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Updated: May 13, 2025
More prisoners kept coming in; limping, bandaged men passed on their way down; infantry runners in khaki shorts, and motor-cycle despatch-riders hurried up and buzzed around the Brigade Headquarters; inside when the telephone bell wasn't ringing the brigade-major could be heard demanding reports from battalions, or issuing fresh instructions.
It was tremendously exciting work. The old town of Upington was transformed in those days. Around the Dutch Reformed Church, standing peaceful and dazzling white in the torrid sun, were tents, wagons, horses, motor-cars, signalling-parties, despatch-riders and infantry.
Away over the hard red sand dunes to the north was the action zone, and from that direction every five minutes came sweating motor despatch-riders, who tore along to Headquarters.
We proceeded as far as the Bankop, not knowing where to find them, and it was no easy matter to look for them amongst the British columns. For ten days we searched the neighbourhood, and finally met one of the Commandant-General's despatch-riders, who informed me of their whereabouts, which they were obliged to keep secret for fear of treachery.
But it may be only a blind." As we turned out into the darkened street to make our way to our respective offices a supply column rumbled over the pavé, each of the seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the aeroplane going home to roost.
More than half the owners of motor-cars in Ulster placed their cars at the disposal of the motor corps, to be used as and when required. The corps was organised in sections of four cars each, and in squadrons of seventeen cars each, with motor cyclist despatch-riders; a signalling corps of despatch-riders and signallers completed the organisation.
Though it ain't the same thing out here." Going in search of Christmas, I passed through a flooded countryside and found only scenes of war behind the lines, with gunners driving their batteries and limber down a road that had become a river-bed, fountains of spray rising about their mules and wheels, military motor-cars lurching in the mud beyond the pave, despatch-riders side-slipping in a wild way through boggy tracks, supply columns churning up deep ruts.
When a string of these gets mixed up with motor-cars, a few despatch-riders on motor-cycles, a peasant's cart, and a company on the march, the result easily surpasses Piccadilly Circus just before the curtains are rising in West End theatres. Blocks may and do occur at any moment. Out of a peaceful rustic solitude you may run round a curve straight into a block.
Time slipped away, and time was short, while the despatch-riders waited for our unwritten despatches, and censors who had been our fellow-travelers washed themselves cleaner and kept an eye on the clock. Percival Phillips turned pink-and-white under the hideous strain of nervous control, with an hour and a half for two columns in The Morning Post. A little pulse throbbed in his forehead.
The artilleryman will have to work his gun single-handed when the section leaders and gun captains have fallen victims to the shrapnel fire; the patrols and despatch-riders are often left to themselves in the middle of the enemy's country; and the sapper, who is working against a counter-mine, will often find himself unexpectedly face to face with the enemy, and has no resource left beyond his own professional knowledge and determination.
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