Part 2 (1/2)
When we got safely aboard the _Galway Castle_ many of us fancied, in expressive phrase, that we were ”well away”; that we had struck a good thing. Our officers were accommodated in befitting state in the first cla.s.s; our warrants and staff non-commissioned dignitaries were also fixed up in correct style; the rest of us had plenty of room and quietness to ourselves in the third cla.s.s. All this by 2.30 in the afternoon.
And then eighteen hundred more warriors filed down the quays and, like Mr. Jim Hawkins, came aboard, sir. Now most of these were as good fellows as you could wish for; but they were landsmen, such as never go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps. A large proportion, indeed, had never seen the sea before viewing it at Cape Town. (South Africa is a fair-sized territory.) Very few of them were good sailors. It is not a man's fault that he is not a good sailor; nor is he to blame for knowing little of the ways that make for cleanliness and comfort under even the most trying conditions on s.h.i.+pboard. But on the whole we did not enjoy that four days' voyage to Walvis Bay. It was a case of bedlam as to noise, and ”muck in” and take what you can get.
Though my knowledge of organisation for a campaign is not great, I would suggest that for campaign work the only kind of s.h.i.+p used should be a vessel absolutely and completely fitted up as a troops.h.i.+p. If the s.h.i.+ps the Government used for the South-West campaign transport had all been fitted up uncompromisingly as ”troopers” I fancy we should have fared better.
At 8 a.m. on the 9th we arrived at Walvis Bay. General Botha, who, with his Chief of Staff, A.D.C.'s, etc., had embarked at the Cape on the auxiliary cruiser _Armadale Castle,_ arrived at Walvis later in the morning. We spent the day on board the _Galway Castle_ awaiting orders and the disembarkation of horses.
Since the beginning of the operations in South-West Africa the world has been flooded with descriptions of Walvis Bay; at least I have seen two books with long descriptions of the place, and more than a dozen articles on the subject. I shall not add to this list by any long (and a.s.suredly unconvincing) attempt at a new picture. When you have left the green-covered kopjes of the Cape a few days before and come to anchor in Walvis Bay on a cold morning you think you have reached No-man's-land after a fast voyage. It is a first impression only. The place is desolate enough; it suggests the Sahara run straight into the sea, or the discomforting dreariness of Punta Arenas, in Patagonia.
But first impressions are not everything. Walvis Bay is desolate; a study in yellow ochre sands, burnt sienna duns, tin shanties veiled in hot desert winds, and a sea that seldom knows anything more than a ripple. But that is the point. Walvis Bay is nothing now--but it is a bay. As a fact, it looks to be one of the finest natural harbours in the world. With the South-West interior developing in the future, Walvis Bay should have something to look forward to.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Before the Advance. General Botha photographed with the Red Cross Sisters]
[Ill.u.s.tration: General Botha and Staff alighting for an Inspection.
(The famous Brigadier-General Brits, who trekked to Namutoni, is the fourth figure from the right.)]
We left the _Galway Castle_ on the 11th, disembarking into lighters, to be towed up the coast to the occupied German port of Swakopmund. Down to the tender, on to the lighter, kits and equipment, and farewell to the quietened steamer. For a while we stood away from her, and rose and fell under no way on the still grey waters. Then we saw a tender from the _Armadale Castle_ steaming towards us. She came up on our starboard quarter and made fast. A figure well known to us all crossed the gangway and climbed to the boat-deck of our steam tender. We had not seen the Commander-in-Chief in personal command since the past bitter days of the Rebellion. A great cheer hit the morning silence and echoed over the bay to each transport at anchor. With a smile of genuine pleasure, General Botha brought his hand to the salute. And away we went, the tender steaming full speed ahead, blunt-nosed barges surging in her wake, for Swakopmund.
Swakopmund was the first Headquarters of the Northern Force, Union Expeditionary Army; we made two sojourns at this German port. First we were there for a period of some five weeks, from February 11 till March 18, whilst awaiting the first advance into the Namib Desert; then we were there for a further month, from the 27th of March till the 25th of April, whilst awaiting the general advance to Windhuk and Karibib.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Awaiting the Advance. The Commander-in-Chief at tea with the Red Cross Sisters]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Awaiting the Advance. Garrison Sports at Swakopmund.
Start for 100 yards race]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Awaiting the Advance. Garrison Sports. Winner]
It is difficult to write about Swakopmund. As a town it is the most extraordinary place I have seen. I use the superlative deliberately.
But I do not wish to live there. It is purely artificial, and artificial to a ghastly degree too. There is not a spot of vegetation.
There is not a genuine tree to be seen. The water has a detestable, unsatisfying blurred taste, to which the adjective ”brackish” is applied. It is probable that a town occupied by enemy troops does not look at its best; but the fact that it was under such conditions when I first knew Swakopmund makes no important difference. The place in its essentials must always be the same. If ever there was a work of bluff Swakopmund is that thing. One fancies the German commercial expert, a Government official, or, maybe, a representative of the ubiquitous Woermann, Brock & Co., looking along this ferocious and awful coast for a spot to found a town that should appear on the maps and be esteemed a seaport. The Swakop River? Very well. Was there water there? But certainly so; water obviously of the worst quality--yet water. Besides, were there not always refrigerators and condensing machinery? Upon which Swakopmund was forced into existence--planked down there bit by bit in the face of circ.u.mstance. Walk a trifle over a thousand yards from the edge of the changeful Atlantic through Swakopmund's deep sandy streets and you get the key to the town. For it ceases utterly, abruptly; from the door of its last villa, fitted with perfect furnis.h.i.+ngs from Hamburg, the bitter desolation that is the Namib Desert stretches away from your, very feet. Marvelling at this place, I was particularly struck by the size of its cemetery. But I was not long puzzled. If you strike Swakopmund on a fine suns.h.i.+ny day you will be pretty favourably impressed with the climate; it seems warm and temperate, and the sun sparkles on the sea.
In a week or so you will learn to modify that judgment. More than half the days we were at Swakopmund a heavy pall of dampness hung over the place, and after a day or two of it one's system seemed to be badly affected. Maybe we were not acclimatised, but the fact remains that a very large proportion of us were down with a kind of dysentery, attended by vomiting and violent pains in the stomach. Then there are days when the winds blow from the desert--an indescribable experience.
They bring moths and flies with them, and great clouds of sand; it is a genuine labour to breathe, and at noon and for two hours after the temperature in the sun runs up into the ”hundred-and-sixties.”
Swakopmund is not a health resort; or perhaps we dwelt there in the wrong season. But it is a monument to Teutonic determination. The Germans willed this town there, planted it on the edge of the wilderness; fitted it out, from bioscope theatre to church with organ and electric organola; and they lived in it, with the climate of perdition and all the accessories of a suburb of Berlin, and called it a seaport. It is not a seaport; in a fair gale you can't land a barrel of corks at the pier. But given time and they would have built in the face of nature a two million pounds breakwater and everything complete.
Yes, they are a thorough people; they are human ants as regards work.
Nevertheless, it is not colonising. The Germans are not colonists.
Army Headquarters were fixed at the Damaraland Building close to the sh.o.r.e--a splendidly equipped edifice, with a tower commanding a fifteen-mile-radius view of the desert and the sea. General Botha made the private quarters of the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief at the Woermann Line House close by.
When we arrived at the northern seaport it had been in our possession many weeks, but our troops were occupying the trenches just outside the town, and from the Damaralands Building Tower our look-out and signallers could see through the heat-haze the enemy's patrols moving to and fro in the glistening sands beyond.
Whilst awaiting orders for an advance, life at Swakopmund was in some ways quite good. There were two attractions: regimental concerts, when sanctioned, and the sh.o.r.e. South Africa at war differs in great degree from other parts of the world. The country has the germ in its blood.
Men who have campaigned before felt the stirring in them when the South-West campaign started. The call for volunteers acted like a magnet. All sorts and conditions of men were found with the Forces in the South-West. Patriotism called them; but there called them also that deep-seated spirit of unrest which prompts so powerfully when war drums sound once again. I used to think Kipling exaggerated a trifle; now I know the truth. At the concerts on the South-West front the most astonis.h.i.+ng array of talent was to be found. One such function in particular stands out in mind. The stage was made up of army biscuit boxes supporting rough planking outside a builder's yard in the deep sand. At a borrowed piano belonging to some vanished resident a trooper officiated; he was clothed in a grey back s.h.i.+rt and ammunition boots-- and displayed the daedal methods of a Fragson. Singers of every type with every kind of voice, and perfectly trained, performed. Only later did I learn that amongst the artists were half a dozen of the best performers in Johannesburg. And at the foresh.o.r.e, between fatigues, drills, and spells of duty the fellows used to gather, to enjoy the one luxury of Swakopmund--the surf-bathing. Here you would meet men upon whom you never expected again to set eyes a.s.sembled literally from all over South Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi. Belonging to one regiment I met, in privates and corporals, six well-to-do farmers, a handful of solicitors, bank clerks, a sub-native commissioner or two, and the no longer youthful private secretary to one of the most eminent semi-public companies in Africa. And there we all were cut off from the outside world. Each evening we got an issue of the official Bulletin-- six square inches of paper thankfully received. For the rest we had no change from the perpetual sound of the sea and the mournful note of the bell-buoy that marks the insh.o.r.e shoal. Its ”dong-dong, dong-dong-dong”
created a perfect illusion of the call to a tiny church through the country lanes of England. Everyone who was there can still hear the old bell-buoy at Swakopmund.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Swakopmund from the Lighthouse: Extreme Right]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Swakopmund: Centre]