Thursday, 27 June 2013

Grandad Williamson besieged in Ladysmith



The town stands where the railway from the Orange Free State and the one from the Transvaal join and then go on to Maritzburg and Durban. The holding of Ladysmith denied to the Boers the use of these two lines in any further advance into Natal and it looked to me that it was very necessary for our force to get back from Dundee for Sir George White to have a sufficient force to defend the place, for the force in there was very little stronger than ours.

After two days rest we again fell in at night to attack the main force of Boers which was closing in on Ladysmith, and we got into position just before dawn.  When the day broke we were found to be in the wrong position and we had to move over some open ground to fetch up in the right place.  We opened out in extended order, which was lucky for us for going across we came under some accurate gun fire.  Being extended we had light casualties and we reached our new position in quite good order.  We stormed up to the top of this ridge with the Mauser bullets zipping around like high velocity bees and we held that position until late in the afternoon when the order came to retire on the town.  This was done in an orderly fashion, one Company retiring leaving the other Company holding the position.  The retiring company took up a position in the rear then the holding company retired through it and this was carried out in an extended line of men roughly eight paces apart and although the Boer artillery kept firing at us we presented a very small target.  The lads were as steady as rocks and as I looked about I could see the other battalions retiring in the same orderly manner.

Entering the town we closed ranks and marched to our Station of Defence.  Again we had been outnumbered and outgunned but by no means beaten.  That ended the battle of Nicholson’s Nek and the siege of Ladysmith had commenced.

Now we had to build protective positions around the town.  Our battalion was allotted a ridge to the west called Observation West.  We could not dig trenches because of the rocks so we built Sangars.  As these were built to give us as wide a field of fire as possible they were sited on the ridge or just over it on the enemy side so the work had to be done at night for we were within rifle range of the Boer positions opposite.  What we did was retire over the ridge during daylight and return to work as darkness fell.  While we were doing this the Naval Contingent was building an emplacement for one of the two 4.7 naval guns behind us, so we were building our own protection and providing a protective screen for them.  How lucky we were that these two 4.7 guns got in to us before the Boers had completed the encirclement.  They were one answer to the big Boer guns.  At least one answer – I will tell you of another answer later on.  These Sangars were our home for nearly five months and from them all but five of us went to hospital with Enteric Fever or Dysentery or the grave.

There was a Roman Catholic convent on our side of the town which the Boers shelled.  It was being used as a hospital so the Boers agreed to the British command having a hospital sited five miles down the railway and to have our sick and wounded taken there.  They allowed one train per day each way.  The morning train took the sick and wounded down, the same train returned empty in the late afternoon.  As the hospital, named Intombi, was in the Boer occupied territory they were able to see that the conditions were kept.  However I reckon that it was a decent humane agreement and reflected great credit on the Boer command.

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