FROM A KARROO VILLAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11346, 14 April 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

FROM A KARROO VILLAGE

AN ASPECT OF THE WAR.

; ..No.. 11. , [BY a SOUTH 'AFRICAN SURVEYOR.] The ordinary material of war became so familiar to the village that it passed almost unregarded. Now and then something excites our curiosity.

Anything above the rank of a colonel will fill the railway platform. General Warren, looking the type of a weather-beaten old warrior, with his heavy grey moustache and keen eyes shining through his eye-glass, under the shadow of his gold-laced peak, excited a cheer. Put General Warren is the especial idol of the South African. Our colonial volunteers swear by him, and will follow him anywhere, with the memory of that neatest of small campaigns, the Bechuanaland expedition. Roberts passed us by night, much to the annoyance of the village loyalists. ' . A great impression was made by the Household Cavalry—giants all, both men and black horses. There. were a few Dutchmen on the station, come in to market the night before, from an outlying dorp fifty miles across the veldt. Curiosity had overcome their unfriendly feelings towards the rooibatje, and the appearance of these giants from the carriages filled them with astonishment; they could do nothing but gape, with fervent ejaculations, "Allemachty Piet, kijk dar—look there at the great men and the horses! I thought the redcoats were all children." Could they but have seen them in their normal splendour of breastplate and plumes! But nothing of that was left except a gold lace cockade on the khaki of the helmet, and the regimental initial H.G. on the shoulder-strap. The great black chargers were hardly less impressive than the men, to those who only knew the South African horse, an undersized lean beast, remarkable for endurance and activity among the rocks of the kopjes more than for size and shape.

So much for the fair and unbattered side of the medal of war. We have our glimpse of the other.

Within a week of the engagements come the hospital trains, and through the windows—closed to exclude the pitiless sun and the baked air—we can see the long lines of the plank berths running the length of the specially-contrived vans, and the. pallid faces of the occupants. Not uncommonly wounds or fever claim their victims before the end of that fiery journey of nights and days across the continent, and the train halts at a wayside village, few and far between, to relieve itself of a useless burden.

These ambulance trains are designed with great care. They have special cars for kitchen and surgery, and nurses are attached to them who live on .he line, and spend weeks and months travelling up and down the Karroo. They always stop here for supplies, silch as we can afford them, but the Karroo can furnish little in the way of luxuries for the sick; it is difficult at, times even to satisfy their demand for milk. An army nurse, in her brilliant scarlet cape, decked with the coloured ribbon of medals won in other campaigns, and her red cross badge, is, in every sense, a bright spot on the landscape. Far across the veldt we see the scarlet dots appear on the platform of the carriages; in the station itself they hold a little court of interested inquirers. "From what battle do these wounded come?" "Were they, the nurses, on the battlefield?" "Do they find it a hard life on the trains?'" "Do the wounded men suffer from the heat?" with a hundred other questions, pertinent and impertinent, which they find it hard work to answer 'J he trains of "slightly wounded" give more opportunity for casual hospitality. A bullet hole 'through the arm, or surface wounds in the head, legs, or body— trifles to modern surgery—only require that the man shall be laid on the" shelf until the wound has healed, when he is ready for the f-ont again. The battle of Magersfontein sent down a trainload of Highlanders and Guardsmen, who had carried back mementoes from that fatal attack— rather, who bad left souvenirs behind them ; for the modern bullet no longer takes up its quarters in the first billet it finds—it passes on, and leaves a "clean hole" behind it. As chance would have it a detachment of Highlanders, on the way up from Capetown, passed the train of wounded at our station. The fresh men gathered in groups round the carriage doors, and interviewed their disabled comrades. The villagers bung respectfully round the outskirts of the kilted crowds, 'and listened to the quick interchange of question and answer, fraught with so 'deep a pathos, though the tone was matter-of-fact and seemingly unconcerned. "Ye'll mind Sandy Macpherson, in cur company," says a wild-looking figure in the train, with torn kilt and stained khaki, ragged beard and hair, a bandage ronid Ids right upper arm, and another on his left forearm. "Ay, a,V." ■ "Well, Sandy, he was fhet in the" body. He lay near me all the day in the bur'nin' sun, but I did na see him, when we retired after sunset." "Deid, a think," says another wounded man in the far comer. "Ay' mon, 'twas a terrible day." " D'ye know what came of Donald McLeod, 'in 'B' Company?" "It'll be Donald was shot in ihe head in the first volley." "And Angus?" "Angus is deid." ' () . "And ye never reached the trenches?" "Well. There was a sairgent that held a position, with 12 men, half the <Uy. Rut 'twas of no use. He coudn't be supported; had to retire with the rest,"

" D'ye mind that long ■Win, Macdonald, that was in our company—a dirrty, idle, careless chap?" says another man, villi a bandage round his head. "Aye, I remember him." "He was taken prisoner, I heard, and they set a Doer to guarrd him, and took awn,' his rifle. But it seems they overlooked bis bayonet, and Tom, he slipped it out when the Doer was na lookin' and stabbed him in the back. Then he cleared out of the trenches, and got away with the rest of us." " I did not think he had it in him."

There is a gloom on the faces of the men as they exchange the experiences of the day, and the tale of missing friends. It is a day long remembered by the Highland .Brigade. Further down the train a young Grenadier Guardsman, with a fresh boy's face, is holding a group of villagers enthralled with the tale of " 'Ow I was 'it in the arm with one o' them damned Mauser bullets, just hunder the bank of the Modder." His story is interrupted by the whistle of the train, and it moves slowly off amid a hurricane of cheers and fare'v'clts. We entertained those wounded men royally, with all the luxury of tinned jams and fresh milk and fruit, cigarettes and Boer tobacco, that our village could afford. There is nothing like the sight of bandages and the tale of wounds Mid suffering to touch men's hearts and unbridle their generosity.

One other picture of ihe dark side of war. A file of soldiers, with fixed bayonets, clattering along the platform, and in the midst of them two melancholy figures. One, a middle-aged man with the ill-kept beard, loose, home-made garments, and veldt-schoen of raw hide which mark the Boer; under his broad bat his dark eyes glance from side to side with a mixture of sullenness and despair, and his face is worn and pale under the olive tan. The other has the round smooth face of youth, and is well dressed, but, his eyes likewise are dull and angry. In his buttonhole flutters a ragged piece of ribbon of the four hostile colours, like a flag of defiance left flying after the surrender. The hands of both are fettered in front of them. ' Both are prisoners, the elder man a rebel from the frontier,- the younger taken at the battle of Belmont, but identified as a British subject. Nothing of the trimness of the trained soldier in either, and it is hard to associate that boy with rebellion and war. Rut time has taught us that uniform and drill are no great protection against the rifle in the hands of boys who can hit the running springbuck at 500 yds. At any rate, old or young, it is a grim prospect that awaits these rebels at their journey's emk