The old soldier nodded. “Some of us. Enough. We’d shot and bayonetted our way through the first line of Commandant Cronje’s troops, dug in deep on the southern side. They were well prepared for us. Their barrels were level with our kneecaps as we came on, all unsuspecting, across the plain. They know how to keep quiet and hold their fire for the moment critique, the Boers. Cronje’s clever idea, that—a double bank of defence, the first on the near side of the river. It took us all by surprise. They mowed us down like tall grass before a scythe. The old fox had placed his younger, weaker units down there in the trenches, saving his old beardies and his artillery for the more secure position on the northern bank.

“At great cost, we’d fought our way up close to the defence pits and were within yards of overrunning them when the Boers decided to call it a day. They never stood to the last man. They had an uncanny way of judging to perfection the moment the fight began to go against them and—without need of a bugle call—they all scarpered. Cronje’s front line men had to take their chances and flee back across the river right under their own side’s guns! That’s Boer ruthlessness for you. Did he care? The old goat had a reputation for being unacquainted with ‘the more chivalrous usages of war.’ He wouldn’t have hesitated to sacrifice his third-raters. They’d done the job they’d been set to do, after all.

“They’d brought us up short and given us a bloody nose, identified and shot a good number of our officers. Their hawks’ eyes could pick out an officer’s markings a mile away. And in our outfit, the officers put themselves in the front line. But I think the Boer were so confident of their marksmanship they knew that from up there in the treetops they could spot and spare their own fellows, even in the sauve qui peut that ensued. At one point, I found myself swimming alongside an escaping Boer lad not old enough to have a beard. At the same moment we stopped and trod water, just staring at each other, eye to eye. With his fair hair and eyes the colour of the North Sea, he could have been my little brother. I gave him a jokey salute, he winked at me and we swam on together. Matching stroke for stroke, inches apart. Each protecting the other from opposing fire, I suppose. Did it occur to us at the time? I’m sure it did. We went our separate ways when we grounded. Nothing in the rule book about that! ‘Tactical use of enemy to facilitate preservation of self,’ would you say? It seemed to work.”