Two Years on Trek Part 21

Steyn, the capital of the Free State. Unfortunately for the town, Mr.

Steyn's business was of such a peculiar character that he was compelled to transfer the seat of Government to other and less important places than Lindley.

With the Brigade went Captain Hopkins, who, to the loss of the Royal Suss.e.x, was proceeding to join his new regiment. Our two young aspirants for fame on the staff, Lieut. Villiers and Lieut. Nelson, also went off, and with them the remainder of the Volunteer company, to whom the following farewell order was issued by the Colonel.

Extract from Battalion Orders, 16th of Nov., 1900.

"In bidding farewell to Lieut. D'Olier and the Volunteer company of the Royal Suss.e.x Regiment, Lieut.-Colonel Donne wishes to express the feelings of all ranks in the First Battalion at losing such good comrades in many a long march and hard fought action. They will go home to Suss.e.x carrying with them the proudest insignia of this campaign--the memories of Welkom Farm, Zand River, Doornkop, Capture of Johannesburg, Capture of Pretoria, and the hard fought battle of Diamond Hill on the 11th and 12th of June; the subsequent march south to Heidelburg and Bethlehem, the operations in the Caledon Valley, the brilliant action at Retief's Nek, and the surrender of the Boer forces at Golden Gate--these are records they can well consider as second to none of the Volunteer companies in South Africa.

"But these marches and victories have not been achieved without grievous losses to mourn. Their best of leaders and bravest of men--Sir Walter Barttelot--fell gallantly leading them to the attack on Retief's Nek.

His sterling worth as a soldier will live long in the records of the regiment. He gloried in fighting for his country, and his death at the head of his Volunteer company will serve not only as a pathetic incident in the campaign, but as an ill.u.s.trious example for all time to the Volunteers of Suss.e.x; it will knit more firmly together in the bond of _esprit de corps_ all the battalions of the Royal Suss.e.x as one great county regiment.

"Whilst the path of the Volunteer company is towards home, that of the First Battalion is outward bound, far out into the British Empire for many a long year; but we shall never forget the comradeship which has been cemented on the fields of South Africa in 1900. All Suss.e.x will welcome her citizen soldiers who have shared our hardships, and added fresh glory to our old flags, which will shortly find their resting place in the County Cathedral. We wish them a speedy and safe return home after work so well accomplished. We wish them the hearty reception that we know awaits them in the old country, and long life to enjoy the honour of having served in this memorable campaign."

The garrison left in Lindley on the departure of the Brigade comprised our battalion, two companies of the Bedfords under Captain Rowe, two guns of the 39th Field Battery under Lieut. Harrison, the Five-Inch gun, two companies of the 15th Battalion of Yeomanry under Lieut.

Shepherd-Crosse, and a few of Brabant's Horse under Lieut. Friedlander.

Lieut. Lloyd, the Supply Officer, had gone with the Brigade, but had left his Sergeant-Major behind with an enormous mountain of stores of all sorts, as we were rationed up to the 15th of the next month, January. Lieut. Goodman had been left also to look after the transport: the hospital and medical arrangements were supervised by Major Ritchie, of the R.A.M.C., who had been some time in Lindley, and who had under him Civil Surgeons Barr and Twigg, Captain Knapp, the medical officer of the Cape Mounted Riflemen, and Lieut. Duncan of the R.A.M.C. There were a good many men in hospital belonging to various corps, and the large church in the centre of the market square, which from the first had been used as a hospital, was nearly full; there had been one or two deaths from enteric.

There were a few civilians in the town: it seems the Boers allowed each business house in the towns to leave either the owner or the manager in charge, all the other a.s.sistants having either to go on commando or to pay a heavy fine. Of course those of them who were British subjects cleared out altogether; but the unfortunate owner of the shop, if he was in possession of burgher rights, gained by long residence in the country, was in rather a fix, and saw every prospect of losing his money either way. One of the merchants in Heilbron provided a case in point: he was an Englishman with burgher rights, and, when war was looming in the distance, he went to Cape Colony, leaving his manager in charge of the store. The Boers under their rule exempted the manager from service, but sent the owner a notice to turn out and join his commando; no notice being taken of this by the man, a fine of 500 was inflicted, which the unfortunate trader had to pay, and did pay, because if he had not done so the Boers would have distrained on the goods in his shop, and would have probably taken several times the amount of the fine.

There was a branch of the National Bank in Lindley, and the manager and a clerk had remained throughout all the troubles, and the various occupations and evacuations by our troops and the Boers: the Boers always respected the Bank, and gave no annoyance whatever.

Several families of doubtful loyalty had been removed by General Bruce Hamilton, and taken away with the Brigade; their property in Lindley was respected, however, in view of their return. One or two of those who were left made themselves useful to us and added to their own income by making up the men's rations of flour into loaves. It will hardly be believed that the greater part of our bread ration was flour only, while at Kroonstad thousands of boxes of biscuits were being used to form houses for the supply subordinates to live in.

The town and the vicinity were in a filthy state after so many mounted troops, cattle and horses had been quartered there; but after a while it was gradually cleared up, and the carcases of the dead bullocks and mules left behind by the Brigade dragged away or buried. The river was a disgusting sight, with dead bullocks strewn about from one end to the other, half in the water: still some men did not mind, but bathed frequently in the deeper pools.

From its situation, in a hollow, surrounded by extensive hills, the town needed a good many pickets to adequately protect it; there were three permanent posts to the north and four to the south, each consisting of an entire company, and some furnishing subsidiary posts in the neighbourhood, on roads or prominent spurs. Each post was well defended, and in some a reserve of rations and water sufficient for three days'

consumption was stored; there was, it need hardly be said, extra ammunition kept by each, and all were defended by earthworks or stone sangars on prominent points, the tents being pitched in each case so as to be out of the line of fire, should the enemy take it into his head to snipe at long range at the pickets.

The remaining three companies of the infantry were quartered on the three sides of the town to act as a reserve, and also as a second line of defence, should the Boers penetrate the picket line and rush into the town. The pickets were relieved every ten days or so, and their positions changed, as the sentry work at some was harder than at others. The men were allowed into the town to go to the Canteen or the Soldiers' Club during the afternoon; it was quite 40 minutes' walk to some of the pickets, so that most of the men usually remained at home.

The two guns of the battery were quartered on the outskirts of the town, but the five inch gun was kept in its gun pit on No. 2 picket to the south, where it dominated a very large tract of country. On one occasion it was taken at night to the opposite picket, about 4 miles away, whence it very much astonished some Boers who were wandering about in front at a distance of no less than 6 miles.

The Yeomanry and a few men of Brabant's Scouts were utilised to furnish a picket by day on the top of Tafelburg, a high square-crowned kopje, about 3 miles to the north-west, from which an extensive view could be obtained; and a couple of mounted men were kept by day at some of the pickets, in case of necessity, to carry messages or go after suspicious pa.s.sers-by. All the pickets were in signalling communication with each other and with headquarters in the town; sometimes helio messages were received from Bethlehem, about 35 miles to the south-east, whose garrison was apparently similarly situated to ourselves; and occasionally, at long intervals, a runner arrived from Kroonstad with microscopic messages--usually containing news, unimportant to us at all events, such as the state of the Czar's health, but very little information as to how things were going on with regard to our move to India, about which we were most concerned.

Occasionally a few of the mounted men would go out at night, and surround a farm or two in hopes of catching a few Boers who might be indulging in the unwonted luxury of a night's rest in a bed; but only once did they meet with any success, and then they caught a solitary Boer who gave us a deal of trouble to look after. Lieut. Harden and Lieut. Montgomerie had the honour of catching this sportsman, who seemed to have been a fighting Boer from the yarns he told with regard to the fights in which he had taken part; but most of his stories had to be taken _c.u.m grano salis_.

On the 3rd of December, however, the Boers treated us to an alarm about half-past nine at night: they crawled up a donga which ended in a short outcrop of rocks within four hundred yards of one of the detached posts then occupied by B company. The rocks afforded splendid natural cover in capital positions for firing from, and the Boers, about a dozen of them, opened a smart fire at the eight men occupying the small defensive work, who, nothing loath, replied with vigour, blazing away at the flashes of the enemy's rifles. One Boer must have been hit, as some blood was found on the gra.s.s the next day. The enemy fired about 500 rounds, judging from the cartridge cases lying in little heaps behind the rocks, and our men got rid of about the same number. One or two of the Boers had the impertinence (it was nothing less!) to try and stalk the picket by dodging up towards them from post to post of a line of fencing which ran in their direction; but, coming to a gap where one or two posts were missing, their hearts failed them, and they went no further. None of our men were hit, but the stone loopholes and the parapet of the post were splashed with bullet marks in five or six places.

Firing commenced also against Captain Aldridge's picket, about a mile further off, where bullets came plunging through the tents, to the astonishment of the men there. These, however, quickly dropped into their places in the various sangars, and replied briskly to the enemy's fire, which, as could be seen by the flashes, was coming from a ridge over 2,000 yards away. After half-an-hour or so the firing dropped on both sides.

The remainder of us had, of course, turned out at once and got into our various positions. About half-past ten, everything being quiet, we turned into bed again. In a few minutes there was a furious clatter of about a dozen shots fired rapidly from the north-east, and later, two more outbursts of firing from the north; and as none of our pickets on that side had fired, we concluded the Boers were ending the evening's amus.e.m.e.nt by firing at each other, an original idea, and one that we hoped they would regularly carry out--if possible, without causing us to turn out also in the dark. We never heard the cause of this firing, and the only possible solution was that two parties of Boers must have met in the dark. There was, however, a very good reason for the sudden firing on the pickets to the east and north-east, as we found in the morning, when Swannepool, a loyal farmer living to the north-west of the town and some miles away, arrived in a furious pa.s.sion, swearing vengeance against all and every Boer; and, when he had cooled down somewhat, announced that some Boers had held him up in the night, and had driven off all his stock, his cows, his bullocks and horses, and had taken away his Cape cart. _Hinc illae lachrymae_, he said, and we sympathised with him.

The few men of B company on the detached post were in a nasty corner for some time, and fully deserved the complimentary remarks which the Colonel made the next day, and which were published in battalion orders.

They were as follows:--

Extract from Battalion Orders, 6th of December, 1900--

"The Commanding Officer wishes to express to Lance-Sergeant Ockelford and the eight men who defended the outpost of No. 1 picket, South, on the night of the 3rd of December, his approbation of their soldierly conduct in defending a small breastwork against a superior force of the enemy.

"An incident of this sort shows what a few men can do who are determined to hold their own, and the Commanding Officer has made a report of their creditable conduct to the General Officer commanding at Bloemfontein."

Our humdrum existence continued now for some little time, our days commencing by standing to arms at dawn (which was pretty early, usually between three and four o'clock), and concluding by our going to bed about eight o'clock in the evening. Almost every day there were cricket matches, and there were _al fresco_ concerts three times a week. Beyond this mild form of entertainment, it cannot be said that we lived in an exciting whirl of constant pleasures.

Soap was at a premium; there was not a sc.r.a.p to be had anywhere. All that the Brigade Canteen had brought had been commandeered by the Supply people for the use of the hospital, and, beyond a meagre issue of one ounce a man, the troops had had none for nearly two months. Matches were also conspicuous by their absence. The soldier is always a large consumer of this article, and spends a good deal of his time daily in striking matches and lighting his pipe; he was not, however, to be defeated by the absence of matches: some ingenious man had discovered that the thin sticks of cordite out of the cartridges made an excellent spill for lighting cigarettes or pipes at the fire, and, until the practice was peremptorily stopped, it became quite a fashionable pursuit.

Some of the Boers must have developed quite an affection for Captain Aldridge's picket, because, on the 8th of December, they fired a few shots about half-past nine in the morning at the men of the picket employed in repairing their sangars. To this fire E company disdained even to reply, and the disgusted Boers, finding their overtures received with apathy, rode off, six of them being observed pa.s.sing through a gap in the hills quite 2,500 yards away.

On the night of the 9th, some of the mounted troops went out to lay a trap for a Boer picket which was in the habit of coming to a kraal, about three miles to the north and in full view of our pickets on that side; and a field gun was sent out early next morning to No. 2 picket to cover their retirement, if required.

The little plan failed, owing to the too eager and inexperienced Yeomen showing themselves just as the birds were entering the trap. There was a certain amount of shooting, however, as towards breakfast time our men withdrew; but it was all long range firing, which seldom harms anyone.

In front of the picket where the gun was posted was a splendid expanse of open country, with an occasional small kopje; and the whole panorama was backed by a range of hills, which limited the view to about five miles. Over this country were a few groups of Boers dotted, moving about aimlessly. One small party riding towards a donga, whence possibly they might have attempted to annoy our Yeomanry, were fired at by our gun at 4,500 yards: the sh.e.l.l sang through the still air and burst with a "ping" some hundreds of yards short. With one accord the four or five Boers mounted and spurred vigorously away, nor did they draw rein so long as they remained in sight.

(_End of Colonel du Moulin's ma.n.u.script._)

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE RAISING OF THE MOUNTED COLUMN.

Evacuation of Lindley--Regiment split up--Major du Moulin's detachment--Men mounted at Bethulie--On convoy--The chase of De Wet--Strydenburg--Colesberg--Edenburg--A vast convoy-- Bloemfontein--Smithfield--Action at Commissie Bridge--the Fighting Column--Raw Yeomen--Deep Dene Drift--Jammersberg Bridge--Springfontein.

The wearisome stay of the Regiment in Lindley came to an end in January, 1901. On the 13th of that month the filling in of the entrenchments was begun, and orders to evacuate the town were finally received on the afternoon of the 20th. The piquets were sent out as usual, but by 9 p.m.

the town was cleared, and the force (consisting of the Royal Suss.e.x, two companies of the Bedfords, and Col. Munro's column) started for Kroonstad. There was great confusion at the drift outside the town, several lines of wagons converging on it in the dark; and by dawn only 3 miles had been made. The secret, however, had been very well kept, and the Boers had no inkling of the departure of the troops until well on into the morning of the 21st. They then hara.s.sed the rear, but made no other use of their considerable numbers, and the force reached Kroonstad practically without incident.

Here the regiment was split up, and B, E, and H companies were sent up the railway to Heilbron. From Heilbron they trekked to Frankfort and back with Col. Williams' Column, a.s.sisting in the evacuation of that place; and they then railed with Head Quarters down to Norval's Pont, where the railway from Cape Town crosses the Orange River, and enters the Orange River Colony. They relieved the Ess.e.x Regiment there, taking over the piquets on the hills north of the river; subsequently detachments were sent to Donkerpoort, and to Providence Siding, further up the line.

On June 3rd these Companies were relieved by Militia, and sent to join various columns, all men who would ride ultimately reaching the Suss.e.x column. Head Quarters remained at Norval's Pont till July, when they were moved, first to Springfontein, and then (December 6th) to Bethulie, on the Port Elizabeth line. Col. Donne had previously gone to Kroonstad as Commandant of that place.

To return to January, 1901--A, C, D, F, and G companies entrained at Kroonstad on the 25th of that month, under Major du Moulin, for Ventersburg Road; and from there they moved out as escort to an ox convoy on the evening of the 27th. The weather was appalling--very heavy rain lit by vivid flashes of lightning, that showed men and oxen in a sea of mud. Progress soon became impossible, and the column halted, waiting where it stood for dawn. The crossing of Zand River on the 29th gave great trouble, the huge convoy taking fifteen hours to complete it.

Smaldeel was reached on the 30th, and there the convoy was left, the five companies entraining for Bethulie, where a great concentration was taking place in view of De Wet's intended raid into Cape Colony. On reaching Bethulie, the kit was reduced to one blanket and one waterproof sheet per man, great-coats and tents being returned to store.

A bad railway accident involving several trains took place here on the 1st of February. The Suss.e.x men turned out, and cleared the line after the greatest exertions. Trucks had to be broken up, and great pieces of them dragged out of the railway cutting by main force.

Want of mounted men was being most keenly felt at this time, and General Lyttleton (who was at Bethulie) suggested that the Regiment might provide the mounted escort required for a convoy. The idea was enthusiastically taken up; many more men volunteered than could be mounted. By the 7th of February an M.I. Company of 120 men had been organised under Lieut. Harden and 2nd Lieut. Leachman; and in addition to these, a number of men of C, D and F companies were mounted, and left under their own officers.

The scenes that ensued during the two or three days, which were all that could be allowed for training, had their humorous side. Many of the men had never had anything to do with a horse before, and hardly knew one end of it from the other. However, they stuck to their mounts n.o.bly--as long as they could. On one of the first treks, an officer, coming under the eye of the authorities, and wishing to show off the accomplishments of his men, gave the command "Trot!" The result was a surprise to all parties. With a thundering of hoofs, a mob of galloping hors.e.m.e.n swept past the officer, scattered the authorities, and disappeared in clouds of dust. They knew how to start their horses--but had not yet learned the art of stopping them.

Great difficulty was experienced in getting saddlery. This had to be obtained locally, and the stuff in the town turned out to be mere rubbish. Some more serviceable equipment was got from the Mounted Infantry, but, when the detachment moved out on February 9th in charge of a convoy, many of the men were using blankets as saddles, and looped putties as stirrups.

The horses supplied were also very indifferent. A large proportion had been cast by the columns for sore backs and wrung withers, from which they had hardly recovered. However, all obstacles were surmounted, and the convoy, consisting of some 300 ox wagons, crossed the main line at Prior's siding on the 10th of February, and reached Philippolis on the 11th, after marching that day 24 miles.

The total strength of the detachment under Major du Moulin at this time was 12 officers and 558 rank and file. This included two companies of the Royal Irish Rifles, which were attached.

Striking down into the Colony, two days were taken up in crossing the Orange River at Sand Drift, where many columns had collected, the river being in flood. The water on the Drift was five feet deep in places, so that the wagons were awash. The bottom was sandy, and the track had constantly to be changed. A steep bank of heavy sand on the south side added to the difficulties. The constant rain at this time was very trying to the troops; the roads were knee-deep in slush, the camps became marshes, and, as there were no tents, wet blankets were the order of the day.