Adventure, November 1915 — page 211: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a Kier Soldiers of Fortune on the Veld “His intentions are good, anyway,’ said Pienaar as the Little Corporal strutted away. “I hope he won’t come to grief.” Up the steep slopes of Spion Kop crept men with belly close to the ground and rifle ready. That kop would have to be taken back. Why in the name of blazes did Eng- lish commanders always take positions on the summits of mountains—especially since the memory of Majuba was still so very young? ; Commands were issued in whispers and passed along the line. On the crest above all was silent. British confidence and an utter contempt for the Boers had not even permitted the precaution usually employed in the field. The first outposts were met only a short distance in front of the trenches. There was a sputter of rifle fire in the gray dawn, a moment of silence, and then the dance commenced. Of a sudden long lines of little blue flames became visible on the crest, to be answered similarly from be- low. Bullets began to sing, shriek, and chirp through the air, and at several points machine guns and pompoms started their death-dealing chatter. Down the slope of the mountain rolled many a body, and when the men finally reached the top one of the worst close-quarters engagements of the war took place. By noon the affair was over. Spion Kop had been retaken by the Boers more as a matter of principle than one of military im- port. The dead on the Boer side had been - placed under some trees, preparatory to in- terring them. Several men were busy gath- ering the identification-cards the men car- ried. When the Red Cross man transcribed them, one of them read: 7 Joseph Dolibois. Residence: Villiers, France. Age: 26. Commando: Jeppesdorp. Killed in action at Spion Kop, January 26. Nature of wound: shot through the head. “The funny part of it is,”’ said Veldcornet Pienaar to the writer a few days later, “that the little Frenchman never fired a shot. He had put a clip of five into the magazine and another cartridge into the chamber. We found them that way. It’s tough, isn’t it?” PRitz—1 think his other name was _ Scholz—would have made an excellent _Winkelried. That broad bosom of his could have accommodated the halberd points of a ! 209 whole company. As a modern soldier of fortune, he was somewhat out of place. For _ Fritz possessed neither the dash nor build of the man who fights in all climes and for any cause. Fritz was just a complacent, stolid, and above all solid German, who in his younger and less corpulent days had seen considerable fighting in Chile and Peru, and who had earned considerable renown in one of the Swazi campaigns—or was it the Magato insurrection? But Fritz had strong soldierly instincts, which no amount of adipose tissue could submerge. Thus it came that when the burghers went to the front he threw up his job in the Modderfontein Dynamite Fac- tory, Ltd., and returned to soldiering. The first difficulty Fritz encountered was when he had to get a horse. It takes some mount to carry three hundred and twenty pounds of man, not speaking of saddle and other trappings. At first Fritz was furnish- ed with a Percheron which for a good many —a years had distributed beer through Johan- | nesburg. But at Elandslaagte—sad affair— the Percheron got a bullet in a vital spot. How Fritz managed to escape afoot has never been fully explained. But he sprinted _ hard for a distance, it seems, dropped in his tracks from sheer exhaustion, and was mis- taken for dead by the pursuing Fifth Lan- cers. Being fat even has its advantages. In the trenches Fritz was all right. It was his lack of mobility that bothered him. After the Percheron had been lost he tried a gaunt, raw-boned horse of uncertain color, but mostly white. But that did not add him to the mobile army. Try as he might, Fritz would lose the head of the column, where he started in order to profit by a length anyway. And then his soldier heart would ache. Fritz has béen seen on many critical occasions leading a singular pro- cession—a man tugging away at a horse that positively refused to be hurried. So in the end Fritz joined the foetgangers, an organization of decrepits which stayed mostly in camp and attended to chores. Oh, the agonies which this proud soldier suffered! Here he was, an old, seasoned soldier with an arm as steady as ever leveled _arifle, and with an aim as true as was ever known—and unable to get to the front. Fritz tried to reduce his weight. But there was so much flesh draped over his six-foot- three frame that he soon gave it up. Necessity is the mother of invention— GEomichbooks (E@) ae ee s a YF > sre eS org er y 3 - ; :- 7