South Africa
such employment. Impracticable, but kind. I have no wish to cease to be a gunner.
Victoria Road, May 20th, 1900.
The horses are doing as well as one can expect, for the rations are insufficient. Our men have been helping to get ready a rest camp near us, and have been filling mattresses with hay. Every fatigue party comes back from the hospital, their jackets bulging with hay for the horses. Two bales were condemned as too musty to put into the mattresses, and we were allowed to take them for the horses. They didn't leave a spear of it. Isn't it pitiful? Everything that the heart of man and woman can devise has been sent out for the "Tommies", but no one thinks of the poor horses. They get the worst of it all the time. Even now we blush to see the handful of hay that each horse gets at a feed.
The Boer War is so far off in time and space that a few further detached references must suffice:
When riding into Bloemfontein met Lord ——'s funeral at the cemetery gates,—band, firing party, Union Jack, and about three companies. A few yards farther on a "Tommy" covered only by his blanket, escorted by thirteen men all told, the last class distinction that the world can ever make.
We had our baptism of fire yesterday. They opened on us from the left flank. Their first shell was about 150 yards in front—direction good. The next was 100 yards over; and we thought we were bracketed. Some shrapnel burst over us and scattered on all sides. I felt as if a hail storm was coming down, and wanted to turn my back, but it was over in an instant. The whistle of a shell is[100]
