The covenant - James A. Michener [446]
'He will be,' the young man said. 'Under a different name. And beware of him.'
As he spoke, he tacked onto the bulletin board a notice from Lord Roberts on the other front; it referred to some of his associate officers in the South African war: Douglas Haig, John French, Julian Byng, Edmund Allenby, Ian Hamilton. They would be the General Bullers whom the Germans would have to face.
With these confused judgments rattling in his head, Major Saltwood watched with pride as General Buller finally figured a way to cross the Tugela, and that night he wrote to Maud, who was busy organizing charities for the wives of Cape men serving with the English forces:
It was damned brilliant, really. Old Buller moved his heavy guns, we get them from the navy, you know, put them on his flank and laid down a hellish barrage, right ahead of our advancing troops. Like a fiery broom he swept away the Boers. So at least we're across this damned river, but I cannot bring my pen to say, 'We'll lift the siege of Ladysmith in five days.' We've said that too many times before. But soon we shall be there.
On 28 February 1900, ninety-five days after he assigned himself the task of relieving Ladysmith, the siege was lifted. Three memorable incidents marked the stirring occasion.
Lord Dundonald, always eager for acclaim, dispatched a unit of his cavalry to be first into town. He followed, and in his company was Winston Churchill, almost a full day ahead of General Buller.
Later, when the general's more pompous entrance was made, he got his maps mixed up and marched to the wrong gate; the heroic defenders, military and civil, were waiting on the opposite side of town, and when it was pointed out to him that since he and his men were fresh, and on well-rested horses, it might be gracious if he rode to the other side, he said, 'I enter here,' and the multitude had to hurry across town to greet him.
And finally, when the defeated Boers were in retreat, some of the cavalrymen saw a chance to chase and destroy. When they started from the town, some of the men who had withstood the siege wanted to join, but could not: 'We have no horses. We ate them.'
'Where are those cavalrymen going?' Buller asked Saltwood.
'Pursuing the enemy.'
'Pursue an enemy who's been honorably defeated? Good God, call our men back. Give the poor devils decent time to lick their wounds.'
'Sir, we've been chasing those damned Boers for months. This is our chance to eliminate them.'
From beneath his tight little hat General Buller stared at his South African aide. 'Sir, you have none of the instincts of a gentleman.' When Frank tried to protest, Buller put his heavy arm about his shoulder. 'Son, if we lose honor in warfare, we lose everything.' And he canceled the pursuit.
General de Groot was bewildered. For more than four months his commando had been abused and misused, and he could do nothing about it. Instead of riding hard and fast in a strike-and-hide tactic, at which his horsemen would have excelled, he had been held in rein and used in assault efforts. It occurred to him, as he sat with Sybilla after the defeat at Ladysmith, that almost never in these four months had his pony been at a gallop, and rarely a trot.
'You know, Sybilla, we're losing men all the time. Our burghers won't tolerate this sort of thing.'
'They'll come back, when your kind of fighting begins.'
'You can't have a commando with nine men.'
Then shocking news from the western front reminded them of the harsh possibilities of this war: General Cronje, an obstinate man who believed that the best defense against English arms was a laager, had surrendered.
'What could he have been thinking of?' De Groot asked Jakob. 'With four thousand men, you and I could take Durban.'
'It's a different war over there. General Roberts is in a hurry. He's no Buller.'
This doleful news, coinciding with Ladysmith, generated a vast depression among the retreating Boers, so that the Venloo Commando was reduced to one hundred and twenty, and when the time came to hand out assignments, those in charge looked