Captain Jervis, General Fitzroy Hart, C.B., C.M.G., and Captain Arthur Hart.
About May 24th, Second Lieutenant Bradford, with twenty-nine men, was sent up the line to garrison Border Siding, where they were picked up three days later.
The deviation bridge over the Vaal having been completed, the battalion was sent forward by train to Vryburg, travelling in two trains. Camp was pitched just outside the station, and for the next two days every one spent their time in buying karosses and in shooting partridges.
The 10th Division, when Mafeking had been relieved by Colonel Mahon, was ordered to march to Johannesburg viâ Lichtenburg. As the first part of the route lay through a country very deficient in water, the division marched in several columns, which followed each other at a day's interval. The battalion left Vryburg on May 30th at 7.30 a.m., and proceeded to Devondale, and on the next day made a march of twenty-two miles to Dornbult, where Captain Mainwaring, with Second Lieutenants Newton and Smith, joined.
Their wanderings before they succeeded in doing so are sufficient evidence how little was known, even to our own staff officers of the whereabouts of the several columns. On arrival at Cape Town in the s.s. Oratava, they were transhipped to the s.s. Ranee and sent to Port Elizabeth. On reporting themselves there they were entrained and sent to Bloemfontein. No one there seemed to know where the regiment was, but at that very time the report arrived of the march on Christiana. Captain Mainwaring then met Captain Carington Smith of the regiment, who was at that time serving in Roberts' Horse (which he later on commanded), and as that officer was shortly going north with some men of his corps, it seemed to both that the speediest way to get to the Dublin Fusiliers was for Captain Mainwaring to be attached to Roberts' Horse. An application to that effect was made to the staff and granted, but shortly afterwards the news of the Christiana column's return to the railway came to hand, so the three officers once more entrained, and proceeded viâ De Aar to Kimberley.
Although Captain Carington Smith did not serve with either battalion during the war, it would not be out of place here to mention the great part he took in it. He commenced by serving in Roberts' Horse, and was with them throughout Lord Roberts' advance to Bloemfontein. In the action at Sanna's Post he was shot through the knee, but resolutely refused to be invalided home. His recovery from this severe wound was little short of marvellous, and he actually managed to rejoin the headquarters of his corps in time to share in the entry into Pretoria. Shortly after this he was again shot at Heidelberg, this time through the other knee, and again made a second and equally marvellous recovery. Towards the end of the war he commanded Roberts' Horse, and later on the South African Light Horse, and his trekking during the campaign amounted to no less than 9000 miles.[Back to Contents]
Issuing Queen Victoria's Chocolate.
Colour-Sergeant Connel, 'G' Company, on left.