AFTER A BATTLE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIII, Issue 12242, 30 June 1900, Page 9

AFTER A BATTLE.

THE RELICS AM) REFUSE OFMODERN WAR. (By JULIAN RALPH.) (Daily Miil.i “Even the bioojnsng butterflies are the ’colour .of kharki,” as Tommy Atkins re. marked when he saw bis first swarm of locusts. There is an exception to the rule, as was proved by the next living thing 1 saw. It was a secretary bird, a yard in height, as heavy as a big turkey—-a stately bird' hold' ing himself proudly and stalking along with j roble strides as he glanced about him for a areakfast of snakes. He was black and vhite. Partridges and many snipe-like birds (.fluttered out of our road, and presently I saw ahead of me a swarm of vultures, soaring in as thick a cloud as if they had been moths. As I drew nearer I noticed' that the bulk of each one’s body was very great. On the ground'—where there were two score waddling about—they seemed even larger. They marked the outer edge <of the great and horrid field of carnage. Many dead horses lay on the veldt,. and these birds were eating some and perching on the hacks of others. Foul, nauseous, ugly, beastly birds are these. They were to be my constant companions for three days. I was to see hundreds upon hundreds of them, and never once, by day, fail to see them. Yet there were not enough of them to make away with all the food that war had given them. Toward the end of the ride (the ghoulish birds thinned out, but the dead horses and oxen multiplied. i THE VULTURES’ FEAST. I am told that a British officer who would not take a pin for his own use will steal like an Albanian to feed a hungry horse—and all our horses have been hungry of late* and many a gentleman has looted forage. It must be, rhea, that our officers feel as I do about this slaughter of horses in this war. Between battles a dozen dioadly forms of disease seize them, and they have to be flung aside andi left to die in the dust. And in battle their legs are snapped off, their bodies torn, and their heads are shattered—and there is nothing to do but to leave them to the aasvogela, as 'the vultures are called. There is no time, in battle, to shoot them. Let the anti-cruelty people at Homo rave as they may, there are other things to think of beside humanity in the heat of great battles. But of all the painful, heartrending sights I have ever seen,, none has compared with this view of hundreds upon hundreds of dead arid dying horses on this 100 miles of war’s promenade. The poor beasts had done no man any harm—in fact, each one had been a man’s reliance—and to see them tattered by shell and then ripped open by vultures, often before they were dead, was enough to snap the tenderest chords in one’s breast. They had not deserved, and they could not understand their horrible ill-luck. . For some reason, hundreds had dragged themselves to the main road, and then had died either in the track of the waggons or by its side. HORROR ON horror’s HEAD. But the worst horror was to come, when I approached close upon the‘last battlefield, only twenty-four hours after the fight at Briefontein. On this field, nob nearly all the horses were yet, dead. On the contrary, as I come up'beside the prostrate body of a beautiful steed, it would slowly and painfully lift his head, and turn upon me a pair of the most pleading, woestricken eyes, full of a hunger to know what I could do for it. And all I could do was to drive on, for I had no firearms—even for my own protection, deep in an enemy’s country, where we had put no single armed men to guard the route of our supplies and reinforcements. My companion used to turn and look back at these dying horses, only to find that they were still straining their sad eyes after the cart. Then he would say, “ He is looking at us yet. Oh, it makes me ill! Look I he is staring at us like a guilty conscience! What can we do ? I wish we did not see such things.”; For my part, I would not look behind. Heaven knows, it was bad enough to see ahead where horses stumbled and fell from weakness, while the horrible aaavogels swept in circles over them, eager to rend their living flesh. Oxen, too, were lying everywhere, with straight, stiff legs, sil? houetted against the veldt. They looked like the toy animals that children make out of round potatoes with wooden matches for legs. • THE GIRT. HE LEFT BEHIND HIM. Wherever there had been a British camp, one found a great litter of little bits of writing-paper, every tenth piece maked with a line of x x x x x x x, or double ox treble lines of them, followed by the words “Ever your sweetheart, Alice,” or “Your very loving Molly.” These were Tommy’s letters from the farms of England and the servants’-halls of her cities. It seemed to me that all the Mollies and Alices wrote alike,-in very bold, thick letters; And their kisses were so hearty and abundant that they stood out on the veldt, and were not to be passed unseen—though it did seem like sacrilege to notice them. Dear rosy Molly, in your gown of print,

and your flower-framed cottage in Derby-. • D shire, never make your kisses any smaller, [ H and do not complain that they spend their j H mere wasted skelsteons on the desert veldt, j H Rather be proud that you thus have seat. ' B to Africa the best things it has got—your fl brave lovers and your steadfast love. , B Dear Alice, in your starched cap and 'fl apron, as I see you meeting the postman at fl your toaster’s door in London, let me sup- I plement the whisper in your heart by say* I ing that Tommy deserves the four lines of I tender crosses that look like a battalion of, I cupids, marching at the bottom of your< I letter. He is rough and dirty now, and 1 8 he knows his comrades apart from one on-. I other more by the stains and rents of their h: I tunics and trousers than'by'their all-aiik«ri ; l grimy, blistered faces. But he is a ncri I fellow—brave, tireless, patient, nm ,<u t « I ing, painfully sober just now, a..v ;c ns steel to sweetheart. Paardebeig battleground is wcni'erinl tV. : see. It suggests , a pandemcrflin,; the; 1 ! wreck of Nature by delirium trerte; l l> i earth is ‘all slitted with trenches, ana. tew* trenches arc clattered with trunks, cloth-; ing, books, tins, cartridge-clips, wrappings,' broken rifles, .'Shelter ciofcasfl. physic and spirit bottles, old letters, wiit-bt-ten in Dutch, shells, bullets, wasted food,' bags and sacks, harness, tools—goodness' knows what not. . Behind the fifSt'r trenches stand the ruins of scores -- of j: v vehicles. Of some that, were burned by,', shells only the ironwork and the tyres re-j main. There are buck waggons, ambu-' lances, spiders, Cape- 'carts, gun carriages,! and covered farm waggons, all broken, tom, dismembered, and often, singed by fixe. : As I passed across the river I came upon ; two mountains—of what, do you think fOne of compressed hay and One of oats. And both were on fire, being burned by some' men of the .. Warwickshire Regintept, by' . order of the Field-Marshal-, who has na’ waggons to bring away the precious food,arid does not mean that the Boers shall got it. Awaiting the torch was another great'' : hillock made of a thousand boxes q£ bis-; suits.. And seventy miles ahead our horses'and men were on half rations or less. Such is war. ■ ■■ 'riV Such is what must Be endured by Tommy,' by his generals—aye, and'by the'Duke of, Westminster, who has been glad to borrow a blanket, ere this, and 6ft of the veldt for his bed. All the places on the veldt are alike, butt they have different names. At one spot in the monotony, called- Poplar Grove—and eternally to bo known aria battlefield-—-wo met a little band of'Engineers, loafing along with heavy waggons, loaded with telegraph wire and tools. They were setting' up the field telegraph, and repairing' what . had been set up, and then knocked down again' by our buck waggons at might. ' ' i “ You are the first, civilians to make thW journey,” said an officer. “The enemy is all about us, and we have not guarded tha route. Those hills ahead are full of Boera. They copped a cart and horses there yesterdky, and they have been sniping, us as bur mem have passed along the road.” OUR FRIEND THE ENEMT. We outepanned, and cooked breakfast, and the little caravan disappeared over a ridge beside the dangerous kopjes. On the instant that we thought ourselves alone there sprang up, as if out of the earth, a Boer and bis grown-up son—both on horseback, and both making straight for ns. They came and stood by our camp fire,' and looked us over, and they went to. our cart and examined its contents. Then they adrised ns how \to go on to flba. army by thei shortest way, beside their hostile kopjes* And presently they rode off and lingered at a distance, watching .us. ' They were a dirty, well set-up, lithe pair, who sab fcheiifine horses like centaurs. We took a route they had not recommended, dodging their ' kopjes, and soon overtaking and passing th* Royal Engineers. Again we were dfmn upon the veldt, ■ ■ - SO GLAD ! : Near Driefonteki we came to the ranch- ■■ house of a German family , named Mullas; and went in and had the inevitable coffee, with them. _ There was a Boer ambulant doctor spiriting about in this hall—a man attached to the German corps ami afraid to go out and join his people, as I uudcrstooL tha case. . But, cl course, the Mulkes wei-s very glad! the. British ■ had, ooanO—as they wcmM have hoe® if the Boers had corns ite stead. And, of course, the British had stolen their fowls, and all the rest of fch« moßotcnously-sickeniug humbug of their bind. We camped ah Driefontein, beside a branch of the Australian hospital— famed as the most excellent of army hospitals. Next day we were just behind the British as they ' swept .the kopjes for Boers, and that even-' ing we came upon Lord Roberts’s trsmv port, which deserves a longer article than tipi solely to itself. And yet it must get but a kodak snapshot, and be don© with.