Chapter 20

ROUNDING UP THE BOERS

French in the Modder--At Bloemfontein--French and the Artist--An Ambush--Doing the Impossible Again--Short Shrift with Barberton Snipers--Some French Stories.

To have relieved Kimberley and partially effected the capture of the redoubtable Cronje in the course of a fortnight, was no mean accomplishment. The average commander would have been content to rest his forces after such exertions. But French is never tired. The very day that Cronje surrendered news came through that a rescue party was coming to Cronje's assistance, and already held a hill on the south-east of the Modder. Although the river was in flood, as the result of torrential rains, French forthwith led out two brigades with their batteries to make a reconnaissance. In forcing the stream both French and his A.A.G. very nearly lost their lives. Losing its foothold the General's horse took fright and fell, flinging him into the raging torrent. As the animal strove to recover, it upset Colonel (now Sir Douglas) Haig, who was coming to the rescue, dashing rider and horse into an over-hanging willow tree. Both French and Haig luckily managed to get themselves free from their plunging animals and struck out for the shore. Dripping but determined, they jumped on to fresh mounts, and advanced in two steamy haloes across the dusty veldt. Of course, not a solitary Boer was in sight for ten miles at least!

[Page Heading: AT POPLAR GROVE]

It very quickly transpired, however, that the Boers were strongly entrenched at Poplar Grove. At their head were French's most redoubtable opponents in the Colesberg campaign--De Wet and Delarey. For once his old antagonists were able to get back at least a little of their own. Their position extended across the river and was protected by a chain of hills, with kopjes between, not to mention the wired fences, ditches and other wiles in which they excelled.

Lord Roberts determined that an attack must be delivered before the enemy had time to recover from the shock of Cronje's surrender. French was, therefore, ordered to circle round the Boer left flank, thus cutting off his retreat, while the infantry delivered a frontal attack.

The result was a compliment to the terrible French and his cavalry. No sooner did the Boers realise that the horsemen were upon them, than they beat a hasty retreat. Before the cavalry were in position, the Boers and their wagons could be seen scurrying off for the river. Arm-chair critics at home have strongly criticised French for what followed. They claim that what should have been a rout, ended in an orderly escape. But they forget several factors in the situation.

While French's men were urging their spent horses forward to overtake the enemy, it became obvious that De Wet had very cleverly covered his retreat. First from a farmhouse in the rear, and, when it was taken, from a low kopje, a small body of men poured forth a hail of bullets. In manoeuvring to take the kopje, the tired cavalry allowed the astute De Wet and Delarey to escape with their guns intact. Kruger and Steyn also, who had come up to hearten their followers, got away.

Maddening as it was to French to see his old enemy escape through his fingers like this, the condition of his men and of his horses had to be taken into account; they were dead beat. For once the manoeuvring of De Wet proved as successful as when it was practised by French at Colesberg. Finally the event of the day is attributable to two of French's best qualities--his caution and his extreme parsimony in the matter of human life. A more ruthless leader might possibly have captured the Boer guns. But it is extremely doubtful whether he would have taken De Wet, Delarey or any other of the well-mounted Boer leaders.

From Poplar Grove the enemy fell back on Driefontein. On March 10, French again drove them, although not without real difficulty, from their stronghold. This accomplished, the army pushed on towards Bloemfontein, which surrendered on March 13. For six weeks the main body halted there to rest, but chiefly to obtain remounts for the cavalry. During that time, however, French's men were not idle. They continually patrolled the surrounding country, keeping in constant touch with the enemy and driving him back for many miles from the town.

[Page Heading: A PAINFUL SITTING]

One unhappy afternoon the General spent in sitting for a painter in Bloemfontein. It was probably the severest ordeal of the campaign for that retiring soldier. "General French," wrote the painter's youngest daughter, "is quite the shyest man in the British army, and looks less like a cavalry officer than you could possibly imagine. He is a heavy man, always looks half-asleep--although who is there more wide awake?--has a very red complexion, grey moustache, thick-set figure, and the last personality in the world to help an artist as a sitter. He promised to sit for the painter, although most characteristically he could not for the life of him think what he had done to be of sufficient interest for anyone to want to sketch him. At last, after a great deal of trouble, the painter got him to sit one morning just outside the club at Bloemfontein. That sitting was the shortest and most disjointed the painter has ever had. The General sat bolt upright in a chair, reading his paper upside down through sheer nervousness, and, if he left that chair once, on one excuse or another, he left it a hundred times, coming back looking more thoroughly upset and nervous each time, until at last he never came back at all. And the painter's only chance of sketching him was at the club during dinner!"[13]

At last the main army was ready for work again, and on May 1 the troops moved out of the fever-stricken town. French and his cavalry were the last to leave, but they overtook Lord Roberts and the main body, and led the way to Kroonstad, once again the seat of the Free State Government. Here by one of his famous turning movements, French cleverly forced the enemy to surrender and give up the keys of the town. Keeping ahead of Lord Roberts and his forces, he crossed the Vaal River and was first at the gates of Johannesburg, which the British entered on May 31.

[Page Heading: THE GUNS]

After two days in the mining city, Lord Roberts' triumphant forces moved on their way to Pretoria. French's next task was to cut the railway communications to the north of Pretoria. In carrying this out he made a wide detour to the west, where his cavalry found themselves in a treacherous country of kopjes, scrub and menacing gorges, a type of country most dangerous to mounted men. Anxiously he pushed forward to reach open country before nightfall (of June 2). But the Boers were before him. A sudden hail of Mauser bullets and shells announced an ambush. But French was undismayed. "Quietly, in complete mastery of the situation, General French gave his orders. 'Make room for the guns,' passed down the line; and like a fire engine to the rescue, up dashed a section of horse artillery and a pom-pom."[14] Very quickly the enemy was beaten off, in spite of the fatigue of a thirty-two mile march. No further resistance was met with as the men passed through the rich, orange-growing country round Pretoria. On June 4, French had completed his enveloping movement, and taken up his position to the north of the town. In the afternoon the cavalrymen learnt, with no little chagrin, that Lord Roberts had already entered Pretoria.

When the efforts to negotiate peace with Botha had failed, French was instructed by Lord Roberts to push the Boers east by a turning movement on their flank, which he would follow by the usual frontal attack on foot. So energetic were the Boers in harassing Lord Roberts' force, that drastic action had become necessary. It proved to be one of the most difficult enterprises that the cavalry had undertaken.

As usually happened the Boers were securely ensconced on ridges, the chief of which was known as Diamond Hill, while our men were condemned to work round from a level plain open to the enemy's fire. In order not to become a series of conspicuous targets, the cavalrymen were forced to dismount and fight their way up to the ridges on foot. For two days they fought gallantly against a steady fire, until the infantry's attack on the enemy's other flank gave French his chance to drive them out. For a third time the plight of his horses finally forbade his taking full advantage of his success. The Boers were driven back, but without being severely punished. The ubiquitous De Wet, need one add, showed a clean pair of heels.

[Page Heading: A DARING VENTURE]

In July, French was in command of the forces operating in Eastern Transvaal. There followed a long and arduous march towards the east which, after the capture of Middleburg, ended in the surrender of Barberton. It was in the beginning of September that French turned his attention to the enemy's forces collected round the latter town. He commenced his operations by circulating reports of an intended action in the opposite direction. While the Boers prepared to meet this he was able to reach Carolina with comparative ease. Here he remained for three days in order to prepare for a flanking movement against Barberton. As he must cut himself off entirely from sources of supply, such preparation was very necessary. French was about to attempt one of the most daring achievements of his career. He was going to take mounted men over a miniature Alps. The Boers were prepared for his attacking Barberton from every direction save one. They never supposed for a moment that the British troops would attempt to force the Nelshoogte Pass. For what did it mean? The scaling of precipitous heights, and the passage along narrow ledges of men, horses and guns. It would have been a difficult task for mountaineers, far less for heavily burdened cavalrymen.

French, however, was determined to do the impossible "once more." He would repeat the miracle of Coles Kop on a titanic scale. Accordingly, after a day's hard fighting, he rested his men for a night near the entrance to the pass. On the following morning, the enemy having disappeared, the advance was sounded. Up a narrow path, whose gradient was frequently one in four, the men crawled, often on hands and knees, while their horses stumbled on behind. Frequently they were scaling towering crags several hundred feet in height, from which there was sometimes a sheer fall of over a thousand feet. In teams of sixteen the oxen panted, struggled and frequently perished in the attempt to drag the heavy guns up the fearful incline. Only a man of indomitable courage would have attempted such a feat. But French lost not a single man in the process. Perhaps the division's perfect belief in his luck did something towards nerving the men for the ordeal.

The top of the pass once reached, French determined to make a sudden descent on Barberton. Taking a leaf out of the Boers' book, he left the whole of his baggage behind to lighten the horses, and rushed his men towards the town. On descending the other side of the pass the soldiers had still to lead their horses, who were as often on their haunches as their feet. Barberton and the Boers saw the oncoming of the British force with blank amazement. It was the last thing in the world they expected. The Boer Commando in possession, six hundred strong, had just time to escape from one end of the town as French entered it at the other.

[Page Heading: A WAY WITH SNIPERS]

Enraged at the surprise that had been sprung on them, the Boers commenced sniping the town from various vantage points in the vicinity. But French knew how to treat the sniper. The following notice was immediately dashed off by the local printing press and posted all over the town.

TO THE INHABITANTS OF BARBERTON.

This is to give notice that if any Shooting into the Town or Sniping in its vicinity takes place, the Lieutenant-General Commanding will withdraw the Troops, and shell the Town without further notice.

By order,

D. HAIG, Lt.-Col. Chief Staff Officer to Lt.-General French.

_September 15, 1900._

The sniping stopped forthwith.

One of the first things that French did was to go and personally rescue his old enemy, Schoeman, from the local jail. That worthy, having surrendered, had come into bad odour with his fellow countrymen. In consequence he had been incarcerated at Barberton. For once the unfortunate Schoeman was glad to see the face of his old enemy again!

French rested his forces in Barberton for three weeks, leaving the town on October 3. The march back to Pretoria was, if anything, more trying than the adventurous dash to Barberton had been. Apart from the trying climb over the heights of the Kaapsche Hoop, and the eternal sniping of the Boers, the weather now brought new sufferings. The men were exhausted by days of heat, and soaked by nights of torrential rain. It was a thoroughly tired and jaded force which finally reached Pretoria on November 3.

One incident of that trying march shows how ably French dealt with Boer bluff. The enemy had made prisoner a captain of the R.A.M.C, and sent a message that they would shoot him unless General French pledged his word that he would burn no Boer farms. French replied that unless the captured medical officer were brought into the British camp next morning, he would burn the town of Bethel to the ground; and, if he were shot, ten Boer prisoners would be similarly put to death. The doctor was brought into camp next morning.

[Page Heading: LORD ROBERTS' RETURN]

In inspecting the cavalry on their return, Lord Roberts expressed his high appreciation of French's work and informed him that, while retaining his cavalry command, he had been appointed to the command of Johannesburg and district.

At the end of the month Lord Roberts returned to England to take command of the Home Forces; and several months elapsed before French was able actively to take up that long rounding-up of the Boers which Kitchener was now planning in such elaborate detail. During the early part of 1901 he was able to clear the Boers out of the central district of Cape Colony. On June 8 he took supreme command of the operations in that Colony, and by November he had confined the enemy to its north-eastern and south-western extremities.

Not until Midsummer, 1902, was French able to return home. Before that he had spent some time recruiting his health in Cape Town. Very eager were the loyal citizens to fête the most successful of all the British Generals. But French would have no banqueting on his account. The war, he characteristically explained, was not yet ended, and so long as it was in progress he was not inclined to accept any public hospitality.

Anything like show or ostentation is foreign to French's whole nature. If there are few stories of his exploits in South Africa, there lies the reason. He is far too modest a man to prepare _bons mots_ or pretty _jeux d'esprit_ for public consumption. Also he is by nature a silent man. His silence is not the detached, Olympian and rather ominous silence of Kitchener. It proceeds simply from a natural modesty and reticence, which reinforce his habitual tendency to "think things over." He is the type of man whom hostesses have to "draw out"; he never talks either on himself, the army or any other subject. To "do his job" better than anybody else in the world could do it is enough for French; chatter about it he leaves to less busy people.

His habitual taciturnity, curiously enough, is one of the traits which endears him to the army. For French's silence has no trait of churlishness. It is the silence of a man utterly absorbed in the task before him, the man whom Tommy Atkins admires. "If the British soldier likes one thing in a General more than another," wrote a soldier who served with French in South Africa, "it is the golden gift of silence, especially when joined to straight action, just to distinguish him from the old women of both sexes. Whenever French penned a dispatch, or an order, or a proclamation, he wasted no ink and strained no pen nibs; but he never penned anything if there was a way of doing the thing himself."[15]

[Page Heading: A SHIRT-SLEEVED GENERAL]

In South Africa he earned the title of "the shirt-sleeved General,"--a soubriquet that conveys a subtle compliment from Tommy's point of view. Actually French was often to be seen walking about in camp during his heavy marches in shirt-sleeves. One afternoon a correspondent rode up to the lines, and seeing a soldier sitting on a bundle of hay, smoking a dilapidated looking old briar pipe, asked where the General was. "The old man is somewhere about," coolly replied the soldier. "Well, just hold my horse while I go and search for him." "Certainly, sir," and the smoker rose obediently and took the bridle. "Can you tell me where the General is?" inquired the correspondent of a staff officer further down the line. "General French? oh, he's somewhere about. Why, there he is, holding that horse's head!" And the officer pointed directly to the smoker, still tranquilly pulling at his pipe, and holding the horse! Needless to say "Uncle French" and his men hugely enjoyed the correspondent's awakening.

Such a man is bound to be the idol of the ranks. "What a good leader General French is," wrote Driver Payne, of the Royal Horse Artillery, to a friend. "He seems so cool at excitable moments; he does not lose his head and rush his men into danger. In fact, he always looks before he leaps, and when he does leap, he makes us move--and the Boers too." Perhaps French was best summed-up one day by a trooper whom, in a curt word, he had just sentenced to barracks for some offence. "The General don't bark much," he remarked, "but, crikey, don't he know how to bite!"

FOOTNOTES:

[13] _M.A.P._, August 25, 1900.

[14] _With General French and his Cavalry in South Africa._ By C.S. Goldman. By permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

[15] _The Regiment_, September 5, 1914.