|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 16
We now come to the feat that broke all known marching records and
caused two hemispheres to talk. On Sunday and Monday, the 25th and 26th
of April, General Botha's forces left the coast: on the 5th of May they
were outside Windhuk. Striking right across the desert through every
kind of country, General Botha's army marched night and day, and in
five of those days covered a minimum distance of a hundred and ninety
miles. Many units did much more than two hundred miles--over forty
miles per day.
It was some trekking.
Swakopmund was left on the 26th of April at dawn. Haigkamchab was
reached by I on the same afternoon, and Husab supply base at 6.30 p.m.
Next day Husab was left at 2.15 p.m.; the column halted for a few
minutes at 5 p.m., and pushed right through to Riet, which was made at
10.20 that evening. Headquarters rested all day on the 28th at Riet,
left it at 8 p.m., trekked by moonlight along the Swakop River for
three hours, outspanned till an hour before dawn, and made Salem at
6.45 a.m. on March 29. At 9.30 that morning the column moved on again,
reached outspan at twenty miles by 1.35 in the afternoon, rested for an
hour and a half and pushed on again till a quarter before midnight,
when it rode into Wilhelmsfeste. But the water was at Kaltenhausen,
some miles further ahead of this military post. We reached it at 1.15
on the morning of the 30th. Animals took two hours to water in the
bitterly cold morning air. The guards had not taken two steps on their
beat before the sand was littered with sleepers that looked like dead
men. These sleeping columns, some ninety to a hundred miles from the
coast, were now half way to Windhuk.
[Illustration: The Great Trek. An extempore bath towards the end of the
Trek]
Two hours after daylight General Headquarters moved to a camping ground
two miles back towards Wilhelmsfeste (Tsaobis), and rested during the
day in the shade of the scant trees with which the veld was covered as
the desert was left behind. The rest of the Northern Army had trekked on
with scarcely any pause. Shortly before sunset, the Commander-in-Chief
set out on a night march of twenty odd miles to Otjimbingwe. The trek
was done at a fierce pace till midnight, when an outspan was ordered;
the party slept for four hours, and made Otjimbingwe just as the dawn of
the 1st of May was breaking. As General Botha rode into this old mission
settlement the rear of the German forces, closely pursued, was galloping
in retreat over the kopjes to the east. Many prisoners were taken here.
General Botha spent the day at Otjimbingwe, left at dawn on the 2nd, and
trekked north-west seventeen miles to Pot Mine, which he reached at 12.45
p.m. Here the Commander-in-Chief awaited the arrival of General Smuts,
had a conference with him, and moved in force on Karibib at 2 a.m. on the
5th of May. He trekked the whole of that day, with two halts of an hour
each, and entered Karibib on the heels of the enemy at five o'clock in
the afternoon. At the same time the rest of the Northern Force had
entered Okasise, Okahandja, Waldau, and other stations on the railway,
had captured the whole system practically up to Omaruru, and were at the
gates of Windhuk. The German forces were in full retreat to the north and
north-east. Their civilian populations, left behind in the towns, seemed
dumfoundered at the appearance of the Union troops. Meantime the Southern
and Central Armies had approached the German capital on the southern
flank.
This account of the advance through the desert of General Botha's
Northern Force is purposely bald. The process of a vast flooding of
water over a country is in essence bald and direct. And that is as near
as I can get for comparison. General Botha's advance was like a
well-ordered flood: which, I take it, was exactly the idea. At a fixed
time organised bodies of men, mounted, dismounted and with artillery,
were systematically poured over the German territory. I am sure most of
the fellows who took part in that advance and recall it in detail will in
the future look back and wonder. For it is a subject for wonder, even
if history does contain some marches more eventful. It has been stated
since that all transport was left behind. But that is not strictly
true: a large quantity of transport was brought on by the Union Forces;
passed through the deepest sand in waterless desert, between gorges,
over big kopjes, into almost trackless bushveld--and was never more
than a day and a half behind. At one place out of a convoy of
twenty-seven wagons, seventeen capsized.
It is hackneyed, I know, but there is only one way to describe the
great trek to Windhuk. It was absolutely "a chequer-board of nights and
days." Looking at my diary just now, that I have had ten years'
practice at keeping, I see a confusion got into the dates. You didn't
know anything about the date or the day of the week. Existence was just
a dateless alternation of light and darkness, of saddle-up and
off-saddle, of cossack-post, of thinking about water--and of yearning
with every fibre of one's being for the ineffable boon of a long sleep.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|