many things of which he does
know, and so well too that they eclipse the greater strategical
considerations of the war. He does know the food he eats and the food
that he would like to eat; moreover, he knew, in German East Africa,
what his rations ought to be, and how to do without them. He learnt how
to fight and march and carry heavy equipment on a very empty stomach. He
learnt to eke out his meagre supplies by living on the wild game of the
country, the native flour, bananas and mangoes. He knew what it meant to
have dysentery and malaria. He had marched under a broiling sun by day
and shivered in the tropic dews at night. He knew what it was to sleep
upon the ground; to hunt for shade from the vertical sun. These and many
other things did he know, and herein lies the chief interest of this or
of any other campaign.

For, strange as it may seem, the soldier in East Africa was more
concerned about his food and clothing, the tea he thirsted for, the
blisters that tormented his weary feet, the equipment that was so heavy,
the sleep that drugged his footsteps on the march, the lion that sniffed
around his drowsy head at night, than about the actual fighting. These
are the real points of personal interest in any campaign, and if these
sketches bear upon the questions of food, the matter of transport, the
manner of the soldier's illness, the hospitals he stayed in, the tsetse
fly that bit him by day, the mosquitoes that made his nights a perfect
torment, they are the more true to life. For fights are few, and, in
this thick bush country, frequently degenerate into blind firing into a
blinder bush; but the "jigger" flea is with the soldier always.

But this campaign is far different from any of the others in which our
arms are at present engaged. First and of especial interest was this
army of ours; the most heterogeneous collection of fighting men, from
the ends of the earth, all gathered in one smoothly working homogeneous
whole. From Boers and British South Africans, from Canada and Australia,
from India, from home, from the planters of East Africa, and from all
the dusky tribes of Central Africa, was this army of ours recruited. The
country, too, was of such a character that knowledge of war in other
campaigns was of little value. Thick grass, dense thorn scrub, high
elephant grass, all had their special bearing on the quality of the
fighting. Close-quarter engagements were the rule, dirty fighting in the
jungle, ambu