Golden Hope (23 page)

The moment was shattered by the shrill blast of a whistle. All hell broke loose.

In the dim patches of firelight he saw a mass of bodies. A blur of khaki hurtled forward through the haze of smoke created to camouflage them until they were right on top of them, bearing down on the camp from all sides. Boers were firing from the hip – yelling like mad men. Rom was trapped, confused – some of the enemy didn't even look like Boers.

Many of his comrades were killed instantly as they slept. He saw some crawl out of their blankets towards the stack of rifles – only to be shot down before they could reach them. Several lads tried valiantly to bring one of the pom-poms into action. Mowed down instantly by bullets, their bodies lay straddled across the guns.

Cut off from any weapons, Rom crawled along the horse lines that were piled with dead horses that had reared, stampeded and trampled their own unarmed soldiers. Dead and wounded lay everywhere. He heard an Australian officer's voice calling out, ‘Don't shoot – you could be killing your comrades!'

Rom felt ice cold.
It's true! Some of those Boer bastards are wearing our uniforms.

There were flashes of khaki, blood wherever he turned. Australian or Boer, who in hell could tell them apart through the smoke screen, the flickering light of campfires and the blazing guns?

The carnage seemed to last forever. Yet in ten minutes the ‘battle' was over.

Rom saw the shadowy outlines of scores of Australians escaping into the darkness.
Good on them. My luck's run out.

He lay low, his breath rasping from his throat. Waited, counting the seconds as the Boers rounded up some fifty or more prisoners. He lost count.

Helpless, impotent, he watched the victors cart off the precious pom-pom guns and all the weapons, carts, wagons and hundreds of horses that had survived the carnage.

Close enough to overhear the Boers' disparaging comments, he was surprised by one of them saying in slightly accented English, ‘This is the most miserable collection of animals I have ever seen.'

That unidentified voice was one he would never forget. Was it General Ben Viljoen himself? No knowing.

Rom was in no mood to argue the toss about the quality of horses.

I'm alive. But who knows for how much longer?

He joined the tail end of a line of prisoners, marched at gunpoint a mile across the darkened veldt.

His body was trembling violently but he tried to harness his imagination.

They're unlikely to shoot prisoners – not the Boer's usual style.

Knowing there was a fair chance he would be stripped of his clothing and valuables, he shifted the envelope containing Clytie's letter to him inside the back of his underpants. There was no time to remove her photograph from his jacket before he felt a gun prodded between his shoulder blades.

Shocked into a state of heightened awareness, he took note of the wide range of accents he identified within the Boer Commando. Despite the occasional guttural Dutch, most spoke English. He recognised American, Irish and other European accents he suspected came from irregulars who had crossed the oceans to fight the British on account of their own national agendas rather than the Boer cause. They were unlikely to be disgruntled Ouitlanders, the foreigners who had worked here in the mines for years, feeling discriminated against in terms of taxation and long-delayed legal status. Ouitlanders, whatever their nationality, tended to join the Imperial cause – but there were no hard and fast rules.

One English-speaking Boer appeared as calm and well-mannered as if he had been skipper of a cricket team and was too much of the gent to boast about his team's victory.

Rom faced him with the same air of sportsmanship. ‘I take it you're one of Ben Viljoen's Commando?'

The young Boer corrected his pronunciation to what sounded to Rom's ears like ‘Veelyern'.

‘He must be celebrating his victory tonight. Was he in charge?'

The gentlemanly burger avoided direct eye contact. ‘Fighting General Muller,' he said.

Rom wondered if his imagination was playing tricks.
Was the young Boer faintly embarrassed by his victory?

‘You are a Colonial? Canada, yah?'

‘No mate, not us. We're Australians – the Victorian Mounted Rifles.' Rom added, ‘What's left of us – and our horses.'

‘No shame. You are brave. But why are you here? It is not
your
war. You are like us. You have fought against the British at –' He clearly failed to pronounce the word, so added, ‘on
your
goldfields, yah?'

‘You mean the Eureka Stockade? No, that wasn't against the British, mate. It was against the police and a bloody unjust law – unfair tax on diggers, whether they found any gold or not. There's a big difference.'

‘You
lost
!
'
The Boer shrugged.

‘We lost on the
day,'
Rom corrected firmly. ‘But the diggers had a moral victory. It got the law changed. And no jury convicted the rebels. Our leader, Peter Lawler, was elected Speaker in the Legislative Assembly.'

The burger shrugged, losing interest in someone else's distant war. ‘Then go home, digger. You don't belong here. It's
our
war.'

Rom watched him walk to the head of the line.
The enemy – face to face.
Despite the worn clothing and the bandolier studded with ammunition strapped diagonally across his chest, the young Boer could have passed as a farmer in any Australian town.

At the thought of home Rom reminded himself.
One year I signed up for. Only a few more months to go – survival, that's all that counts.
He was jolted back to the present when another heavily bearded burger prodded him with the butt of a rifle for stepping out of line and stood towering over him. His accent and his order almost caused Rom to laugh in disbelief.

‘Vat size?' the man asked, pointing his Martini-Henry at Rom's feet.

Anxious to retain all his toes, Rom decided it was wise to be helpful.

‘Five! Want to try them for size? You're welcome, but I can't guarantee they won't smell.'

‘Five? Not good. Six I vont!'

The heavily built lad moved down the line and finally found a bloke with bigger feet who, drunk on his unexpected escape from death, tried to argue the toss.

‘Fair go. You don't expect me to walk twelve miles back to camp barefoot? What's this flaming war coming to? It's supposed to be a gentleman's war.'

The digger beside him gave him a sharp nudge. ‘Shut your trap, ye eedjit! Ye'll give the man your boots if ye know what's good for ye!'

The tap of the Boer gun on his boots speeded up their transfer.

•  •  •

A few hours later, his own boots commandeered by another burger but otherwise relatively intact, Rom was turned loose with the rest of the prisoners. They headed in the direction of what was hopefully Beatson's column at Vandyke's Drift.

Rom cast a look behind him at the totally wrecked camp at Wilmansrust. In the distance a number of the enemy carried lanterns as they searched for their dead and wounded in the trenches where an hour earlier they had lain in wait, ready to strike.

What about
our
wounded? Dr Palmer was killed instantly. There's no one to tend our wounded.

‘Come on, you slackers,' Rom called out wearily. ‘The sooner we make Beatson's camp, the sooner we get an ambulance to our blokes.'

Stripped of their uniforms, and marching barefoot, their horses dead or captured, they had little thought for their own lives. Their sole aim was to get medical help for their mates. They had no choice but to allow the veldt to lead them towards the dawn.

Rom urged on the prisoners around him – reminding them that every minute counted. They reached Beatson's camp around midnight. Despite suffering from fatigue, bloody, blistered feet and certain signs of the enteric fever that had become an epidemic, to a man they were eager to return immediately to Wilmansrust to rescue their wounded and resume the fight.

Instead they were stunned by Beatson's orders that no start would be made until after daybreak.

Rom jotted down the facts in his diary. Beatson's orders meant that his flying column did not arrive at Wilmansrust until ten next morning. The ambulance wagon arrived even later.

Rom had commandeered a mule that was on its last legs. Among the first to arrive at the scene, he stood stock still, shocked by the extent of the carnage revealed in the light of day. The bodies of slaughtered men and horses lay entangled in all directions.

He tried to turn off the part of his mind that felt waves of anger and shame.
Three hundred and fifty of us – up against a Commando of maybe a hundred and fifty. Yet we were slaughtered.

Like an automaton Rom and another lad followed orders. In silence they laid out side by side the bodies of the eighteen who had been killed instantly. Rom was unable to recognise their faces and ceased trying to identify them. Several others died later from their wounds. It was some comfort to Rom to know that they had not died alone.

An Australian officer, Major McKnight, explained that half an hour after the firing ceased abruptly, he had been taken prisoner. On learning he was a doctor, the Boers had allowed him to return to the scene to tend the wounded.

Stripped of everything but their socks, trousers and hats, McKnight and a veterinary officer, Captain Samuel Sherlock, had lit fires around the wounded and tended them throughout the night.

Rom counted forty-five wounded. Devoid of emotion, like a machine attached to a shovel, he helped dig a mass grave. Eighteen V.M.R. soldiers and Captain Watson of the Royal Artillery were buried together, along with a young Kaffir and an unknown Boer.

As Rom finished helping erect a rough fence around the grave he looked across at the insignificant farmhouse – Wilmansrust. Anger almost choked him.

What the hell was that all about? One bloody little farm?

The wounded were transported by ambulance train to the military hospital in Johannesburg. It was only when Rom saw the train depart that he remembered what he had lost. It was some consolation to have Clytie's letter safely tucked inside his underpants. The loss of
his boots was a temporary matter. What mattered was his lost jacket. On instinct he retraced his steps. Somehow the Boers had overlooked it. He found it trampled on, under the carcass of a horse. The pocket held Clytie's photograph – miraculously intact. He gave a jackaroo's holler and punched his fist at the sky in triumph.

•  •  •

For the next few days Rom was one of the survivors without horses. Kitted out with an assortment of ill-fitting uniforms to replace those commandeered by their captors, they were ordered to march on foot across open, treeless terrain that brought them in frequent contact with the enemy.

During one day's march Major-General Beatson was overheard sharing his considered opinion with the Australian officers under his command.

‘I tell you what I think. The Australians are a damned fat, round-shouldered, useless crowd of wasters.'

Shocked by the vehemence of his comments, several Australian officers immediately protested.

Beatson was not a man to retract his words. ‘Australians are all alike,' he proclaimed. ‘In my opinion they are a lot of white-livered curs.'

Aware that an Australian officer was writing down his comments, Beatson pointed his finger at him. ‘You can add dogs too!'

Beatson's insults were quick to filter down through the ranks.

Rom heard them second-hand, but was himself a witness to an event on the fourth day after the Wilmansrust debackle. The column was camped near a large farm where they had been given permission to slaughter some pigs for food.

Rom looked up as Beatson passed by, pausing long enough to observe them bayoneting the pigs. Beatson's voice was loud enough to be clearly intended for every Australian present.

‘Yes, that's about what you are good for. When the Dutchmen came the other night you didn't fix bayonets and charge them, but you go for something that can't hit back!'

Rom and the other Australians froze, bayonets in hand. Beatson departed, swinging his swagger stick. Rom's mind was flooded by images of the bloody carcasses of men and horses at Wilmansrust, the pile of rifles neatly stacked together by order of Major Morris.

Rom seethed at the injustice, knowing Beatson was safely shielded by the privilege of his rank, his impressive Imperial record in India, and his firm advocacy of Major Morris's orders ‘by the book'.

Beatson's vitriolic condemnation of an event he had not witnessed except second-hand through the eyes of Morris soon became common knowledge. There wasn't a V.M.R. volunteer who did not hold Beatson in utter contempt.

The seeds of mutiny had been born. Soon after he recorded Beatson's comments in his diary, Rom was relieved to be ordered by an Australian officer to continue patrolling the veldt.

•  •  •

On his second day out scouting, the heat was no greater than usual but Rom was sweating profusely. He began to wonder about his chances of staying free from the enteric fever that was not only decimating the ranks of the V.M.R. but all the Colonial units and the Tommies in the Imperial Forces.

The sky was clear, the colour of the blue found on religious Christmas cards. No tree in sight for miles around, so naturally not a skerrick of timber. To light a fire to boil a billy of tea Rom had to forage for dead balls of vegetation blowing across the veldt. It was important to boil water in the hope of avoiding the dreaded fever.

He was suddenly alerted by the sound of a bird dramatically close at hand. He shook his head in bewilderment. No mistaking that deep-throated, loud cry – the same cry he had heard from the illusive bitternbirds who nested somewhere in the marshes behind Hoffnung.