Our last
Christmas we spent on the Modder. I remember it well; a wet night, and
all night long we sat on a steep kopje watching the lights of a Boer
laager and expecting to be attacked. Methuen's little campaign strikes
one now as a sort of prelude, or overture, to the main show; but how
very much surprised we should have been that November morning when we
marched from Orange River Camp if you had told us we should ever be
looked at in that light. Ten thousand men was a big army in those days.
We have been on the trek now for about six weeks with Bruce-Hamilton,
and though we have not so far been seriously engaged, there has been
almost daily fighting round the fringes and skirts of the column
("skirt-fighting," you may call it).
"_November_ 17.--Left Lindley. This neighbourhood quite as disturbed as
ever. Shooting.
"_November_ 18.--More shooting. Boers in all hills.
"_November_ 19.--More shooting and galloping about. Reached Heilbron.
"_November_ 20.--Left for Frankfort. Boers in attendance as usual. Our
two guns and pompom very useful."
Those were the last entries I made in my diary. The day's events became
too monotonous to chronicle, but very much the same sort of entries
would have applied to almost every day since. Sometimes there are
exciting incidents. Yesterday half-a-dozen Boers hid in a little hollow
which just concealed them until our column came along, and opened fire
at close range on the flank guard.
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