With Rimington | Page 6

our enemies have
appropriated the services of the Almighty, but all the same it shows a
dangerous temper. People who believe they have formed this alliance
have always been difficult to beat. You remember Macaulay's Puritan,
with his "Bible in one hand and a two-edged sword in the other." The
sword has given place to a Mauser now, but I am not sure that we are
likely to benefit much by the change. As to the Bible, it is still very
much in evidence. Not a single kit but contained one; usually the
family one in old brown leather. Now it is an historical fact that
Bible-reading adversaries are very awkward customers to tackle, and
remembering that, I dislike these Bibles.
More practically important than love-letters and Bibles, we found also

a lot of abandoned ammunition, shell and Mauser. Our ambulance
parties were at work in the hills. Several Boers, as they fled, had been
shot down near the laager. We found one, shot through the thigh,
groaning very much, and carried him into the shade of a waggon, and
did what we could for him. Meantime some of us had gathered bits of
boxes and wood, and made a fire and boiled water. Tea-cups, coffee,
sugar, and biscuits were found, and we made a splendid feast in the
midst of the desolation. Horrid, you will say, to think of food among
the dead and wounded. And yet that coffee certainly was very good.
Somehow I believe the Boers understand roasting it better than we do.
Before going we collected all the ammunition and heaped it together
and made a pile of wood round it which we set ablaze and then drew
out into the plain and reined in and looked back. Never shall I forget
the view. The hills, those hills the English infantry had carried so
splendidly, were between us and the now setting sun, and though so
close were almost black with clean-hacked edges against the sunset
side of the sky. To eastward the endless grassy sea went whitening to
the horizon, crossed in the distance with the horizontal lines of rich
brown and yellow and pure blue, which at sunrise and sunset give such
marvellous colouring to the veldt. The air here is exactly like the desert
air, very exhilarating to breathe and giving to everything it touches that
wonderful clearness and refinement which people who have been
brought up in a damp climate and among smudged outlines so often
mistake for hardness. Our great ammunition fire in the hollow of the
hill burned merrily, and by-and-by a furious splutter of Mauser
cartridges began, with every now and then the louder report of shells
and great smoke balls hanging in the air. But sheer above all, above
yellow veldt and ruined Boer laager, rose the hill, the position we had
carried, grim and rigid against the sunset and all black. And, with the
sudden sense of seeing that comes to one now and then, I stared at it for
a while and said out loud "Belmont!" And in that aspect it remains
photographed in my memory.

LETTER III
GRASPAN
November 26, 1899.

We marched out from our Orange River Camp on November 22nd, and
fought at Belmont on the 23rd. On the 24th we marched north again,
and on the 25th (yesterday) fought another action at Graspan, or, as
some call it, Enslin--there is still the difficulty about names. March a
day and fight a day seems the rule so far.
At home, when you are criticising these actions of Methuen, you must
always bear two facts in mind. First, we are bound to keep our line of
communication, that is, the railway, open, and hold it as we advance.
We can bring Kimberley no relief unless we can open and guard the
railway, and so enable supplies to be poured into the town. Second, we
are not strong enough, and above all not mobile enough, while holding
the railway to attempt a wide flanking movement which might threaten
the Boer retreat, or enable us to shell and attack from two sides at once.
If we had anything like a decent force of mounted men I suppose we
could do it, but with our handful to separate it from the main body
would be to get it cut off. "Want of frigates" was to be found on
Nelson's heart, as he said on some occasion, and I am sure by this time
that "want of cavalry" must be written on poor Methuen's. So you must
figure to yourself a small army, an army almost all infantry, and an
army tied to the railway on this march; and if we bring off no brilliant
strategy, but simply plod on and take hard knocks, well, what else, I
ask,