riest
in all our record. To all the other miseries of the men there was
added an incessant pining for food which it was impossible for them to
procure in anything like satisfying quantities, and I have repeatedly
watched them gather up from the face of the veldt unwholesomenesses
that no man could eat; I have seen them many a time thus try with wry
face to devour wild melon bitter as gall, and then fling it away in
utter disgust, if not despair.

Yet at the head of the Brigade there marched a strong body of Military
Police whose one business it was to see that these famished men looted
nothing. When a deserted house was reached no pretence at protecting
it was made. Such a house of course never contained food, and our men
sought in it only what would serve for firewood, in some cases almost
demolishing the place in their eagerness to secure a few small sticks,
or massive beams. Nothing in that way came amiss.

But if man, woman or child were in the house a cordon of police was
instantly put round the building. The longing eyes and tingling
fingers passed on, and absolutely nothing was touched except on
payment. Tom Hood in one of his merry poems tells of a place:--

"Straight down the crooked lane
And right round the square,"

where the most toothsome little porkers cried "Come eat me if you
please." That, to the famine-haunted imagination of the troops, was
precisely what many a well-fed porker on the veldt seemed to say, but
as a rule say in vain. After thousands of troops had gone by, I have
with my own eyes seen that lucky porker still there, with ducks of
unruffled plumage still floating on the farmhouse pond, and fat
poultry quite unconscious how perilous an hour they had just passed.
Yet the owner of the aforesaid pig and poultry was out on commando,
his mauser charged with a messenger of death, which any moment might
wing its way to any one of us. No wonder if the famished soldiers
could not quite see the equity of the arrangement which left him at
liberty to hunt for their lives but would not allow them to lay a
finger on one of his barndoor fowls. It would be absurd to suppose
that, in the face of such pressure, the vigilance of the police was
never eluded; and our mounted scouts were always well away from police
control. As the result their saddles became sometimes like an inverted
hen-roost; heads down instead of up; but they were seldom asked in
what market they had made their purcha