My chief impression of the weather is that of heat and dust, but there were times when we thought the dreaded rainy season had begun; when the camp was a running morass, and we crouched in our tents, watching pools of water soaking under our harness sheets, and counting the labour over rusted steel. But it used to pass off, leaving a wonderful effect; every waste oat seed about the camp sprouted; little green lawns sprang up in a single night round the places where the forage was heaped, and the whole veldt put on a delicate pink dress, a powder of tiny pink flowers.
By the middle of May we began to think we had been forgotten altogether, but at last, on the morning of the 17th of May, as we were marching out to drill, an orderly galloped up, and put a long blue letter into the Captain's hand. We had seen this happen before, and our discussions of the circumstance, as we rode along, were sceptical, but this time we were wrong.
The railway north--Yesterday's start--Travelling made easy--Feeding horses--A menu--De Aar--A new climate--Naauwport--Over the frontier-- Bloemfontein--A fiasco--To camp again--The right section--Diary days-- Riding exercise--A bit of history--Longman's Hospital--The watering-place--Artillery at drill--A review--A camp rumour--A taste of freedom--A tent scene.
"_May 20._--_Sunday._--I write this on the train, on the way up north, somewhere near Beaufort West; for the long-wished day has come at last, and we are being sent to Kroonstadt, which anyway is pretty near to, if not actually at, the front. Our only fear is now that it will be too late. All day the train has been traversing the Karoo, a desert seamed by bare rocky mountains, and without a sign of life on it, only vast stretches of pebbly soil, dotted sparsely with dusty-green dwarf scrub. But to go back. We started yesterday. All went smoothly and simply. At eight, kit was inspected; in the morning, bareback exercise; at twelve, tents struck; at 12.30 dinner; at one, 'boot and saddle.' When we were hooked in and mounted, the Captain made a splendid little speech in the incisive forcible voice we had learned to know so well, saying we had had for long the most trying experience that can befall a soldier, that of standing fast, while he sees his comrades passing him up to the front. He congratulated us on the way we had met that experience. There had been no complaining or slackness in our work on that account. He hoped we would have the luck to go into action, and his last advice to us was 'to keep our stomachs full and our bellies warm!'