Adventure, November 1915 — page 212: what you’re looking at

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

210 even more on the battlefield than in the humdrum life of peace. So Fritz thought. Eureka! ~ The next day Fritz had an interview with old Theron, Veldcornet of one of the Johan- nesburg commandos. Certainly, the plan was a good one. Every man was needed. How he got to the spot where he was needed ‘did not matter. Fritz returned to his tent with a broad grin of satisfaction. For about a week Fritz was nowhere to be seen. It was understood that he had gone to Newcastle on pressing business. He had. Eight days afterward, Fritz reappeared incamp. He made his entry in a Cape cart, drawn by two lively mules. Be it stated for the benefit of the unini- tiated that a Cape cart is a two-wheeled vehicle, so built that it will stand the strain which the bad roads of South Africa impose. Hereafter Fritz would go to battle in a chariot. He did on many occasions. When last seen Fritz and his team of mules were hot-footing it after a little debauch at Pan Statie, to the accompaniment of the clatter of the many pots and pans Fritz carried for his messmates. OW Yelle de Haas—if that be the man- ner in which he spelled his first name —managed to get away from mother, the writer has never known. But he should have been with mother, for his own good; as will be seen. 3 - Yelle hailed from Java, and was faintly Eurasian—there was just enough of Java- nese blood in him to make a most interesting young Dutchman. He came to the front with a money-belt literally bursting with gold pieces, and in some mysterious manner he kept replenishing his traveling bank regularly once a month. Mother must have - forgiven him when she found that the heir to one of the biggest coffee plantations in the Dutch East Indies was determined to help his kin across the Indian Ocean. Yelle was possibly eighteen years old, and-none too big for his age. It was his notion to get into the “regular” part of the army—he adored uniforms—and for this reason he joined the artillery. That the piece he worked with was an old muzzle- loader wounded his pride every time he swabbed the old fellow out. But he was a soldier, was Yelle—every inch of him, though the inches were few. - Adventure It was a privilege to serve with Yelle’s old brass barker. The platoon, if we may call it that, had the best of everything and largely maintained itself. Naturally, Yelle supplied these sinews of war, and when the lieutenant failed to recover from some twenty shrapnel woundsy Yelle was partly instituted, and partly constituted himself, Commander in Chief of the thunderer and the Maxim and Vickers which had been added to this “‘unit.’”” Times were such that ‘Sumping” of that kind did not matter much—it was not likely that anybody would have a commission under the new govern- ment that was growing stronger with every blooming day. Yelle’s battery did some great work and showed wonderful staying power. Thanks to the fact that the old brass piece had not been used in the early part of the war, owing to its great antiquity, there was ammunition for it when the more modern guns rested in ~ fragments at the bottom of the Crocodile River at Hectorspruit. So Yelle went up through the Laageveld, did good work at Spitz Kop—there are dozens of Spitz Kop battles, but only one that made history—and could generally be relied upon to instil in the burghers that — peculiar confidence which comes from hav- ing artillery bark in your rear. But one day Yelle came to grief. High up in the azure heavens a shrapnel died of colic, emptying its contents on Yelle’s con- tingent. abdominal dimensions Yelle could boast of went one of the loopers—one of those dull- blue, leaden balls they stuff shrapnel with. If you are familiar with what the military Alas, through the few inches of surgeon opines in a case like that, you will | understand poor Yelle’s position. In the United States army they put a red tag on the man so wounded and set him to one side —to die just as quickly as he can. So it happened with Yelle. Just for curiosity’s sake, they cut him open afterward and discovered that the ball had ranged downward and had torn the in- testinal tracts to ribbons. Poor Yelle! ALTENDORF was a man past forty, and twenty of his years he had spent putting in semesters at the various German universities. The veld robbed Alt-Heidel- berg of one of its ablest beer drinkers when Altendorf decided to journey thither for the GEomichbooks com % eee roam ae it DN) Suhel ES tee ON Adee