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Updated: May 24, 2025
The lack of water was the only really trying thing, and the cold at night. We had fresh meat for supper this night from a sheep commandeered on the march, and weren't we ravenous! Another very cold night, but the joyful orders for reveillé at 7 A.M. June 29. "Stables" and harness-cleaning all the morning.
At nine, harness-cleaning for drivers, and grazing for gunners, but I have got a gunner who dislikes bare-back riding to do my harness while I graze. I am writing on the veldt; warm sunny day, pale blue sky very pale. Back to finish harness-cleaning. We always "grouse" at this occupation, as I believe all drivers do on active service.
In my second watch, in the small hours, a Tommy with a water-cart strayed into our lines, asking for the Boer prisoners, for whom he had been sent to get water. He swore copiously at the nature of his job in particular, and at war in general. I showed him the way, and consoled him with tobacco. August 1. Grazing and harness-cleaning all day. Rumours galore.
"We are back at camp about 1.30, form our lines again, between the guns and waggons, unharness, rub down horses, and then have dinner. We can buy beer at a canteen, or, better still, draught ginger-beer, which is a grand drink. Harness-cleaning is irksome work, and, as far as appearances go, is a heart-breaking task, for the eternal dust is always obliterating every trace of one's labour.
Harness-cleaning was another bugbear, but even that succumbed to the mud after a time; and as the weeks flew by and inspections, infallible finger-posts to a "scrap," became more frequent we knew that all was not in vain and that very soon we should have the chance of justifying the long, arduous days of preparation. And quite suddenly it came.
This was changed by the lady who sold us the fowl, an Englishwoman. On our return there was harness-cleaning, interrupted by a sudden order to move, but only to shift camp about a mile. This is always annoying, because at halts you always collect things such as fuel and meal and pots, which are impossible to carry with you.
At eleven there was harness-cleaning, and I was sadly regarding a small remnant of dubbin and my dusty girths and leathers, when the order came for "boot and saddle," and that little job was off.
You would see a squadron going to water with scarcely a shirt-sleeve between them; and some of the men also dispensed with the shirt and rode mother-naked to the waist! The usual state of their saddlery would have sent a British General of the "spit and polish" type into a fit of apoplexy, for a harness-cleaning parade was a thing unheard of amongst the Australians.
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