FROM BLOEMFONTEIN TO KOOMATI POORT AND BACK BY THE REV. E. P. LOWRY SENIOR WESLEYAN CHAPLAIN WITH THE SOUTH AFRICAN FIELD FORCE   London HORACE MARSHALL & SON TEMPLE HOUSE, TEMPLE AVENUE, E.C. 1902 TO THE OFFICERS, NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS, AND MEN OF THE GUARDS' BRIGADE THIS IMPERFECT RECORD OF THEIR HEROIC DARING, AND OF THEIR YET MORE HEROIC ENDURANCE IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, IN TOKEN OF SINCEREST ADMIRATION, AND IN GRATEFUL APPRECIATION OF NUMBERLESS COURTESIES RECEIVED BY ONE OF

The story of my long tramp with the Guards' Brigade was in part told through a series of letters that appeared in The Methodist Recorder , The Methodist Times , and other papers. The first portion of that series was republished in "Chaplains in Khaki," as also extensive selections in "From Aldershot to Pretoria." In this volume, therefore, to avoid needless repetition, the story begins with our triumphal occupation of Bloemfontein, and is continued till after the time of the breaking-up of the G

THE ULTIMATUM AND WHAT LED TO IT When the late Emperor of the French was informed, on the eve of the Franco-German War, that not so much as a gaiter button would be found wanting if hostilities were at once commenced, soon all France found itself, with him, fatally deceived. But when the Transvaal Burghers boasted that they were "ready to give the British such a licking as they had never had before," it proved no idle vaunting. Whether the average Boer understood the real purpose for which he wa

ON THE WAY TO BLOEMFONTEIN, AND IN IT "For old times' sake Don't let enmity live; For old times' sake Say you will forget and forgive. Life is too short for quarrel; Hearts are too precious to break; Shake hands and let us be friends For old times' sake!" So gaily sang the Scots Guards as, in hope of speedy triumph and return, we left Southampton for Kruger's Land on the afternoon of October 21st, 1899. From a photograph by Mr Westerman A Magersfontein Boer Trench. Our last evening in England br

A LONG HALT AT BLOEMFONTEIN Refits. Before we could resume our march every commissariat store needed to be replenished, and every man required a new outfit from top to toe. If the march of the infantry had been much further prolonged we should have degenerated into a literally bootless expedition, for some of the men reached Bloemfontein with bare if not actually bleeding feet, while their nether garments were in a condition that beggared and baffled all description. Once smart Guardsmen had pat

THROUGH WORLDS UNKNOWN AND FROM WORLDS UNKNOWN A pleasure jaunt. During this six weeks of tarrying at Bloemfontein I found myself able to visit a most interesting Methodist family residing some twenty miles south of the town. For my sole benefit the express to the Cape was stopped at a certain platelayer's hut, and then a walk of about a mile across the veldt brought me to the pleasant country house of a venerable widow lady. Her belongings had of course been freely commandeered by the Boers on

QUICK MARCH TO THE TRANSVAAL It was with feelings of unfeigned delight that the Guards learned May Day was to witness the beginning of another great move towards Pretoria. We had entered Bloemfontein without expending upon it a single shot; we had been strangely welcomed with smiles and cheers and waving flags and lavish hospitality; but none the less that charming little capital had made us pay dearly for its conquest, and for our six weeks of so-called rest on the sodden veldt around it. Its t

TO THE VALSCH RIVER AND THE VAAL After resting for two days at Smaldeel, the Guards set out for Kroonstad on the Valsch or False River, so called because in some parts it so frequently changes its channel that after a heavy freshet one can seldom be quite sure where to find it. This march of sixty-five miles was covered in three days and a half; Smaldeel seeing the last of us on Wednesday and Kroonstad seeing the first of us about noon on Saturday. In the course of this notable march we saw, or

A CHAPTER ABOUT CHAPLAINS Whilst our narrative pauses for a while beside the Vaal which served as a boundary between the two Republics, it may be well to devote one chapter to a further description of the work of the chaplains with whom in those two Republics I was brought into more or less close official relationship. Concerning the chaplains of other Churches whose work I witnessed, it does not behove me to speak in detail; I can but sum up my estimate of their worth by saying concerning each,

THE HELPFUL WORK OF THE OFFICIATING CLERGY In addition to the eight Acting Chaplains referred to in previous chapters, some forty-five or fifty Wesleyan ministers were appointed "Officiating Clergymen." These, while still discharging, so far as circumstances might permit, their ordinary civilian duties, were formally authorised to minister to the troops residing for a while in the neighbourhood of their church. Many of the local Anglican clergy were similarly employed, and supplemented the labou

GETTING TO THE GOLDEN CITY So utter, and for the time being so ludicrously complete, was the collapse of our adversaries' defence, that on that first night within the Transvaal border we lay down to rest on the open veldt without any slightest shelter, but also without any slightest fear, save only the fear of catching cold; and slept as undisturbed as though we had been slumbering amid hoar-frost and heather on the famous Fox Hills near Aldershot. On that particular Sunday night our tentless ca

PRETORIA THE CITY OF ROSES War and worship live only on barest speaking terms, and to the latter the former makes few concessions; so it came to pass that Whitsunday, like so many another Sunday spent in South Africa, found us again upon the march, with the inevitable result that no parade service could possibly be held. Everybody, however, seemed full of confident expectation that the next day we should reach Pretoria, and perhaps take possession of it. Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday. "If we take

PRETORIAN INCIDENTS AND IMPRESSIONS Pretoria is manifestly a city in process of being made, and has probably in store a magnificent future, though at present the shanty and the palace stand "cheek by jowl." Even the main roads leading into the town seemed atrociously bad as judged by English standards, and the paving of the principal streets was of a correspondingly perilous type. Yet the public buildings already referred to were not the only ones that claimed our commendation as signs of a prog

FROM PRETORIA TO BELFAST On reaching Pretoria, almost unopposed, our Guardsmen jumped to the hasty and quite unjustifiable conclusion that the campaign was closing, and that in the course of about another fortnight some of us would be on our homeward way. They forgot that after a candle has burned down into its socket it may still flare and flicker wearisomely long before it finally goes out. War lights just such a candle, and no extinguisher has yet been patented for the instant quenching of it

THROUGH HELVETIA The fighting near Belfast. On August 24th the tiny little town of Belfast was reached by General Pole Carew's division, including the Guards' Brigade; but though our advent was unopposed, there was heavy fighting on our right, where General Buller, newly arrived from Natal, had the day before approached the immensely strong Boer position at Bergendal. There the Johannesburg police, the most valorous of all the burgher forces, made their last heroic stand three days later, and we

WAR'S WANTON WASTE Day after day we steadily worked our way down to Koomati Poort, even when climbing such terrific hills that we sometimes seemed like men toiling to the top of a seven-storied house in order to reach the cellar. Hence Monday morning found us still seemingly close to "The Devil's Kantoor," which we had reached on the previous Saturday, though meanwhile we had tramped up and down and in and out, till we could travel no farther, all day on Sunday. A Surrendered Boer General. Durin

FROM PORTUGUESE AFRICA TO PRETORIA Towards sundown on Tuesday, September 24th, while most of the Guards' Brigade was busy bathing in the delicious waters of the Koomati at its juncture with the Crocodile River, I walked along the railway line to take stock of the damage done to the rolling stock, and to the endlessly varied goods with which long lines of trucks had recently been filled. It was an absolutely appalling sight! Staggering Humanity. Long before, at the very beginning of the war, the

A WAR OF CEASELESS SURPRISES What Conan Doyle rightly described as "The great Boer War" came eventually to be called yet more correctly "The great Bore War." It grew into a weariness that might well have worn out the patience and exhausted the resources of almost any nation. No one for a moment imagined when we reached Koomati Poort that we had come only to the half-way house of our toils and travels, and that there still lay ahead of us another twelve months' cruel task. From the very first to

PRETORIA AND THE ROYAL FAMILY During the next few months many events occurred in Pretoria of vital interest to the whole empire, and especially to the various members of the Royal Family. To these this seems the fittest place to refer, though most of them took place during my various return visits to Pretoria, and are therefore not precisely ranged in due chronologic order. Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty It was an ever memorable scene I witnessed in the Kirk Square when the Union Jack was once