Sixth chapter
Only those who take big risks (Oom Schalk Lourens said) learn the big lessons of life.
Who invented the armoured train? We have to wonder who sat up in the middle of the night and thought: Whoa, let’s turn a train into an overweight steel-plated armadillo!
Was it a Confederate American? A Russian? Or a German? What twisted mind decided to replace all but four of a train’s passenger carriages with troop-carrying wagons, add heavy armoured plates with ominous gun slits to the windows, and bolt a sandbagged machine-gun nest on the roof of the first carriage?
It doesn’t matter that Queen Victoria’s husband Bertie thought the overweight and cumbersome monster “an entirely safe mode of travel” or that Tsar Nicholas of Russia called it “a brilliant solution” to the dangers of war-time travel: they were dead wrong. It was a moronic idea. It even looks like one in the old photographs.
Winston Churchill wrote, “Nothing seems more formidable than an armoured train; but nothing is in fact more vulnerable and helpless. It was only necessary to blow up a railway bridge to leave the monster stranded, far from home and help, at the mercy of the enemy.”
He had some practical experience. In the first year of the war Churchill was captured by General Louis Botha’s commando after the armoured train carrying him and 70 troops was ambushed and derailed. Churchill loftily demanded his immediate release, claiming press neutrality.
Did the Boer general believe him?
Not so you’d notice.
Botha took one look at the British Army issue revolver on young Winston’s hip and invited him firmly to join the other 70 English troops in Pretoria’s finest prison. And by doing that, of course, Botha helped launch the Churchill legend into the stratosphere.
Make no mistake: Botha knew this when he told Willy he had an ace up his sleeve. It would have been extremely unlikely of Churchill to ignore a personal letter from Louis Botha.
The train waiting at the Pretoria Station that Wednesday afternoon was armed and armoured to the hilt. As anachronistic as the dwindling number of military balloons still scouting for cannon positions in the countryside, it was the last armoured train now running between Pretoria and Durban and only had four passenger carriages: two first class behind the engine, then two second class carriages, and at the rear a sleeping wagon for three squads of riflemen who worked shifts manning the Maxim machine-gun on top of the first first-class carriage.
Captain Lawrence prayed these fine young men and their fire power wouldn’t be needed on the overnight train journey to Durban and the ship waiting in its harbour. Personally he needed this command, it was an honour to be trusted with such a gift for the King, and it probably put a dent in his conscience about what really happened to his eye.
With a little luck it could also improve matters with his wife. Hopefully Mary would become less condescending and stop obsessing over their son Shawn who was not as good at farming as he was at bullshitting and drinking peach brandy.
Captain Lawrence knew a bit about steam engines. The smoking beast pulling the train was a British-made A4 Pacific, the fastest steam locomotive ever built in England. It could reach its destination on the coast quicker if it only had to stop for coal and water, but there were real paying passengers on board who had to be let off at stations along the way. All at established railway times.
Using real passengers was the stupendously stupid idea of a police detective who code-named himself Shadrach. A protestant Scot, Shadrach thought the appearance of a normal train service would make the use of an armoured and armed monstrosity less conspicuous. The idiot had two detectives under him, code-named Meshach and Abednego. Both of them used to work fairly intelligently for the London Police, but then gold lust made them rush to the South African goldfields where they didn’t find a single gold nugget and were forced to return to police work under an even bigger fool. Shadrach, Meshach and fucking Abednego. The biblical names were too obviously chosen to show the detectives would walk through fire, etcetera, something Meshach and Abednego had no intention of doing. William Gibson was paying them to babysit a royal gift, not go up in flames for it.
That Wednesday afternoon, the 10th of November 1908, escorted by the three police detectives in civilian disguise looking like three police detectives in civilian disguise, Captain Lawrence carried a small yellow-wood chest over the empty platform of Pretoria Station and onto the armoured train. They had come here directly from the handing-over ceremony at the Prime Minister’s residence.
Shadrach wanted the platform bare, in case a person or persons unknown leapt from the crowd and tried to grab the chest, then he could see the person or persons coming. The idiot would probably have made it to chief inspector if he didn’t die so unexpectedly before his next birthday. He would’ve been 40 years old.
Two men stepped off the train to meet Captain Lawrence: a boyish-looking army lieutenant who was in charge of the riflemen, trying hard not to blush, and a train conductor so large everyone was trying hard not to look at him.
The young officer saluted and blushed. “Lieutenant Michael Connery, sir, an honour to serve you.”
“At ease, Lieutenant.” The Captain smiled. “I suspect this is going to be a piece of cake.”
Connery forced a smile. “I do hope so, sir.”
The huge conductor, speaking English with a harsh accent, gallantly offered to carry the yellow-wood chest to the Captain’s compartment.
“The chest will stay with the Captain,” Shadrach informed him, “and we will stay with the chest.”
“Ja, of course, all travelling first class.” The train conductor showed Shadrach the official booking attached to his clipboard. “Detective Sergeant Wilson, Detective Constable Blair and Detective Constable Thatcher will share the compartment next to the Captain, all the way to Maydon Wharf, Durban Harbour.”
Captain Lawrence sniffed at Shadrach (Wilson). “I thought I made it clear, no-one must know you’re detectives.”
Shadrach glared at the train conductor. “We are travelling incognito.”
The train conductor didn’t understand the word. “I’m sorry?”
Shadrach scowled at Meshach (Blair) and Abednego (Thatcher) as if it was all their fault. They thought it best to shut up. Lieutenant Michael Connery thought the same thing.
“Nobody knows we’re here,” Shadrach explained.
The conductor smiled. “ Ja-nee, of course, good story.”
The conductor’s name was Bernardus van Aswegen. Built like a gnarled tree stump, grey-flecked spade of beard, icy blue eyes in red face, late forties. Ask any Engishman out in the African sun: if it looks like one, smells and sounds like one, it’s a fucking Boer. A tame one in this case; known enemies of the peace were never employed in positions of trust.
Of course we now know Bernardus van Aswegen wasn’t really a train conductor, although he often did have something to do with trains during the war. He blew them up.
Speaking of trains exploding, who the hell was Comrade Grootjan and why did he have to keep his powder dry?
On a day of flame and smoke, mentioned briefly in some history books as the Battle of Klipkop, Bernardus van Aswegen saved the life of a boy who acted like a man and shot like a sniper. The boy was kneeling on a bare hill dotted with the bodies of his dead comrades, the only survivor of a surprise attack by an English patrol, the very angry patrol he was now shooting at over the carcass of his beloved horse. The boy behaved as if he wanted to die on this hill and take as many Englishmen with him as possible.
After losing six men to the boy’s shooting, the commanding officer of the patrol pinpointed the marksman’s position and sent a messenger to a line of cannon on the ridge behind him. Within the hour concentrated cannon fire turned the hill into a hell of flame and smoke. Already dead Boers, men the boy had ridden and fought with, were further dismembered by the explosions and their pieces literally flew everywhere.
The boy somehow managed to continue shooting, but the hissing sprays of dead Boer, hot dirt and rock were creeping closer. His ears and nose bled from the thunder of the explosions, and he couldn’t see properly through the smoke. So he never saw Bernardus van Aswegen on his black stallion until they were virtually on top of him.
“Is jy befok in jou kop?” the bearded horseman roared at him, the words literally meaning: “Are you befucked in your head?”
The boy assumed it was a rhetorical question and fired another wild shot into the wall of smoke. Bernardus van Aswegen leant down and swung the boy onto the horse behind him. The boy was not a lightweight, but the giant easily held him by his hair like you would a pumpkin by its stem. The black stallion leapt away, plunging through bitter smoke and ignoring the tremendous noise of the big guns as it raced to the other end of the exploding hill. They nearly made it to the valley below where Bernardus van Aswegen’s dynamite team hid in the trees. The boy could actually see their tethered horses when cannon shrapnel took the black stallion’s head clean off, and the boy fell painfully among sharp rocks, the bearded giant close to him. Bernardus van Aswegen broke his arm, the boy his ankle.
When the boy later thanked Bernardus van Aswegen for risking his life to save him, the giant told him the only risks worth taking were big risks.
“I will risk my life for you if I have to,” the boy said solemnly.
Bernardus van Aswegen snorted wryly. “Good story. What’s your name, boy?”
“Gerrit Johannes Pretorius,” the boy said.
I love the historical setting combined with an assortment of oddball characters and an exuberant narrative