SECTION I

THE PRELIMINARY CANTER

At the stroke of seven on the evening of January 13, 1915, a train
steamed out of Pretoria station to the accompaniment of roars of
cheering. And few in the imposing string of carriages that made the
train were sober within the meaning of the act. But everyone was in the
highest spirits. The Rebellion was over. The New Year was with us.
After weary days our real business was on hand. We were off to German
West at last.

We reached Cape Town on the 15th. I am particular about the date, not
entirely as a result of a desire for meticulous accuracy. All who
started on the South-West Campaign will remember their Cape Peninsula
experience after the heat and burden of the Rebellion. The authorities
might have chosen most of our camping grounds about Cape Town with the
genial purpose of providing a kind of military holiday as a preliminary
canter to the campaign proper. The unit to which I was attached had its
temporary resting place on the slopes of Table Mountain at Groote
Schuur, on the Rhodes Estate. And I fancy the world has on its vast
surface few spots more alluring and more bracing to the spirit.

Up till that time South Africa itself had never put an expeditionary
army, to be shipped by sea, on a war footing, and at Cape Town the work
of equipping the South-West African Expeditionary Force was carried on
and finished during the four weeks we were there. The quiet pine and
fir lined roads on the Rondebosch side of Table Mountain complained
daily under the traffic of wagons and motors, horses, mules and guns;
it ruined the roads and begot unceasing clouds of dust.

And from breakfast-time till late afternoon every street leading to
Cape Town and to the great Supply and Ordnance Stores at Maitland and
at Portswood Road was filled with grey and khaki carts and wagons
roaring steadily along in golden dust. In the whole Peninsula the
normal interests of life were for the time being completely
side-tracked.

Being associated directly with the Commander-in-Chief and Headquarters,
we were fortunate in having our camp on the finest piece of ground on
the estate; our tents stretched down a strip of sloping sward,
sheltered from the wind by the wonderful trees that luxuriate on the
lower falls of Table Mountain; from one's tent entrance the eye was
caught by a panorama sweeping a radius of twenty miles inland. I shall
never forget those days when in the morning wind and sun I helped t