Grandad Williamson meets General Allenby

The wet season on the veldt hampered us greatly in this chase after the enemy.  We had to have some transport to carry food, ammunition and blankets, one blanket a man.  The rain would make dried up watercourses raging torrents in no time and even when the rain let up the steep banks of the watercourses were extremely difficult for transport.  When it got stuck the party of infantry with the main body used to heave and tug, collect stones ie rocks and brushwood to get the wagons up the slope.  I was in charge of a party doing this one day and a colonel rode up to me.  Did I know where Colonel Campbell was? (that was our camp commander).  I said “No sir” and saluted.  He looked at me and then he said, “If you see Colonel Campbell tell him I am looking for him.”  I replied “Who are you sir?”  “Colonel Allenby”, he said.  He too was in command of a similar column, that is one battalion of infantry, a regiment of cavalry and a battery of artillery, which was of a similar composition to the one I was in.  I thought what a fine looking officer he was – he proved that later on.

These many small columns never looked like bringing the war to an end.  We advanced at foot marching pace, (the wagon infantry idea had been abandoned), and the enemy retreated at a canter.

Grandad Williamson and train wrecking

Whilst the phase of the small columns was being operated we usually returned to Middelburg to rest and refit and during these rest periods we had some exciting times.  The Boers kept blowing up our supplies on the trains that brought them from Pretoria.  The idea was to put explosive under the rails and let the weight of the engine touch off the explosion and derail the engine.  Then the destructive party would take what they could of the supplies and make tracks.

The most successful train wrecker on our part of the line was an Irishman we called Jack Hinton.  He and his party could and did wreck trains, rob the contents and get away with it.  Our regimental postman was another Irishman, Paddy Boyle by name, and he was bringing our mail on one of the trains Jack wrecked.  Paddy would have had some registered letters for which he had signed.  He had to hand his mailbags over and in doing so he asked Jack to give him a receipt for them.  Jack had a Mauser pistol in his hand, “Yes” he said and aimed the pistol at Paddy

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Eventually we got the answer to this trouble.  The first truck, filled with iron rails, was No. 1 vehicle with the locomotive behind it, and armoured trucks were improvised carrying a number of infantrymen, but it did seem a long time before the answer was forthcoming.  Jack did a lot of damage and kept the Boers in his area supplied; I never heard what happened to him.