y
deep questionings, all torn out of my mind like a page of scribbled
poetry plucked out of a business note-book. Khaki figures were up all
about me passing the word and hurrying to their places. All the
dispositions I had made overnight came back clear and sharp into my
mind. We hadn't long for preparations....

It seems now there were only a few busy moments before the fighting
began. It must have been much longer in reality. By that time we had
seen their gun come over and a train of carts. They were blundering
right into us. Every moment it was getting lighter, and the moment of
contact nearer. Then "Crack!" from down below among the rocks, and there
was a sudden stoppage of the trail of dark shapes upon the hillside.
"Crack!" came a shot from our extreme left. I damned the impatient men
who had shot away the secret of our presence. But we had to keep them at
a shooting distance. Would the Boers have the wit to charge through us
before the daylight came, or should we hold them? I had a swift,
disturbing idea. Would they try a bolt across our front to the left? Had
we extended far enough across the deep valley to our left? But they'd
hesitate on account of their gun. The gun couldn't go that way because
of the gullies and thickets.... But suppose they tried it! I hung
between momentous decisions....

Then all up the dim hillside I could make out the Boers halting and
riding back. One rifle across there flashed.

We held them!...

We had begun the fight of Pieters Nek which ended before midday with the
surrender of Simon Botha and over seven hundred men. It was the crown of
all my soldiering.

Sec. 4

I came back to England at last when I was twenty-six. After the peace of
Vereeniging I worked under the Repatriation Commission which controlled
the distribution of returning prisoners and concentrated population to
their homes; for the most part I was distributing stock and grain, and
presently manoeuvring a sort of ploughing flying column that the dearth
of horses and oxen made necessary, work that was certainly as hard as if
far less exciting than war. That particular work of replanting the
desolated country with human beings took hold of my imagination, and for
a time at least seemed quite straightforward and understandable. The
comfort of ceasing to destroy!

No one has written anything that really conveys the quality of that
repatriation process; the queer business of bringing these suspicious,
illitera