A still more absurd practice was that of sometimes attempting to carry
off the dead during an engagement. An instance of this was seen at
Rietfontein. A couple of men of a Volunteer regiment were coming
across the open ground below the hill under a pretty brisk fire, when
Dr. H----, himself one of the most fearless of men, called out to
them, "S---- has been killed down there; better bring him in." They
turned back immediately, and one of them, J. Gillespie, got off his
horse and lifted the corpse on to the saddle, they holding it in
position by hanging on to a leg on either side, and walked back, while
the bullets were whistling around them, and knocking up little spurts
of dirt on the ground in front of them. It was a most ghastly sight;
the head of the corpse bobbed about with the motion of the horse, and
the lips of the corpse were drawn back in a horrible grin, as if he
were laughing idiotically at them for trying to qualify for a Victoria
Cross with a corpse. I really think they deserved it just as much as
if he had been alive.

A curious thing happened to a horse of one of the men who were
performing this feat. The owner found when he had returned to
Ladysmith that his water-bottle, which was attached to his saddle, had
been perforated by a bullet. Showing it to another in the evening,
they came to the conclusion, from the position of the holes, that it
would be impossible for the holes to be made in the position they
were without wounding the horse. The next day, on examining the horse,
he found a bullet had actually passed through and through him, and yet
apparently he seemed none the worse.

There was another but different instance of a horse carrying a corpse
at the battle of Lombard's Kop. There was no leering and hideous
grinning at us, however, as the rider's head had been blown clean away
by a Boer shell. The 5th Lancers were riding out on our right, when a
single horse came galloping past them, clattering furiously over the
stony veldt. No wonder the men stared; it was a sight to be
remembered. The rider was firmly fixed in the deep cavalry saddle; the
reins tossed loose with the horse's mane, and both hands were clenched
against either side of his breast; and the head was cut off clean at
the shoulders. Perhaps in the spasm of that death-tear the rider had
gripped his horse's sides with his long-spurred heels; perhaps the
horse also was wounded; anyhow, with head down, and wild and terrified
eyes, hi