Grandad Williamson and the Bisley shot

To continue, we came round in a big sweep through Piet Retief back to Lydenburg and we had to occupy some high ground and hold it while the transport and main body came through the pass.  A Boer patrol fired on us from long range and our officer in command, a Bisley shot by the way, through his binoculars spotted them, borrowed my rifle, got down and at a range of more than a mile, shifted them.

I was now an unpaid Lance Corporal in command of the section.  The soldiers of section “D” of the Army Reserve, mostly N.C.O.s had joined us.  This made a surplus of N.C.O.s – they drew the pay, I did the work.

When we left the railway we had loaded up rations and ammunition on the wagons drawn chiefly by Trek Oxen and Mules and on these supplies we were dependent for the month the operation had taken, and to get more supplies we must get back to the railway.  So back we went doing the same kind of duties that we did coming out.  I remember one day, we were on flank guard and we came across a lame old donkey.  The old boy looked so wretched that our officer decided to kill him.  He pulled out his pistol and gave the donkey one round which dropped but did not kill him so he fired again, whereupon the old lad got up.  It took seven rounds to finish that animal off.  That demoted the Bisley idea.

Grandad Williamson on the Veldt

The only time I was attacked by a snake in South Africa was at Zandspruit.  I was going along taking very little notice of anything when just a yard in front of me a puff adder was coiled up to strike – which he immediately did.  Being a footballer I was pretty nimble on my feet and I was able to side step him.  Carrying my rifle at the trail I dropped the butt end of it slap in the middle of his back as he landed.  That was his reward.  I spent the whole of the war sleeping by night on the veldt, here tonight gone tomorrow style, but indeed I saw very few snakes the whole time and I never saw a Mamba.

A few days rest at Zandspruit and we were off again.  We left the railway and struck out for Ermilo with the idea of cutting the railway from Pretoria to Portuguese territory thereby stopping all railway communication available to the Boer republics and perhaps capturing old Kruger with his bullion.  The force under Lord Roberts was coming up the railway from Pretoria and had reached a small station called Belfast and we were again doing a flanking movement when we ran up against a fairly strongly held ridge at Bergandahl.  A short artillery preparation and over we stormed and drove the enemy off only to see the last train, said to be Kruger’s, steaming away to Lorenzo Marques and safety.  But that train had a narrow escape due to the bravery of those men who had died at their posts on Bergendahl ridge.

That was the last stand up fight we had.  Most of the fighting after that was a hit and run affair.  From Bergendahl we crossed the railway and entered the Bush Veldt, miles and miles of it.  Then it was Advanced Guard, Flank Guard and the Rear Guard with Night Outpost and a little sniping thrown in all the way to the Lydenburg Gold Fields, and there at the top I was on Outpost Sentry at daybreak when I saw a lion – a lioness and two young ones - come down to a spruit a good distance, perhaps a mile, away: they drank and went away.  I stood there and watched them astonished but I also realised there was no enemy force on my front.

 (You may wonder why a sentry should stand exposed: well we infantrymen spent most of the daylight marching on the Guards I have enumerated above and if we were allowed to sit or lie down we might go to sleep.  When we halted for the night we used, if possible, to throw up some head shelter and behind this the relief sentries slept.)

Grandad Williamson is relieved at last

Sometime, about the end of January or the beginning of February General Buller attacked the Boer positions on Spion Kop.  We could see the British shells bursting on the Kop from the position we held and saw the Boers retiring and Buller’s force did the same thing.  The Boers found out first what had happened, returned and occupied the Kop from which the British had driven them.  We thought we had been relieved but we were not.  Why General Buller was not informed the Boers had retired was a mystery to us.

We were getting news, such as Churchill’s capture, the repulse at Colenso with the loss of the son of Lord Roberts, the defeat at Mayersfontein and other news.  A period of despondency set in and the officer commanding our company came along the section posts his company occupied and asked each man would he be prepared to fight his way out.  We five said we would fight.  Owing to the scanty and poor quality of the rations we were getting each man of us had dysentery so I think the High Command, realising our capabilities, hung on where we were.  Then on the twenty seventh of February 1900, to our joy, we were told that Lord Dundonald had come through with the British Cavalry and we were relieved.  We got on our hind legs and went for the Boer positions opposite us but the main body had skedaddled and his rear guard, after firing a few shots at us, did the same.

That was as much as we were physically capable of doing, so we returned to our Sangars.  We got a ration of bully beef and biscuits to celebrate the occasion, which aggravated the dysentery we already had.  Next day we were assembled and staggered down to Colenso where, under canvas for six weeks, we rested, recuperated and were reinforced to join General Neville Lyttleton’s division and turn the Boers out of Laings Nek and Majuba Hill.  Then the whole of Natal was back under British control.

Now this flanking movement meant forced marching through a strip of Swaziland and through Wakkestroom, a town in the eastern Transvaal, and over the Drakensburg mountains, and before the Boers holding Laings Nek knew what was happening we were on their flank.  This and a frontal attack up the Nek was too much for them and so off they went.  With the force under Lord Roberts coming up the line from Johannesburg they probably remembered Cronje’s predicament and consequently got a move on to the rear.  We moved in to the railway at Zandspruit where we rested a day, but that night we got an alarm of a Boer attack coming from the Free State direction, so we turned out in the darkness and occupied the Majuba Hill that had been so tragic to General Colby’s force in 1881.  As dawn broke we were safely in position, each man a rock and heads down, but no attack materialised so in full daylight we returned to our camp.