In the Ranks of the C.I.V. | Page 7

once we
were packed no movement was possible."
For two more days we were busily employed in unpacking stores, and
putting the materiel of battery into shape, while, at the same time, we
were receiving our complement of mules and Kaffir drivers for our
transport waggons. Then came our first parades and drills. Rough we
were no doubt at first. The mobilization of a volunteer battery cannot
be carried out in an instant, and presents numberless difficulties from
which infantry are free. Our horses were new to the work, and a few of
us men, including my humble self, were only recent recruits.
The guns, too, were of a new pattern. The H.A.C. at home is armed
with the 15-pounder guns in use in the Regular Field Artillery. But for
the campaign, as the C.I.V. Battery, we had taken out new weapons
(presented by the City of London), in the shape of four 12-1/2-pounder
Vickers-Maxim field guns, taking fixed ammunition, having practically
no recoil, and with a much improved breech-mechanism. They turned
out very good, but of course, being experimental, required practice in
handling, which could not have been obtained in the few weeks in the
London barracks.

On the other hand, the large majority of us were old hands, our senior
officers and N.C.O.'s were from the Regular Horse Artillery, and all
ranks were animated by an intense desire to reach the utmost efficiency
at the earliest possible moment.
My impressions of the next ten days are of grooming, feeding, and
exercising in the cool twilight of dawn, sweltering dusty drills, often in
sand-storms, under a blazing mid-day sun, of "fatigues" of all sorts,
when we harnessed ourselves in teams to things, or made and un-made
mountains of ammunition boxes--a constant round of sultry work,
tempered by cool bathes on white sand, grapes from peripatetic baskets,
and brief intervals of languid leisure, with al fresco meals of bully-beef
and dry bread outside our tents.
Time was marked by the three daily stable hours, each with their triple
duty of grooming, feeding, and watering, the "trivial round" which
makes up so much of the life of a driver. As a very humble
representative of that class, my horses were two "spares," that is, not
allotted to any team. Much to my disgust, I was not even provided with
a saddle, and had to do my work bareback, which filled me with
indignation at the time, but only makes me smile now. My roan was
always a sort of a pariah among the sub-division horses, an incorrigible
kicker and outcast, having to be picketed on a peg outside the lines for
his misdeeds. Many a kick did I get from him; and yet I always had a
certain affection for him in all his troubled, unloved life, till the day
when, nine months later, he trotted off to the re-mount depot at Pretoria,
to vex some strange driver in a strange battery. My other horse, a dun,
was soon taken as a sergeant's mount, and I had to take on an Argentine
re-mount, a rough, stupid little mare, with kicking and biting
propensities which quite threw the roan's into the shade. She also had a
peg of ignominy, and three times a day I had to dance perilously round
my precious pair with a tentative body-brush and hoof-pick. The scene
generally ended in the pegs coming away from the loose sand, and a
perspiring chase through the lines. I had some practice, too, in driving
in a team, for one of our drivers "went sick," and I took his place in the
team of an ammunition-waggon for several days.

Abrupt contrasts to the rough camp life were some evenings spent with
Williams in Capetown, where it already felt very strange to be dining at
a table, and sitting on a chair, and using more than one plate. Once it
was at the invitation of Amery of the Times, in the palatial splendour of
the Mount Nelson Hotel, where I felt strangely incongruous in my by
no means immaculate driver's uniform. But how I enjoyed that dinner!
Had there been many drivers present, the management would have been
seriously embarrassed that evening.
Wildly varying rumours of our future used to abound, but on March 14,
a sudden order came to raise camp, and march to Stellenbosch. Teams
were harnessed and hooked in, stores packed in the buck waggons,
tents struck, and at twelve we were ready. Before starting Major
McMicking addressed us, and said we were going to a disaffected
district, and must be very careful. We took ourselves very seriously in
those days, and instantly felt a sense of heightened importance. Then
we started on the road which by slow, very slow, degrees was to bring
us to Pretoria in August.
My preparations