The XVIIIth sailed from England under all the depressing influences of the “Black Week”—the disastrous seven days in which three considerable bodies of British troops sustained severe reverses at the hands of the Boers. General Sir Redvers Buller, then in supreme command in South Africa, had been defeated at Colenso in his attempt to extricate the defenders of Ladysmith from the grip of the burghers whose commandos hemmed them in on every side. Lieutenant-General Gatacre had been heavily repulsed at Stormberg in his attack upon one of the columns that had invaded the north-east of Cape Colony. Lieutenant-General Lord Methuen, after three successes in his march from the Orange river towards Kimberley, had failed with heavy loss to dislodge Cronje from the kopjes of Magersfontein. But though the country was profoundly depressed at the news of these successive defeats, the spirits of the Royal Irish were as high as ever, and even had their buoyant temperaments been influenced by the national gloom at the time of their departure, life on board the Gascon was too full of occupation to allow time for thinking of unpleasant things. As the reservists had not joined in time to be equipped fully before they left Aldershot, their field service kit was issued to them on the voyage; and as many of them had not been trained to the use of the Lee-Metford rifle, they were put through a course of musketry at sea. All hands were daily exercised in physical drill; ammunition carriers and company scouts were selected and given theoretical instruction in their duties; identity cards were prepared and sewn into the men’s clothing, and wire cutters served out. To provide healthy amusement for the troops the officers organised “tugs-of-war” and other forms of athletics in the afternoons, while concerts and “sing-songs” filled up the evening hours.
When the Gascon reached Cape Town on the 6th of January, 1900, the Royal Irish and the Wiltshire were ordered not to disembark, as the destination of Clements’ brigade was still uncertain. For three days the battalion remained inactive, with little to do but to gaze on the lovely scenery of Table Bay; to admire the great fleet of transports and store-ships floating on its waters, and to form some idea of the general situation at the front. This was no easy matter, for the censorship over the South African press was severe, and the papers in Cape Town gave much less news of the war than those published in the United Kingdom. Gradually the Royal Irish ascertained that the Boer leaders had not known how to profit by their victories. The state of affairs had not altered materially since the Gascon left England, and the Union Jack still waved over the three towns to which the burghers were laying siege. The reports from Mafeking were satisfactory, and showed a spirit of hopeful resolution, contrasting favourably with the attitude of part of the civilian population of Kimberley. This great mining centre was held by a force of improvised volunteers, stiffened by half a battalion of regular infantry and a few gunners. Its townspeople had been greatly discouraged by Methuen’s defeat at Magersfontein; they were now beginning to feel the privations of the siege, or rather of the investment, for in the true sense of the word Kimberley was not besieged; and every native runner who made his way through the enemy’s lines brought urgent appeals for immediate relief, not only from politicians and merchants, but also from Mr Rhodes, whose influence at the diamond fields was so commanding that he was virtually dictator of Kimberley. In Natal the garrison of Ladysmith had just repulsed a vigorous assault upon their southern defences; but supplies were beginning to run short, enteric and dysentery were rampant, and privations and overwork were beginning to tell heavily upon the physique of Sir George White’s troops, whose morale, however, hardship and fatigue had in no wise impaired. In the field the enemy had made no more progress than in his siege operations. No Boer commando had crossed the Tugela to harass Sir Redvers Buller as he lay echeloned along the railway from Chieveley to the coast, and thus he had been unmolested while preparing for his second attempt to relieve Ladysmith—the effort which beginning on the 10th of January, 1900, ended in failure twenty-eight days later at Vaal Kranz. In Cape Colony the Boers had been as slothful as in Natal. Gatacre’s opponents were still concentrated round Stormberg; the commandos which had raided across the Orange river by the Norval’s Pont bridge were so stoutly opposed by Lieutenant-General French that they could advance no farther than Colesberg: Cronje, who since his victory on December 11, 1899, had remained inactive at Magersfontein, was confronted by Methuen’s entrenchments at the junction of the Riet and Modder rivers, and the railway between Methuen’s camp to the bridge over the Orange river was adequately guarded. Thus the invaders had not gained ground, and as even the most disaffected of the Cape Dutch had no intention of breaking into open rebellion until commandos of Transvaalers or Free Staters appeared among them, no general rising throughout the colony had taken place; and the safety of the railways running from the coast to our various advanced posts was not seriously imperilled, though the protection of those lines of communication immobilised a large number of troops.
Four days after the Gascon steamed into Table Bay, Field-Marshal Lord Roberts arrived at Cape Town to take command of the army in South Africa. For political reasons the disembarkation of the headquarter staff was made the occasion for a military display; troops lined the streets, and a company of the Royal Irish was sent on shore to form a guard of honour at the landing-stage. A few hours later the Gascon sailed for Port Elizabeth, where on January 12, 1900, the battalion landed, and was ordered to a camp three miles from the harbour. It was so long since the XVIIIth had been on active service that among the rank and file only the reservists, and indeed not all of them, knew how varied and how arduous are the fatigue duties which troops are called upon to perform in a campaign, and the first day’s work in South Africa proved very trying to men just out from England: in burning heat they had first to take their part in unloading the ship, then to pack the stores and baggage on a train which stopped a mile short of their destination; next to “off-load” the goods, and finally to carry them by hand into the camp and there arrange them in proper order. Before many weeks were over the young soldiers, partly by experience and partly by the teaching of their older comrades, had learned that in war for every day spent in fighting fifty are occupied in marching, in making entrenchments or breast-works, in mending roads, in building bridges, in digging waggons out of deep mud-holes, and in dragging guns up the sides of precipitous mountains. Early on the 13th, the battalion was ordered up country to reinforce General French, who with a column of all arms was defending the western portion of the De Aar-Naauwpoort-Stormberg railway which, running roughly parallel with the Orange river, links together the various lines from the coast to the interior of the sub-continent. The eastern part of this cross-country railway was in the hands of the enemy, and one of the most important points left to us was Naauwpoort junction, only thirty-three miles south of Colesberg, the little town where Schoeman, the leader of the invaders, had taken up his quarters. He had intended to drive the British garrison out of Naauwpoort, break up the line connecting Cape Town with Kimberley, and then raise the standard of revolt in the central provinces of Cape Colony; but by a series of brilliant and audacious manœuvres French had gradually edged him back into the network of kopjes encircling Colesberg. Now, in the middle of January, our infantry watched the southern and western faces of this natural fortress, while our mounted troops, widely thrust out on either flank, sought opportunities to harass Schoeman’s communications with the Orange Free State. The railway from Port Elizabeth to Bloemfontein, the capital of the Free State, had been recovered to within ten miles of Colesberg; and railhead was at Rensberg siding, where the battalion arrived on the 15th after a journey full of novel experiences. Owing to want of rolling stock the soldiers were conveyed, not in ordinary passenger carriages, but in open goods trucks. If a company was lucky it travelled in empty trucks, but if there were no “empties” available, the men had to perch on the top of loads of coal or stores, and to cling on for dear life as the train swayed violently in rounding sharp turnings in the line. Every bridge and every important culvert was held by detachments of local volunteers, who as the train approached their post emerged from their improvised shelters to beg for newspapers, and to report that all was well. Every station was guarded by irregular troops, and on the platforms were loyalist ladies, who enthusiastically greeted the Royal Irish, pressing fruit, flowers, and tobacco upon them, and begging for regimental buttons or badges as mementos of the meeting. At every siding stood long trains, shunted to give passage to the troops—some composed of “empties” going back to the base to refill, others laden with supplies of every kind for the front. At long intervals there were halts at stations to give the men time to eat the meals, for which preparations had been made in advance by the Railway staff officers in charge of the line; and as the troop-train gradually neared railhead it passed several villages where French had met and beaten back the enemy while the battalion was still upon the sea.
When the Royal Irish reached Rensberg they heard that they were to reinforce the extreme right of French’s main line, then resting on Slingersfontein, a farm ten miles south-east of Colesberg. The burghers, discovering that this post was weakly manned, were becoming aggressive; and only a few hours before, a detachment of New Zealand Mounted Rifles under Captain Madock, R.A., with a handful of the Yorkshire regiment, had found very great difficulty in beating back a determined attack upon two hills, which, rising about four hundred feet above the plain between Slingersfontein and the Boer positions round Colesberg, were held as outworks to the farm. General Clements was placed in command of the Slingersfontein area, and when on the 16th the battalion, now provided with transport waggons and mules, arrived at his headquarters, he ordered Colonel Guinness to occupy these kopjes as permanent detached posts. Three companies marched off to “Madock’s” and “New Zealand hills,” as the scenes of the previous day’s fighting were now called; the rest of the Royal Irish went on picket; and though the strain of work slightly diminished as the remainder of the 12th brigade successively joined its headquarters, for the next few weeks the battalion was on outpost for two nights out of three. As soon as Slingersfontein was fairly safe, French used it as a pivot for the mounted troops with whom he was trying to find and turn the enemy’s left flank, but as to the east and south-east of Colesberg he was checked by commandos in superior and apparently ever-increasing strength, he sought at the other end of his line for opportunities to manœuvre the enemy still farther backwards towards the Orange river. Before he was able to profit by the information gained in his reconnaissances to the north of the village, he was summoned to Cape Town by Lord Roberts, who desired to explain to him personally the part allotted to the cavalry division in the plan of campaign, elaborated by the Commander-in-Chief and three or four of his most trusted advisers since their arrival in South Africa. In a regimental history it would be out of place to describe how the main army was assembled within striking distance of the western frontier of the Orange Free State: it is enough to say that, thanks to the absolute secrecy maintained by the few officers who were in Lord Roberts’ confidence, the long and difficult process was effected with remarkable success. The troops were entrained without an idea where they were going; the military railway officials despatched the trains in obedience to orders they did not understand; contradictory and misleading reports were spread broadcast over the colony in order to deceive the enemy’s spies and sympathisers. This policy produced the desired result. The burghers, completely puzzled by the information that reached them, failed to penetrate the object of Lord Roberts’ movements, and beyond reinforcing the commandos at Colesberg, made no important changes in their dispositions.
As the cavalry division was now required to cover the concentration of the main army, French returned to Rensberg to superintend its transfer to the Orange-River-Kimberley line; and on the 6th of February, after seeing the last of his own troops quietly disappear from the neighbourhood of Colesberg, he made over the command of the district to Clements, whom Lord Roberts had appointed to continue the work hitherto performed by the cavalry commander. The duty entrusted to Clements was no easy one. The detachment left with him was weak in numbers, weaker still in mobility; it consisted of two squadrons of regular cavalry; about 650 Australian volunteers, many of whom had arrived in South Africa as foot soldiers; 450 regular infantry, of whom a considerable proportion were by no means good riders; one battery of Horse, one of Field artillery, and two howitzers; the 12th brigade of infantry and half a battalion of the Royal Berkshire regiment. With this small force he had to maintain himself on a front twenty-five miles in length against a foe whose numbers were now estimated to be between 11,000 and 12,000 men, well armed and mounted, and whose artillery, a 40-pr., five field-guns, and five pom-poms, was by no means to be despised. Clements carried on the system of defence devised by French. Companies or larger detachments of infantry were posted on important points, a mile or more apart, in rough forts built of the stones and boulders with which the hills were strewn. Every opportunity was taken to make these works more secure, and as the Royal Irish plied pick and shovel and crowbar to improve their defences, careful observation was kept on the enemy’s big gun, and whenever the 40-pr. was turned in their direction a signal warned them to take cover instantly. Thanks to the vigilance of their look-out men, the Royal Irish, though frequently shelled, were able always “to go to earth” in time, and suffered no losses from the cannonade. The front and flanks of the positions were watched by groups of sentries, concealed from the enemy’s view and fire by sangars—the dry-stone breastworks, of which constant use was made throughout the war. Very soon after French’s troops had been withdrawn, the burghers discovered that the British facing them had perceptibly diminished in strength, and at once began a series of attempts to turn Clements’ flanks and cut off his communications with the rest of the army. Between the 6th and the 11th there was fighting on various parts of the line, and so many shells fell among the tents of the Royal Irish and the Worcester that the camps were removed to less exposed positions.[287] On the 12th, both flanks were severely bombarded and then attacked by riflemen, who succeeded in ousting the defenders of Hobkirk’s farm, the post marking our extreme left. At the other end of the line the half battalion of the Worcestershire, which was holding a group of kopjes to the east of Slingersfontein, was hotly shelled, and then exposed to a rifle-fire so heavy that after considerable loss it was unable to retain the whole of the ground entrusted to it, though the greater part was stubbornly and successfully defended till nightfall.
Clements had been obliged to throw every available man into his fighting line, and thus, when his left was turned and his right in serious danger, he had no reserves in hand with which to recapture the lost positions. He decided therefore to retire, and while the troops on the flanks were still able to hold the Boers in some degree in check, he made his preparations to fall back on Rensberg. From details which have been preserved of the way in which the troops were withdrawn from the right of the line, we learn that each of the detachments, scattered over the many miles of country comprised in the Slingersfontein area, received orders to leave its post at an hour timed to bring it into camp thirty minutes before the column was to march. At about 8 P.M., after all the Kaffirs employed as bullock-drivers had been “rounded up and placed under guard to prevent their bolting,” the oxen were inspanned with as little noise as possible, and as each waggon was ready it was sent off to the unit to which it was allotted. The tents were then struck, each corps leaving a few standing to deceive the enemy, and finally the telegraph and signalling stations were dismantled and packed up.[288] While the carts and waggons were returning to the rendezvous of the baggage, a company of the Royal Irish was sent to reinforce a detachment of the battalion in guarding a defile through which the column was about to retire, and when the troops were assembled the march began. Part of the XVIIIth, preceded by a few mounted scouts, formed the advance-guard; then came two guns of the Royal Horse artillery, followed by the whole of the transport vehicles and the remainder of the guns, under escort of dismounted troops. The convoy was flanked by infantry, with supports distributed at intervals throughout its length. The rear-guard was composed of the rest of the foot soldiers in column of half companies at column distance, followed by a company in extended order, and covered by the whole of the mounted troops, widely extended. Thanks to the brilliancy of the moonlight and to the fact that the burghers made no attempt to harass the retreat, Clements arrived early on the 13th at Rensberg, where to his annoyance he found that the Boers had anticipated his movements by occupying a range of kopjes, which from the east commanded the railway from Rensberg to Arundel, the next station southward on the line towards Naauwpoort Junction. As the presence of the enemy among these kopjes made it impossible for him to remain at Rensberg, the General determined to fall back on Arundel, which he reached at 5 A.M. on the 14th of February.
Here for a few days he stood on the defensive, his infantry holding positions on the hills, his mounted men demonstrating vigorously on either flank. During this time the rôle of the Royal Irish was much the same as that assigned to them at Slingersfontein: four companies held a large kopje to the left rear of the village, and the remainder of the battalion was constantly employed on outpost and on fatigues of every kind. The enemy was by no means inactive, and on the 20th attacked Clements in front and on both flanks, but without success; and the good fortune which had attended the XVIIIth throughout the operations at Colesberg continued at Arundel, for though at both places it was frequently shelled and often exposed to the fire of long-range snipers, no casualties occurred while it was serving south of the Orange river. In a short time Clements was reinforced by two field-batteries, two 5-in. guns, a battalion of British militia, and a considerable number of mounted volunteers, chiefly from Cape Colony and Australia; and after driving away the detachment of the enemy which was threatening his left rear, he gradually recovered the ground he had abandoned, shelling the Boers out of successive positions, the flanks of which he threatened with his mounted troops. At that moment it was not part of the Commander-in-Chief’s plan to strike hard for the Norval’s Pont bridge, so Clements’ movements were comparatively slow, but on the 28th of February he re-occupied Colesberg without opposition, for as the Boers had heard of Cronje’s surrender at Paardeberg,[289] they were now falling back on the Orange river, doing as much damage as possible to the railway in their retreat. Clements followed them, repairing the line as he advanced; and on the 8th of March the head of his column stood on the left bank of the river, facing a considerable number of burghers, who from the other side of the stream exulted in the destruction of the Norval’s Pont bridge, the three central spans of which they had blown up. It was impossible to attempt to force the passage of the Orange, as floods rendered it impassable for several days; the pontoon troop did not arrive as soon as it was expected; when it did come up several of the pontoons proved unserviceable, and it was not until the 15th that the river was bridged by a structure, 260 yards in length, supported partly on pontoons and partly on piers extemporised from casks. Large numbers of the labourers employed in its construction were supplied from the ranks of the Royal Irish. As soon as the bridge was practicable, a considerable body of troops crossed at once and established themselves unmolested on the soil of the Free State.
To those who judge of the importance of a military operation by the length of the casualty lists, the work done by the Royal Irish and the other units of the 12th brigade since they landed in South Africa will appear insignificant, as between the 6th of February and the 15th of March the total losses in Clements’ whole command only amounted to 327 killed, wounded, and missing. Soldiers, however, will appreciate the value of the part played in this stage of the campaign by General Clements, who, in the words of the official historian, “had to detain the Boers at Colesberg and prevent them from swooping upon the lines of communication south of the Orange—a movement which, if successful, would have caused an outbreak of active disloyalty in large districts of Cape Colony hitherto sullenly quiescent. By maintaining himself between Rensberg and Arundel he fulfilled his chief function, as well as the hardly less important duties of guarding the right rear of the main army, of securing the safety of the important railway junction of Naauwpoort, and incidentally of keeping under his fire a body of the enemy who might otherwise have joined in the opposition to Lord Roberts’ march.”[290]