Free Blunted Lance by Max Hennessy Page A

up in the west to relieve Kimberley. Methuen can look after that, Clery can look after the centre, and Gatacre after the Orange River front. Intelligence isn’t much help.’
    ‘It never was,’ General Goff said bitterly. ‘And I wouldn’t trust the guides.’
    ‘You’ll also find there’s a shortage of maps, sir,’ Ellesmere said.
    ‘It’s something we’ve tried to rectify,’ General Goff pointed out. ‘The clarity of the atmosphere here doesn’t make up for the lack of information about the lie of the land. We’ll be fighting in the dark and that’s a futile exercise. At Estcourt they have no maps at all.’
    Buller seemed stolidly unmoved, his mind occupied with his problems.
    ‘A Director of Military Intelligence was appointed in 1895,’ he said doggedly.
    ‘With a staff of eighteen officers,’ General Goff snapped. ‘The German Army has a comparable staff of a hundred and fifty.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘You forget my daughter married into a German military family.’
    ‘And that could be an embarrassment,’ Buller said, ‘if their half-witted Emperor drags us into a war.’
    The General acknowledged the fact. ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘on more than one occasion it’s had its advantages. Great God and all His pink angels, we knew eight months ago we were likely to be at war before the year was out and we’ve been in this damned country since the beginning of the century!’
    Buller, who had been at the War Office himself during the crucial years, tried to defend the system. ‘Intelligence has no means of drawing maps,’ he said. ‘We tried to buy ’em but the man who was handling it died and nothing was done.’
    ‘ Something was,’ General Goff snapppd. ‘My son did it. He found maps in the public library and we had them copied and printed. He also found a thousand copies of a map of the Transvaal, which was being produced here for the Transvaal government. We impounded them as contraband of war.’
     
    The following week saw the arrival from Ladysmith of French, the cavalry leader, who had been released with his chief of staff, Haig, to lead the cavalry from the south.
    ‘Last train out.’ French was so busy talking he didn’t notice Dabney place a glass at his elbow. ‘We were hit by a volley near Pieter’s Station and when we stopped we were all expecting to be greeted by the Boers. In fact we’d reached one of our outposts and we found a 3-inch shell had gone through the second truck. Good job it didn’t hit a wheel or we’d be on our way to Pretoria now.’
    French was a short man whom Dabney knew well because he’d commanded the 19th Lancers’ sister regiment, the 19th Hussars, and had often been seen at the depot at Ripon. Short-legged and burly to the point of appearing to have no neck, he was a fluent and persuasive talker, but from things his father had let drop Dabney knew he was not regarded as an intellectual genius. He was also supposed to have a liking for women, which was why he was said to be sometimes short of money and, though his reputation as a cavalryman was good, he was rumoured to be weak-willed and petulant when he couldn’t have his own way. His chief of staff, the quiet, educated Haig, his looks those of a matinee idol, watched his chief placidly. Dabney had heard that French had borrowed money from him.
    They brought information about Ladysmith which was of help, but sounded pessimistic all the same. White, it seemed, was behaving with a curious mixture of rashness and vacillation.
    ‘They’re keeping the horses to mount counter attacks,’ Haig said. ‘But it seems to me if the siege lasts long enough they’ll end up eating them.’
     
    By this time, Ladysmith was heavily invested and it was clear that a strong force would have to be sent to relieve it. At Mafeking and Kimberley the Boers appeared quite content to sit and wait and in that area there seemed no great hurry. Then, in November, came news of the destruction of an