The covenant - James A. Michener [435]
Saltwood was to find that this phrase had specific meanings for Buller, because by the close of the second day he had encouraged his staff to fill the empty rooms at the Mount Nelson with the choicest free ladies of Cape Town, and with them on the scene, there was considerable revelry. On the third day Saltwood said, 'Sir, the officers want to consult with you. You're aware, I presume, that the fighting is not going well?'
Saltwood was astonished by what happened next; it was if a magician had waved a military wand, transforming this big, bumbling man into a tough-minded soldier. Buller stiffened, and with the riding crop he kept in his quarters, indicated a top-secret binder: 'I have me orders. Before I left London the wizards planned me entire campaign. Spelled out everything I was to do.' He rapped the folder twice, not arrogantly, but in a gesture of dismissal: 'And every plan they made was wrong. It doesn't apply, not with those damned Boers . . . My word, they can move fast, those Boers.'
'What are you going to do, sir?'
Buller rose, moved about his suite, then stopped and stared out the window at the confusing land he was supposed to conquer. Turning abruptly to face his new assistant, he said, 'Prepare to spend a long time in the field. I've got to do exactly the opposite of what they order.' He shoved the War Office directives aside. 'I'm splitting me troops. Half to Kimberley to rescue them up there. You and I will be going to Ladysmith.'
He made this bold move to inspire the troops, but as a member of the clique opposed to him said, 'He did inspire the troops, but the wrong ones.' And in London a wag circulated the rumor that the Boer high command had issued an order: 'Anyone who shoots General Buller will be court-martialed. He's our strongest weapon.'
Frank Saltwood, watching closely every move he made, believed at first that the critics and the comics were correct. Redvers Buller was an ass.
The Tugela River is that lovely stream which marked the southern limit of King Shaka's Zululand, and along which Piet Retief's people had waited while he and his men marched to their death at Dingane's Kraal. When these waiting women and children were slaughtered a few days later, their blood ran into the Tugela. Now, at a small hill far upstream, Spion Kop (Lookout Hill), General Redvers Buller was about to conduct a campaign which suggested that the German observer had been correct when he added to his first report: 'When you first meet Buller you instinctively like him. A real soldier. But when you study what he actually does in battle, you shudder.'
The town of Ladysmith was still under siege. Resolute Englishmen, lacking food, medicine, fire power, horses and sleep, protected the town against encircling forces. All England, which received telegrams direct from the town, wanted these brave defenders rescued, so when General Buller joined his massive army below the Tugela, he found himself less than fifteen miles from Ladysmith, with overwhelming superiority, twenty-one thousand against forty-five hundred, and he dispatched an unfortunate helio-graphed message to the besieged troops: 'Will rescue you within five days.'
There were two difficulties: he had to cross the river, and once that was done, his men would have to run a gauntlet through a chain of small hills.
As the German observer reported later: 'He might have accomplished either of these tasks if faced alone, but to require him to meet both of them at once posed a problem so complex that he seemed quite unable to grapple with it.'
Buller sat on the south side of the Tugela for five days, pondering the difficulties, finally telling Saltwood, 'A frontal attack would be quite impossible. Never break through there, eh, Frank? We face a long, hard fight.'
'You said in England that it would be over before you got here.'
'Would have