How we kept the flag flying: the story of the siege of Ladysmith

Front matter

THE LIBRARY OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

CHAPTER I NEWS or BATTLE rtii.m

The first news— The Hocr invasion— Fight at Dundee-Storming the heights— British artillery 13

CHAPTER U

AFTER THE EIGHT

At Elands Laagte— The cavalry work— The wounded on

the field— The Boer losses- An international concert 20

CHAPTER XI DAYS or GLOOM PAGB

A siege menu — News from Mooi river— Hoi)e dcfcrre<l — Ungrateful athletes— A disastrous d.iy Kur "Auld I..1111,' Sync" — A " dichaid " volunteer \o2

CHAPTLR XII

News of Uullcr — Mysterious prepiration* — Biltong — Tht t.iutysmitk l.yrt — A dash for I.on;: Tom — Hlnwini' n[) .i gun — Kxullant volunteers 113

Chapter XX Impressions Of Battle

The folly of inaction — The first battle — A nasty few minutes — The impressive sequel — Conduct of the enemy — The lonely dead — Confusion of fight — How historians disagree — Night and the bayonet 208

Chapter XXI

Another disappointment — Reduced rations — A distant view — The Boer trek — Camps re-established— Signs of disaster — An exhausted garrison 224

Chapter XXII

Eating horse-meat — A black depression — The rush for rations — An expected assault — Bracing up the town — A faltering foe 232

CONTENTS CHAPTER XXIII rKc,\

Tobacco famine — Commissariat trials — Cupboard love— Sicpe whist — The hundred days — A cricket me^^^i^^e — Usury in trade — A contrast — Siege prices .241

Chapter XXIV A Tjmk Of Anxiety

Bird-seed porridge — The garrison meat bill — Preparing a welcome — The Gossack post — A black night — The bridge builders — Methodical Dutch gunnery . . . -253

Chapter XXV

A brave young surgeon — The rinkalse — Sir deorge White and the garrison — Guns on the Tugela — ''All "r)inf^\vo]l" — Quarter rations — Correspondents' luck 266

Chapter XXVI

The great trek — How I saw it — A silver snake — A remarkable retreat — Shelling Long Tom — Fine artillery work — Bailer's cavalry in sight — The rush to meet them — "Thank God we kept the flag flyintj" — The fighting chiefs — The fate of the flag ...... 273

Chapter XXVII After The Relief

A dead Boer — The toys of Umbulwana — Harassing the rear-guard — A deserted camp — Mistaken for Boers — A sailor's welcome 287

Chapter XXVIII

In the Dutch trenches — The Union Jack — Boer gun positions — Where lyddite fell — A natural citadel — Gunner and priest — A brave pair — An Entjlishman's experience — Good-bye to Ladysmith 293 now WE KEPT THE ELAG ELYING

Chapter I News Of Battle

The first news — The Boer invasion — Fight at Dundee — Stormiog the heights — British artillery.

When the S.S. Australasian left Albany and struck across the Indian Ocean, which is so rapidly becoming a great English lake, war had not been declared. A re-statement of peace terms was being sought, and for over a fortnight wc on board speculated on the chances of peace and war. With head winds and seas for the greater part of the trip, the pace was slow, and instead of landing, as anticipated, on Wednesday, October i8, it was not until the following Saturday at noon that the high blue bluffs to the south of Durban entrance loomed up out of the thick grey haze, and we waited off the entrance with a tropical rain falling in cataracts. Those three lost days made a vast difference to some of us. On that day the second battle between the British and Boers had been fought at Elands Laagte ; on the previous day a brilliant victory had been won by the Imperial troops at Dundee, a name rich in historic traditions to many who fought there. Durban was in a tumult of excitement, for the volunteers of the loyal little colony of

Natal had borne themselves splendidly in the first death-grip with the Boers, and in forty-eight short hours had built an obelisk in their history. The town teemed with refugees from the Transvaal and closer home. The Union steamer that dropped anchor alongside us in the Mozambique current was packed with the panic-stricken from Delagoa Bay, and steam tenders, black with passengers, were pouring their living freights into the big white Donald Currie liner that lay close by — all off for Cape Town or England.

These things told their own story long before the Australasian had dropped anchor, and we waited keenly expectant as a man-of-war's boat from H.M.S. Tartar^ with a spruce, business-like lieutenant in the bows, came alongside on the look-out for contraband of war. " What's the news ? " was shouted impatiently from the deck of the Australasian ; " has there been any fighting ? " The mystery of uncommunicativeness had fallen upon her Majesty's service, and the spruce flag-lieutenant said — nothing. A kindly purser put us out of misery with a bare hint that the Boers had been beaten near Glencoe on the previous day, and there was cheering, broken at intervals, when the crowd on one boat sang " Soldiers of the Queen," and it was caught up and echoed from another. It was sweet tidings, with a dash of bitter in it, for I had just missed it. Oriental-looking Durban, with its hosts of Hindoos and its hundred of rickshaws, drawn by big Zulu boys — who were perhaps fighting the British themselves when last the town saw such excitement— was trying its best to meet the strain. The Johannesburg millionaires had first pick of the hotels, and the unfortunate traveller was lucky if he could get a chair for the night, not to mention such a luxury as a shake-down. When a town of 8000 people suddenly takes in 17,000 extra there must be a crush.

It was known that the Boers had invaded Natal in three columns, the main column, under General Joubert himself, coming by Laing's Nek. Joubert's last message to the burghers had ended with the words, " I want you

NEirS OF BATTLE to be prepared for the worst," and at Dundee and Elands I^aai^tc the worst was waiting for them in disaster and death. Though there were many complaints from refugees of injury and insult, this generally occurred with small parties of Boers, who were out of hand for the time, and General Joubcrt, in reproving some of his men for looting, said — " I will not allow robbery or plunder, and forbid any injury to be done to any private person."

One mistake of the British forces in the earlier wars with the Hocrs was not repeated this cainpaign. As the Boers advanced and the pickets and vedettes came into touch and exchanged shots they found no rooi batjcs. The red coats, which blazed so vividly of old under the African sun, and made such a splendid target for sharpshooters, had disappeared. Whether English or African, volunteer or regular, the whole of the Imperial troops were in their favourite fighting khaki, the corps distingtiished only by the smallest badges.

When Sir George White passed through with his Staff, all wore the familiar Stanley cap, and thus only were they distinguishable from the rest of the fighting force. Sir George White's eye brightened when he saw the Gordons, for years ago, when he was winning the V.C., his Afghan and Mutiny medals, and his Caiidahar .star, he was for a time in command of them. Speaking of the Gordons, it is worth noting that very many of the men in South Africa took part in that famous rush on the heights of Dargai, made memorable amongst other things for the slogan of Piper Findlater —

" When one with his legs shot under. Sat down "mid the fire and thunder, And still, to the world's wide wonder, ' The Cock of the North' he played."

One thing noticeable in these highly-trained Indian troops was their fine mobility. Little time any of them wasted in Durban. As the transports came down buoyantly on the Madagascar current, they were rushed alongside the wharves — the armoured trains were in waiting, and the style in which the chargers of the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons were swung ^ from ship to truck was a perfect triumph in militarytransport.

At Dundee the Boers had advanced, halted — some say irresolute in their movements, and wishing for touch of the other columns, others that they merely wished to rest their horses after the forced march — and retreated, but before daybreak on Friday morning they backed up their threat of driving the British into the Indian Ocean with a decisive movement. Before dawn a picket heard men approaching quietly. They listened, found that they were talking Dutch, then challenged, and fired. A bare-headed vedette, who had lost his helmet in the brief exchange of bullets, rode in with the intelligence into the streets of Dundee, and the trumpets blared the assembly. The clatter of his horse's hoofs in the early morning, and the impetuous haste of the rider, telling that his mission was one of importance — the first note in the coming struggle for supremacy in South Africa, the revival of the old feud of the days of Blake and Van Tromp.

The Boers came on with the daylight in strong force, and the first intimation the British had of it was the whiz of shells from the Creuzot and Krupp field guns. From the first their fire work was erratic, and when it came to the artillery duel there was but one in it. It was not the armament, but the man behind the gun. Talana Hill, from which the Boers opened, is a kopje halfa-mile or so to the west of the town of Dundee — for there was something of a new Scotland about this place, with its Bannockburn and Craigieburn farms lying in the hollow. The Boers fired right over the town of Dundee, to pitch their shells into Glencoe camp beyond it, but their range-finding was bad at first. They picked up the range as the light improved, and several shells burst in a clear space in the centre of the camp, while another passed on the ricochet just over the horse-lines of the

NEWS OF BATTLE 17

Natal Carbineers. Then the artillery duel blazed, and the people of Dundee stood dazed in their own streets as the storm of iron passed overhead, battery answering battery from ridi^je to ridf^c, while the whirr of shell was varied by the burr of quail st.irtled from cover by this tremendous din, the echoes of which lingered amongst the ridges.

In a few minutes the greatest battle in South African history was in progress, and the deidliness of the Imperial field guns was at once evident. The lioer artillerymen were silhouetted on the ridge against the bright sky-line. Soon their movements were more brisk, and little white puffs of smoke amongst them showed where the British shells were bursting. Nothing could withstand this deadly accuracy. The clamour of guns on Dundee ridge died down to a splutter, then to single shots, and the Boer artillery was silenced. They had had their answer. They had boasted of their artillery, and had bombarded the veldt sometimes short of the enemy's position, sometimes far beyond it, often wide, but seldom on it. The only lioer shell which really got close to the British battery after they opened, passed a little overhead. A body of Boer infantry tried to creep up on the right under shelter of some native kraals, but one of the batteries concentrated on the spot, and the enemy were driven back. Soon it was evident that the Boer infantry would make their stand on the summit of Talana Hill, and under cover of a tremendous artillery fire pushed to close range. Preparation was made for the crisis of the fight — the storming of the mountain.

It looked a desperate enterprise, for though a long plantation covered the approach for some time, the ground beyond was open and clear. General Penn Symons, the British commander, rode up under cover of the plantation, and gave directions for the final attack. It was here that he fell mortally wounded by a shot through the stomach.

A mass of Boer infantry suddenly concentrated on the right of Talana, but as the mass came together the

B

British shells were bursting amongst them again, and the terrible shrapnel drove them back. So well had the khaki blended with the surroundings that the British lines appeared to be painfully sparse, and to carry the crest in face of the Mausers of the ever-gathering clusters of Boer riflemen looked sheer suicide. About 600 yards from the top of the hill a stone wall ran parallel with the Boer position, and this was the first British objective. Under its cover they halted momentarily, while ever and again the Boer riflemen rushed to the crest of the hill, only to be driven back by the awful storm of shrapnel.

It is doubtful whether the best-trained European troops could, with more of heroism, have withstood the torrent of splintering shell that fell upon them. Hour after hour it had found them, till the sweat of the British gunners sizzled on their own gun-barrels, and still the Boers had to be beaten. Hurled back by the artillery, they rushed up to the crest to pour upon the advancing line of infantry the rifle fire in which they still believed themselves unequalled, while the Dublins and the Royal Irish answered with volleys that floated back across the open in a single crash, and must have been terribly demoralizing. There discipline and training told. The fall of many men in succession is bad enough, but when they go down in clusters no nerves can stand the strain. Behind the British fighting line was here and there a patch of brown, showing a khakiclad soldier lying still.

For over six hours they had been fighting fiercely — the end seemed yet f:i,r off. The change came with a sudden forward dash of the 69th Battery. Like a flash they had limbered up, and galloping to short range, were in action again before the Boers on the hill-top seemed to realize the nature of the movement. The effect was instantaneous — the Boer exchanges slackened, and, noting the effect, the 13th was also brought up to short range. Silence fell upon them soon for want of a target, but still the snappish bark of the Maxims served

NEWS OF BATTLE 19

by the Dublins kept on. The last effort by the Boers was on the extreme left, where a group of them made a rush forward to a kopje. The shells of the 13th burst among them once again, and after eight hours' valiant fighting, British soldiers had won the first great battle of tlie campaign.

Chapter II After The Fight

At Elands Laagte — The cavalry work — The wounded on the field — The Boer losses — An international concert.

As this book is chiefly the story of a siege, I shall dwell but lightly upon a few incidents of the second fight at Elands Laagte, for the battle has been described in detail by many eye-witnesses, more skilled in war and its detail than an Australian novice, whose experiences of fighting had hitherto been confined to such a small bush affair as the destruction of the Kelly gang of bushrangers, or a second-hand recital of the revolt of the Ballarat miners at Eureka.

All night the wounded at Elands Laagte lay upon the field, for the last charge of the Lancers through the demoralized Boer ranks took place in actual darkness — so bad was the light, indeed, that one body of Boers mistook the cavalry for their own men, and the deadly lances were within forty yards of them before they realized their danger.

While to some extent indifferent to bullet wounds, the Boers have a deadly horror of steel — especially of the lance. Some of them fell upon their knees with uplifted hands, praying for mercy. " I have five children," screamed one of them. " For GoJ's sake, spare me." The Lancer raised his point and passed on, but on turning saw the man he had spared in the act of reaching for

AFTER THE FIGHT ax

a Mauser rifle. Ho turned back, ran him first through the muscle of the arm, as he souj^'ht to shield himself, and then throufjh the body. "At the last moment, I tried to let off one poor devil who was white with fear," said a Lancer, "but my horse knew his business too well, and the lance-point found." One of the lance thrusts, after passing throU";jh the body of a Boer, pinned him to his own horse's neck.

Most of the British wounded were brought in during the night, but some of the Gordons, who had fallen just as thev were changing home, had been overlooked. They lay along the rocky ridge, with the rain beating upon them, realizing to the full the horrors of war.

Boers brought in by the British ambulance expected to be treated fairly, but were for the most part astonished at the solicitude of their captors. Occasionally they presumed upon it, and at Ladysmith Camp some of the slightly wounded had tu be brought to their senses at times at the point of the bayonet. One man from Johannesburg, who had been shot in the stomach, though in agony from his wounds, and drenched with the night rain, pleaded piteously that the ambulance men should not kill him. The poor fellow never realized how mistaken were his notions of British clemency, for he died on his stretcher while being carried into the hospital. Count Zcpplein, a German whose father distinguished himself greatly in the Franco-German war, was lound to be past all aid, for he had been shot in the head, and the bullet wound exposed the brain.

The dead remained upon the field until Monday, and the story of the fight with the advance of the different regiments of British infantry was sadly told by the bodies, some lying face down, as though peacefullyasleep, others tortured and stiffened into strange attitudes, all gruesomely flat and shrunken, amongst the rocks. Near the crest of the hill, and close to the Boer position, the green kilts and brown jackets of the Gordons were lying thickly. Three oflScers and twenty-two men were buried there, and furthest into the medley of broken guns, dead Boers, and mangled horses, which marked their last stand, lay the body of Major Denne, a big, handsome fellow, who was shot through the body. As the Highlanders approached within fifty yards, the excited Boers stood up, and some even rushed forward to meet them, but the instant the Gordons brought their bayonets to the charge a panic seized the burghers, and they fled. Only a few dead Boers had the mark of the bayonet on them, but further on, where the Lancers came in on their flank, more had died from the thrust than the bullet. Many of them had loaded revolvers, but were so panic-stricken that they made no use of them, and sought only to dodge the lance-points. By Monday the Kaffir bands, whose kraals are scattered all over the veldt, had been looting the dead, and Mr. Brooks, a road superintendent, who with his Kaffir boys buried fifty-six Boers and forty-four British, found the bodies stripped of everything. The Kaffirs had hesitated in some cases about touching the British dead, though they had cut Major Denne's stars from his shoulders.

He must have been the last man killed before the enemy broke and fled, for none lay nearer the breastworks. With the suicidal chivalry which marked the British officers throughout the fight, he led on his men, disdaining cover, and this policy, brave though it may be, led to the loss of many gallant men in giving the Boers fair targets for their matchless marksmanship. No corps in the British camp at Ladysmith was so bitter against the enemy as the Gordons. It was evident even when they were bringing in the prisoners. One Pretorian sought to carry it off" with a bragging air as they came into Ladysmith, but a big Highlander, with a flitch of bacon under his arm — a queer mixture of the fighter and forager— turned abruptly and struck him backhanded across the face, with a curt " Shet yer moo." The Boer shrunk up and was silent.

At the point stormed by the Highlanders most of the Boers were shot either through the chest or the lower

AFTER THE FIGHT 23

part of the body, for even in that hurricane of death these well-disciplined fighters had kept the points of their riHcs low. Their fii^hting was superb, and the Boers admitted it.

The compliment is the more genuine in that the quality of mercy is not being strained by the Gordons. " I pit me bayonet through one big red-headed chap," said nuggety little Malcolm, of Perthshire, " an' I had to pit my foot ta his chest ta poo'itoot." Nor were the Dublin Fusiliers over-nice with the enemy. Two of them at Dundee found a young Boer lying partly under an old man, who was dead, with a little heap of Mauser shells beside him. " What's the matthor wid ye } " said a big fellow. " I'm shot here," said the burgher, pointing to his right thigh. They searched for the bullet wound and found none. " Why, blasht ye, it's only shammin' ye are," said the Irishman, as he laid him out on the veldt with a heavy right-hander on the chin.

The tenacity of the Boers in adhering to denials of any great loss was illustrated while Mr. Brooks was still engaged in his sad mortuary task. He met a Dutch doctor on the field, and told him he had just buried twenty-two of his men in one grave and twenty-four in another, and offered to show him the spot. " You have made a mistake," was the reply; "these were not our dead, they were EnglislL We had very few men killed." " He was the first man," said the impulsive Brooks, " who did not try to hit me when I called him a liar." Just then a Kaffir boy came up with ten dead Boers in his wagon. The doctor was obliged to admit that these were burghers, but he was not at all anxious to have proofs as to the identity of the others, by having any of the bodies raised from their shallow graves, though none the less anxious to a'ctain a description of the dead. As the burial party passed along the ridge Mauser rifles were lying everywhere, and the bolts were taken from them and thrown into the river.

A party of twenty-five, in galloping away for their lives, got separated from the commando and were met by Dr. Rupert Hornabrook, of Adelaide, who told them that the British had won the fight, and that they must accompany him as captives to Elands Laagte railway station, which they did. The medical profession has already won much honour in the campaign. A week before, Dr. Buntine, of Maritzburg, was out with the Carbineers, who had a brush with the Boers, during which Lieutenant Gallwey, son of the Chief Justice of Natal, was taken prisoner. As the Carbineers retreated one of the trooper's horses fell, partly stunning him. Dr. Buntine, who is a Victorian, rode back under fire, and helped him to safety.

That racial hatred had not died with the second generation of burghers was shown by the fact that most of the Boers who fell at Elands Laagte were young men. The only white-haired man buried was the father of W. Blignaut, a champion South African athlete. The Boers declared that it was the riff-raff of their commandos — the larrikins of Pretoria and Johannesburg — who first broke and fled as the British infantry charged up the ridge, but once they began to run it soon became a rout.

On the eve of Elands Laagte, some of the Boers spent a merry evening with a number of Englishmen at the railway station. The first seen of them was a patrol of about forty, under Field-Cornet Pienaar, who seized the station and captured a mixed train that was just coming in. They behaved very decently afterwards. While waiting for General Kock, the field-cornet suggested that they might as well have a concert, and he asl:ed an P^nglishman named Ganthorpe to play and sing — both Dutch and English joining in the chorus of " They All Take After Me." " It's a funny world," said the field-cornet. " Here are the Dutch and English at war, and we're all enjoying ourselves together."

On Friday night there were about 1500 Boers at Elands Laagte, and early on Saturday morning the British made their appearance, and one of the first men

AFTER THE FIGHT killed was the sentiinental fieKl-cornet of the international concert. A shower of Lee-Mctford bullets suddenly rattled upon the station buildings, and a party of Boers who were in barrack there rushed out. The field-cornet turned to see whence the shots came, and at that moment a bullet passed through his head.

Chapter III

By rail to Ladysmith — A natural citadel — The fight at Tinta Inyoni — Shelling the Boers — Gloucesters in a hot corner — Hospital work — Yule's retreat — The Fighting "Dubs" — An Irishman's story.

While casual and somewhat frenzied accounts of that brilHant httle fight at Elands Laagte (pronounced Elandslockty) were still coming into Durban, I caught the evening mail train on Monday, and started for the front. Martial law had just been proclaimed in Durban, the military authorities had seized the South African Bank, and the town was simmering with excitement. One could not even buy a Webley revolver without going through a long licensing ceremony before a magistrate, so that in the event of the weapon being found either in the possession of a Zulu boy, a Kaffir, or a Boer the ownership could be traced. Up a narrow-gauge line with sharp curves, on to cool hills covered with the broad wind-frayed fronds of miles of plantains and bananas, broken by occasional patches of mealies, pine-apples, and paw-paws, the Kaffir mail climbed slowly. The quaint little Mozambique monkeys darted through the low oaklike trees, and bigger apes scampered scolding to the shelter of rocky ledges.

Every country has its characteristic odour, and that ot the colony of Natal, and especially the far-out towns, is as distinctive, as indescribable, as penetrative, but barely so pleasant, as the characteristic scent of old Murray pine. It be$;an at Durban ; it la«;ted to Ladysmith. The ordinary seats in the Natal trains were converted into sleeping cars by the addition of a ruc^ and pillow. There was not much sleepinf^ though. At every station the excitement burned. Towards morning one was awakened by a storm of groans, a shout of " Ha, you German dogs," and we were in a siding to make way for a special with one hundred and ninety-six Boer prisoners on their way to the Maritzburg Gaol. The captives were cither asleep or pretended sleep, and beyond an occasional sickly smile, took no notice of the hooting.

Just at daybreak the train ran into Ladysmith, a scattered town, enclosed in an amphitheatre of rocky hills.

One had hardly set foot on the platform at Ladysmith in the grey of the early morning, before he found that something special was pending. All through the British lines there was a stir. The army mule, in teams of ten, and driven with wonderful skill — and a long whip — by shouting Cape boys, was everywhere mixed up with long trains of long-horned, black, scraggy bullocks clogging the streets. To reduce this chaos to order was the work of the Army Transport Corps — a fleshwearing, brain-racking problem in organization. This army train seemed to loosen itself to disorder in the early morning, the strange shouting of the Cape boys, Kaffirs, Zulus, and Indians making it a scene utterly opposed to all preconceived notions of a British column waking up to duty — and possibly to death. Later it formed itself slowly into a train, and went through a gap in the hills, out over the rolling veldt — a train miles long it seemed, and so unwieldy that one could understand the ease with which a routed enemy's baggage may be cut off and captured by cavalry.

This stir was the visible sign of probable conflict, and it was not without reason that it was being sent out this burning hot morning. The Boers routed at Elands

Laagte on Saturday had reappeared in greater strength, having been reinforced by another commando at a point at least seven miles nearer Ladysmith. Rietfontein, a farm owned by Mr. Pepworth, a member of the Natal Parliament, had been seized and looted by them on the previous evening, Early that morning an Afrikander lying hid in a reedy spruit had watched one of the Boer commandos taking strong position on the crest of a round scrub-capped hill. As they would have to come into the open approaching Ladysmith, there was little fear of the Boers leaving this position, but the necessity of stirring them up arose from the fact that their left was in touch of the road between Ladysmith and Dundee, along which Yule's column was retreating.

Horses were at a premium, though Boer mounts and Basuto ponies were obtainable in Ladysmith on the morning after Elands Laagte at prices ranging from a sovereign to a box of cigarettes. For one brief half-hour I was flattered by the hope of getting a pony, owned by a missing officer of Hussars, one of the finest polo-players in the British army, but another ofificer had first call, and he called. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to try Australian legs over the rocky South African veldt on a day that made marching to flaccid muscles anything but a luxury. Earlier in the morning one heard that the fight pending would be greater even than Dundee or Elands Laagte, for the Boers were in greater strength and a stronger position. But Sir George White had concluded that beyond shaking the abundant self-confidence of the Boer, giving him another taste of his doom, and weakening his contempt for British soldiers, there was nothing to be gained in driving them from positions which the victors were not desirous to hold, and which could be re-occupied by the enemy on the following day.