This Long Delay Was Absolutely Necessary In Order To
Supply The Place Of The Ten Thousand Horses And Mules Which Are
Said To Have Been Used Up In The Severe Work Of The Preceding
Month.
It was not merely that a large number of the cavalry
chargers had died or been abandoned, but it was that of those which
remained the majority were in a state which made them useless for
immediate service.
How far this might have been avoided is open to
question, for it is notorious that General French's reputation as a
horsemaster does not stand so high as his fame as a cavalry leader.
But besides the horses there was urgent need of every sort of
supply, from boots to hospitals, and the only way by which they
could come was by two single-line railways which unite into one
single-line railway, with the alternative of passing over a
precarious pontoon bridge at Norval's Pont, or truck by truck over
the road bridge at Bethulie. To support an army of fifty thousand
men under these circumstances, eight hundred miles from a base, is
no light matter, and a premature advance which could not be thrust
home would be the greatest of misfortunes. The public at home and
the army in Africa became restless under the inaction, but it was
one more example of the absolute soundness of Lord Roberts's
judgment and the quiet resolution with which he adheres to it. He
issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of the Free State
promising protection to all who should bring in their arms and
settle down upon their farms. The most stringent orders were issued
against looting or personal violence, but nothing could exceed the
gentleness and good humour of the troops. Indeed there seemed more
need for an order which should protect them against the extortion
of their conquered enemies. It is strange to think that we are
separated by only ninety years from the savage soldiery of Badajoz
and San Sebastian.
The streets of the little Dutch town formed during this interval a
curious object-lesson in the resources of the Empire. All the
scattered Anglo-Celtic races had sent their best blood to fight for
the common cause. Peace is the great solvent, as war is the
powerful unifier. For the British as for the German Empire much
virtue had come from the stress and strain of battle. To stand in
the market square of Bloemfontein and to see the warrior types
around you was to be assured of the future of the race. The
middle-sized, square-set, weather-tanned, straw-bearded British
regulars crowded the footpaths. There also one might see the
hard-faced Canadians, the loose-limbed dashing Australians,
fireblooded and keen, the dark New Zealanders, with a Maori touch
here and there in their features, the gallant men of Tasmania, the
gentlemen troopers of India and Ceylon, and everywhere the wild
South African irregulars with their bandoliers and unkempt wiry
horses, Rimington's men with the racoon bands, Roberts's Horse with
the black plumes, some with pink puggarees, some with birdseye, but
all of the same type, hard, rugged, and alert. The man who could
look at these splendid soldiers, and, remembering the sacrifices of
time, money, and comfort which most of them had made before they
found themselves fighting in the heart of Africa, doubt that the
spirit of the race burned now as brightly as ever, must be devoid
of judgment and sympathy. The real glories of the British race lie
in the future, not in the past. The Empire walks, and may still
walk, with an uncertain step, but with every year its tread will be
firmer, for its weakness is that of waxing youth and not of waning
age.
The greatest misfortune of the campaign, one which it was obviously
impolitic to insist upon at the time, began with the occupation of
Bloemfontein. This was the great outbreak of enteric among the
troops. For more than two months the hospitals were choked with
sick. One general hospital with five hundred beds held seventeen
hundred sick, nearly all enterics. A half field hospital with fifty
beds held three hundred and seventy cases. The total number of
cases could not have been less than six or seven thousand - and this
not of an evanescent and easily treated complaint, but of the most
persistent and debilitating of continued fevers, the one too which
requires the most assiduous attention and careful nursing. How
great was the strain only those who had to meet it can tell. The
exertions of the military hospitals and of those others which were
fitted out by private benevolence sufficed, after a long struggle,
to meet the crisis. At Bloemfontein alone, as many as fifty men
died in one day, and more than 1000 new graves in the cemetery
testify to the severity of the epidemic. No men in the campaign
served their country more truly than the officers and men of the
medical service, nor can any one who went through the epidemic
forget the bravery and unselfishness of those admirable nursing
sisters who set the men around them a higher standard of devotion
to duty.
Enteric fever is always endemic in the country, and especially at
Bloemfontein, but there can be no doubt that this severe outbreak
had its origin in the Paardeberg water. All through the campaign,
while the machinery for curing disease was excellent, that for
preventing it was elementary or absent. If bad water can cost us
more than all the bullets of the enemy, then surely it is worth our
while to make the drinking of unboiled water a stringent military
offence, and to attach to every company and squadron the most rapid
and efficient means for boiling it - for filtering alone is useless.
An incessant trouble it would be, but it would have saved a
division for the army. It is heartrending for the medical man who
has emerged from a hospital full of water-born pestilence to see a
regimental watercart being filled, without protest, at some
polluted wayside pool.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 112 of 222
Words from 112981 to 114000
of 225456
