General Yule had taken over command of the British Forces on
the spot and must have come to the conclusion that holding onto any position
there was hopeless and he decided to try and get back to Ladysmith and join up
with Sir George White’s force there. In
the late afternoon our company commander got orders to take a number of mule
wagons into the Army Service Corps yard in Dundee, which was then in No Mans
Land between us and the Boers, and load up provisions to feed the force during
the four days and four nights march back.
There was to be no smoking and no noise.
We soldiers obeyed but the native drivers “Ya-hooed” at their
animals. The Boers must have heard them
but they took no action. Naturally we
realised the position we were in and worked hard to get the stores loaded
up. When we had finished, our officer in
command told us we had 20 minutes to spare and to look round and pick up
anything we could carry, but nothing heavy.
We dived into the officers’ tents and I picked up a Krop razor (I still
have the blade).
Falling in again the wagons had already gone to catch up the
main body – we acted as the rear guard that night and the next day to the
retreating column. Getting away from
there was one bit of luck. The next
night we had another bit. We came to a
Nek dominated by steep hills quite close to the track and I for one breathed a
little easier when we were through. If
we had been held up there all the odds would have been against us. We had no great amount of food or ammunition
to make a prolonged stand and were too far from Ladysmith for the force there
to give us any help.
Good fortune held with us on the third day’s march. Again we were on rear guard and we crossed a
river that was ankle deep, then we took up a position on the further bank to
allow the main body, which had been delayed by the steep banks of the river, to
get some distance from us. It started to
rain as we crossed and when we left the position we had taken up, two hours
later, that river was twenty feet deep, quite a good moat between us and the
enemy.
Then we heard the guns at Elandslaagte and that gave us some
comfort. The Boers had sent a force down
the railway, perhaps with the object of flanking us out of Ladysmith. Sir George White’s forces turned out and gave
this force a drubbing, capturing their artillery and paving the way for us to
march in.
We still had a long way to go and on the last night’s march
we were advanced guard. We were going
along in the pitch darkness, most of us half asleep, some fully asleep (a man’s
rifle would come back and fall on the man behind him, then he would fall down
fast asleep, his more alert comrades would pick the fallen one up, put his
rifle in his hand and start him up again just like an automaton). Well, as I was saying, we were on this track
which had a donga on each side of it and a horse came galloping down the middle
of us. We dived or got knocked into the
dongas from which we climbed muddied up.
Hearing voices on our left we fixed bayonets and charged. Some sensible chap with us called out “Who
are you?”
“Natal Carbineers” came back the reply. They had come out from Ladysmith to help us
in if necessary. It was a relief, that
answer, for we had that 20,000 horsemen on our minds.
As day broke we could see Ladysmith and towards afternoon,
dead tired and hungry, we marched in.
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