The covenant - James A. Michener [462]
When cartoons across the world showed the noble lord playing with blocks while old General de Groot slipped away behind him, an enraged headquarters in Pretoria commanded: 'That man must be brought in.'
Regiments from eleven nations applied pressure, and once again the old man was trapped within a barbed-wire hedge, with Canadians, Irishmen, Australians and Welshmen closing in. This time he adopted a simple device: rounding up all available cattle from unburned farms, he stampeded them toward a spot between two blockhouses, and as the frightened animals piled up against the barbed wire, they simply carried it away, while the Venloo Commando swept off to freedom yet again.
This time the cartoonists were merciless: 'like ulysses . . .' And they showed De Groot and his men tied to the bellies of the steers as they galloped past a sleeping Polyphemus who looked exactly like Lord Kitchener.
'All of them!' he thundered. 'I want all of them thrown into camps.' So his men moved out to corral every woman and child belonging to the fighting Boers. They would be herded into camps of concentration, to keep them from feeding and supporting their menfolk. It was pointed out to Kitchener that there were already more than fifty thousand refugees in camps, many there at the behest of Boers themselves, for they had been unable to survive on farms without their men. 'I don't care if there are fifty thousand more!' stormed Kitchener.
When the drive against the commando-homesteads was well under way, and the Boer territories further denuded of women and farms and cattle, leaving only smoking ruins, Kitchener began to see good results. Three commandants, unable to survive against starvation and barbed wire, voluntarily surrendered, but before doing so their top men crept away to join up with General de Groot, whose forces now reached their maximum: four hundred and thirty hardened men, a hundred extra ponies and fifty blacks. This would be the final army, led by an old man approaching seventy.
Pleased with the apparent effectiveness of the concentration camp, Lord Kitchener summoned Major Saltwood one morning and gave him an order: 'Burn Vrymeer and herd the women into the camp at Chrissie Meer.'
'Are you sure you want to do this, sir?'
'I am,' the steely-eyed general said, 'and I deem it best if you lead the men, rather than an Englishman.'
'I think of myself as an Englishman, sir, and I don't relish assignments like this.'
'I consider you a local, Saltwood. It'll look better.'
So with a mixed detachment of seventy, including troops from various colonies, Saltwood rode east on the Lourenco Marques train, disembarked his horses at Waterval-Boven, and rode slowly south toward the lakea journey he had taken in happier times. When he reached Venloo and saw the heavy price it had paid in this war, all windows shattered, a feeling of despair came over him, and he remembered what Maud had said that day at Trianon: 'Seems more like Genghis Khan.'
Then he turned west on the pleasant rural road leading to the lake, and when he crested the hill he could see the two farms at which he had once been so happy and so well received. It pained him to think that these good people had later considered him to be a spy, but he supposed, upon reflection, that he had been, in a general way of speaking. He did not want to go on, but when the men behind began to rein up near him he sighed and headed for the rickety buildings of the De Groot farm. 'Not much lost if they burn,' a Welshman said.
Sybilla was in the kitchen, and when she saw the troops she knew what to expect. Without saying a word, she packed a few belongings, reached for her sunbonnet, and appeared on the stoep. 'General Kitchener's orders,' a soldier said.