blinder bush; but the "jigger" flea is with the soldier always.

But this campaign is far different from any of the others in which our
arms are at present engaged. First and of especial interest was this
army of ours; the most heterogeneous collection of fighting men, from
the ends of the earth, all gathered in one smoothly working homogeneous
whole. From Boers and British South Africans, from Canada and Australia,
from India, from home, from the planters of East Africa, and from all
the dusky tribes of Central Africa, was this army of ours recruited. The
country, too, was of such a character that knowledge of war in other
campaigns was of little value. Thick grass, dense thorn scrub, high
elephant grass, all had their special bearing on the quality of the
fighting. Close-quarter engagements were the rule, dirty fighting in the
jungle, ambushes, patrol encounters; and the deadly machine-gun that
enfiladed or swept every open space. We cannot be surprised that the
mounted arm was robbed of much of its utility, that artillery work was
often blind for want of observation, that the trench dug in the green
heart of a forest escaped the watchful eyes of aeroplanes, that this war
became a fight of men and rifles, and, above all, the machine-gun.

In this campaign the Hun has been the least of the malignant influences.
More from fever and dysentery, from biting flies, from ticks and
crawling beasts have we suffered than from the bullets of the enemy.
Lions and hyaenas have been our camp followers, and not a little are we
grateful to these wonderful scavengers, the best of all possible allies
in settling the great question of sanitation in camps. For all our roads
were marked by the bodies of dead horses, mules and oxen, whose stench
filled the evening air. Much labour in the distasteful jobs of burying
these poor victims of war did the scavengers of the forest save us.