Collected works of j s f.., p.115
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 115
With the despatch of Prempeh and his mother into exile the Ashanti Expedition practically came to an end, and Baden-Powell returned to England, having done a vast amount of pioneering work, kept a full journal, seen a king dance, made numerous sketches, and generally added to his store of knowledge of men and things. The powers that be gave him a brevet-lieutenant-colonelcy and a star for his pains, and then sent him off to his regiment in Ireland to resume his usual avocations of hard work and hard play.
Embarkation of King Prempeh.
II. THE MATABELE CAMPAIGN, 1896
ON THE AFTERNOON of Friday, April 24th, 1896, Baden-Powell was in Belfast, attending the funeral of one of the men of his squadron who had been killed by a fall from his horse. During the ceremony a telegram from General Sir Frederick Carrington was put into his hands, warning him that he might be summoned to take part in the operations against the rebellious Matabele. Close upon this came the official notification from Sir Evelyn Wood, Quartermaster-General, directing him to proceed to Southampton and to embark on the s.s. Tantallon Castle on May 2nd. By May 6th he was at Madeira, well on his way to the beginning of the most important military affair he had yet engaged in. At 4 a.m. on May 19th he woke to find the screw stopped, the ship motionless, and to see “looming dark against the stars, the long, flat top of grand old Table Mountain.” He was once more in South Africa — little dreaming, perhaps, of what lay before him in the immediate future, or of what he was to do there ere another five years had gone by.
SKETCH MAP of The Theatre of operations
He found Cape Town “just the same as ever.” A brief stay there, a hearty God-speed from a crowd of well-remembered faces at the station, and he was off for Mafeking. One wonders if he knew, if he had any premonitions that almost exactly three years later he would be bound for Mafeking again, charged to fight a much superior enemy to the savage Matabele. He says nothing of that — all he records in his journal of the first night in the train is that the beds were hard and the night cold. He reached Mafeking on May 22nd. It then consisted of a little corrugated tin house and goods shed, serving as railway station, hundreds of waggons and mounds of stores, and a street and market square also composed of tin houses. He found Sir Frederick Carrington — to whom he was to act as Chief Staff Officer — here, and with the other officers of his Staff took up his quarters in a railway carriage. This, however, was to be but a short stay in Mafeking; on May 23rd, he, General Carrington, Captain Vyvyan, and Lieutenant Ferguson set off for Buluwayo by coach— “a regular Buffalo-Bill-Wild-West-Deadwood affair, hung by huge leather springs on a heavy, strongly-built under-carriage, drawn by ten mules.” They were ten days and nights in this vehicle, which laboured along at a slow rate through the heavy sand, and rocked and pitched until Baden-Powell described its motion as “exactly like being in the cabin of a small yacht in bad weather,” but at last they came to Buluwayo, and found themselves in sight of war.
Mafeking to Buluwayo. Ten days and nights by coach.
For some days Baden-Powell was busily engaged in office-work. Buluwayo had been cleared of the rebellious Matabele, but the impis were still hanging about in the neighbourhood, and in order to clear them away Sir F. Carrington decided to despatch three strong columns simultaneously to the north, north-east, and north-west, for distances of sixty to eighty miles. On June 5th Colonel Plumer with 460 men went off to the north-west; Macfarlane’s column, 400 strong, set out for the north. A third column, under Spreckley, was to set forth next day, but at ten o’clock in the evening, as Baden-Powell was finishing his office-work, the American scout Burnham rode in to announce the near presence of a large impi of the Matabele. Baden-Powell went out to reconnoitre, and ere morning had sent a request to Buluwayo for troops from Spreckley’s column. With a force of 250 men and two guns he moved upon the waiting Matabele, who were about 1200 strong. He thus describes the fight in his journal: —
“They did not seem very excited at our advance, but all stood looking as we crossed the Umgusa stream, but as we began to breast the slope on their side of it, and on which their camp lay, they became exceedingly lively, and were soon running like ants to take post in good positions at the edge of a long belt of thicker bush. We afterwards found that their apathy at first was due to a message from the M’limo, who had instructed them to approach and to draw out the garrison, and to get us to cross the Umgusa, because he (the M’limo) would then cause the stream to open and swallow up every man of us. After which the impi would have nothing to do but walk into Buluwayo and cut up the women and children at their leisure. But something had gone wrong with the M’limo’s machinery, and we crossed the stream without any contretemps. So, as we got nearer to the swarm of black heads among the grass and bushes, their rifles began to pop and their bullets to flit past with a weird little ‘phit,’ ‘phit,’ or a jet of dust and a shrill ‘wh-e-e-e-w’ where they ricocheted off the ground. Some of our men, accustomed to mounted infantry work, were now for jumping off to return the fire, but the order was given: ‘No; make a cavalry fight of it. Forward! Gallop!’
The Umgusa Fight: June 6th.
“Then, as we came up close, the niggers let us have an irregular, rackety volley, and in another moment we were among them. They did not wait, but one and all they turned to fly, dodging in among the bushes, loading as they ran. And we were close upon their heels, zigzagging through the thorns, jumping off now and then, or pulling up, to fire a shot (we had not a sword among us, worse luck!), and on again.
“The men that I was with — Grey’s Scouts — never seemed to miss a shot.
“The Matabele as they ran kept stopping behind bushes to fire. Now and again they tried to rally, but whenever a clump of them began to form or tried to stand, we went at them with a whoop and a yell, and both spurs in, and sent them flying. Of course, besides their guns they had their assegais. Several of our horses got some wounds, and one man got a horrid stab straight into his stomach. I saw another of our men fling himself on to a Kafir who was stabbing at him; together they rolled on the ground, and in a twinkling the white man had twisted the spear from its owner’s hand, and after a short, sharp tussle, he drove it through the other’s heart.
“In one place one of the men got somewhat detached from the rest, and came on a bunch of eight of the enemy. These fired on him and killed his horse, but he himself was up in trice, and, using magazine fire, he let them have it with such effect that before they could close on him with their clubs and assegais, he had floored half their number, and the rest just turned and fled. And farther on a horse was shot, and, in the fall, his rider stunned. The niggers came looping up, grinning at the anticipated bloodshed, but Sergeant Farley, of Grey’s Scouts, was there before them, and, hoisting up his comrade on to his horse, got him safe away.
“Everywhere one found the Kafirs creeping into bushes, where they lay low till some of us came by, and then they loosed off their guns at us after we had passed.
“I had my Colt’s repeater with me — with only six cartridges in the magazine, and soon I found I had finished these — so, throwing it under a peculiar tree, where I might find it again, I went on with my revolver. Presently I came on an open stretch of ground, and about eighty yards before me was a Kafir with a Martini-Henry. He saw me and dropped on one knee and drew a steady bead on me. I felt so indignant at this that I rode at him as hard as I could go, calling him every name under the sun; he aimed, — for an hour, it seemed to me, — and it was quite a relief when at last he fired, at about ten yards distance, and still more of a relief when I realized he had clean missed me. Then he jumped up and turned to run, but he had not gone two paces when he cringed as if some one had slapped him hard on the back, then his head dropped and his heels flew up, and he fell smack on his face, shot by one of our men behind me.
“At last I called a halt. Our horses were done, the niggers were all scattered, and there were almost as many left behind us hiding in bushes as there were running on in front.
“A few minutes spent in breathing the horses, and a vast amount of jabber and chaff, and then we re-formed the line and returned at a walk, clearing the bush as we went.
“I had one shave. I went to help two men who were fighting a Kafir at the foot of a tree, but they killed him just as I got there. I was under the tree when something moving over my head caught my attention. It was a gun-barrel taking aim down at me, the firer jammed so close to the tree-stem as to look like part of it. Before I could move he fired, and just ploughed into the ground at my feet. He did not remain much longer in the tree. I have his knobkerrie and his photo now as mementoes.
“At length we mustered again at our starting-point, where the guns and ambulance had been left. We found that, apart from small scratches and contusions, we had only four men badly wounded. One poor fellow had his thigh smashed by a ball from an elephant gun, from which he afterwards died. Another had two bullets in his back. Four horses had been killed.
“And the blow dealt to the enemy was a most important one. A prisoner told us that the impi was composed of picked men from all the chief regiments of the rebel forces, and that a great number of the chiefs were present at the fight.”
Eight to One.
Baden-Powell contrived to vary the monotony of office-work by a little scouting. He made friends with Burnham and arranged to go scouting with him, and was much disappointed that the agreement could not be carried out. In his journal, under date June 26th, he mentions that having been closely confined to the office for four days, he set out after dinner for a ten-mile ride, roused up some other congenial spirits, and spent the night out-o’-doors, feeling all the better for the change. However, as the days sped on, opportunities for indulging in scouting came, and Baden-Powell — to whom at this time the Matabele gave the nickname of Impeesa — the Wolf that never Sleeps — made a great many useful observations of the Matopos country. Then came his release from town and office life. As he knew the country intimately, he was sent to act as guide to Colonel Plumer, whose force was about to engage in a campaign in the Matopos, and on the evening of July 19th he went off alone in front of the column (preferring that “for fear of having my attention distracted if any one were with me, and of thereby losing my bearings”) across the moonlit country. They advanced close to the enemy and then lay down to sleep— “jolly cold” it was, he says in his journal — rising at dawn to enter a hollow, bushy valley where he “jumped for joy” at finding some traces of the enemy’s presence. The following extract from Baden-Powell’s journal affords a graphic picture of what followed: —
“My telescope soon showed that there was a large camp with numerous fires, and crowds of natives moving among them. These presently formed into one dense brown mass, with their assegai blades glinting sharply in the rays of the morning sun. We soon got the guns up to the front from the main body, and in a few minutes they were banging their shells with beautiful accuracy over the startled rebel camp.
“While they were at this game, I stole onwards with a few native scouts into the bottom of the valley, and soon saw another thin wisp of smoke not far from me in the bush; we crept cautiously down, and there found a small outpost of the enemy just leaving the spot where they had been camped for the night. At this point two valleys ran off from the main valley in which we were; one, running to the south, was merely a long narrow gorge, along which flowed the Tuli River; the other, on the opposite side of the river from us, ran to the eastward and formed a small open plateau surrounded by a circle of intricate koppies. While we were yet watching at this point, strings of natives suddenly appeared streaming across this open valley, retiring from the camp on the mountain above, which was being shelled by our guns. They were going very leisurely, and, thinking themselves unobserved, proceeded to take up their position among the encircling koppies. I sent back word of their movements, and calling together the Native Levy, proceeded at once to attack them. To do this more effectually, we worked round to the end of the main valley and got into some vast rock strongholds on the edge of the Tuli gorge. These, though recently occupied by hundreds of men, were now vacated, and one had an opportunity of seeing what a rebel stronghold was like from the inside; all the paths were blocked and barricaded with rocks and small trees; the whole place was honeycombed with caves to which all entrances, save one or two, were blocked with stones; among these loopholes were left, such as to enable the occupants to fire in almost any direction. Looking from these loopholes to the opposite side of the gorge, we could see the enemy close on us in large numbers, taking up their position in a similar stronghold. Now and again two or three of them would come out of a cave on to a flat rock and dance a war-dance at our troops, which they could see in the distance, being quite unsuspicious of our near presence. They were evidently rehearsing what they would do when they caught the white man among their rocks, and they were shouting all sorts of insults to the troops, more with a spirit of bravado than with any idea of their reaching their ears at that distance. Interesting as the performance was, we did not sit it out for long, but put an abrupt end to it by suddenly loosing a volley at them at short range and from this unexpected quarter.
“Then, clambering down among the rocks, we crossed the Tuli River and commenced the ascent of the towering crags in which the enemy were located. Of course this had to be done on foot, and I left my horse tied to a tree, with my coat and all spare kit hung in the branches.
“Our friendlies went very gaily at the work at first, with any amount of firing, but very little result; the enemy had now entirely disappeared into their caves and holes among the rocks, merely looking out to fire and then popping in again. Our own niggers climbed about, firing among the rocks, but presently did more firing than climbing, and began to take cover and to stick to it; finally, two of them were bowled over, and the rest of them got behind the rocks and there remained, and no efforts could get them to budge. I then called up the Cape Boys and the Maxims (in which Lord Grey assisted where it was difficult to move owing to the very bad ground); these reinforcements came up with no loss of time and went to work with a will. It was delightful to watch the cool, business-like way in which Robertson brought his Boys along. They floundered through the boggy stream and crawled up the smooth, dome-shaped rocks beyond, and soon were clambering up among the koppies, banging and cheering. Llewellyn, too, brought his guns along at equal speed, and soon had them in equal position on apparently inaccessible crags, where they came into action with full effect at every chance the enemy gave them.
Scout Burnham.
“The fight gradually moved along the eastern valley, in the centre of which was a convenient rock from which I was able to see all that was going on, and it formed a good centre for directing the attacks, as the enemy were in the rocks on every side of us. The Cape Boys, after making a long circle round through part of the stronghold, reassembled at this spot, and from it directed their further attacks on the different parts requiring them, and it became the most convenient position for the machine guns, as they were able to play in every direction in turn from this point. For the systematic attack on the stronghold a portion of it is assigned to each company, and it is a pleasing sight to see the calm and ready way in which they set to work. They crowd into the narrow, bushy paths between the koppies, and then swarm out over the rocks from whence the firing comes, and very soon the row begins. A scattered shot here and there, and then a rattling volley; the boom of the elephant gun roaring dully from inside a cave is answered by the sharp crack of a Martini-Henry; the firing gradually wakes up on every side of us, the weird whisk of a bullet overhead is varied by the hum of a leaden-coated stone or the shriek of a pot-leg fired from a Matabele big-bore gun; and when these noises threaten to become monotonous, they are suddenly enlivened up by the hurried energetic “tap, tap, tap” of the Maxims or the deafening “pong” of the Hotchkiss. As you approach the koppies, excitement seems to be in the air; they stand so still and harmless-looking, and yet you know that from several at least of those holes and crannies the enemy are watching you, with finger on trigger, waiting for a fair chance. But it is from the least expected quarter that a roar comes forth and a cloud of smoke, and the dust flies up at your feet.”
The campaign in the Matopos continued until nearly the middle of August, and Baden-Powell was actively engaged during the whole of it, chiefly in reconnaissance and scouting. Once, at any rate, he met with an amusing adventure in giving chase to a young Matabele lady, who proved herself quite equal to him in agility and cunning.
“ ... I still wanted to catch a prisoner — though I did not at first see my way to doing it. However, in the course of our prowl we presently came on fresh well-beaten tracks, evidently of women and children going to and from the outlying country, probably bringing in supplies. This seemed to offer us a chance of catching some of them coming in, although, as the sun was up, we had little hope of being very successful.
“But luck was with us again, and we had hardly settled ourselves near the path when I saw a couple of women coming along with loads on their heads. The moment they saw us, they dropped their loads and ran, but Richardson and I galloped for them, and one, an elderly lady, gave herself up without any fuss; but the other, a lithe and active young person, dived away at a tremendous pace into the long grass, and completely disappeared from view. We searched about, and kept a bright look-out for her, but in vain.
