The
Greater Part Of The Column Has Abandoned Its Tents And Is Bivouacking
In The Open.
It is a wonderful and impressive sight.
At the first
view, an army in being, when it is spread out as it is in the Tugela
basin back of the hills, seems a hopelessly and irrevocably entangled
mob.
An army in the field is not regiments of armed men, marching with a
gun on shoulder, or crouching behind trenches. That is the least,
even if it seems the most, important part of it. Before one reaches
the firing-line he must pass villages of men, camps of men, bivouacs
of men, who are feeding, mending, repairing, and burying the men at
the "front." It is these latter that make the mob of gypsies, which
is apparently without head or order or organization. They stretched
across the great basin of the Tugela, like the children of Israel,
their camp-fires rising to the sky at night like the reflection of
great search-lights; by day they swarmed across the plain, like
hundreds of moving circus-vans in every direction, with as little
obvious intention as herds of buffalo. But each had his appointed
work, and each was utterly indifferent to the battle going forward a
mile away. Hundreds of teams, of sixteen oxen each, crawled like
great black water-snakes across the drifts, the Kaffir drivers, naked
and black, lashing them with whips as long as lariats, shrieking,
beseeching, and howling, and falling upon the oxen's horns to drag
them into place.
Mules from Spain and Texas, loaded with ammunition, kicked and
plunged, more oxen drew more soberly the great naval guns, which
lurched as though in a heavy sea, throwing the blue-jackets who hung
upon the drag-ropes from one high side of the trail to the other.
Across the plain, and making toward the trail, wagons loaded with
fodder, with rations, with camp equipment, with tents and cooking-
stoves, crowded each other as closely as cable-cars on Broadway.
Scattered among them were fixed lines of tethered horses, rows of
dog-tents, camps of Kaffirs, hospital stations with the Red Cross
waving from the nearest and highest tree. Dripping water-carts with
as many spigots as the regiment had companies, howitzer guns guided
by as many ropes as a May-pole, crowded past these to the trail, or
gave way to the ambulances filled with men half dressed and bound in
the zinc-blue bandages that made the color detestable forever after.
Troops of the irregular horse gallop through this multitude, with a
jangling of spurs and sling-belts; and Tommies, in close order, fight
their way among the oxen, or help pull them to one side as the
stretchers pass, each with its burden, each with its blue bandage
stained a dark brownish crimson. It is only when the figure on the
stretcher lies under a blanket that the tumult and push and
sweltering mass comes to a quick pause, while the dead man's comrade
stands at attention, and the officer raises his fingers to his
helmet. Then the mass surges on again, with cracking of whips and
shouts and imprecations, while the yellow dust rises in thick clouds
and buries the picture in a glaring fog. This moving, struggling
mass, that fights for the right of way along the road, is within easy
distance of the shells. Those from their own guns pass over them
with a shrill crescendo, those from the enemy burst among them at
rare intervals, or sink impotently in the soft soil. And a dozen
Tommies rush to dig them out as keepsakes. Up at the front, brown
and yellow regiments are lying crouched behind brown and yellow rocks
and stones. As far as you can see, the hills are sown with them.
With a glass you distinguish them against the sky-line of every hill,
for over three miles away. Sometimes the men rise and fire, and
there is a feverish flutter of musketry; sometimes they lie
motionless for hours while the guns make the ways straight.
Any one who has seen Epsom Downs on a Derby day, with its thousands
of vans and tents and lines of horses and moving mobs, can form some
idea of what it is like. But while at the Derby all is interest and
excitement, and every one is pushing and struggling, and the air
palpitates with the intoxication of a great event, the winning of a
horse-race - here, where men are killed every hour and no one of them
knows when his turn may come, the fact that most impresses you is
their indifference to it all. What strikes you most is the bored air
of the Tommies, the undivided interest of the engineers in the
construction of a pontoon bridge, the solicitude of the medical staff
over the long lines of wounded, the rage of the naked Kaffirs at
their lumbering steers; the fact that every one is intent on
something - anything - but the battle.
They are wearied with battles. The Tommies stretch themselves in the
sun to dry the wet khaki in which they have lain out in the cold
night for weeks, and yawn at battles. Or, if you climb to the hill
where the officers are seated, you will find men steeped even deeper
in boredom. They are burned a dark red; their brown mustaches look
white by contrast, theirs are the same faces you have met with in
Piccadilly, which you see across the tables of the Savoy restaurant,
which gaze depressedly from the windows of White's and the Bachelors'
Club. If they were bored then, they are unbearably bored now. Below
them the men of their regiment lie crouched amid the bowlders, hardly
distinguishable from the brown and yellow rock. They are sleeping,
or dozing, or yawning. A shell passes over them like the shaking of
many telegraph wires, and neither officer nor Tommy raises his head
to watch it strike.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 30 of 55
Words from 29571 to 30570
of 55169
