We had
already lost more than a hundred men and the enemy about
the same, but it was water that dominated our every waking
thought and the increasing frenzy of our dreams in snatched
moments of sleep. I had my men on half rations and they
must have been hungry but none had the saliva to swallow
even half an ounce of biscuit. Such thirst leads to a certain
kind of mania and it was in such a state that I decided I’d
prefer to die sated than shrivelled. I summoned Macintosh to
my quarters and had him rustle up a dozen canteens.
Honestly expecting failure, I did not tell the men what ruse
I had planned, but my sergeant was keen as mustard from
the off – the wholehearted, instinctive sort who seems
perennially primed for a spot of derring-do.
The moonlight might have been daylight to Mac and me,
the way our hearts raced, but we made it to the riverbank
easily enough and began to fill the canteens one by one. We
could hear the enemy on the other side, yapping in that
guttural way of theirs. I was quite sure we’d be seen but Mac
was calmness personified and we had those tins brimming in
no time. Only then did we realize that lugging twelve up
a steep ridge between the pair of us was a task to challenge
Hercules.
Mac hissed that we should leave four behind but, in my
crazed state, I could not agree. What was going through my
mind was this: my men would be back in the thick of it at
first light, killing and being killed, and I couldn’t stand to see
another fall in silence, the howl of his soul strangled in his
dehydrated throat. If my men wanted to scream, they would
scream.
We would have made it had I not tripped at the very top
of the ridge and dropped one canteen that bounced noisily
down the slope. Mac reached down for me and pulled me up
with those thick pig-farmer’s arms that had spent a lifetime
hauling swine from one pen to another. But the bullets were
already flying and one bit into my left shoulder and another
into my left calf.
As God is my witness, I would have happily lain down to
die with nothing for company but a drink of water, but Mac
dragged me up saying, ‘Come on, sir. Not far now.’ So,
I stumbled all the way back to camp, still carrying five
canteens, blind with pain but fearful that, if I fell, I must
suffer the indignity of returning to my men under the arm of
a giant Scotsman, squealing like a piglet.
The men made quite a fuss of us that night as they drank
their fill. My sergeant recounted the story a dozen times,
embellishing my bravery a little more and ignoring his own
with each telling. The next morning I was stretchered out on
the convoy for Bloemfontein leaving my chaps in the care of
a well-intentioned but green young fellow by the name of
Hay. I heard later that he was dead before sunset.