United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But it has water in it nevertheless; and at fixed and charted spots are to be found bore-holes and wells for the convenience of dwellers in the profitless wilderness. The principal wells and holes are at the places marked on the diagram. General Botha's principal task was to take an army right across the Namib Desert, and to do that he had to capture every water-hole and keep it.
First we were there for a period of some five weeks, from February 11 till March 18, whilst awaiting the first advance into the Namib Desert; then we were there for a further month, from the 27th of March till the 25th of April, whilst awaiting the general advance to Windhuk and Karibib. Garrison Sports at Swakopmund. Garrison Sports. It is difficult to write about Swakopmund.
Existence was just a dateless alternation of light and darkness, of saddle-up and off-saddle, of cossack-post, of thinking about water and of yearning with every fibre of one's being for the ineffable boon of a long sleep. It will be seen that the key to the advance over the Namib Desert was the Swakop River.
Trees began to appear caricatures of trees. Then game spoor was reported. And suddenly, just after noon, rain fell out of one cloud in a sky otherwise brazenly clear five drops fell. I counted five on my bridle hand. Rain on the edge of the Namib Desert. It was ludicrous, too bizarre; it was the last straw. We gasped. A deep roar of ironical cheering went up.
The vital consideration to the advance of any army across the Namib Desert is to secure the water-holes on the Swakop River. The Swakop is by no means the usual prepossessing kind of stream that flows efficiently between wide banks. It flowed actually for a day just after General Botha landed at Swakopmund the first and last time, apparently, within the memory of man.
For it ceases utterly, abruptly; from the door of its last villa, fitted with perfect furnishings from Hamburg, the bitter desolation that is the Namib Desert stretches away from your, very feet. Marvelling at this place, I was particularly struck by the size of its cemetery. But I was not long puzzled.
The other columns moved on, trekking night and day, as in the great advance across the Namib Desert.
On the 18th of March the Commander-in-Chief and Staff, with all forces except those detailed to the base and infantry already holding the line and stores depots, etc., trekked out from Swakopmund on what was officially described as a "reconnaissance." It was really the first big push into the Namib Desert.
Bodies of the Union troops had occupied Riet on the evening of the 20th. The actions at the Jakalswater and Pforte fronts, to fight which the columns had swept away to our left the night before, were equally successful. That is the general story of the fight of the 20th March on the inland edge of the Namib Desert. But how to picture vividly the scene before Riet that day?
Word Of The Day