Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900): Letters from the FrontHales, A. G. (Alfred Greenwood)
History
Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900): Letters from the Front
Hales, A. G. (Alfred Greenwood)
South African War, 1899-1902 -- Personal narratives
against us; but we do hate and despise the men who have brought a cruel war
upon us for their own evil ends, whilst they try to cloak their designs in
a mantle of righteousness and liberty." I may not have given the exact
words of the President, as I am writing from memory, but I think I have
given his exact sentiments; and, if I am any judge of human nature, the
love of his country is the love of his life.
"STOPPING A FEW."
I saw him first, years ago upon a station in New South Wales; a neat, smart
figure less than nine stone in weight, but it was nine stone of fencing
wire full of the electricity of life. He was in the stockyard when I first
saw him, working like any ordinary station hand, for it was the busy
portion of the year, and at such times the squatters' sons work like any
hired hand, only a lot harder, if they are worth their salt, and have not
been bitten by the mania for dudeism during their college course in the
cities. There was nothing of the dandy about this fellow. From head to heel
he was a man's son, full of the vim of living, strong with the lust of
life. The sweat ran down his face, dirty with the dust kicked up by the
cattle in the stockyard. His clothes were not guiltless of mire, for he had
been knocked over more than once that morning, and there was an edge upon
his voice as he rapped out his orders to the stockmen who were working with
him. He did not look in the least degree pretty, and there was not enough
poetry about him just then to make an obituary jingle on a tombstone. I
little thought that day that a time would come when he would prove the
glory of his Australian breeding in the teeth of an enemy's guns on African
soil.
I saw him again--under silk this time--as a gentleman rider. He was the
same quiet, cool little fellow, grey-eyed, steel-lipped, stout-hearted,
with "hands" that Archer might have envied. He rode at his fences that day
as the Australian amateurs can ride, with a rip and a rattle, with the
long, loose leg, the hands well down, and head up and back, and "Over or
Through" was his motto. I did not know him to speak to in those old days.
We were to shake hands under peculiar circumstances away in a foreign land,
in a foreign hospital, both of us prisoners of war, both of us wounded.
That was where and how I spoke to little Dowling, lieutenant in the First
Australian Horse, as game a sample of humanity as ever threw leg over
saddle or loosed a rifle at a foe. He came to my bedside the morning after
I entered the hospital, and standing over me with a green shade over one
eye, and one hand in a sling, said laconically:
"Australian ain't you?"
"Yes, by gad, and I know you." He reached out his left hand, and placed it
in mine.
"Been 'stopping one'?" he remarked.
"Only a graze, thank God," I replied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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