Grandad Williamson sails off to South Africa

Then the time came to say goodbye to all that and sail the Irish sea once more back from Dublin to Holyhead then by train to Southampton to board the R.M.S Goorkha of the Union Line and on to our destination, South Africa, to replace men of our 1st Battalion who had been transferred to the Army Reserve.

First of all let me tell you about the ship.  She was not one of the old Biscuit and Salt Junk troopships, she was a mail and passenger carrying liner sailing between England and South Africa.  Never in my two periods of service did I eat such good food as I got on that ship.  She was commanded by an R.N.R. Captain and he was strict on cleanliness.  Most days he would come down into the holds where we ate and slept.  I was orderly man at one of the tables down there and I overheard him say to the Military Officer in charge of troops aboard, “My word Major, these decks look different now than they do the times I have third class passengers from Eastern Europe in them”.  Basins and plates with ration tins had to be laid out on the scrubbed tables every time for his inspection; that was one of the duties of the orderly man of the table, others of my duties were serving food to the seventeen other privates allotted to the table.  Doing this and keeping the deck floor swept made my day, I had no other duties or parades to attend.

The voyage after we got through the Bay of Biscay became very pleasant.  We were leaving the cold behind and our first stop was Las Palmas.  When we had dropped anchor there the fruit sellers came aboard and we spent a little of our wealth on fruit.  Round the ship were small boats with expert swimmers and divers aboard calling us to throw our spare pennies into the water.  They would watch them sink then dive and fetch them up.  I think we stayed in that port two days.  We privates were not allowed ashore; they might have lost one or two if they had let go of us.

Our next call was St. Helena.  Here we dropped the mud hook again and spent some time gazing at the rock 365 steps up.  No going ashore here but who wanted to climb those steps to see a little more sea than could be seen from the deck we were on?  In fact it was not until we reached Cape Town that we were allowed ashore to stretch our legs and it was then in the form of a route march with an officer in command.  It was a wonder we did not have to Climb Table Mountain.  That would have been more like the Army Schedule, but no, the march was confined to the town.

Three more stops.  Algoa Bay, where we anchored outside  Port Elisabeth, East London, where we got stuck on the mud entering the Harbour and where  we had another march, then on to Durban, our destination, by sea where we disembarked by lighters to a lovely town – fruit and flowers in abundance.  Our stay here was the shortest.  Somehow we did not seem to get on well with the colonials – perhaps it was because we were too free with the natives.  We fell in by the seashore and marched to the station where we entrained and were swished up to Pietermaritzburg.  It reminded me of a lecture I once attended as a Sunday School scholar.  It was given by a returned missionary from India.  He quoted something from Kipling which went:

“It’s Tommy this and Tommy that

And Tommy get out of the way

But it’s good morning Mr. Atkins

When the band begins to play”

Grandad Williamson at the Curragh

Just before the 1897 Christmas I came home from Cork to Liverpool by boat with a good passage all the way home but going back we ran into a storm and were thirty hours aboard the ship, no food and dreadfully cold.  Buffeted about by the bucking and rolling ship, I got on one of the gratings down to the engines.  One of the firemen came up to me and asked me - Was I frightened? – I said – No I was cold.

Sometime in the summer of 1898 the battalion moved from Cork to Curragh, Kildare, which had a fairly large British garrison stationed there.  A cold, windy place some miles from Dublin, our barracks were long wooden huts, cheerless places, I bet they were cold in winter.  There I saw lots of soldiers and very few Irishmen.  One thing I remember during my short stay there was being reviewed by the Queen, Victoria.  Our battalion was drawn up in line on one side of the road about fifty yards back from it (so the old girl would not smell us I suppose).  It rained in true Irish fashion and she kept us there between two and three hours.  Then she came down the road in a closed carriage, horses at full trot.  I question whether she saw her (not at the moment) loyal soldiers standing there like drowned rats. 

Later in 1898 I went on draft leave and coming back off it I met three more lads in Nottingham who were going out in the same draft as I was.  They had a Notts footballer with them who had previously played for Derby.  He came with us to Derby where we all detrained and went to Johnny Goodalls pub.  We had plenty of time to catch the train to Crewe and Holyhead so we tried to get drunk and were very successful.  Somewhere before  we got to Crewe, a window mender got in the compartment we were in; he had in his crate - the one they carried on their backs – some glass.  We passed him the bottle and he got drunk too, and madly so, for when he got out at Crewe he had no glass left in his crate; it was broken into fragments and lay about the compartment floor.  We had sobered down a little by the time we reached Holyhead but goodness knows how we got by the Military Police and onto the boat.  I reckon the police knew where we were going and that we were having a last fling.

Grandad Williamson on the stage in Cork

Down in the Cabbage Market, where the Porter was a little better than anywhere else in Cork, I was discussing with an Irish lad the rows we had on the bridge and he said. “It is not you as men we hate, it is the uniform you wear”.  I replied “Come off it, what about the boys of Wexford, anyway ‘tis we as men who have to take the knocks”, and  sure it was so, for on leaving the pub where we had been talking I was laid out with a blow I never saw coming.

One special row we had was on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.  To celebrate this the Garrison Sports Committee organised a fete and gala on the garrison sports ground which was adjacent to, but on the outside of the garrison boundaries.  The sports had finished and our band was playing for dancing; something happened, I think it was in the pause between dancing.  The big drummer had laid his drum on the ground and an Irish boy had jumped on it.  The drummer gave him a clout with his drumstick and the riot was on.  A picquet of fifty men had been warned to stay in barracks to meet a situation like this and this picquet was turned out at speed but a warning of its coming had reached the Irish for when the picquet reached the ground the breakers had broken and cleared off.

When good theatre companies came to Cork they often employed soldiers as supers.  In those days you had drawn a good week’s pay if you had drawn three and sixpence, so a shilling the theatre companies paid for a performance was a good supplement.  I had the good fortune to be picked for several, in fact each time soldiers were asked for.  I remember one play in which I was employed “The Sign of the Cross” we were paid immediately after the Saturday matinee, well, that was asking for trouble.  Several of the lads got drunk.  One was the front end carrier of the Sedan Chair carrying “Caesar’s Wife” on to the stage in one of the scenes; he dropped his end and spilt the woman out; another in the same scene stood guard behind “Caesar” with his knees bobbling and the spear point downwards – he made Caesar’s raving seem comical.  After that we were never paid until the last performance.  In that particular play I was one of the Christians and we ended up being chewed up by the lions – a fellow backstage banging a chain on the boarded floor, that was the bones cracking.

Grandad joins up and begins Army life

As a young lad (about 14 years of age) I went to Nottingham to enlist in the Royal Navy, but the Enlisting Sergeant there, after measuring me up turned me down.  I was half an inch too short in height and he said I had flat feet.  I may have had but since then I have marched and walked a very long way and my feet have never let me down.  I also made up for my height by the time I was eighteen, for then I went again to the same public house the “Golden Ball”, but to  different recruiting sergeant and enlisted in the Army.

In those days you could join any branch of the Army providing it was open to enlistment, or, of course refuse service.  I opted to join the Leicester Regiment and was sent to Derby Barracks where I spent six days in the Reception Room there.  The sharpest thing I remember about that Reception Room was that I went dinnerless the whole six days, I was not quick enough to snaffle any when it came up.

From Derby I was sent on to the “Glen Parva Barracks” Wigston, Leicester where I was to do my six months training and where I got dinner without any scrambling.  It was, in fact, a very pleasant period of my soldiering.

Apart from having two left legs when turning and getting a chewing up from the Hon. “Tubby” Hawke for saluting him with a Coal box on my shoulder. I had a smooth time.  The “Horrible Hawke” we called that officer.

When I and the others who had enlisted about the same time as I had were considered to be able to turn right properly we were drafted to our Second Battalion then stationed in Cork, Ireland.  Here we found ourselves amongst a partially hostile population.  The Barracks there were situated at the top of St. Patrick’s Hill and to get into the town from there we had to cross St. Patrick’s bridge.  To get there was easy because we could leave the Barracks in the afternoon; getting back at night was often hard and dangerous.  On the dangerous occasions we would have to battle out way through scores of Irishmen chanting ”We are the boys of Wexford and ye English dogs defy”.  We got an answer to the getting through by going back to the Barracks in orderly gangs with belts swinging.  We used to give as good as we got.  Sometimes someone would yell “the Priest!” and the Irish army would skedaddle.

Grandad Williamson's Boer War Reminiscences

My Grandad was born in 1878 in Radcliffe on Trent, Nottinghamshire and not wanting to become a butcher like his father joined the Army in 1896.  In later life he wrote about his Boer War experiences and in the next series of blogs I'm going to publish these.  He was in the Leicestershire Regiment who were actually in South Africa when the war broke out and he was part of the force trapped inside Ladysmith.

I hope you find them interesting.  I do.