As I have said, we lay alongside the Dublins and a right old
Irish crowd they were. Their commanding
officer was a strict disciplinarian – he had to be. Often we would hear of the table at which he
sat when administering justice being kicked up in his face when he had passed
sentence.
In the town was a big public house kept by Barney
Froomberg. It had a stage in the big
room and it was in this room that the Dublins (and our lads too) swallowed the
stuff that got them into trouble. On
this stage Private McGuiness used to do turns and the drinks he used to get
from his pals for entertaining them were chiefly the cause of his appearance
before the C.O. on a charge. When his
commanding officer had done with him he would ask the sergeant of the guard to
make him out a sick report and then McGuiness would be escorted to the
hospital. There the Camp Medical
Officer, another Irishman, would not ask Mac what was the matter with him, he
would ask, “How many days this time McGuiness? who would reply “8 days to
barracks” or whatever the sentence was.
Then Mickey the Doctor would say, “Come inside” and McGuiness would do
his punishment time in hospital, for this lad was the liveliest and wittiest of
persons. No doubt the Doctor thought
having McGuiness inside would do his patients more good than medicine.
We were going along easily, both the officers and the other
ranks having more or less a good time despite the darkening political situation
when a middle aged, athletic-looking man came to take command of the troops in
Natal. His name was General Penn Symons
and he, with Indian frontier experience, immediately commenced to waken us up
to the dangerous situation before us and prepare us to fight energetically if
war came. All the peacetime fal-de-ral
was scrapped and field training, shooting, night attacks were his ideas of how
to soldier, with route marching to toughen us up etc. In the matter of a few months he had taught
us more than we had learned in years of barrack room soldiering and it is a
pity that he did not live to see the results of his good work. He was killed leading the attack on Talana
Hill.
Sometime during the South African winter, perhaps in the
month of June, we moved up to Ladysmith to relieve the Royal Irish Rifles, who
were going to India, and in the late September we moved up to Dundee, a small
mining town in Natal but on the Natal-Transvaal border. Here we were joined by the Dublin Fusiliers,
a battalion of Kings Royal Rifles and another battalion (I think it was the
Liverpool Regiment). That was the
Infantry strength. Then there were a
regiment of Hussars and a battery of artillery.
That was our fighting strength.
One misty morning we stood to until the mist began to lift,
then we stood down and went to our tents.
We had not shed our equipment when “Bang” and a shell sailed into the
railway cutting about 40 yards past our tents.
We grabbed our rifles and made a beeline for cover. General Penn Symons who was in the camp with
us quickly got the attack going and made straight for the Boer positions on
Talana Hill. He, the General, was killed
climbing the hill but the troops he had trained carried on and drove the Boers
back to their frontier. At night we
returned to camp. That scrap on Talana
Hill and one at Elangslaagte a day or two later steadied the Boers somewhat,
they did not seem quite so anxious to come to grips with us afterwards. They were meeting soldiers trained quite
differently to those their fathers defeated at Majuba Hill and Laings Nek in
1881.
The next day after Talana we were shelled out of our camp
again, with guns sited in the direction of Laings Nek that could outrange any
artillery we had. With them they had a
swarm of horseman estimated to number 20,000.
We retired back on to the coalfield where only the long range Creusots
could reach us. Previously our artillery
had tried counter battery work, but owing to the height of the Boer guns on the
Drakensburg slopes and also because they were able to knock out our guns miles
before out guns could get in range, the suicide job was called off.
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