Barracks, Bivouacs and Battles

The insurrection was at an end. About thirty diggers had been killed on the spot, several subsequently died of wounds, and 125 were taken prisoners. Of the attacking force an officer and a soldier were killed, and thirteen men were wounded, some mortally. The military were promptly reinforced from Melbourne, and martial law was proclaimed, but resistance had been quite stamped out with the fall of the “Stockade.” A commission of inquiry was sent to the gold-fields without delay, and its report recommended a general amnesty (to include the prisoners awaiting trial) and the modified abolition of the license fee. Nevertheless some of the Eureka “insurgents” were arraigned on the charge of high treason, but in every case the Melbourne juries brought in a verdict of acquittal, and therefore no steps were taken to apprehend their comrades who had escaped and were in hiding. The amnesty was complete, although never formally proclaimed. Peter Lalor, for whose apprehension a reward of £200 had been offered, affably emerged from the concealment into which he had been so fortunate as to escape from the stockade. While lying perdu, one of his arms, which had been smashed by a bullet in the brief action, had been skilfully amputated, and Peter had made a satisfactory recovery. During his retirement he wrote a defence of his conduct, and claimed that, as hour after hour of the eventful night passed without an attack, the greater number of the 1500 defenders who were in the stockade until midnight had gone away to bed, so that when the attack was made there actually remained in the enclosure only about 120 men. He expressed the frankest regret that “we were unable to inflict on the real authors of the outbreak the punishment they so richly deserved.” A year after he emerged from hiding, the one-armed ex-rebel was returned to Parliament by a mining constituency. Thus he ranged himself, and five-and-twenty years later was sitting in a court dress in the chair of the Legislative Assembly of the Colony.

MY CAMPAIGN IN PALL MALL

For better or for worse, the war correspondent, as regards a British army in the field, has been stamped out. The journalist who now accompanies an army is a war reporter. He dances in the fetters of the censorship, whose power over him is absolute: it may not only detain or withhold his work, but at discretion may alter it so that he may be made to say the direct reverse of what he wrote. If the position has its humiliations, it also has its compensations. The censorship which makes a slave of the war reporter, ipso facto relieves him of all the responsibility for the words he writes. His waking hours are unclouded by forebodings of aspersions on his veracity, emanating from officials chafing under inconvenient interpellations. His slumbers are disturbed by no dream-vision of a bad quarter of an hour with the chief of staff, when the paper containing that outspoken telegram of his arrives in camp. The authorities in Pall Mall, by the institution of the rules and the censorship, have indeed scotched the war journalist, but have not succeeded in killing him. Lord Wolseley in the early editions of the Soldier’s Pocket-book described the war correspondent of the unreformed era as “the curse of modern armies”; that somewhat strenuous expression he retains in the latest edition as still applicable to the reporter who works under the yoke of the regulations set forth in its pages. I may humbly venture to remark, having given the matter considerable attention, that from the military point of view I entirely concur in Lord Wolseley’s objections to the presence of journalistic persons with an army in the field against a civilised enemy. Were I a general, and had I an independent command in war offered me, I should accept it only on condition that I should have the charter to shoot every war correspondent found within fifty miles of my headquarters. The most careful correspondent cannot write a sentence – a sentence which the strictest censor, if he is to pass anything at all, cannot refrain from sanctioning – that may not give a hint to the astute intelligence-officials of the other side. This fact I realised at the beginning of my career, and my conviction of its truth grew till the end of it. What then? It is not a question for the newspapers, which dread a war because of the huge expense it entails without adequate compensation. It is a question solely for the public, whose servants the general and the war journalists alike are. If the public deliberately prefers news to victories – for that is the issue in a nutshell as regards a European war – then on the head of the public be it.

The war correspondent of the era that ended with the introduction of the handcuffs had a chequered lot. His fetterless condition gave him many advantages and some opportunities. He could stir the nation by his revelations of mal-administration. Uncompelled to specified and conventional methods of communication, he might win some fleeting fame by sending to his countrymen the earliest tidings of a victory achieved by their army, at the cost of some toil and danger incurred by the courier-correspondent. On the other side of the account was this unpleasantness, that if he were not a toady and a sycophant, but an independent man, he could hardly escape being regarded as an Ishmaelite, against whom in the very nature of things was the great heavy hand of officialdom. He had constantly to confront that kind of contemptuous contradiction which is equivalent to impugnment of the veracity of the person contradicted. Of late years it is true, for weighty reasons, there has been discernible in the tone of official contradictions a droll infusion of funk in the insolence. The insolence was, of course, in the very essence of the official nature; the funk came from a nervous foreboding of refutation begotten of experience. That experience did not deter, because the average official shudders, as if it were sheer revolution, at a departure from the old arrogant use and wont; but it had a tendency to engender disquietude in the bureaucratic breast.

A man must either be well endowed with philosophy, or, to quote a historic witness, must be “on very good terms with himself,” who is not galled by a contumelious aspersion of untruthfulness thrown on him from high places and circulated throughout the length and breadth of the land. He may have his vindication to his hand, but it rarely has the vogue of the calumny. In some memorable instances, however, this has been the case. Before the Crimean war was over, England had come to recognise that it was the pen of William Howard Russell which had saved her army from extinction. Lord Beaconsfield, when he tried the de haut en bas method of whistling truth down the wind, and sneered at MacGahan’s revelations of Turkish barbarities in Bulgaria as “coffee-house babble,” found himself conclusively confuted by Mr. Walter Baring’s intensification of the unofficial disclosures. But in the game between him and the correspondent the official plays with cogged dice. Let me give an instance. That portion of the public who believed Lord Wolseley accepted his denial of the truth of the assertions made by Dr. Russell regarding the excesses of our troops in the Transvaal between the close of the Zulu war and the beginning of the Boer war. Those most conversant with the circumstances were aware that the statements made by Russell were substantially accurate, but Lord Wolseley roundly pronounced them utterly destitute of foundation. Now it happened that Russell – strange omission on the part of a journalist of his experience – had neglected to fortify himself with evidence which he should be able to adduce if challenged. A man of high spirit and implicit veracity, the imputation cast on him roused him to just indignation, and he was bent on making good his words. But the effort was futile; Landrost after Landrost testified with complaisant unanimity to the immaculateness of the British soldier. Russell had to grin and bear the situation; but he spoke his mind on the subject in the direct manner which is his characteristic.

I recall a little experience of my own, which ended for me, perhaps because I am a Scot whereas he is an Irishman, more successfully than did Russell’s Transvaal controversy. When the brigade of British troops landed in Cyprus, with which he took possession of that island in 1878, Lord Wolseley sent it to encamp on the ridge of Chiflik Pasha, a few miles inland from Larnaca. There sickness soon set in among the soldiers with great severity. The disorder was that insidious complaint known as “Cyprus fever,” which has long since disappeared from Cyprus itself, but which still harbours in the constitution of most of those who were of the expedition of original occupation. Accompanying that expedition in a journalistic capacity, for a fortnight or so previous to August 15 I had been telegraphing to the Daily News increasingly serious details regarding the ill-health of the troops. On that day I wired: “In all about 25 per cent of the whole force are fever-stricken; about two-thirds of the medical staff are also down.” On the following afternoon a question was put in the House of Commons on the subject to the Secretary for War. Colonel Stanley replied by quoting a telegram from Lord Wolseley stating that “only about six per cent of the troops were in hospital”; which was literally true, since the hospitals could hold no more, and, being literally true, was quite smart, although utterly misleading. Of course the minister inculcated belief in the official version; and equally, of course, he had his airy little gibe at the non-official person. It was not until August 26, being then at Malta on my way home, that I saw a newspaper containing the question and answer in Parliament. Then I straightway telegraphed to my journal repeating my previous statements in detail, giving as my authorities for them the respective medical officers of the brigade, and adding: “Assertion and counter-assertion are childish in a matter wherein the documents furnish exact and detailed information. The Secretary for War will find that the official returns sent in to the Principal Medical Officer on the evening of the day in question amply bear out my statements.” Yet officialism had the best of it after all. Parliament had risen before the telegram I have quoted reached England, and so no Parliamentary friend had the opportunity of enforcing the minister’s admission of the accuracy of my statement by moving for the production of the returns.

In one curious instance a set was made at a war correspondent, not by officialism, but by the many-headed itself. He was with the force that was confronting Arabi in the Kafre Dowr position outside Alexandria during the interval between the bombardment of that city and the arrival in Egypt of Lord Wolseley’s reinforcements. One afternoon his paper brought out a “special edition” on the strength of a telegram from him to the effect that one of the pickets of our force had run in on its supports. Whether or not the telegram was “written up” in Fleet Street, is a question which need not be dwelt on, in the face of the fact that the correspondent did not deny that he had sent intelligence of the misbehaviour of the picket. It was passing strange, the gust of popular indignation against this penman – in this particular matter at least a quite inoffensive although in a professional sense silly person. The angry nation would not have it at any price that a picket of British soldiers could act as described. The correspondent was denounced far and wide as the vilest of calumniators. Punch pandered to the undignified and perverse clamour in some doggerel jingle; the correspondent’s journal temporised in the face of the storm, and cashiered its representative. Yet his act was in no way blameworthy; it was simply officious and superfluous. Such a trifle as the casual bolt of a picket was an incident which a correspondent who had ever seen war – and this man had made a previous campaign – should have ignored as not worth chronicling. In war such petty fallings away from the ideal are happening all the time. They occur in every army I have ever known, and I have watched the conduct in the field of the armies of eight European nations. There is infinitely less steady valour in the soldiery of any nationality than the civilian who idealises it imagines. I never was in a battle, with the single exception of Ulundi, in the course of which I did not witness a stampede. The Germans are grand fighting men, and at Gravelotte they had the glow in them of three victories in a fortnight; yet in the afternoon of that day there was a sudden panic in Steinmetz’s army – one half of it at least was on the run; and I saw old Wilhelm borne back in the débâcle, resisting vehemently, belabouring the runaways with the flat of his sword, and abusing them with fine racy German oaths shouted at the top of his voice. Nevertheless the Germans won the battle of Gravelotte. Our own fellows have never been in the habit of evincing inability to hold their own against no matter what foe. But for all that they are not uniformly heroes, and it is folly to believe that they are. I am not the man, an old soldier myself, to run down the British soldier; but the cheap froth of the cockalorum civilian disgusts me. I who write say that I have known British pickets, like the pickets of other nations, run in discreditably once and again. For instance, on the evening before Ginghilovo, when a picket of one of our crack regiments bolted back into the position headed by its sergeant, leaving its officer the sole defender of the abandoned ground. For instance, on the night but one before Ulundi, when a picket of Wood’s most seasoned regiment, a regiment that had distinguished itself grandly at Kambula, scuttled into the laager in uncontrollable scare. It was in each case a momentary panic. No doubt the first-named picket behaved quite well in the fight next day. As for Wood’s fellows, he gave them five-and-twenty apiece; they got their tunics on their sore backs in time for Ulundi, were as good as the best there, and, in virtue of the flogging and the victory together, regained their good name. I knew personally of this little accident in Wood’s force; but it never occurred to me to report it. It was not that I shunned doing so, but simply because the thing was not worth while. My comrade, with his experience, should have taken the same view of the petty mischance he happened to witness in Egypt; but it was sheer truculence to hound him down because he looked at events microscopically.

I am anxious to quote a correspondence which seems to me to illustrate, not a little vividly, the tergiversations and tortuosities of officialdom in its relations with the war correspondent; but it is impossible to make the letters intelligible without an amount of egotism which is eminently distasteful to me. The desire, however, to make public the correspondence outweighs the repugnance to being egotistic, and accordingly I proceed.

After the decisive victory of Ulundi gained over the Zulus on July 4, 1879, I quitted the same evening the laager in which Lord Chelmsford’s army was encamped, and, after a continuous ride of about seventeen hours, reached the telegraph-wire at Landmann’s Drift with the earliest news. Thence I telegraphed to Sir Bartle Frere at Cape Town, and to Sir Garnet Wolseley, then on his way to Port Durnford on the Zululand coast, a brief summary of the action and the result. Both those officials telegraphed me thanks in reply. Sir Garnet’s expression of his “sincere thanks for the most welcome news” was naturally most grateful to me, as he was the Commander-in-Chief of all the forces then in the field. No further intelligence than that which I had wired him reached Sir Bartle Frere before the departure of the mail, and it was my message to him which was read in both Houses of Parliament as the only intelligence which up to date had reached the home authorities. The question of a member, whether some recognition was not due to the bringer, under somewhat arduous circumstances, of tidings so welcome was negatived by Sir Stafford Northcote with the remark that the bearer was a newspaper correspondent who had toiled and adventured in the interest of his journal. As it happened, this was a mistake. When on the evening of the fight, in accordance with previous arrangement, I took to Lord Chelmsford’s headquarter the packet containing my short description of the day’s work, I had not the remotest idea that half an hour later I should be galloping through the lonely bush on my way to the telegraph-office on the far-distant Natal frontier. There was no hurry to catch the mail, and there was then no telegraphic communication between South Africa and England. My colleagues who remained in camp and sent away their matter at their leisure next day, were in easy time for the outgoing mail from Cape Town. I rode out of the Umvaloosi laager that night because I have a quick temper and a disgust for military ineptitude. When Lord Chelmsford told me that he did not intend to despatch his courier until next morning, the assigned reason being the absence of some petty details, it was in the angry impulse of the moment that I passionately exclaimed, “Then, sir, I will start myself at once!” I knew with what anxiety Wolseley was waiting for news, and what immediate influence on his plans the tidings of the day’s work would have; and I realised, too, the spirit that actuated the delay in their despatch. I was sorry for myself the moment I had spoken, for I needed no one to tell me the risks in front of me. I got through safely; the same night, not five hundred yards off the faint track along which I groped, Lieutenant Scott Douglas and Corporal Cotter were slaughtered with unmentionable barbarity. It should be said that when Sir Stafford Northcote was shown that it was not “in the interest of my paper” that I had ridden from Ulundi to Landmann’s Drift, he acknowledged the error with the manly frankness which was but one of the fine features of a noble character.

I had sworn to my hurt, but unless I ate dirt there could be no withdrawal. When, before starting, I went to Sir Evelyn Wood to ask for his home messages, he would have detained me, but that in a word I told him how I must go; he understood, bade me Godspeed, and let me go. There was no sentiment about his limb of an aide-de-camp – “the boy,” as we called him. As I turned from Wood’s tent “the boy” shouted an offer to bet me five pounds I would not get through. “Done!” I cried. “Ah!” quoth “the boy,” with a regard for his pound of flesh beyond his years, “you must put the money down, for I don’t in the least expect to see you back again.” So I posted my fiver and rode away into the dense all but trackless bush, just as the great red sun touched the westward ridge overhanging the Umvaloosi gorge.

I had “got through” and been back in England some time, when it occurred to me to claim the Zulu medal. A war medal is not a decoration in the sense that the Albert medal, or the “C.I.E.” or the “D.S.O.,” or that proud symbol the “C.M.G.,” is a decoration. The medal for a campaign once granted, a military person of whatever rank is entitled to it as a right who has been inside hostile territory in the course of the campaign; he need not have been under fire, or indeed within miles of a battle. In the Zulu business many got the medal who had never crossed the Natal frontier, and the whole wing of a regiment received the Ashantee medal that never disembarked at all. I found copious precedents in favour of civilians being the recipients of war medals. William Howard Russell has the Crimean and Indian medals. A British Museum employé who accompanied the expedition to pick up specimens for that institution received the Abyssinian medal. The Victoria Cross was given to four civilians for gallant acts in the Indian Mutiny, and the Mutiny medal to all civilians who were under fire. It was worn by a lady lately dead, who was born in the Lucknow Residency during the siege, and earned it by that achievement. I did not presume to claim the Zulu medal in virtue of having made the campaign as a correspondent, but because of a specific service for which I had received the thanks of the local commander-in-chief. True, a claim I had put in for the Afghan medal had been rejected on the specified ground that “the Secretary of State is of opinion that the service on the performance of which that claim is based was not of a character which would entitle you to the medal.” But then that “service” was merely the having been mentioned in his despatch by the commanding General for saving life in action – a ground surely not to be mentioned in the same day with the acknowledgment of a superior General’s gratitude. So my claim went in to the War Office based on the ride from Ulundi to the telegraph-office, and the results thereof set forth above. The not unexpected reply came back, that, “As it would appear that no application was made for your services on the occasion referred to in your letter, Mr. Childers regrets his inability to comply with your request.”

I felt for Mr. Childers: it is always unpleasant to the humane man that for any reason he should cause regret to a fellow-mortal; and I believed by a further representation I could dispel his regret and enable him to rejoice in the ability of compliance. That representation was as follows. The letter (April 2, 1881) was sent from America: —

I respectfully beg to repeat the claim, on the ground of another service to which your previous objection does not apply. On reaching Landmann’s Drift, and having handed to General Marshall (in command there) the despatches which had been entrusted to me by Lord Chelmsford, he, expressing his belief that no direct communication between Lord Chelmsford and Sir Garnet Wolseley at Port Durnford could be opened up for some time, and his conviction that details as to the disposition of the troops in Zululand and of the recent action could not fail to be of consequence to the latter, requested me, as a matter of public service, to continue with all speed my journey to Port Durnford and place my knowledge of affairs within the enemy’s country at Sir Garnet’s disposal. In furtherance of this project General Marshall handed me a special authorisation to claim means of speedy transit along the route I should have to take. In fulfilment of this request I rode about 150 miles to Pieter Maritzburg without rest, and suffering from a contusion sustained in the Ulundi action; and thence journeyed on with all speed to Port Durnford, reaching that place in advance of any other messenger from the column in the interior. Sir Garnet Wolseley availed himself of the information I brought, and did me the honour to thank me for the service done as being materially in the public interest.

Sir Garnet Wolseley and General Marshall confirmed the above statements in so far as they concerned each.

* * * * *

The reply to the above representation bore date June 2, 1881, and was as follows: —

I am to inform you that Lord Chelmsford reports that he did not make any use of your services on the occasion specified by you, and on reference to General Marshall, it appears that he did not receive any despatches by you from Lord Chelmsford. Under these circumstances, and as the fact of your having ridden from Landmann’s Drift to Port Durnford would not justify the grant of the decoration under existing regulations, Mr. Childers is unable to alter the decision already conveyed to you.

When Mr. Edmund Yates was resuming his seat, after having listened to the censure with which Lord Coleridge accompanied the sentence awarded him in a well-remembered action, I heard him murmur, I believe unconsciously, “That’s a snorter!” A similar view of this communication suggested itself to me. It was a lesson never to write an important letter at a distance from one’s diaries. While feeling sure of the ability to justify in effect the averment that I had carried despatches from Lord Chelmsford, there was a clear mistake in the statement that I had handed these to General Marshall. I had met him on my way to the telegraph-office, and had shown him the packet I carried; it was addressed to the telegraph-master, and to him I delivered it. My reply to the “snorter” was as follows: —

I would have accepted without troubling you further your disinclination to alter your previous adverse decision, but for one circumstance. Your letter conveys a grave charge against my personal veracity, a matter of infinitely greater importance to me than the receipt or non-receipt of a medal. Writing as I did from America without access to memoranda, I erred in naming General Marshall as the recipient of the official enclosure carried by me from Ulundi. I have the honour to enclose a detailed statement of the actual events which occurred in Lord Chelmsford’s headquarter, with the request that you submit the same to Lord Chelmsford and Colonel North Crealock, his lordship’s military secretary; satisfied as I am that the result of such submission will be to alter the terms of Lord Chelmsford’s report as conveyed in your letter.