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.)