Grandad Williamson concludes his story

Fresh ideas had to be tried out and we set about building the Blockhouse lines.  We, the infantry, put up the wire, dug the trenches and screened the engineers while they built the blockhouses.  These were constructed with tubular corrugated iron, the outer casing being eight inches wider all round than the inner casing and the cavity was filled with stone chippings.  This made them rifle bullet proof, which was the heaviest weapon the Boers now possessed.  A trench and parapet went round the outside, then some distance away, perhaps 20 or 30 yards, the blockhouse was ringed with barbed wire.  The walls of the blockhouse were loopholed and each blockhouse would hold ten men.  At the night the sentry would patrol round the trench.  In the daytime most of us would be out digging a trench five feet wide and three feet deep on each side of the wire, (18 strands of it) connecting blockhouse to blockhouse and these blockhouse lines were connected up to cover the country.

For we infantrymen this was quite nice, we had a corrugated iron roof over our head at night and when these trenches were dug nothing much to do by day – only watch the cavalry and mounted infantry round up the Boers.  This is what they did:

They would start at a point in the sector and fan out like beaters and any of the enemy in the sector who could not get through the connecting barbed wire and the trenches alongside had to surrender or die.  Some did get through, but very few.  We put loaded rifles sighted down the line of wire which, if the wire was cut pulled the trigger.  The blockhouses were on the average 600 yards apart and when the rifle went off the garrison of each blockhouse would pour a murderous fire down the line at very short range.

I was in a blockhouse between Standerton and Ermilo about 20 to 30 miles from the farmer place and I have seen our mounted men, when the sweep was in our sector, chasing Boers Wild West style, but a good deal more grim.  This process did the job and along came the surrender.

I had been lent from my own company to “D” company to man an open trench at night which was sited midway between two blockhouses to cover a dip in the connecting wire which was dead ground to the blockhouses on either side, but when the Armistice was made I went back to my own company which was in a small fortress of two companies and battalion headquarters.  Here I saw the last remnants of the Boer forces in our sector come in and surrender.  There were about 35 of them, poor old chaps and they did look downcast.  They need not have done, they had fought and stuck it to the end, what more can men do?  The war had grim periods but to these old fellows all the last 12 months must have been hellish, some of the older men of the Commando were old enough to be our fathers.

Personally, all the animosity died within me when I saw them.  In fact one of the old friends I had in the 1914-18 war was the son of a man who had fought against us in 1899-1902.

Now to conclude; this account of my first service in the Army has had to depend on my memory, much has been forgotten, but all stated in these recollections are true, sufficient it is to say whenever the battalion I belonged to was in action I was with it in the capacity of a fighting infantryman.

 W. A. Williamson, D. C. M.  1st Leics. No. 4877