 Section 8 of Notes of a War Correspondent. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Richard Kilmer. Notes of a War Correspondent. By Richard Harding Davis. The South African War. Part 2. The Relief of Lady Smith. After the defeat of the Boers at the Battle of Peters Hill, there were two things left for them to do. They could fall back across a great plain which stretched from Peters Hill to Buwana Mountain, and there make their last stand against Bueller and the Lady Smith Relief column, or they could abandon the siege of Lady Smith and slip away after having held Bueller at bay for three months. Buwana Mountain is shaped like a brick and blocks the valley in which Lady Smith lies. The railroad tracks slip around one end of the brick and the Dundee trail around the other. It was on this mountain that the Boers had placed their famous gun, Long Tom, with which they began the bombardment of Lady Smith and with which, up to the day before Lady Smith was relieved, they had thrown three thousand shells into that miserable town. If the Boers on retreating from Peters Hill had fortified this mountain with the purpose of holding off Bueller for still a longer time, they would have been under a fire from General White's artillery in the town behind them and from Bueller's naval guns in front. Their position would not have been unlike that of Humpty Dumpty on the wall, so they wisely adopted the only alternative and slipped away. This was on Tuesday night while the British were hurrying up artillery to hold the hills they had taken that afternoon. By ten o'clock the following morning from the top of Peters Hill, you could still see the Boers moving off along the Dundee road. It was an easy matter to follow them, for the dust hung above the trail in a yellow cloud, like mist over a swamp. There were two opinions as to whether they were halting at Buwana or passing it on their way to Lang's neck. If they were going only to Buwana, there was the probability of two weeks more fighting before they could be dislodged. If they had avoided Buwana, the way to Lady Smith was open. Lord Dundonald, who was in command of a brigade of irregular cavalry, was scouting to the left of Buwana far in advance of our forces. At sunset he arrived without having encountered the Boers at the base of Buwana. He could either return and report the disappearance of the enemy, or he could make a dash for it and enter Lady Smith. His orders were to go, look sea, and avoid in action, and the fact that none of his brigade was in the triumphant procession which took place three days later, has led many to think that in entering the besieged town without orders he offended the commanding general. In any event it is a family row and of no interest to the outsider. The main fact is that he did make a dash for it, and just at sunset found himself with two hundred men only a mile from the doomed city. His force was composed of Natal Carboneiros and Imperial Light Horse. He halted them, and in order that honors might be even, formed them in sections with half sections made up from each of the two organizations. All the officers were placed in front, and with a cheer they started to race across the plain. The wig-waggers on Covenant Hill had already seen them, and the townspeople, and the garrison, were rushing through the streets to meet them, cheering and shouting, and some of them weeping. Others, so officers tell me, who were in the different camps, looked down upon the figures galloping across the plain in the twilight, and continued making tea. Just that they had reached the center of the town, General Sir George White and his staff rode down from headquarters and met the men whose coming meant for him life and peace and success. They were advancing at a walk, with the cheering people hanging to their stirrups, clutching at their hands, and hanging to the bridles of their horses. General White's first greeting was characteristically unselfish and loyal, and typical of the British officer. He gave no sign of his own, incalculable relief, nor did he give to Caesar the things which were Caesar's. He did not cheer Dundonald, nor Bueller, nor the column which had rescued him and his garrison from the present starvation, and probable imprisonment at Pretoria. He raised his helmet and cried, We will give three cheers for the Queen, and then the General, and the healthy, ragged, and sunburned troops from the outside world, the starved, fever-ridden garrison, and the starved, fever-ridden civilians stood with hats off during their national anthem. The column outside had been fighting steadily for six weeks to get Dundonald, or any one of its force, into Lady Smith. For fourteen days it had been living in the open, fighting by night as well as by day, without halt or respite. The garrison inside had been for four months holding the enemy at bay with the point of the bayonet. It was famished for food. Dundonald, with fever, and yet when the relief came and all turned out well, the first thought of everyone was for the Queen. It may be credulous in them or old-fashioned, but it is certainly very unselfish, and when you take their point of view, it is certainly very fine. After the Queen, everyone else had his share of the cheering, and General White could not complain of the heartiness with which they greeted him. He tried to make a speech in reply, but it was a brief one. He spoke of how much they owed to General Bueller in his column, and he congratulated his own soldiers on the defense they had made. I am very sorry, man, he said, that I had to cut down your rations. I, I promise you, I won't do it again. Then he stopped very suddenly and whirled his horse's head around and rode away, judging from the number of times they told me of this, the fact that they had all but seen an English general give way to his feelings, seemed to have impressed a civilian mind of Lady Smith more than the entrance of the relief force. The men, having come in and demonstrated that the way was open, rode forth again, and the relief of Lady Smith had taken place. But it is not the people cheering in the dark streets, nor General White breaking down in his speech of welcome, which gives the note to the way the men of Lady Smith received their freedom. It is rather the fact that as the two hundred battle-stained and earth-stained troops galloped forward, racing to be the first, and rising in their stirrups to cheer, the men in the hospital camps said, well, they've come at last, have they, and continued fussing over their fourth of a ration of tea. That gives the real picture of how Lady Smith came into her inheritance, and of how she received her rescuers. On the morning after Dunn-Donald had ridden in and out of Lady Smith, two other correspondents and myself started to relieve it on our own account. We did not know the way to Lady Smith, and we did not then know whether or not the Boers still occupied Bawana Mountain. But we argued that the chances of the Boers having raised a siege were so good that it was worth risking their not having done so and being taken prisoner. We carried all the tobacco we could pack in our saddlebags and enough food for one day. My chief regret was that my government, with true Republican simplicity, had given me a passport typewritten on a modest sheet of note-paper and woefully lacking in impressive seals and coats of arms. I fancied it would look to Boer eyes like one I might have forged for myself in the writing room of the hotel at Cape Town. We had ridden up Peters Hill and scrambled down on its other side before we learned that the night before Dunn-Donald had raised a siege. We learned this from long trains of artillery and regiments of infantry which already were moving forward over the great plain which lies between Peters and Bawana. We learned it also from the silence of conscientious, dutiful correspondents who came galloping back as we galloped forward and who made wide detours at sight of us or who, when we hailed them, lashed their ponies over the red rocks and pretended not to hear, each unselfishly turning his back on Lady Smith in the hope that he might be the first to send word that the doomed city was relieved. This would enable one paper to say that it had the news on the street five minutes earlier than its hated rivals. We found that the rivalry of our respective papers bored us. We condemned it as being childish and weak. London, New York, Chicago were names. They were spots thousands of leagues away. Lady Smith was just across the mountain. If our horses held out at the pace we would be, after Dunn-Donald, the first men in. We imagined that we would see hysterical women and starving men they would ring our hands and say, God bless you, and we would halt our steaming horses in the marketplace and distribute the news of the outside world and tobacco. There would be shattered houses, ruthless homes, deep pits in the roadways where the shells had burst and buried themselves. We would see the entombed miner at the moment of his deliverance. We would be among the first from the outer world to break the spell of his silence, the first to receive the brunt of the imprisoned people's gratitude and rejoicings. Indeed it was clearly our duty to the papers that employed us that we should not send them news but that we should be the first to enter Lady Smith. We were surely the best judges of what was best to do. How like them to try to dictate to us from London and New York when we were on the spot. It was absurd. As we raced in and out of the long confused column, lashing viciously with our whips, we stumbled around pieces of artillery, slid in between dripping water carts, dodged the horns of weary oxen, scattered companies of straggling Tommies, and ducked under protruding tent poles on the baggage wagons and at last came out together again in advance of the dusty column. Besides, we don't know where the press censor is, do we? No, of course, we had no idea where the press censor was, and unless he said that Lady Smith was relieved, the fact that twenty-five thousand other soldiers said so counted for idle gossip. Our papers could not expect us to go riding over mountains the day Lady Smith was relieved, hunting for a press censor. The press censor, Gast Hartlin, never is where he ought to be. The words were bumped out of him, as he was shot up and down in the saddle. That was it. It was the press censor's fault. Our consciousness were clear now. If our papers worried themselves or us because they did not receive the great news until everyone else knew of it, it was all because of that press censor. We smiled again and spurred the horses forward. We abused the press censor roundly. We were extremely indignant with him. It was so like him to lose himself the day Lady Smith was relieved. Con found him we muttered and grinned guiltily. We felt as we used to feel when we were playing truant from school. We were nearing Peter's station now and were halfway to Lady Smith. But the van of the army was still about us. Was it possible that it stretched already into the beleaguered city? Were we, after all, to be cheated of the first freshest impressions? The tall answers turned at the sound of the horses' hoofs and stared. Infantry officers on foot smiled up at us sadly. They were dirty and dusty and sweating. They carried rifles and cross belts like the Tommys. And they knew that we outsiders who were not under orders would see the chosen city before them. Some of them shouted to us. But we only nodded and galloped on. We wanted to get rid of them all. But they were intermitable. When we thought we had shaken them off and that we were at last in advance, we would come upon a group of them resting on the same ground. Their shells had torn up during the battle of the day before. We passed bore loggers marked by empty cans and broken saddles and black, cold campfires. At Peter's station the blood was still fresh on the grass. We're two hours before some of the South African light horse had been wounded. The boars were still on Boana then. Perhaps after all we had better turn back and try to find that press sensor. But we rode on and saw Peter's station as we passed it as an absurd relic of bygone days when bridges were intact and trains ran on schedule time. One door seen over the shoulder as we galloped past we had station master's office private and in contempt of that stern injunction which would make even the first class passenger hesitate one of our shells had knocked away half the door and made its privacy a mockery. We had only to follow the track now and we would arrive in time unless the boars were still on Boana. We had shaken off the army and we were two miles in front of it when six men came galloping toward us in an unfamiliar uniform. They passed us far to the right regardless of the trail and galloping through the high grass. We pulled up when we saw them for they had green facings to their gray uniforms and no one with Bueller's column wore green facings. We gave a yell and chorus are you from Lady Smith we shouted the men before they answered wheeled and cheered we were the first men out cried the officer and we rode in among them shaking hands and offering our good wishes we're glad to see you we said we're glad to see you they said it was not an original greeting but it seems sufficient to all of us are the boars on Boana we asked no they've trekked up Dundee way you can go right in we parted at the word and started to go right in we found the culverts along the railroad cut away and the bridges down and that galloping ponies over the road bed of a railroad is a difficult feat at the best even when the road is in working order some men cleanly dressed and rather pale looking met us and said good morning are you from Lady Smith we called no we're from the neutral camp they answered we were the first men from outside they had seen in four months and that was the extent of their interest or information they had put on their best clothes and were walking along the track to Colenso to catch a train south to Durbin or to Moritzburg to any place out of the neutral camp they might have been synambulus for all they saw of us or of the boar trenches and the battlefield before them but we found them of greatest interest especially their clean clothes our column had not seen clean linen in six weeks and the sight of these civilians in white duck and straw hats and carrying walking sticks coming toward us over the railroad ties made one think it was Sunday at home and these were excursionists to the suburbs we had been riding through a roofless tunnel with the mountain and the great dam on one side and the high wall of the railway cutting on the other but now just ahead of us lay the open country the tunnel barricaded by twisted rails and heaped up ties and bags of earth buwana was behind us for eight miles it had shut out the sight of our goal but now directly in front of us was spread a great city of dirty tents and grass huts and red cross flags the neutral camp and beyond that four miles away shimmering and twinkling sleepily in the sun the white walls and zinc roofs we gave a gasp of recognition and galloped into and through the neutral camp natives of India in great turbines Indian women in gray shawls and nose rings and black caffers in discarded khaki looked up at us dully from the earth floors of their huts and when we shouted which way and where is the bridge only stared or pointed vaguely still staring after all we thought they are poor creatures incapable of emotion perhaps they do not know how glad we are that they have been rescued they do not understand that we want to shake hands with everybody and offer our congratulations wait until we meet our own people we said they will understand it was such a pleasant prospect that we whipped the unhappy ponies into greater bursts of speed not because they needed it but because we were too excited and impatient to sit motionless in our haste we lost our way among innumerable little trees we disagreed as to which of the many cross trails led home to the bridge we slipped out of our stirrups to drag the ponies over one steep place and to haul them up another and at last the right road lay before us and a hundred yards ahead a short iron bridge and a Gordon Highlander waiting to welcome us to receive our first greetings and an assorted collection of cigarettes Hartland was riding a thoroughbred polo pony and passed the gallant defender of Lady Smith without a kind look or word but Blackwood and I galloped up more decoriously smiling at him with good will the soldier who had not seen a friend from the outside world in four months leaped in front of us and presented a heavy gun bayonet Hallfairy cried, where's your pass? of course it showed excellent discipline we admired it immensely we even overlooked the fact that he should think boar spies would enter the town by way of the main bridge and had a gallop we liked his vigilance we admired his discipline but in spite of that his reception chilled us we had brought several things with us that we thought they might possibly want but we had entirely forgotten to bring a pass indeed I do not believe one of the 25,000 men who had been fighting for six weeks to relieve Lady Smith had supplied himself with one the night before when the Lady Smith sentries had tried to halt Don Donald's troopers in the same way and demanded a pass from them there was not one in the squadron we crossed the bridge soberly and entered Lady Smith at a walk even the ponies looked disconcerted and crestfallen after the high grass and the mountains of red rock where there was not even a tent to remind one of a roof tree the stone cottages and shop windows and chapels and well-ordered hedges of the main street of Lady Smith made it seem a wealthy and attractive suburb when we entered a Sabbath-like calm hung upon the town officers in the spartist khaki and glistening stow-wassers observed us a scance little girls in white pinafores passed us with eyes cast down a man on a bicycle looked up and then in terror lest we speak to him glued his eyes to the wheel and scorched rapidly we trotted forward and halted at each street crossing looking to the right and left in the hope that someone would nod to us from the opposite end of the town General Bueller and his staff came toward us slowly the housetops did not seem to sway it was not roses, roses all the way the german army marching in the Paris received as hardy a welcome why didn't you people cheer general Bueller when he came in we asked later oh was that general Bueller they inquired we didn't recognize him but you knew he was a general officer you knew he was the first of the relieving column yes, but we didn't know who he was I decided that the bare fact of the relief of Lady Smith was all I would be able to wire to my neglected paper and with remorses started to find the Lady Smith Sensor two officers with whom I ventured to break the hush that hung upon the town by asking my way said they were going in the direction of the Sensor we rode for some distance in guarded silence finally one of them with an inward struggle brought himself to ask are you from the outside I was forced to admit that I was I felt that I had taken an unwarrantable liberty in intruding on a besieged garrison I wanted to say that I had lost my way and had ridden into town by mistake and that I begged to be allowed to withdraw with apologies the other officer woke up suddenly and handed me a printed list of the prices which had been paid during the siege for food and tobacco he seemed to offer it as being in some way an official apology for his starved appearance the price of cigars struck me as especially pathetic and I commented on it the first officer gazed mournfully at the blazing sunshine before him I have not smoked a cigar in two months he said my surging sympathy and my terror at again offending the haughty garrison combatted so fiercely that it was only with a great effort that I produced a handful will you have these the other officer started in his saddle so violently that I thought his horse had stumbled but he also kept his eyes straight in front thank you I will take one if I may just one said the first officer are you sure I'm not robbing you they each took one but they refused to put the rest of the cigars in their pockets as the printed list stated that a dozen matches sold for $1.75 I handed them a box of matches then a beautiful thing happened they lit the cigars and at the first taste of the smoke and they were not good cigars in almost human expression peace and goodwill and utter abandonment to joy spread over their yellow skins and cracked lips and fever lit eyes the first man dropped his reins and put his hands on his hips and threw back his head and shoulders and closed his eyelids I felt that I had intruded at a moment which should have been left sacred another boy officer in stainless khaki and beautifully turned out and varnished but with the same yellow skin and sharpened cheekbones and protruding teeth a skeleton on horseback rode slowly toward us down the hill as he reached us he glanced up and then swayed in his saddle gazing at my companions fearfully good god he cried his brother officers seem to understand but made no answer except to jerk their heads toward me they were too occupied to speak I handed the skeleton a cigar and he took it in great embarrassment laughing and stammering and blushing then I began to understand I began to appreciate the heroic self-sacrifice of the first two who when they had been given the chance had refused to fill their pockets I knew then that it was an effort worthy of the VC the censor was at his post and a few minutes later a signal officer on Covenant Hill heliographed my cable to Boana where six hours after the boars had abandoned it Bueller's own helos had begun to dance and they speeded the cable on its long journey to the newspaper office on the Thames embankment when one descended to the streets again there are only two streets of the town and looked for signs of the siege one found them not in the shattered houses of which there seemed surprisingly few but in the starved and fever shaken look of the people the cloak of indifference which every Englishman wears and his instinctive dislike to make much of his feelings and in this case his pluck at first concealed from us how terribly those who had been inside of Lady Smith suffered and how near to the breaking point they were their faces were the real index to what they had passed through anyone who had seen our men at Montauk Point or in the fever camp at Sybony needed no hospitalist to tell him of the pitiful condition of the garrison the skin on their faces was yellow and drawn sharply over the brow and cheekbone their teeth protruded their voices ranging from a feeble pipe to a deep whisper in this pitiful condition they had been forced to keep night watch on the hill crest in the rain to lie in the trenches and to work on fortifications and bomb proofs and they were expected to do all these things on what strength they could get from horse meat biscuits of the toughness and composition of those that are fed to dogs which is what we call corn the first day in Lady Smith gave us a faint experience as to what this siege meant the correspondence had disposed of all their tobacco and within an hour saw starvation staring them in the face and raced through the town to rob fellow correspondents who had just arrived the newcomers in their turn had soon distributed all they owned and came tearing back we tried to buy grass for our ponies and were met with pitying contempt we tried to buy food for ourselves and were met with open scorn I went to the only hotel which was open in the place and offered large sums for a cup of tea put up your money said the Scotchman in charge sharply what's the good of your money can your horse eat money can you eat money very well then put it away the great dramatic moment after the raising of the siege was the entrance into Lady Smith of the relieving column it was a magnificent manly and moving spectacle you must imagine the dry burning heat the fine yellow dust the white glare of the sunshine and in the heat and glare and dust the great interminable column of men in ragged khaki crowding down the main street twenty-two thousand strong shouting with a sweat running off their red faces and cutting little rivulets in the dust that caked their cheeks some of them were so glad that though in the heaviest marching order they leaped up and down and stepped out of line to dance to the music of the bagpipes for hours they crowded past laughing joking and cheering or staring ahead of them with lips wide apart panting in the heat and choking with the dust always ready to turn again and wave their helmets at Sir George White it was a pitiful contrast which the two forces presented the men of the garrison were in clean khaki pipe clayed and brushed and polished but their tunics hung on them as loosely as the flag around its pole the skin on their cheekbones was as tight and as yellow as the belly of a drum their teeth protruded through parched cracked lips and hunger, fever and suffering stared from out their eyes they were so ill and so feeble that the mere exercise of standing was too severe for their endurance and many of them collapsed falling back to the sidewalk rising to salute only the first troop of each succeeding regiment this done they would again sink back and each would sit leaning his head against his musket resting heavily on his folded arms in comparison the relieving column looked like giants as they came in with a swinging swagger their uniforms blackened with mud and sweat and blood stains their faces brilliantly crimsoned and blistered and tanned by the dust and sun they made a picture of strength and health and aggressiveness perhaps the contrast was strongest when the battalion of the devins that had been on foreign service passed the reserve battalion which had come from England the men of the two battalions had parted five years before in India and they met again in Lady Smith with the men of one battalion lining the street, sick, hungry and yellow and the others who had been fighting six weeks to reach it marching toward them robust red faced and cheering mightily as they met they gave a shout of recognition and the men broke ranks and ran forward calling each other by name embracing, shaking hands and punching each other in the back and shoulders it was a sight that very few men watched unmoved indeed the whole three hours was one of the most brutal assaults upon the feelings that had been my lot to endure one felt he had been entirely lifted and the question of the wrongs of the boars disappeared before a simple proposition of brave men saluting brave men early in the campaign when his officers had blundered General White had dared to write I alone am to blame but in this triumphal procession 22,000 gentlemen in khaki wiped that line off the slate and wrote well done sir as they passed before him through the town which he had defended and saved end of the relief of lady smith recording by Richard Kilmer Rio Medina, Texas section nine of notes of a war corresponded this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org recording by Richard Kilmer notes of a war correspondent by Richard Harding Davis the South African war part three the night before the battle the war front was at Bramford and as Lord Roberts was advancing upon that place one already saw in the headlines the battle of Bramford but before our train drew out of the station we learned that the English had just occupied Bramford and that the war front had been pushed back to Wynberg we decided that Bramford was an impossible position to hold anyway and that we had better leave the train at Wynberg we found some selfish consolation for the war repulse in the fact that it shortened our railroad journey by one day the next morning the train dispatcher informed us that during the night the Ruinix had taken Wynberg and that the burgers were gathered at Smalldale we agreed not to go to Wynberg but to stop off at Smalldale we also agreed that Wynberg was an impossible position to hold when at eleven o'clock the train reached Kroenstad we learned that Lord Roberts was in Smalldale it was then evident that if our train had gone and the British army kept on there would be a collision so we stopped at Kroenstad in talking it over we decided that owing to its situation Smalldale was an impossible position to hold the Sand River which runs about forty miles south of Kroenstad was the last place in the Free State at which the burgers could hope to make a stand and at the bridge where the railroad spans the river and at a drift ten miles lower down the boars and the free staters had collected to the number of four thousand Lord Roberts and his advancing column which was known to contain thirty five thousand men were a few miles distant from the opposite bank of the Sand River there was an equal chance that the English would attempt to cross at the drift or at the bridge we thought they would cross at the drift and stopped for the night at Ventersburg a town ten miles from the river Ventersburg in comparison with Kroenstad where we had left them rounding up stray burgers and hurrying them to the firing line and burning official documents in the street was calm Ventersburg was not destroying incriminating documents nor driving weary burgers from its solitary street it was making them welcome at Jones's Hotel the sun had sunk and angry crimson the sure sign of a bloody battle on the morrow and a full moon had turned the dusty street and the veldt into which it disappeared into a field of snow the American scouts had halted at Jones's Hotel and the American proprietor was giving them drinks free their cowboy spurs jingled on the floor of the bar room on the boards of the verandas on the stone floor of the kitchen and in the billiard room where they were playing pool as joyously as though the English were not ten miles away grave awkward burgers rode up each in a cloud of dust and leaving his pony to wander in the street and his rifle in a corner shook hands with everyone solemnly and asked for coffee Italians of Garibaldi's red-shirted army Swedes and Danes in semi-uniform Frenchmen in high boots and great sombreros Germans with the sabre cuts on their cheeks that had been given them at the university and Russian officers smoking tiny cigarettes crowded the little dining room and by the light of a smoky lamp talked in many tongues of Spion Kopp Sinajas post 14 streams and the battle on the morrow they were suntanned, dusty, stained and many of them with wounds and bandages they came from every capital of Europe and as each took his turn around the crowded table they drank to the health of every nation save one when they had eaten they picked up the pony's bridle from the dust and melted into the moonlight with a wave of the hand there were no bugles to sound boots and saddles for them no sergeants to keep them in hand no officers to pay for their rations and issue orders each was his own officer his conscience was his bugle call he gave himself orders they were all equal all friends the cowboy and the Russian prince the French socialist from Lavalette on Montmartre with a red sash around his velveteen breeches and the little French nobleman from the Serkal Royale who had never before felt the sun except when he played lawn tennis on the Isla de Putot each had his bandolier and rifle each was minding his own business which was the business of all to try and save the independence of a free people the presence of these foreigners with rifle in hand showed the sentiment and the sympathies of the countries from which they came these men were Europe's real ambassadors to the Republic of the Transfall the hundreds of thousands of their countrymen who had remained at home held toward the boar the same feelings but they were not so strongly moved not so strongly has to feel that they must go abroad to fight these foreigners were not the exception in opinion they were only exceptionally adventurous exceptionally liberty loving they were not soldiers of fortune for the soldier of fortune fights for gain these men received no pay no emolument no reward they were the few who dared do what the majority of their countrymen in Europe fought at Jones's hotel that night at Ventersburg it was as though a jury most of men from all of Europe and the United States had gathered in judgment on the British nation outside in the moonlight in the dusty road two bearded burgers had halted me to ask the way to the house of the commandant between them on a boar pony sat a man erect slim waisted with well set shoulders and chin in the air one hand holding the reins high and the other with knuckles down resting on his hip the boar pony he rode nor the moonlight nor the belt behind him could disguise his seat and pose it was as though I had been suddenly thrown back into London and was passing the curious gauntletted guardsman motionless on his black charger in the sentry gate in Whitehall only now instead of a steel breastplate with thin khaki and instead of the high boots his legs were wrapped in twisted putties when did they take you I asked early this morning I was out scouting he said he spoke in a voice so well trained and modulated that I tried to see his shoulder straps oh you are an officer I said no sir a trooper first lifeguards you know whether it my mistake or because it was not a mistake I could not guess there are many gentlemen rankers in this war he made a lonely figure in the night his helmet marking him as conspicuously as a man wearing a high hat in a church from the billiard room where the American scouts were playing pool came the click of the ivory and loud light hearted laughter from the veranda buttering of many strange tongues and the deep lazy voices of the boars there were boars to the left of him boars to the right of him pulling at their long drooping pipes and sending up big rings of white smoke in the white moonlight he dismounted and stood watching the crowd about him under half lowered eyelids but as unmoved as though he saw no one he threw his arm over the pony's neck and pulled its head down against his chest and began talking to it it was as though he wished to emphasize his loneliness you are not tired are you no you're not he said his voice was as kindly as though he were speaking to a child oh but you can't be tired what he whispered little hungry perhaps yes he seemed to draw much comfort from his friend the pony and the pony rubbed his head against the Englishman's shoulder the commandant says he will question you in the morning you will come with us to the jail now his captor directed you will find three of your people there to talk to I will go bring a blanket for you it's getting cold and they rode off together into the night two days later he would have heard through the windows of jones' hotel the billiard balls still clicking joyously as the accused then would have worn helmets like his own the original jones the proprietor of jones' hotel had fled the man who succeeded him was also a refugee and the present manager was an American from Cincinnati he had never before kept a hotel but he confided to me that it was not a bad business as he found on each drink sold he made a profit of 100% the proprietress was a lady from Brooklyn her husband another American was a prisoner with condry at St. Helena she was in considerable doubt as to whether she ought to run before the British arrived or wait and chance being made a prisoner she said she would prefer to escape but what with standing on her feet all day in the kitchen preparing meals for hungry burgers and foreign volunteers she was too tired to get away war at close hand consists so largely of commonplace and trivial details that I hope I may be pardoned for recording the anxieties and cares of this lady from Brooklyn her point of view so admirably illustrates one side of war it is only when you are 10 years away from it or 10,000 miles away from it that you forget the dull places the moments loom up which are terrible picturesque and momentous we have read in vanity fair of the terror and the mad haste to escape of the people of Brussels on the eve of Waterloo that is the obvious and dramatic side that is the picture of war you remember and which appeals and the rule people like to read of the rumble of cannon through the streets of Ventersburg the silent dusty columns of the reinforcements passing in the moonlight the galloping hoofs of the aides suddenly beating upon the night air and growing fainter and dying away the bugle calls from the camps along the river the stamp of spurred boots as the general himself enters the hotel and spreads the blueprint maps upon the table the clanking sabers of his staff standing behind him in the candlelight spring and tugging at their gauntlets while the great man plans his attack you must stop with the British army if you want bugle calls and clanking sabers and gauntlets they are a part of the penelope of war and of warriors but we saw no warriors at Ventersburg that night only a few cattle breeders and farmers who were fighting for the land they had won from the lion and the bushman with them a mixed company of gentlemen adventurers gathered around the table discussing other days in other lands the picture of war which is most familiar is the one of the people of Brussels fleeing from the city with the French guns booming in the distance or has one sees it in Shenandoah where aides gallop on and off the stage and the night signals flash from both sides of the valley this is the obvious and dramatic side the other side of war is the night before the battle at Jones's hotel the landlady in the dining room with her elbows on the table fretfully deciding that after a day in front of the cooking stove she is too tired to escape an invading army declaring that the one place at which she would rather be at the moment was Green's restaurant in Philadelphia immediately follows between the foreign legion and the American as the weather rectors is not better than the cafe de Paris and the general agreement that Ritz cannot hope to run two hotels in London without being robbed that is how men talked and acted on the eve of a battle we heard no galloping aides no clanking spurs only the click of the clipped billiard balls the American scouts who were killed 36 hours later knocked them about the torn billiard cloth the drip drip of the kerosene from a blazing sweating lamp which struck the dirty table cloth with the regular ticking of a hall clock and the complaint of the piano from the hotel parlor where the correspondent of a Boston paper was picking out hello my baby laboriously with one finger war is not so terribly dramatic or exciting at the time and the real trials of war at the time and not has one later remembers them consists largely in looting fodder for your ponies and in bribing the station master to put on an open truck in which to carry them we were awakened about two o'clock in the morning by a loud knocking on a door and the distracted voice of the local justice of the peace calling upon the landlord to rouse himself and fly the English so the voice informed the various guests as door after door was thrown open upon the courtyard we're at Ventersburg station only two hours away the justice of the peace wanted to buy or to borrow a horse and wanted it very badly but a sleepy-eyed and skeptical audience told him unfeelingly that he was either drunk or dreaming and only the landlady now apparently refreshed after her labors was keenly even hysterically intent on instant flight she sat up in her bed with her hair in curlpapers and revolver beside her and through her open door she shouted advice to her lodgers but they were unsympathetic and reassured her only by banging their doors and retiring with profane grumbling and in a few moments the silence was broken only by the voice of the justice as he fled down the main street of Ventersburg offering his kingdom for a horse the next morning we rode out to Sand River to see the boar positions near the drift and met President Stein in his cape cart coming from them on his way to the bridge ever since the occupation of Blumfontein the London papers had been speaking of him as the late president as though he were dead he impressed me on the contrary as being very much alive and very much the president although his executive chamber was the dancing-hall of a hotel and his roof-tree the hood of a cape cart he stood in the middle of the road and talked hopefully of the morrow he had been waiting, he said to see the development of the enemy's attack but the British had not appeared and as he believed they would not advance that day he was going on to the bridge to talk to his burgers and to consult with General Botha he was much more a man of the world and more the professional politician than President Kruger I used the words professional politician in no unpleasant sense but meaning rather that he was ready, tactful and diplomatic for instance he gave to whatever he said the air of a confidence reserved especially for the ear of the person to whom he spoke he showed none of the bitterness which President Kruger exhibits towards the British but took the tone toward the English government of the most critical and mused tolerance had he heard it, it would have been intensely annoying to any Englishman I see that the London Chronicle he said, asked if since I have become a rebel this is my rights as a barrister of the temple of course, we are no more rebels than the Spaniards were rebels against the United States by a great stretch of the truth under the Zurazente Clause the burgers of the Transfall might be called rebels but a free stator, never it is not the animosity of the English which I mind, he added thoughtfully but their depressing ignorance of their own history was cheerfulness and hopefulness even though one guessed they were assumed commanded one's admiration he was being hunted out of one village after another the miles of territory still free to him were hourly shrinking in a few days he would be a refugee in the Transfall but he stood in the open belt with all his possessions in the cart behind him the President without a Republic a man without a home but still full of pluck cheerful and unbeaten the farmhouse of General Andrew Condry stood just above the drift and was the only conspicuous mark for the English guns on our side of the river so in order to protect it the General had turned it over to the ambulance corps to be used as a hospital they had lashed a great red cross flag to the chimney and filled the clean shelves of the generously built kitchen antiseptics and bitter smelling drugs and surgeons cutlery President Stein gave me a letter to Dr. Rogers Reid who was in charge and he offered us our choice of the deserted bedrooms it was a most welcome shelter and in comparison to the cold veld the hospital was a haven of comfort hundreds of cooing doves stumbling over the roof of the barn helped to fill the air with their peaceful murmur it was a strange overture to a battle but in time I learned to not listen for any more marshal prelude the Boers do not make a business of war and when he is not actually fighting he pretends that he is camping out for pleasure in his logger there are no war like sounds no sentries challenge no bugles call he has no duties to perform for his kafir boys care for his pony and build his fires he has nothing to do but to wait for the next fight and to make the time pass as best he can in camp the burgers are like a party of children they play games with each other and play tricks upon each other and engage in numerous wrestling bouts a form of contest of which they seem particularly fond they are like children also in that they are direct and simple as courteous as the ideal child should be indeed if I were asked what struck me as the chief characteristic of the boar I should say that they were the two qualities which the English have always disallowed him his simplicity rather than his cuteness and his courtesy rather than his boarishness the force that waited at the drift by crongie's farm as it lay spread out on both sides of the river the gathering of Wisconsin lumberman of Adirondack's guides and hunters halted at Paul Smith's like a Methodist camp meeting limited entirely to men the eye sought in vain for rows of tents for the horses at the picket line for the flags that marked the headquarters the commissary the field telegraph the field post office the ASC the RMAC the other combinations of letters of the military alphabet I remembered that great army of general Bueller's as I saw it stretching out over the basin of the Tugela like the children of Israel in number like Tammany Hall an organization and discipline with not a tent pin missing with hospitals as complete as those established for a hundred years in the heart of London with searchlights, heliographs soloons, renkin rays pontoon bridges telegraph wagons and trenching tools ferriers with anvils major generals, map makers gallipers, intelligence departments even biographers and press sensors every kind of thing and every kind of man that goes to make up a British Army Corps I knew that seven miles from us just such another completely equipped discipline column was advancing to the opposite bank of the Sand River and opposed to it was this merry company of boar farmers lying on the grass toasting pieces of freshly killed hawks on the end of a stick their hobbled ponies foraging for themselves a half mile away a thousand men without a tent among them without a field glass it was a picnic a pastoral scene of war on the hills overlooking the drift were the guns but down along the banks the burgers were sitting in circles singing the evening hymns many of them sung to the tunes familiar in the service of the Episcopal church so that it sounded like a Sunday evening in the country at home at the drift other burgers were watering the oxen bathing and washing in the cold river around the campfires others were smoking luxuriously with their saddles for pillows the evening breeze brought the sweet smell of burning wood a haze of smoke from many fires the lazy hum of hundreds of voices rising in the open air the naeing of many horses and the swift soothing rush of the river when morning came to Kranji's farm it brought with it no warning nor sign of battle we began to believe that the British army had an invention of the enemies so we cooked bacon and fed the doves and smoked on the veranda moving our chairs around it with the sun and argued as to whether we should stay where we were or go on to the bridge at noon it was evident there would be no fight at the drift that day so we started along the bank of the river with the idea of reaching the bridge before nightfall the trail lay on the English side of the river but we were in constant concern least our white hooded Cape Cart would be seen by some of their scouts and we would be taken prisoner and forced to travel all the way back to Cape Town we saw many herds of deer but no scouts or lancers and such being the effect of many copchies lost all idea as to where we were we knew we were burying steadily south toward Lord Roberts who as we later learned went in some three miles distant about two o'clock his guns opened up on our left so at least we knew that we were still on the wrong side of the river and that we must be between the boar and the English artillery except for that our knowledge of our geographical position was a blank and we accordingly outspanned and cooked more baking outspanding is unharnessing the ponies and mules to graze and takes three minutes in spanning is trying to catch them again and takes from three to five hours we started back over the trail over which we had come and just at sunset saw a man appear from behind a rock and disappear again whether he was boar or britain I could not tell but while I was examining the rock with my glasses two boars came galloping forward and ordered me to move his arms up to sit with both arms in the air is an extremely ignominious position and especially annoying if the pony is restless so I compromised by waving my whip as high as I could reach with one hand and still held in the horse with the other the third man from behind the rock rode up at the same time they said they had watched us coming from the English line and that we were prisoners and that for us nothing could be more satisfactory because we now knew where we were and because they had probably saved us a week's trip to Cape Town they examined and approved of our credentials and showed us the proper trail which we managed to follow until they disappeared when the trail disappeared also and we were again lost in what seemed an interminable valley but just before nightfall the fires of the commando came down one of us and we rode into the camp of General Christian Divet he told us we could not reach the bridge that night and showed us a farmhouse on a distant copchi where we could find a place to spread our blankets I was extremely glad to meet him as he and General Botha are the most able and brave of the Board Generals he was big manly and of impressive size and although he speaks English he conveyed it to his agents many long and old world compliments to the greater republic across the seas we found the people in the farmhouse on the distant copchi quite hysterical over the near presence of the British and the entire place in such an uproar that we slept out in the veld in the morning we were awakened by the sound of the vicar maxim or the pom-pom as the English call it or bomb-maxon but by any name it was a remarkable gun and the most demoralizing of any of the smaller pieces which had been used in this campaign one of its values is that its projectiles throw up sufficient dust to enable the gunner to tell exactly where they strike and within a few seconds he is able to alter the range accordingly in this way it is its own rangefinder its bark is almost as dangerous as its bite for its reports have a brisk, insolent sound like a postman's knock or a cooper hammering rapidly on an empty keg and there is an unexplainable mocking sound to the reports as though the gun were laughing at you the English Tommies used to call it very aptly the hyena gun I found it much less offensive from the rear than when I was with the British and in front of it from the top of the copchi we saw that the battle had at last begun and that the bridge was the objective point the English came up in great lines and blocks and from so far away and in such close order that at first in spite of the khaki they looked as though they wore uniforms of blue they advanced steadily and two hours later when we had ridden to a copchi nearer the bridge they were apparently in the same formation as when we had first seen them only now farms that had lain far in their rear were overrun by them and they encompassed the whole basin an army of 25,000 men advancing in full view across the great plain appeals to you as something entirely lacking in the human element you do not think of it as a collection of very tired, dusty and perspiring men with aching legs and parched lips a natural phenomenon or a gigantic monster which wipes out a railway station a cornfield and a village with a single clutch of one of its tentacles you would as soon attribute human qualities to a plague a tidal wave or a slowly slipping landslide one of the tentacles composed of 6,000 horses had detached itself and crossed the river below the bridge where it was creeping up on both of us right we could see the burgers galloping before it towards Venturesburg at the bridge General Botha and President Stein stood in the open road with uplifted arms waved the borers back calling upon them to stand but the burgers only shook their heads and with averted eyes grimly and silently rode by them on the other side they knew they were flanked they knew the men in the moving mass in front of them were in proportion of 9 to 1 when you look down upon the lines of the English Army advancing for 3 miles across the plain one could hardly blame them the burgers did not even raise their mousers one bullet the size of a broken slate pencil falling into a block 3 miles across and a mile deep seemed so inadequate it was like trying to turn back the waves of the sea with a blowpipe it is true they held back as many at Colenso but the defensive positions there were magnificent and since then 6 months had passed during which time the same 30,000 men who had been fighting then were fighting still while the enemy was always new with fresh recruits and reinforcements arriving daily has the English officers at Durban who had so lately arrived from home that they wore swords used to say with the proud consciousness of 200,000 men back of them it won't last much longer now the Boers have had their belly full of fighting they are fed up on it that's what it is they are fed up they forgot that the Boers who for 3 months held Bueller back to Gila were the same Boers who were rushed across the Free States to rescue Kongji from Roberts and who were then sent to meet the Relief Column at 14 streams and were then ordered back again to harass Roberts at Sinahas Post and who at last worn out, stale, heart-sick and hopeless at the unequal odds in endless fighting fell back at Sand River for 3 months 30,000 men had been intempling the impossible task of endeavoring to meet an equal number of the enemy three different places at the same time I have seen a retreat in Greece when the men, before they left the trenches stood up in them and raged and cursed at the advancing Turk cursed at their government at their king, at each other and retreated with shame in their faces because they did so but the retreat of the Burgers of the Free State was not like that they rose one by one and saddled their ponies with the look in their faces of men who had been attending the funeral of a friend and who were leaving just before the coffin was swallowed into the grave some of them, for a long time after the greater number of the commando had ridden away sat upon the rocks staring down into the sunny valley below them talking together gravely rising to take a last look at the territory which was their own the shells of the victorious British sang triumphantly over the heads of their own artillery bursting impotently in white smoke or tearing up the veld in fountains of dust but they did not heed them they did not even send a revengeful bullet into the approaching masses the sweetness of revenge could not pay for what they had lost they looked down upon the farmhouses of the men they knew upon their own farmhouses rising in smoke they saw the Englishmen, like pests of locusts, settling down around gardens and farmhouses still nearer and swallowing them up their companions already far on the way to safety waved to them from the veld to follow an excited doctor carrying a wounded man warned us that the English were just below storming the hill our artillery is aiming 500 yards he shouted but still the remaining burgers stood immovable leaning on their rifles silent, homeless looking down without rage or show of feelings at the great waves of khakis sweeping steadily toward them and possessing their land end of the South African war recording by Richard Kilmer Rio Medina, Texas this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by K. A. Ference notes of a war correspondent by Richard Harding Davis the Japanese-Russian war battles I did not see we knew it was a battle because the Japanese officers told us it was in other wars I had seen other battles many sorts of battles but I had never seen a battle like that one most battles are noisy hurried and violent giving rise to an unnatural first and to the delusion that by some unhappy coincidence every man on the other side is shooting only at you this delusion is not peculiar to myself many men have told me that in the confusion of battle they always get this exaggerated idea of their own importance down in Cuba I heard a colonel inform a group of brother officers that his Spanish field piece had marked him for his own and for an hour had been pumping shrapnel at him and at no one else the interesting part of the story was that he believed it but the battle of Anxantien was in no way disquieting it was a noiseless, odorless rubber-tired battle so far as we were concerned it consisted of rings of shrapnel smoke floating over a mountain pass so many miles distant that when, with a glass, you could see a speck of fire twinkling the sun like a heliograph you could not tell whether it was the flash from the gun or the flame from the shell neither could you tell whether the cigarette rings issued from the lips of the Japanese gun or from those of the Russians the only thing about the battle of which you were certain was that it was a perfectly safe battle to watch it was the first one I ever witnessed that did not require you to calmly smoke a pipe in order to conceal the fact that you were scared but soothing as it was, the battle lacked what is called the human interest there may have been men behind the guns but as they were also behind Camel Hill and Saddle Mountain eight miles away our eyes, like those of Mr. Samuel Weller being only eyes were not able to discover them our teachers, the three Japanese officers who were detailed to tell us about the things we were not allowed to see gazed at the scene of the carnage with well simulated horror their expressions of countenance showed that should anyone battle eight miles nearer they were prepared to sell their life dearly when they found that many of us were looking at them or their battle, they were hurt the reason no one was looking at them was because most of us had gone to sleep the rest, with a bitter experience of Japanese promises had doubted there would be a battle and had prepared themselves with newspapers and so, while eight miles away the preliminary battle to Liao Yang was making history we were lying on the grass reading two-month-old news of the St. Louis Convention the site greatly disturbed our teachers you complain they said because you are not allowed to see anything and now when we show you a battle you will not look Lewis of the Herald eagerly sees his glasses and follows the track of the Siberian Railway as it disappeared into the path I give pardon, but I didn't know it was a battle I apologize, Riley I thought it was a locomotive at Anshan Tian Station blowing off steam and so, teacher gave him the bad mark for this respect it was really trying in order to see this battle we had traveled half around the world had been waited four wasted months in Tokyo, then had taken a sea voyage of ten days, then for twelve days had ridden through mud and dust in pursuit of the army and for twelve more days while battles raged ten miles away had been kept prisoners in a compound where five out of the eighteen correspondents were sick with dysentery or fever and finally as a reward we were released from captivity and taken to see smoke rings eight miles away that night around Robin, which was signed by all was sent to General Oku pointing out to him that unless we were allowed nearer to his army than eight miles the people who paid us our salaries was at an end while waiting for an answer to this we were led out to see another battle either that we might not miss one minute of it or that we should be too sleepy to see any of it we were started in black darkness at three o'clock in the morning the hour as we were told when one's vitality is at its lowest and one which should be reserved for the exclusive use of burglars and robbers of hen houses concerning that hour I learned this however its effects may be upon human beings it finds a horse at its most strenuous moment at that hour by the light of three paper lanterns we tried to saddle eighteen horses donkeys and ponies and the sole object of each was to kick the light out of the lantern nearer to him we finally rode off through a darkness that was lightened only by a gray dripping fog and in a silence broken only by the patter of brain upon the corn that towered high above our heads and for many miles hen was in after an hour Sataki, the teacher who acted as our guide lost the trail and Captain Lionel James of the Times who wrote on the heels of duet found it for him Sataki, so our other two keepers told us is an authority on international law and he may be all of that and know all there is to know of three mile limits and paper blockades but when it came to picking up a trail even in the bright sunlight when it lay well turned beneath his horses nostrils we always found that any correspondent with an experience of a few campaigns was of more general use the trail ended at a muddy hill a bare sugar-lope of a hill as high as the main tent of a circus and as abruptly sloping away it was swept by a damp chilling wind a mean peevish rain washed its sides and they were so steep that if we sat upon them we'd toboggan slowly downwards blowing up the mud with our boot heels hungry, sleepy and utter darkness we clung to the slippery mound in its ocean of whispering millet like sailors wrecked in a mid-sea upon a rock and waited for the day after two hours a grain nest came grudgingly trees and rocks grew out of it trenches appeared at our feet and what had before looked like a lake of water became a mud village then, like shadows the foreign attachés whom we fondly hoped might turn out to be to take as prisoners and carry us off to breakfast rode up in silence and were halted at the base of the hill it seemed now, the onions being assembled the orchestra might begin but no hot-throated cannon broke the chilling, dripping silence no upheaval of the air spoke of cannon guns no whirling shrapnel screamed and burst instead the fog rolled back showing us miles of waving corn the wet rails of the Siberian railroad listening in the rain and, masking the horizon the same mountains from which the day before the smokerings had ascended they now were dark, brooding their tops hooded in clouds somewhere in front of us hidden in the kialiang hidden in the tiny villages crouching on the banks of streams concealed in trenches that were they themselves concealed Oku's army the army to which we were supposed to belong was buried from our sight and in the mountains on our right where the 4th army and 20 miles so farther to the right Kuroki was closing in upon the alyang all of this we guessed what we were told was very different what we saw was nothing in all 400,000 men were not farther from us than 4 to 30 miles and we saw nothing we watched as the commissariat wagons carrying food to those men passed us by the hospital stores passed us by the transport carts passed us by the koolies with reserve mounts the last wounded soldier, straggler and camp follower passed us by like a big tidal wave Oku's army had swept forward leaving its unwelcome gas the attachés and correspondents 40 lonely foreigners among 70,000 Japanese stranded upon a hill miles in the rear perhaps as war it was necessary but it was not my misson that night Major Okape our head teacher gave us the official interpretation of what had occurred the Russians he said had retreated from the alyang and were in open flight the last general Kuroki who he said was 50 miles north of us could cut them off they would reach Mukden in 10 days and until then there would be no more fighting the Japanese troops he said were in the alyang and had been abandoned without a fight this he told us on the evening of the 27th of August the next morning Major Okape delivered the answer of general Oku to our round robin he informed us that we had been as near to the fighting as we would ever be allowed to go the nearest we had been to any fighting was 4 miles our experience had taught us that when the Japanese promised us we would be allowed to do something we wanted to do they did not keep their promise but that when they said we would not be allowed to do something we wanted to do that was the truth consequently when general Oku declared the correspondence would be held 4 miles in the rear we believed he would keep his word and as we now know he did the only men who saw the fighting were later ensued being those who disobeyed his orders and escaped from their keepers those who had been ordered by their papers to strictly obey the regulations of the Japanese and the military attachés were kept by Oku nearly 6 miles in the rear with Oku's answer to the correspondence Mr. John Fox Jr. of Scribner's magazine Mr. Milton Pryor of the London Illustrated News Mr. George Lynch of the London Morning Chronicle and myself left the army we were very sorry to go apart from the fact that we had not been allowed to see anything of the military operations we were enjoying ourselves immensely personally I never went on a campaign in a more delightful country there were better companions than the men to correspondence with the Second Army for the sake of such good company and to see more of Manchuria I personally wanted to keep on but I was not being paid to go camping with a set of good fellows already the Japanese had wasted 6 months of my time and 6 months in Mr. Coyer's money Mr. Fox had been bottled up for a period of equal length while Mr. Pryor and Mr. Lynch had been prisoners in Tokyo for even 4 months longer and now that Okabe assured us that Liaoyang was already taken and Okabe told us if there were any fighting we would not be allowed to witness it it seemed a good time to quit other correspondence would have quit then as most of them did 10 days later but that their work and ours in a slight degree differed as we were not working for daily papers we used the cable that sold them while they used it every day each evening Okabe brought them the official account of battles and of the movements of the troops which news of events which they had not witnessed they sent their separate papers but for our purposes it was necessary we should see things for ourselves or contrary to the popular accusation no matter how flattering it may be we could not describe events at which we were not present but what mainly moved us to decide was the statements of Okabe the officer especially detailed by the war office to aid and instruct us to act as our guide, philosopher and friend our only official source of information told us that Liao Yang was occupied by the Japanese and that the Russians were in retreat he even begged me personally to come with him into Liao Yang on the 29th and see how it was progressing under the control of the Japanese authorities Okabe's news meant that the great battle Kropotkin had promised that Liao Yang and which we had come to see would never take place why Okabe lied I do not know whether Oku had lied to him or whether it was Baron General Kodama or Major General Fukushima who had instructed him to so grossly misinform us it is impossible to say while in Tokyo no one ever more frequently no more unblushingly made statements that they knew were untrue than did Kodama and Fukushima the none of their deceptions had ever harmed us so greatly as did the lie they had put into the mouth of Okabe not only had the Japanese not occupied Liao Yang on the evening of the 27th of August but later, as everybody knows they had to fight 6 days to get into it and Kuroki so far from being 50 miles north toward Mukden as Okabe said he was was 20 miles to the east on our right preparing for the closing in movement which was just about to begin 3 days after we had left the army the greatest battle since Sidon was waged for 6 days so our half year of time and money of dreary waiting of daily humiliations at the hands of officers seized by suspicion all of which would have been made up to us by the sight of this one great spectacle was to the end absolutely lost to us perhaps we made a mistake in judgment as the cards fell we certainly did but after the event it is easy to be wise for the last 15 years had I known as much as the night before the Grand Prix was run as I did the next afternoon and he would be passing rich the only proposition before us was this there was small chance of any immediate fighting if they were fighting we would not see it confronted with the same conditions again I would decide in exactly the same manner I am as fortunate lay in the fact that our experience with other armies had led us to believe that officers and gentlemen speak the truth that men with titles of nobility and with the higher titles of general and major general do not lie in that we were mistaken the parting from the other correspondence and the fact upon the feelings which had we known they were to follow us two weeks later to Tokyo would have spared us it is worth recording why after waiting many months to get to the front they in their turn so soon left it after each of the big battles before Liao Yang they handed the dispatches they had written for the papers to Major Okabe each day he told them that these dispatches had been censored and forwarded after three days he brought back and informed the correspondence that not one of their cables had been sent it was the final affront of Japanese duplicity in recording the greatest battle of modern times three days had been lost and by a lie the object of their coming to the far east had been frustrated it was fatuitous to no longer expect from Kodama and his people's fair play or honest treatment and in the interest of their employers and to save their own self-respect in this world the times of London the New York Herald the Paris Figaro the London Daily Telegraph Daily Mail and Morning Post quit the Japanese Army meanwhile, unconscious of what we had missed the four of us were congratulating ourselves upon our escape and had started for new shuang our first halt was at Haicheng in the same compound in which for many days with the others we had been in prison but our halt was a brief one filled with silence filled only with memories of the men who, with their laughter their stories and their songs had made it live but now all were gone the old familiar faces and the familiar voices and we threw our things back on the carts and hurried away the trails between Haicheng and the sea made the worst going we had encountered in Manchuria you soon are convinced that the time has not been long since this tract of land lay entirely under the waters of the Gulf of Liao Tong you soon sent the salt air and as you flounder in the alluvial deposits of ages you suspect to find the salt water at the very roots of the millet water lies in every furrow of the miles of corn fields water flows and streams in the roads water spreads and lakes over the compounds it oozes from beneath the very walls of the go-downs you would not be surprised at any moment to see the tide returning to envelop you in this liquid mud a cart can make a trail by this simple process of continuing forward the havoc is created in the millet and the ditches its iron-studded wheels dig in the mud leave to the eyes of the next comer as perfectly good a trail as the one that has been in use for many centuries consequently the opportunities for choosing the wrong trail are excellent and we embraced every opportunity but friendly Chinaman and certainly they are a friendly human people again and again cheerfully went far out of their way to guide us back to ours and so after two days we found ourselves five miles from Nishuang here we agreed to separate we had heard a marvelous tale that at Nishuang there was ice, champagne and a hotel with enamel bath fumes we had unceasingly discussed the possibility of this being true and what we would do with these luxuries if we got them and when we came so near to where they were supposed to be it was agreed that one of us would ride on ahead and command them and the others followed with the cart the lucky number fell to John Fox and he left us at a gallop he was to engage rooms for the four and to arrange for the care of seven Japanese interpreters and servants nine Chinese coulis and nineteen horses and mules we expected that by eight o'clock we would be eating the best dinner John Fox could order if he were mistaken not that John Fox had not ordered the dinner but no one ate it but John Fox the very minute he left us the cart turned turtle in the mud and the largest of his four mules lay down in it and knocked off work the mule was hot and very tired and the mud was soft, cool and wet so he burrowed under its protecting surface until all we could see of him was his ears the coulis shrieked at him prior issued ultimatums at him the Japanese servants stood on dry land fifteen feet away and talked about him but he only snuggled deeper into his mud bath when there is no more of a mule to hit than his ears he has you at a great disadvantage and when the coulis waded in and tugged at his head we found that the harder they tugged the deeper they sank when they were so far out of sight that we were in danger of losing them too we ordered them to give up the struggle and unload the cart before we got it out of dry dock we loaded and again in line with the other carts it was nine o'clock and dark in the meantime Lynch, to sense a duty weakened by visions of enamel bath tubs filled with champagne and floating lumps of ice had secretly abandoned us sealing away into the night and leaving us to follow this, not ten minutes after we had started Mr. Pryor decided that he would not do so he camped out with the carts in a village while dinnerless, supperless and thirsty I rode on alone I reached Nishuang at midnight and after being refused admittance by the Japanese soldiers was finally rescued by the number one man from the Manchuria Hotel who had been sent out by Fox for two seeks and a lantern to find me for some minutes I dared not ask him the fateful question it was better still to hope than to put one's fortunes to the test but finally I summoned my courage Ice have got I begged have got he answered there was a long grateful pause and then in a voice that trembled I asked again champagne have got number one man nodded he said I totally forgot until the next morning to ask about the enameled backups when I arrived John Pox had gone to bed and as it was six weeks since any of us had seen a real bed I did not wake him hence he did not know I was in the hotel and throughout the troubles it followed I slept soundly meanwhile Lynch as a punishment for running away from us had lost his own way and after stumbling into an old sow in her litter of pigs enough to startle anyone stumbled into a Japanese outpost was hailed as a Russian spy and made prisoner this had one advantage as he now was able to find Nushuang to which place he was marched closely guarded arriving there at half past two in the morning since he ran away from us he had been wandering about on foot for ten hours he sent a note to Mr. Little the British consul and to Bush Brothers the king of Nushuang and still tormented by visions of ice and champagne demanded that his captors take him to the Manchuria Hotel there he swore they would find a pass from Nushuang allowing him to enter Nushuang three friends who could identify him four carts, seven servants nine hoolies and nine animals the commandant took him to the Manchuria Hotel where instead of this wealth of corroborative detail they found John Pox in bed as prior the only one of us not in Nushuang had the pass from Nushuang and Nushima for admitting us to enter it there was no one to prove what either Lynch or Fox said and the officer flew into a passion and told Fox he would send both of them out of town on the first train Mr. Fox was annoyed at being pulled from his bed at three in the morning to be told he was a Russian spy so he said that there was not a train fast enough to get him out of Nushuang as quickly as he wanted to go or for that matter out of Japan and away from the Japanese people at this the officer he yelled graduate and speaking very pure English told Mr. Fox to shut up and Mr. Fox being a Harvard graduate with an equally perfect command of English pure and undefiled shook his fist in the face of the Japanese officer and told him to shut up yourself Lynch, seeing the witness he had summoned for the defense about to plunge into conflict with his captor leaped unhappily from foot to foot and was heard diplomatically suggesting that all hands should adjourn for ice and champagne if I were a spy, demanded Fox do you suppose I would have ridden into your town on a white horse and registered at your headquarters and then ordered four rooms for the principal hotel in accommodations for seven servants, nine coollies and 19 animals is that the way a Russian spy works does he go around with a brass band the officer, unable to answer in kind this excellent reasoning took a mean advantage of his position by placing both John and Lynch under arrest and at the head of each bed a Japanese policeman to guard their slumbers the next morning Friar arrived at the pass and from the decks of the first outbound English seamer Fox hurled through the captain's brass speaking trumpet our farewell to the Japanese as represented by the gun boats in the harbor their officers probably thinking his remarks referred to floating mines ran eagerly to the side but our ship's captain tumbled from the bridge, rescued his trumpet and begged Fox until we were under the guns of a British man of war to issue no more farewell addresses the next evening we passed into the gulf of Peachy Lee and saw above Port Arthur the great guns flashing and denied and the next day we anchored in the snug harbor of Tifu we went at once to the cable station to cable colliers I was returning and asked the Chinamen in charge if my name was on the list of those correspondents who could send copy-collects he said it was and as I started to write he added with grave politeness I congratulate you for a moment I did not lift my eye I felt a chill creeping down my spine I knew it sort of a blow was coming and I was afraid of it why? I asked the Chinamen bowed and smiled because you are the first, he said you are the only correspondent to arrive who has seen the battle of Yangyang and turned to a sort of nausea I knew then what disaster had fallen but I cheated myself by pretending the man was misinformed there was no battle I protested the Japanese told me themselves they had entered Liao Yang without firing a shot the cable operator was a gentleman he saw my distress saw what it meant and delivered the blow with the distaste of a physician who must tell a patient he cannot recover gently, reluctantly with real sympathy he said they have been fighting for six days I went over to a bench and sat down and when Lynch and Fox came in and took one look at me they guessed what had happened when the Chinamen told them of what we had been cheated they, in their turn, came to the bench and collapsed no one said anything no one even swore six months we had waited only to miss by three days the greatest battle since Gettysburg and Hedon by six months we had tasted all the indignities of the suspected spy we had been prisoners of war we had been ticket of leaf men and it is not difficult to imagine our glad surprise that same day when we saw in the harbor the white hull of cruiser Cincinnati with our flag lifting at her stern we did not know a soul on board but that did not halt us as refugees, as fleeing political prisoners as American slaves escaping and avoiding jailers we climbed over the side and demanded protection and dinner we got both perhaps it was not good to rest on that bit of driftwood that atom of our country that had floated far from the mainland and now formed an island of American territory in the harbor of Chifu perhaps we were not content to sit at the mahogany table in the glistening white and brass bound ward rooms surrounded by those eager sunburned faces to hear sea slang and the excellence of Maine, Virginia and New York City we forgot our dark skinned keepers with the slanting suspicious unfriendly eyes with tongues that spoke the one thing and meant the other all the memories of those six months of deceit, of broken pledges of unnecessary humiliation of petty and politeness from a half educated half bred conceited and arrogant people fell from up like a heavy knapsack we were again at home again with our own people out of the happy confusion of that great occasion I recall two toasts one was offered by John Box Japan for the Japanese and the Japanese for Japan even the Japanese wardroom boy did not catch its significance the other was a paraphrase of a couplet in reference to our brown brothers of the Philippines first spoken in Manila to the Japanese they may be brothers to Commodore Perry but they ain't no brothers of mine it was a joyous night Lieutenant Gilmore who had been a historic prisoner in the Philippines so far sympathized with our escape from the yellow peril as to intercede with the captain to extend the rules of the ship and those rules that were incapable of extending broke indeed I believe we broke everything with the eight inch gun and finally we were conducted to our steamer in a launch crowded with slim waisted broad-chested youths clasping each other's shoulders and singing way down in my heart I have a feeling for you a sort of feeling for you while the officer of the deck turned his back and discreetly fixed his night glass upon a suspicious star it was an American cruiser that rescued this war correspondent from the bondage of Japan it will require all the battleships in the Japanese navy to force him back into it end of the Japanese Russian war battles I did not see recording by K. A. Ferrant Eastern Texas