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Then the wide street itself, away down and down and down into the distance, was alive with gorgeously-clothed people not still, but moving, swaying, drifting, eddying, a delirious display of all colors and all shades of color, delicate, lovely, pale, soft, strong, stunning, vivid, brilliant, a sort of storm of sweetpea blossoms passing on the wings of a hurricane; and presently, through this storm of color, came swaying and swinging the majestic elephants, clothed in their Sunday best of gaudinesses, and the long procession of fanciful trucks freighted with their groups of curious and costly images, and then the long rearguard of stately camels, with their picturesque riders.
For two disquieting days, however, nothing was heard of the rearguard. To our relief it turned up on the third day. Several weeks of quiet followed, the British resting after their giant efforts, whilst we prepared to stem their further advance when it should take place.
"The baggage, under escort of the rearguard, remained in Gasht till ordered forward after the action. "An advance was made to the river, where the bridge had been broken, but sufficiently repaired by the Sappers and Miners for the passage of the infantry. The guns forded the river, and the force ascended to the fan facing the right sangars of the enemy's position.
Lieutenant G. Acland Troyte, King's Royal Rifle Corps, 25th Mounted Infantry, states: 'I was wounded on October 25 in a rearguard action with Colonel Benson's force, near Kaffirstadt. The Boers came up and stripped me of everything except my drawers, shirt, and socks, they gave me an old pair of trousers, and later a coat. Lieutenant Reginald Seymour, 1st Batt.
That serious company of young Englishmen making soldiers of themselves in a day with so unpropitious an opening light did not look like national indifference. Those innocents getting used to rifles were as affecting as that single line of bodies I saw across a mile of stubble near Compiegne, where a rearguard of the "Contemptibles" had sacrificed themselves to their comrades.
The night of the 21st the army moved back from Rossville, and my division, as the rearguard of the Twentieth Corps, got within our lines at Chattanooga about 8 o'clock the morning of the 22d. Our unmolested retirement from Rossville lent additional force to the belief that the enemy had been badly injured, and further impressed me with the conviction that we might have held on.
The retreat of the Russians commenced on the evening of the 7th of June. Napoleon followed them with almost the whole of his army; the detachments of the vanguard and rearguard had more than once been engaged in partial combats when, on the evening of the 10th of June, the French army debouched before the entrenched camp of Heilsberg strongly supported by the banks of the Alle.
The rearguard, commanded by the general himself, covered the rear, but fortunately the enemy did not come up until evening; but so numerous were the stragglers that when the French cavalry charged, they mustered in sufficient force to repel their attack, a proof that it was not so much fatigue as insubordination that caused them to lag behind.
General Philip Botha and I were with the rearguard, and did not expect to reach the line of forts until ten o'clock on the following morning. We had not advanced very far before we were joined by Commandant Michal Prinsloo, who had with him three hundred of the Bethlehem burghers.
In these conditions he was forced to the most trying form of fight the rearguard and flank action. With his goal practically right ahead, he reached three of the parallel large sand dunes with which the veld around Upington is scattered. They were on his left flank. He swerved into them. Hotly pursued, he crossed two, and under the lee of the second left a party of good shots.
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