to-day, with the sun just topping the distant veldt, the whistle blew,
and we started. It was a piercing frosty morning; but we were all so
tired that we slept just as we were. I found myself nestling on the
floor of a truck (very dirty), between a gun-wheel and the three foot
high side with feed-bags for pillows. Cold feet soon roused me, and I
got up on to the gun in the sun, and saw we were slowly climbing a
long incline through the usual veldt and kopjes, only more inhabited
looking, with a tree and a farm or two. A lovely scene with the sun
reddening the veldt in the pure crisp air. I smoked a cigarette in
great content of mind. Soon shapeless heaps of blankets began to move
down the trucks, muffled heads blinked out from odd corners, and
gradually the Battery woke, and thawed, and breakfasted on biscuit and
bully beef. We have said good-bye to bread.

We rumbled slowly on all the morning, past the same sort of country,
with dead horses and broken bridges marking Roberts's track, and at
Brandfort stopped to feed horses, which, by the way, is a nasty
dangerous game when you are dealing with closed horse-boxes. You have
to climb through a small window, get in among the horses, and put the
feeds on as they are handed up. The horses are not tied up, and are
wild with hunger. You have simply to fight to avoid being crushed or
kicked in that reeking interior, for they are packed as thick as
possible.

At Vet River we got the first news of fighting. Boers under De Wet had
been breaking bridges, and cutting wires. A very seedy-looking
Guardsman gave us the news, and said they were cold and starving; and
they looked it. What regiment was there? "Oh, we're all details 'ere,"
he said, with a gloomy shrug. At Zand River infantry were in trenches
expecting attack. A fine bridge had been blown up, and we crossed the