Chapter XV: The First Battalion (2)

Nothing occurred to disturb the garrison of Belfast until midnight, when heavy firing, beginning at Monument Hill, then spreading to Colliery Hill, and finally raging at the Gordons’ posts, showed that the burghers had surrounded the town and were assailing it vigorously on every side. From information obtained by the British officers captured during the engagement, it is known that General L. Botha, who had under him about two thousand men, had allotted to the Ermelo commando the task of driving the Gordon Highlanders from the southern works: the Middelburg commando was to engage the Shropshire Light Infantry at the Colliery, but not to press home the attack until General B. Viljoen, with seven hundred and fifty of the Johannesburg and Bocksburg commandos, had made himself master of Monument Hill--a post which was to be carried at all cost, not only on account of its tactical importance, but also because the burghers were determined to capture the big gun which they thought was left at night on the top of the kopje. Fortunately, during the 7th, General Smith-Dorrien had decided that it should be dragged down the hill and back into the artillery lines at nightfall; and thus the gun was preserved from the fate which overtook the defenders of the sangar in which the Boers expected to find the piece of ordnance they coveted so earnestly.

Owing to the fact that of the three officers on Monument Hill one was killed and the others wounded and carried away by the enemy, the official report of the part played by the Royal Irish is necessarily somewhat meagre. But, thanks to a narrative prepared by Captain Dease, and to information supplied by others who were present, it is possible to form some idea of the desperate struggle for the possession of the hill. The night piquets were posted at dusk, and the officers of A company divided the duty between them, Fosbery taking the watch till 2 A.M., when Dease was to relieve him. Everything was quiet till about a quarter to twelve, when Dease, who was in a shelter near the tents of the reserve, heard a distant challenge, followed almost immediately by the report of a rifle. Nothing happened, and as nervous sentries often fired at imaginary enemies, no one was disturbed by the single shot, though, as it turned out, it was fired not by a British soldier but by a burgher, who when the sentry at the north-east trench challenged, shot him dead. Dease was trying to go to sleep again, when two more rifles rang out; he dashed out of his shelter, and with Fosbery, whom he met in the fog, hurried to the centre of the plateau to ascertain the cause of the firing. On the way they came under a sudden fusilade from a party of Boers who, after scaling the northern and north-eastern slopes of the kopje, had surprised and carried a couple of the trenches, thus establishing themselves inside our line of works. The two officers rushed forward and reached the gun sangar just as the burghers were advancing upon it.

“The fog,” writes Captain Dease, “at this time was extremely
dense, and the position of the enemy could only be distinguished
by the flashes of the rifles. The Boers at first concentrated on
the maxim gun, and a tremendous hand-to-hand combat took place.
Our men used their bayonets with effect, and some of the machine
gunners (who had slung their rifles in an abortive effort to
get the gun to work) set-to with picks, axes, and anything they
could lay hands on. In short, as the men said, ‘it was the father
and the mother av a fight!’ The enemy suffered so severely that
they ceased trying to get over the sangar wall, but remained a
yard or two on the far side, pouring in a terrific rapid fire at
the crest line of the sangar. It is difficult to be clear about
the sequence of events, but I think that among the eighteen men
originally in the sangar there were only one or two casualties
during the hand-to-hand part of the fight; but during the next
phase, when the Boers contented themselves with sweeping the
crest, we lost very heavily, for our fellows, the lust of battle
on them after the hand-to-hand fight near the machine gun,
exposed themselves in a most reckless manner, and were with
difficulty prevented from getting out of the sangar and charging
into the enemy. The action had continued for about half an hour,
when the Boers made a second rush on the gun, and being met at
that point by a mere remnant, forced us back. At this moment,
as we were gradually drawing back towards the entrance to the
sangar, 3733 Private J. Barry,[312] who was nearest the maxim,
picked up a pickaxe lying near it. As he forced his way to the
gun through the Boers, efforts were made to stop him, and he had
just time to drive in the point of the pick into the junction of
the barrel and breech-casing before he was literally swept down
by a hail of bullets from the enemy round him.[313] As he was
shot at by about a dozen burghers within five yards’ distance
and from all sides, I fancy they must have played havoc in their
own ranks! Fosbery now realised that the position in the sangar
was untenable, and shouting out to us to ‘charge through the
entrance and make for the blockhouse,’ led the way. The Boers
were there in great force, and we were met with a very hot but
unaimed fire. Only Fosbery, Corporal Gorman, and myself took
part in this charge; all the rest of us were either killed or
wounded. About ten yards from the entrance Fosbery, in trying
to club down a Boer with the butt of his carbine, was wounded
in two places: I got a few yards farther, and while occupied
with a couple of the enemy in front was hit on the head by a
butt-ended rifle, and temporarily stunned: Corporal Gorman, I
think, surrendered, but of this I am uncertain, as I was too
busy to notice what he was doing, as he was behind me. When I
recovered consciousness about ten, perhaps twenty, minutes later,
I searched for and found Fosbery, who was still alive. I did what
I could in the way of first aid, but he was hopelessly hit and
had already lost a great deal of blood. The Boers were so close
to him when they shot him down that his clothing was scorched
all round the wounds. A little after this I suddenly ran into a
group of wandering Boers, and having lost my carbine when I was
knocked over, was easily collared and put under escort. But of
this and all subsequent proceedings I can remember nothing. I had
been singularly unfortunate in the fight in jamming my revolver
(a Service Webley) as I reloaded it. It was no good to me, and I
can remember using it as a missile during the charge--I hope with
effect! A carbine that night was a useless weapon for officers.
We had no bayonets, and the short length of the stock and barrel
placed us at a great disadvantage in the hand-to-hand _mêlée_.”

While the support was fighting desperately in the gun sangar against overwhelming odds, most of the piquets on the perimeter were swamped by sheer weight of numbers. Their trenches were of a type found very useful by the battalion in actions where it had been exposed to continuous bombardment, such as those in the Colesberg campaign--narrow slits in the ground, 2 feet 6 inches wide, nearly 5 feet deep, loopholed with a parapet 2 feet in height and at least 3 feet in width. But excellent as this pattern had proved elsewhere, it was not a success in very close fighting at night, for the trench was so deep that its occupants could not see over the parapet, and the loopholes were ill adapted for firing on an enemy at a few yards’ range. Around these works parties of Boers, from twenty to two hundred strong, suddenly loomed up out of the fog and closed rapidly from all sides upon the defenders, whom they covered with their rifles, demanding instant surrender. Though thus caught in an absolute death-trap, most of these little groups of four or five soldiers showed fight, not laying down their arms until one or more of their number had been killed or wounded. Here Lance-Corporal Dowie, a veteran who had served in the Egyptian war of 1882, met a glorious death. He was in command of a small trench, which he succeeded in holding during the first assault: he refused to surrender, though he must have realised that resistance was hopeless, and with his men continued to fight on desperately until a number of burghers, rushing in from behind, overwhelmed the party and left Dowie dead in the work he had defended so gallantly.

The reserve fared no better than the piquets or the support. When awakened by the sound of battle, the men of D company manned the broad and shallow trench by which, as it has been said, their tents were enclosed, though very incompletely. At first the attack came from their front and right, but after the capture of the sangar had made the Boers masters of the northern end of the hill, a fresh body of the enemy fell upon them from the left rear. There was a short, wild struggle; then the burghers surged forward, and hemmed in the men of D so closely that many of them could not use their bayonets, and while the Boers in front seized the muzzles and pointed them in the air, those behind knocked our men down with the butts of their Mauser rifles. By this time Captain Milner was severely wounded: and those of his company who were not killed, wounded, or prisoners ceased to be a formed body of troops. Singly or in small groups they tried to make their way towards Belfast, but in the fog they stumbled across large parties of the enemy, into whose hands they fell. Out of the ninety-three officers and men of the Royal Irish on the hill only seven escaped; the remainder were killed, wounded, or captives in the hands of the enemy. Little more than half an hour after the first shot was fired the defence had been beaten down completely, and the only sounds to be heard on Monument Hill were the groans of the wounded, and the hoarse shouts of the burghers as they collected the rifles and ammunition and sought vainly for the 4.7-in. gun, which they hoped to turn upon the garrison of the town.

When the attack began General Smith-Dorrien had only two companies--(one of the Royal Irish and one of the Shropshire Light Infantry) available as reinforcements for the posts north of the line. Both companies turned out, stood to their arms, and awaited orders, while Lieutenant-Colonel Spens, Shropshire Light Infantry, at once reconnoitred towards Monument Hill, and before the firing had quite died down, met a soldier who gave him the grim news that Fosbery’s detachment had been cut to pieces. Halting his party, Spens went forward with two or three men to ascertain for himself the real position of affairs, and, undetected by the enemy, worked his way up the kopje until he reached a wire fence from which he could see the burghers swarming over the camp which they were looting. Then, convinced that the post was lost indeed, he withdrew, taking with him the men of two small outlying piquets whom the enemy had not discovered, but who, in his opinion, would inevitably be captured as soon as the fog lifted. This daring reconnaissance was equalled by that of a corporal in the 5th Lancers, who volunteered to find out what had happened to the Royal Irish. He thus described the scene upon the hill--

“I left the road and struck across the veld, and by running,
creeping, crawling, and rolling I managed to get up to the wire
entanglements which encircled the post. The difficulty now was
to get through the wire. I could hear shouts and groans, and
there was some shooting going on, but whether Briton or Boer
was in possession I could not tell. I dared not go round the
entanglement to the entrances, as I knew they would be guarded,
and so by a series of wriggles soon found myself inside the post.
What was to be done now? I knew if I were seen I should be shot,
whoever held the hill, so I continued to wriggle and roll on my
stomach. I soon came across the effects of the fight, the dead
bodies of the infantry and Boers, and the tents which had been
cut down on top of the Irishmen. Some one was calling ‘Water, for
God’s sake give me water,’ and suddenly a dog barked a few yards
to my right, and I could just distinguish a man. I immediately
covered him with my rifle, but apparently he had not seen me. I
remained where I was for some time, and then slowly crawled back
a little and worked my way to where I heard the shouts for water
coming from. I soon found two of the Irishmen badly wounded, and
asked them in a whisper what had happened, but the only reply
was a piteous appeal for water. I then crawled some fifty yards
to the cook-house and found a camp kettle with some water in it,
and slowly wriggled back to the two wounded men, and filling my
cap with water gave them a good drink. They then told me that the
Boers had rushed the sentries in the fog, cutting down the tents
on their occupants, and shooting and clubbing the men as they
rushed out, and although the garrison had made a gallant fight
they were overpowered and the post captured. There was a lot of
shouting going on by the Boers, and I quietly crawled towards it,
and then there was a shot. Beyond a man standing on the monument
I could see nothing, and so gradually crawled back to the wire
entanglements; as soon as I was clear of these ran back to the
horses, where I found Sergeant Evans and Aldridge safe, and we
rode back to camp and made our report.”[314]

Along the rest of the line of outworks the enemy pressed home the attack with great gallantry and determination, but was repulsed at all important points. The Gordon Highlanders beat back Botha’s burghers, though with the loss of a small isolated post, and the Shropshire Light Infantry maintained their hold on the vital part of their position, though also with the loss of a small outlying detachment. Only at Monument Hill were the Boers successful, and this success, obtained solely by overwhelming numbers, they failed to turn to account. Whether they were dispirited by their losses, bewildered by the fog, or crippled by the want of trained staff officers to direct their movements and carry out Botha’s plans, it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that beyond capturing some scores of rifles, a few tents, and much ammunition from the Royal Irish, the burghers accomplished nothing, and retired so hastily with their prisoners and booty that when Spens returned in the early morning to Monument Hill he found it occupied only by the dead and wounded.

It will be remembered that Botha’s scheme provided for the simultaneous attack on seven posts along the railway. These attacks were duly made, but in most cases they were not serious, and in none were they successful. The returns prove that Belfast was the real objective of the burghers, for out of 179 casualties sustained in the defence of these seven places, 143 fell upon the troops in Belfast. The Royal Irish were by far the greatest sufferers; of the three officers on Monument Hill, Captain Fosbery was killed, Captain Milner was severely wounded, Lieutenant Dease injured, and both were taken prisoners; while among the ninety non-commissioned officers and privates eight were killed outright, five died of their wounds, twenty-two were wounded in varying degrees of severity, and fifty-one were taken prisoner.[315] The Boers on their side also lost heavily: in the attack on Belfast fifty-eight burghers were killed, of whom fourteen fell at Monument Hill.

General Smith-Dorrien, in his report on the events of the 7th-8th of January, stated that the heavy loss in killed and wounded among the Royal Irish was “sufficient evidence that their defence was a fine one.” He specially mentioned Captain Fosbery for his “splendid work in command of the post,” adding that from all sides he heard how well this officer had behaved until he was shot down. In Force Orders, dated the 12th of January, 1901, he expressed his

“appreciation of the steadiness of the troops on the morning
of the 8th. He would specially mention the fine defence of the
Royal Irish piquet at the monument under that gallant officer,
Captain Fosbery, whose death he deplores, until overwhelmed by
vastly superior numbers after a hard fight.... He regrets the
heavy losses, but does not consider them heavy, considering the
determined nature of the attack. He also considers that had it
not been for the fog the attack would have been much more easily
repulsed.”

The General also wrote as follows of Private John Barry:--

“I would especially call attention to the heroic conduct of No.
3733 Private J. Barry, Royal Irish, who seeing the machine gun
surrounded by Boers seized a pick and began to smash the action,
which he completed in spite of the threats of the Boers. I regret
to say that the Boers in retaliation shot him dead, or I would
have recommended him for a V.C.”

The War Office decided to award this honourable decoration to Barry, although he was not alive to wear it, and it was presented to his widow to be held as a treasured heirloom in Barry’s family. Thus, for the third time since the Order of the Victoria Cross was instituted, did a member of the Royal Irish regiment win this, the highest prize for valour in the British army.

For several days the garrison of Belfast toiled continuously to make good the weak points in the defences revealed by the night attack, and then settled down into the old routine of occasional raids into the neighbouring country and frequent skirmishes on the line of communication. A party of the Royal Irish under Captain Grogan had an extraordinary escape while escorting a train about this time; the burghers had mined the railway with dynamite and expected to see the train and its guard of soldiers blown sky-high, but their hopes were disappointed; a couple of heavily laden trucks in front of the engine met the full force of the explosion and were hurled off the rails; none of the escort were hurt, and the greater part of the train was uninjured.

On February 22, F, G, and H companies under Major Orr were sent to Helvetia, where they spent a fortnight in remodelling the defences, and then moved on to Lydenburg as escort to a convoy of supplies for the troops holding that distant post. Though unopposed by the enemy the march was very trying, for the rain fell in torrents, and the road, deep in mud, led across three rivers where the water reached to the waists of the soldiers as they struggled through the fords. Very soon after the convoy reached its destination Lieutenant-Colonel C. W. Park, Devonshire regiment, who at that moment was senior officer at Lydenburg, learned that a small commando of about seventy Boers had established itself in a valley near Krugerspost, twelve or fourteen miles north of the British camp. He determined to capture the laager, and on the 13th of March issued orders for the night march by which the burghers were to be encircled and surprised. The infantry selected for the enterprise were three companies of the Rifle Brigade, three of the Devonshire, and the detachment of the Royal Irish, now under command of Captain W. H. White, vice Major Orr, who had been obliged to go into hospital. They were to be carried in ox waggons for six miles; then after dismounting they were to make a long sweep across the veld to avoid a Boer piquet, the position of which had been ascertained, and on reaching a specified point break into three small columns, and crown the hills commanding the laager. The operation was by no means easy, for its success demanded not only that the troops should accomplish the various stages of the march within the time allowed by the calculations of the staff, but also that the guides should lead the detachments quickly and unerringly to the appointed places.

As soon as the column left the road its troubles began: the surface of the veld was seamed with spruits, pitted with bogs, and covered with high grass; it was impossible to move in close formation, and once the companies had been opened out, it became so difficult to maintain connection between the various units that when the troops reached the spot where the encircling movement was to begin, they were half an hour “behind scheduled time.” The Royal Irish detachment was now handed over to a guide, who led it along a ravine which every moment grew narrower and steeper. At first the man seemed confident in himself; then suddenly he lost his head, and confessed he was doubtful about the exact position of the laager. The situation was serious, for if the Royal Irish did not succeed in making their way to the ground allotted to them in the scheme of attack, there would be a gap in the enveloping line through which the Boers might easily escape. Captain White accordingly sent Lieutenant Panter-Downes with H company up the ravine with orders to push on and connect with the left of the Devons, while he himself moved the remainder of the detachment farther to the left to feel for the Rifle Brigade. Just as the first glimmer of dawn was showing in the east a message from Panter-Downes arrived to report that he had discovered the laager, which was not visible from the slope up which White was climbing. While F and G companies linked up with the Riflemen and gained a crest commanding the Boer camp, H strove to get into touch with the Devons, but before Panter-Downes could make his way across a very difficult piece of broken ground the Boers took the alarm, discovered the gap in our line, and hurled themselves upon it, not without success, for though they left thirty-seven of their number in our hands, the remainder of the commando escaped. Some of them owed their liberty to the chivalry of the Royal Irish; in the words of the Record of Service they “would have been shot down had they not worn long night-drawers and so been mistaken for women.” Though about half the _personnel_ of the commando got away, all its _matériel_--tents, waggons, horses, and much grain--fell into Colonel Park’s hands at a cost of only five casualties, all among the Royal Irish.[316]

In a few days the detachment returned to the railway and rejoined the battalion, which now had been withdrawn from the garrison of Belfast to take part in active operations in the northern Transvaal. Early in the year the Intelligence department had become aware that the repeated attacks upon the railway were intended to divert attention from the preparations for a great raid to the southward, by which General Botha hoped to restore the shattered fortunes of the republican armies. Lord Kitchener, who on Lord Roberts’ departure for England in December, 1900, had succeeded to the supreme command of the British forces in South Africa, first sent General French with 22,000 combatants to harry Botha’s commandos south of the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay line, and then organised a body of nearly 10,000 men with whom Lieutenant-General Sir B. Blood was to sweep a huge piece of country, bounded on the south by the same railway, on the north by the 25th degree of latitude, on the east by the Stenkamps Berg, and on the west by the Oliphant river. The principal settlement in this district was Roos Senekal, on which Blood’s troops were to converge from various points. Three of the columns were commanded by Major-General F. W. Kitchener, the remainder by Major-General R. S. R. Fetherstonhaugh; the Royal Irish were allotted to that under the immediate orders of Colonel Park, who was one of Kitchener’s subordinate commanders. Leaving the railway on March 27, the battalion reached Lydenburg on April 11, where began six months of work as arduous, monotonous, and disagreeable as ever British soldiers were called upon to perform. On some occasions the Royal Irish formed part of an outer ring of troops whose business it was to block every Nek and every drift by which a commando could break from the net that was closing upon it; at other times, as part of the striking column, they made forced marches by day and night, too often to find that the burghers had taken the alarm and had fled, leaving behind them their womenkind, who they knew would be well treated by the British. They had to “round-up” great mobs of cattle, to remove women and children from farms used as headquarters by the local guerillas, to escort convoys, and to march incessantly “in a most difficult country over almost impossible roads.” For weeks together they never bivouacked twice in the same place, and whenever they found themselves for a few days at Lydenburg or at a station on the line, instead of resting, they had to build blockhouses. On one of these brief visits to the comparative civilisation of the railway the battalion was joined by Lieutenant W. G. Lindsey and thirty non-commissioned officers and men of the 5th (Irish volunteer battalion), the King’s (Liverpool) regiment, who on May 20, 1901 arrived to replace the volunteer company which on October 8, 1900, had started on its journey back to England.

A detailed account of the work of the regiment between April and October, 1901, would contain so little beyond a list of bivouacs at places with uncouth and unknown names, that no attempt will be made to follow the wanderings of the Royal Irish: the reader who desires to know their exact position on every day throughout this period will find the information in Appendix 8. At the end of September the battalion, to use the South African expression, “came off trek,” and as soon as it had been refitted, relieved the Manchester regiment at Lydenburg. An idea of the straits to which the men had been reduced by hard marching will be gathered from a report dated September 1: “many have no shirts at all, and others have no boots. All the boots and trousers are in a bad state and will not hold together much longer.”

Colonel Park took the opportunity of thanking the officers and men for their services in a farewell order dated October 1, 1901--

“It is with the greatest regret that the Officer Commanding the
column has now to part with the first battalion, the Royal Irish
regiment, the last remaining unit of the original force which
started from Lydenburg under his command five and a half months
ago.

“The splendid fighting qualities of the Royal Irish are well
known to all, and their magnificent marching powers and the good
spirit of all ranks under the hardships and privations of active
service have been the admiration of the O.C. column, and of all
ranks who have served with him. Colonel Park wishes them the best
of good luck, and trusts that at some future time he may have
again the honour of serving with this gallant and distinguished
regiment.”

Though the war had already lasted for two years, the strenuous exertions of Botha, De Wet, and a few other Boer leaders prolonged the struggle, hopeless though it was, for nine months longer. During this time the battalion remained at Lydenburg, taking its share of duty in garrisoning the town, in escorting convoys, and in manning the fifty-five blockhouses by which the place was linked with the railway at Machadodorp, forty-five miles away. From the regimental point of view only two incidents worthy of record occurred in this phase of the war: the capture of B. Viljoen, the Boer general who had inflicted so heavy a loss upon the Royal Irish at Monument Hill, and the destruction by dynamite of a blockhouse held by a party of the Royal Irish.

At the beginning of the year 1902, Schalk Burger, the acting President of the Transvaal Republic, was in hiding near Dulstroom with the few adherents who formed his so-called government. Viljoen, the commander of the remnants of the commandos raised in the districts north of the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay railway, had been driven to Pilgrim’s Rest, whence Burger summoned him to a conference to arrange for the transfer of the “government” to the comparative safety of that remote settlement. The preliminaries being settled, Viljoen preceded Burger on the journey over the fifty miles of country between Dulstroom and Pilgrim’s Rest. This ride, writes the author of the Official History, “proved to be the last of the Boer leader’s many adventures. The British Intelligence Department was keenly watching the vagrant legislature; and ambuscades lay in many a likely spruit-bed and rail and river crossing. Into one of these traps--laid by a party of the Royal Irish regiment, sent out under Major A. S. Orr by Lieut.-Colonel H. Guinness--fell Viljoen as, having stolen past the outposts of Lydenburg, he made to ford the Spekboom river.” The details of the capture were as follows: at about 7 P.M. on January 25, 1902, Major Orr with five officers and a hundred and twenty of the other ranks was suddenly ordered to hasten to two drifts, where it was reported that a party of burghers would attempt to cross during the night.[317] Captain Farmer was sent with a detachment to block one of these drifts; near the other Major Orr hid the remainder of his force, posting twenty men in a ruined farmhouse a few hundred yards to his flank.

By 10 o’clock at night the trap was set, and the soldiers were resting after their long march over heavy mealie-fields and through spruits swollen by recent rain, when the detachment in the farm opened a sharp fusilade on a small number of Boers approaching from the south-west, and drove them towards the drift where Orr had established himself. So perfectly in hand were the Royal Irish that, though they could hear horses galloping towards them, they remained silent and motionless until the leading horsemen, who rode in pairs, were almost under the muzzles of their rifles. Then Colour-Sergeant J. Boulger, who was nearest the road, shouted “Hands up.” Disregarding this summons the Boers galloped on: Boulger realising that they meant to dash through the drift, opened fire on the horses of the two Boers in front: his men followed his example, and the animals, one pierced by nine, the other by three bullets, dropped dead, in their fall pinning to the ground their riders, Viljoen and Bester, one of the General’s staff. Then there was a short confused skirmish, in which Nel, another of Viljoen’s staff, and a Cape Boer lost their lives; the remainder of the party, which numbered ten in all, escaped, though not across the drift. As soon as Viljoen and Bester had been drawn from beneath their horses, they were recognised by one of the civilian scouts, who told Major Orr the names of the prisoners. Between men who have frequently faced each other in battle arises a curious feeling of quasi-friendship, and the Royal Irish and the commandos led by Viljoen had frequently met on many a hard-fought field: moreover, after Monument Hill Viljoen had treated his prisoners, both officers and men, with great kindness: therefore, as Orr hurried his captives to Lydenburg he assured them that they had fallen into good hands, and during the few days that Viljoen remained at Lydenburg awaiting an escort to the railway the regiment did its best to make his captivity agreeable. The burghers were very anxious to rescue him; and one night, writes an officer, “two or three of them stole into the town to see if it was possible to dig him out, but finding a sentry at his door and another at his window gave up the attempt, leaving behind them a clever cartoon of Lord Kitchener sitting in a zariba of barbed wire, surrounded by surrendered burghers whom he was imploring to go out and persuade the others to come in, while floating above him was the spirit of Joe Chamberlain! The drawing was signed, ‘Phil Jung, with apologies to Phil May.’” In his report Colonel Guinness specially mentioned Major Orr, to whose good dispositions of the force at his command was due the successful issue of the affair, and Colour-Sergeant Boulger,[318] who had been very favourably reported upon by Major Orr.

The dynamite episode occurred two months later. Among the blockhouses held by the Royal Irish was one, named by the troops Ben Tor, which stood on a kopje so thickly covered with big boulders that the sentries could not watch all the approaches to it. The building was of stone, roofed with sheets of galvanised iron; and on the night of the 18th of March it was held by a non-commissioned officer--Sergeant M‘Grath--and nine private soldiers. About two o’clock in the morning of the 19th, the two men on sentry outside the blockhouse heard sounds which they rightly interpreted to be those of approaching feet. While one remained on the look-out, the other crawled into the blockhouse and reported to Sergeant M‘Grath, who immediately stood to arms and manned his loopholes, but almost before the men were in their places a bomb was hurled on the roof, which unfortunately being flat, not sloping, afforded the missile a secure lodgment. In a second there was a tremendous explosion: the blockhouse was wrecked; one of the walls was thrown down, and every man of the garrison dangerously or severely wounded, except the sentry outside who escaped all injury. After capturing this man the Boers waited for some minutes to see if any one was still on foot; then, satisfied that no resistance was to be expected, they rapidly looted the blockhouse and decamped, fortunately without finding the boxes of reserve ammunition hidden under the sheets of galvanised iron which formed the beds of the garrison. Beyond stripping some of the wounded, the burghers did their victims no harm, and sent off the uninjured soldier to summon medical aid from Lydenburg. By dawn a detachment of troops, a doctor, and an ambulance were on the way to Ben Tor, where, says one of the officers, “the place was like a shambles--too horrible to describe.” As soon as the wounded men had been removed,[319] the blockhouse was rebuilt and greatly strengthened.

Nothing of note occurred in the battalion during the remainder of the campaign, which was brought to an end by the declaration of peace on May 31, 1902. This is not the place to discuss the terms upon which the Boer guerillas were allowed to surrender their arms and return to their homes; to enumerate the enormous sums spent by the Imperial Treasury in rebuilding and restocking the burghers farms, or to speculate on what may be the ultimate effect on South Africa and the Empire of the policy by which, little more than five years after the last shot was fired in the war, all the rights and privileges of self-government were granted to our former enemies. Whatever the future may have in store for England, the Royal Irish regiment will always have the satisfaction of remembering that throughout the long struggle with the Boer republics, all ranks worthily maintained the honour of their corps.

* * * * *

The doings of the officers and men who served in the mounted infantry are in no degree less interesting than those of the first battalion, but, unfortunately, want of space renders it impossible to describe in detail the many engagements and operations of importance in which they took part. All that can be attempted is a bare outline of their work, with a few instances of the many exploits which the independent nature of their employment gave them the opportunity to perform. Though for a time the two contingents were in the same brigade, they were employed together so seldom that their movements are chronicled separately.

When the first battalion was called upon to provide a section for Captain St Leger’s Cork company of the 1st regiment of mounted infantry, commanded by Colonel E. A. H. Alderson, the choice fell upon Second Lieutenant P. U. Vigors and thirty-seven non-commissioned officers and men, who landing at Cape Town early in November, 1899, were sent up country to De Aar, a place important as a great railway junction and an advanced base, where large quantities of stores had been accumulated. Here they spent nearly three months, chiefly on detached duties, such as guarding the railway bridge at Hanover Road, outposts, and patrols, one of which once pushed out as far as Prieska in the north-west of Cape Colony. Early in February, 1900, the 1st regiment of mounted infantry was allotted to the 1st brigade of mounted infantry, a newly-formed body under Colonel O. C. Hannay, and composed of the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th regiments of mounted infantry (all regular soldiers) and several corps of Australian and South African volunteers. In the 5th regiment the Royal Irish were well represented; it was commanded by Major Hatchell, an officer of the XVIIIth; and one company, or a quarter of its total strength, had been contributed by the first battalion.

The Royal Irish section of the Cork company of the 1st mounted infantry charged with the cavalry at Klip Drift, and took part in the relief of Kimberley; reached Paardeberg some days before Cronje surrendered, and shared in the actions of Poplar Grove and Driefontein. In the operations outside Bloemfontein on March 12, the Cork company succeeded in forestalling the Boers in the occupation of an important kopje, just north of the Leper hospital. At the disastrous affair at Sannah’s Post on the 31st of March, where the section served in the rear-guard covering the retreat of our broken force, all did well, and an officer and a lance-corporal especially distinguished themselves. As Captain St Leger was superintending the retirement of the rear section of the Cork company he saw a big man, dismounted, running after the horsemen. St Leger called him, and ascertained that he was Corporal Parker, 1st Life Guards, who after escaping from the trap in the Korn spruit had attached himself to the mounted infantry. While the corporal was speaking he was shot through the right shoulder, and at that moment St Leger’s orderly, Drummer Radford, noticed that his officer was staying behind and rode back to him. Thinking he could manage the Life Guardsman alone, St Leger ordered Radford to return to the company, but when he tried to get the trooper on to his (St Leger’s) horse, failed to do so, for the man’s wound had made him incapable of helping himself, and he was too heavy to be lifted into the saddle. There was no time to be lost, so with his right arm round the trooper’s waist, he half supported, half dragged him in the direction in which the Cork company had retired. With his left hand St Leger led his horse, which grew very restive under the pitiless hail of bullets that literally tore up the ground under the animal’s belly. As the Boers followed up the little group, now completely isolated and a long way behind the last of the rear-guard, the outlook seemed almost hopeless. Suddenly St Leger realised that if he could succeed in getting his wounded man a few hundred yards farther on, they would not only find temporary cover in some low-lying and broken ground, but would also be protected by the fire of a party of Roberts’ Horse who, some distance off, were holding back the enemy on this part of the battlefield. The burghers came on fast, and three of them galloped up to within a hundred yards of the fugitives, and emptied their magazines at them as they disappeared into cover. As the Boers fired from the saddle none of their bullets took effect. Bad as the situation was, it grew worse when the section of Roberts’ Horse turned about, and galloped to a position farther to the rear. Happily St Leger managed to attract the attention of one of them--a gallant man, who raced back to him with a led horse, on which they managed to hoist the Life Guardsman, who, though faint from his wound, was still able to ride once he was in the saddle. Then they galloped hard, scattering in order to offer a smaller target to the shower of Mauser bullets by which they were pursued. Corporal Parker recovered from his wound completely; and neither the trooper in Roberts’ Horse nor Captain St Leger was hit; indeed, good luck followed the latter throughout the day, for thanks to the resolution of his groom, Private Ward, his favourite pony was saved from the general wreck of the column. Private Ward was riding with the waggons when they fell into the ambush; when called upon to surrender, he refused to do so, and though his own horse was hit, succeeded in escaping with St Leger’s pony, in whose saddle-bags were sixty sovereigns, just received for the men’s pay. Lance-Corporal Hall distinguished himself by two acts of signal bravery under very heavy fire. Noticing a wounded gunner staggering along in the retreat he rode back to him, and placed him upon his own horse: later in the day, when the Boers were pressing hard upon the mounted infantry, he saw a trooper of Roberts’ Horse whose pony had been killed and who was in imminent danger of being shot or captured. He dashed after a stray horse, caught it, and brought off the irregular in safety. Hall escaped unhurt; only three of the Royal Irish were wounded in this engagement.[320]

The section formed part of the army which invaded the Transvaal, and was at the passage of the Reit and the Zand rivers, the action of Johannesburg, the capture of Pretoria, and the battle of Diamond Hill (11th and 12th of June). For the next few weeks it remained in the neighbourhood of Pretoria, chiefly engaged in outpost duty, sometimes of a very exciting nature. Thus at Reitvlei, on July 15, a piquet of sixteen men was saved from capture or destruction by the intelligence of Sergeant Connolly who, discovering that a party of two hundred burghers with three guns was threatening the post, reported so clearly and so promptly that his officer was able to signal for reinforcements, which fortunately arrived in time. When Lord Roberts began to advance towards Komati Poort the Cork company pushed on with the remainder of the mounted infantry; a few of the Royal Irish section were fortunate enough to be engaged at Bergendal, but none reached Komati Poort, the company remaining at Kaapsche Hoop until November, when it was ordered back to Pretoria and thence to the northern frontier of Cape Colony.

Since the beginning of June, De Wet had kept the Free State in a blaze, and although after his failure in various minor enterprises he was chased up and down the country, and very roughly handled at Bothaville on November 6, he rallied enough burghers around him to be able to swoop upon the British garrison of Dewetsdorp, which surrendered to him on the 23rd of November, 1900. The fall of this place seemed to remove one of the chief obstacles to the raid into Cape Colony which for months had been discussed round the camp fires of every Free State commando,[321] and De Wet pushed towards the Orange river, believing that once he gained its southern bank the Dutch population in the colony would welcome him with enthusiasm. As soon as his plan was discovered, troops were hurried from all parts of the theatre of war towards the Orange river, among them the column to which the Cork company was attached. After a long and weary journey by train from Pretoria to Bethulie, it shared in the operations in December by which De Wet was prevented from crossing the river, and driven backwards into the eastern Free State, where though harried incessantly by our troops he never abandoned his scheme for a second invasion of British territory. The Cork company was soon called away from the pursuit of De Wet to that of two of his lieutenants, Kritzinger and Hertzog, who succeeded in passing across the river and waged guerilla warfare in many districts of Cape Colony. Early in February, 1901, De Wet, with extraordinary skill and equally extraordinary good fortune, threaded his way through the troops closing round him, and dashed across the Orange at an unguarded drift, but there his lucky star failed him, and the British mounted troops, though almost spent by their unending pursuit of Kritzinger and Hertzog’s raiders, who had now joined the commandos of their leader, drove the invaders back into the Free State at the end of February, 1901.

Between March and November 1901, the section was in the south of the Free State, occupied in clearing the country and similar uncongenial duties, the monotony of which was relieved by occasional skirmishes. In one of these affairs two soldiers distinguished themselves. Private W. Sweeney found himself surrounded by four mounted Boers who, covering him with their rifles, called upon him to surrender; though they were all within fifty yards of him he refused to do so, and firing at them from the saddle succeeded in making his escape. His name was specially mentioned to the General commanding the column for his gallantry on this occasion.[322] Private Radford, while carrying a message for Lieutenant Vigors, was wounded and his horse was hit under him; nevertheless he delivered his message and then made his way back to report that he had done so. The next two months were spent at Winburg, and in January, 1902, the section began to take part in the “drives” which marked the final phase of the war in the north-east of the Free State. In addition to the non-commissioned officer and men already mentioned, Lieutenant Vigors, in the statement he prepared for the regimental records, gives praise to the good conduct throughout the war of Sergeants Kennedy and Colthorpe, Lance-Corporals Mackay and Griffin, Privates Tobin and (5914) Power.

It was said on page 311 that just before the battalion sailed from England Captain R. A. Smyth, Lieutenants S. H. L. Galbraith and E. Lloyd, with sixty-seven of the other ranks went to the mounted infantry at Shorncliffe. From this nucleus developed a company, composed of the same officers and a hundred and thirty-six non-commissioned officers and men, who landed at Cape Town on January 31, 1900, and formed part of the 5th regiment of mounted infantry. The company received its baptism of fire on February 11, 1900, while reinforcing the flank-guard of a convoy in difficulties between Ramah and Roodipan. In this affair Private M. Maher greatly distinguished himself by volunteering to carry a written order to a detachment, separated from the main body by a broad stretch of ground completely swept by the enemy’s fire. He set an excellent example by walking, not running, across the danger zone; delivered the note, and then, refusing to remain with the detachment which was under cover, coolly returned to report that the order had duly reached the officer to whom it was addressed. Maher was not hit; in this affair there were only two casualties among the Royal Irish, neither fatal.[323] The company was at a skirmish near Jacobsdal, where Major Hatchell was wounded; and after a long night march arrived at Klip drift on the Modder river on the 15th, too late to take part in Lieutenant-General French’s charge through the Boer position, though in time to see the cavalry division re-form and start on its final advance upon Kimberley. The Royal Irish were sent on outpost at once, and remained on piquet until dawn, when they were ordered to work eastward down the river to Klipkraal drift, one of the fords by which it was expected that Cronje, now in full retreat from the kopjes of Magersfontein, would attempt to cross the stream. The company was engaged all day with the Boer rear-guard, and several men were wounded, among whom was Sergeant Peebles, whose experiences were singularly unpleasant;[324] while on patrol he was shot through the thighs, and falling helpless on the ground was stripped naked by marauding Boers, and left for dead, until late in the evening he was rescued by a party of his comrades. After spending the night in guarding a battery of artillery, the company at daybreak on the 17th was sent to ascertain if the burghers still held the ground they had occupied when darkness put an end to the combat. As soon as the Royal Irish reported that the position had been evacuated, the column was set in motion, but the Boers had gained a long start; their rear-guard again fought stoutly, and it was not until late in the evening of the 17th that the mounted infantry bivouacked two miles south of Paardeberg drift, near the laager which Cronje had formed a few hours sooner, when to his dismay he found that he had been “headed off” by French, who with a weak brigade of cavalry and two batteries of Royal Horse artillery from Kimberley had thrown himself boldly across the Boer general’s path. At 4 A.M. on the 18th, Hannay’s brigade marched eastwards to form the right of the line of troops with which Lord Kitchener proposed to attack the enemy’s position on every side. The Royal Irish company was engaged all day, and in the ill-fated charge led by Colonel Hannay against the north-east face of the laager was represented by Captain Smyth, Lieutenant Lloyd, and thirteen or fourteen non-commissioned officers and men, of whom several privates were wounded.[325] During the remainder of the operations, ending in Cronje’s surrender on February 27, the company was employed in scouting and patrolling the country south-east of Paardeberg; and after taking part in the action of Poplar Grove it marched into Bloemfontein with Lieutenant-General Tucker’s column on March 16th.