THE BRITISH ARMY'S OFFICE HOURS

Otago Witness, Issue 2456, 10 April 1901, Page 26

THE BRITISH ARMY'S OFFICE HOURS

The following story, forwarded to a contemporary by a correspondent m South Africa, is believed to be absolu'ely-.true, and suggests how some types of the British officer must have endeared themselves to loyalists: — " Near a certain city several bands of marauders had been having a gay time. One band of 40 suddenly descended on the farm of a Dutchman living within six miles of the city. They, rounded up his horse?, took all the carts they could carry away, and bat clown to a &quare meal hastily prepared by the bew ildered housewife, who had imagined that English pi'oteetion meant immunity from looters. In the meantime the owner of the farm slipped away m the darkness, and galloped ' eyes out ' for the town, which was held by several thousand soldier.-!, foolishly thinking that the skein of red tape -v.ould be untied, and his farm re-cued. He reached the town, and after rn&ny inquiries from suspicioup sentries was directed to the office of the gentleman responsible for the peace of the district. A fusilade of kicks on the door by the excited Dutchman at length brought forth a youthful staff officer, who demanded wrathfully why his rest was broken. A hurried explanation of the situation left him unmoved. Would he send out a patrol at once? Would he do something? The petitioner waited for an encouraging answer, and at last the red tape man spoke: ' It's no use coming here, don t-you-know, at this sort of hour. You must come in office hours, don't-you-know" — 9 till 4,' and the oracle retired, leaving t'*e> downcast "Dutchman to wonder if Englishmen only fought and died between 9 and 4. It's only fair to say that the senior officer, as soon as lie heard of the raid next day, despatched three strong patrols, but unfortunately the Boers have no office hours, and ' when they got there ' (as Tennyson says) ' tho farm was baie,' and so poor 'Tommy' got none."

THE DEEDS OF PLUMER'S COLUMN

" It sounds a little like fingering a note on our own trumpet," writes Trooper Shand, from Fourteen Streams, on the sth of January last, "but it's only a part of the creed of every Rhodesian I've met — and I see nothing to disprove it — that Plunder's men have done more work, and endured more hardships during the campaign, than any other body of men taking part in the war. They had no war correspondents to emulate their deeds of daring. They only had a cold, practical commander, who saw in a man performing an act of heroism only a man doing his duty We have been over some of their line of marches — Gaberones. Tuli. At Tuli they have a cemetery to themselves— -Plumer's column — and there are those little wooden crossed mounds Fcattered everywhere. Sometimes we have come across them, while patrolling, miles from the nearest roads, where the footfall of a white man would be the merest fluke onoe in 50 years. "The niggers will tell you that they 'caw ' Plumer's men,' and the Kaffir trader will describe to you when he saw them fco past his store, when they couldn't sit any longer on their horses, burning with fever, and weak with starvation, the only ' ambulance ' was to lie down between two sacks of mealies on the springless, jolting bullock waggons. Till the Rhodesian Field Force was formed, of 2000 men, this little handful kept watch over the north and north-west boarder, always moving, often fighting. I have seen pome of their battlefields (not on record), with the little, low-walled cemetery altached, that always tells so much and says so little. "Then they relieved Mafeking from the north, and the only thing of note in that was in entering the town looking more ill and starved than those who had been besieged 60 long. The ' Queen's chocolate,' after which such a frantic rush was made a year ago, sent out from the Queen to her brave men so nobly fighting, etc , could not have been more highly prized than by these men, out of touch with every evidence of civilisation, and away from those comforts so valued by men silently suffering day after day. And yet to this day even that little token has never reached them."— Christehurch Press.