THE LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION CO., 7 AND 9 WARREN STREET. Publishers of NINETEENTH CENTURY, CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, WESTMINSTER REVIEW, FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, 1901. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. MXXIII. JANUARY 1901. VOL. CLXIX. a MAROONED. BY “LINESMAN." NOT spurned from some lawless or indignant ship's company on to a lonely islet, but dropped at a little dot of a wayside station on the great green veldt-sea, to guard with half hundred men a stretch of railway line. Veldt to the right of us, veldt to the left of us, before and behind us in long lazy waves of ground, limitless, melancholy, almost terrifying in its interminable sameness. One feels like an ant at the bottom of a teacup, so round and unattainable appears the horizon, so discouragingly similar the prospect on every side. The little station, with its brave air of business, its stationmaster, and its electric "buzzer," examples of the cheerful in animate and inanimate, its signals which wag at the approach of the infre VOL, CLXIX. -NO. MXXIII. quent trains as conscientiously and decisively as if they controlled the traffic outside Waterloo Station, - all this only accentuates the surrounding silence and solitude. Walk a quarter of a mile away and its small bustle becomes isolated, and reminds one of the tinkling of the time-bell from an unseen ship at night upon the ocean. Even the half hundred British soldiers seem subdued, and detract not a whit from the sense of the vast loneliness of the primeval meadow. They are not really subdued, of course; Tommy alone upon the summit of Aconcagua would comfort his soul and break the detestable silence with song or one of those apostrophes to his surroundings, which to my mind plainly indicate a latent pantheism in her Majesty's rank A and file. But here in this tiny camp at the bottom of the gigantic bowl of grass, songs and apostrophes, even games of football, are but the tinkling ship's bell again, far away, drowned in the tremendous quiet, almost sad. Now we, half hundred and the writer, are, if you please, a fibre of that important military muscle known as the lines of communication. What tomes have been written upon this vital portion of an army in the field; what elegant diagrams, resembling the newfashioned jewelled muff-chains, with little "blobs" joined one to the other by a thin line indicating the various posts and their connections, adorn the text-books for the edification of young gentlemen required to evince by examination an intimate acquaintance with the whole chain, though they will probably never have to command anything more than one of the "blobs." If one could peer into the mighty mind of a general setting forth to conquer, what would we see? Triumphant tactical combinations? Deceptive retirements? "Slim" sidlings to a flank? Not a bit of it. Across that gigantic intellect would be written but three words, a label upon a troubled packet of nerves, "Lines of communication"! Thereby we, the said half hundred and writer, derive no small comfort. When first we were delegated to this task there was but one bitter and rebellious verdict, none the less to the point because it was that pitiable mod ern a Yankeeism, the monosyllable "left," to wit-an expression which may be better understood by the classical reader unversed in the latterday volapuk of slang, when he is told that it is telegraphese for the feelings which surged over Atalanta when she looked up from picking the gaud from the cinder-path to see the outsider making his effort inside the distance amid a roar from the ring! We trust we have made it clear to the classical reader! This campaign has been peculiar in many ways, in every way if the classics of the pursuit are to be taken as guides for all war. Even its broad initial conception and plan were unique - if I were a civilian I should say faulty, but at any rate unique. Everything in it, from the effect of shrapnel to the working of the hospital system, has been a surprise, and therefore instructive. It has been as though the bloodbought military lessons of the last forty years have been for naught; nothing has occurred as per book, whereas enough things have occurred not as per book to make a book themselves. And of these peculiarities hardly anything has been more peculiar than the insecurity of the lines of communication, I mean, their momentary liability to be interrupted, or even destroyed. Of course a great deal of this must be attributed to the vagrant nature of the enemy. Cutting railway lines at night is loafer's work, and the Boer set free from the discipline of the commando is a loafer of loafers, though, it is true, a living oxymoron in his activity and resource in the loafing game. Small commandos are but aggregations of loafers with increased powers, so that they can not only cut a line but perhaps demolish a defended post or two, or at least absorb a few of the patrols which link them precariously together. Against big commandos the vagrancy charge cannot be fairly urged. In a previous article 1 we have done the Boer full justice as a fighting man, and deplored the entomological quizzing of him by that British speciality, the man in the street, through his magnifying-glass, the daily papers. A commando 1000 strong is as respectable a fighting unit as any regiment in the world. It has its weaknesses, of course, but “hanging about" is not one of them; it must rather be said to "move," and with effect at times. But to the small commandos, say of from 50 to 300 men, “hanging about" is the beginning and the end of logistics, and very much abhorred they are by the isolated guardians of railway and telegraph. "Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike," they as often as not take up their abode on a kopje within perhaps an hour's ride of garrisoned railway station or fortified bridge, and from there put into play an ingenious and exasperating policy of pinpricks. They are peculiar to the lines of communication, and their composition is as peculiar a as their field of activity. Often they are the relics of the local commando, whose main body has surrendered and returned to its normal avocations of ploughing and peculation. This is the nucleus, and around it hovers a hazy unclassified fringe of society in the shape of oathbreakers or felons from other districts, who are afraid of serious fighting, are more afraid of being recognised if they surrender, and who therefore seek a dubious safety in medio. With a few unhappy souls recaptured from their farms and forced at the rifle-muzzle to ride out again to the hated kopjes the olla-podrida is probably complete, and one can pretty well imagine how, weary, shiftless, and mutually distrustful, its component Dutchmen sit upon their kopje and gaze miserably over towards the little cluster of tents which shelter the dominant Power they can never make faces at again. Thus it is at the little post from which this screed is penned. We have our neighbouring kopje, and upon it our small commando. To be exact, we have two neighbouring kopjes, and the small commando is as often as not performing the venerable feat of "one Turk becoming two Turks" by sitting upon them both. Down on the veldt around them and us there dwells a scattered colony of perhaps 150 surrendered Burghers, covering roughly ten square miles of country; here and 1 "The Passing of a Nation,” “Blackwood's Magazine,' December 1900. |