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.