The Campaigns and History of the Royal Irish Regiment, [v. 1,] from 1684 to 1902

by G. le M. Gretton

The history of the battalion for the next two months is almost devoid of interest. The Royal Irish formed part of the column which Clements led from the Orange river to Bloemfontein, over a vast and gently undulating plain, dotted at rare intervals with villages whose inhabitants, professing to be tired of the war, readily handed over to the troops a few hundred rifles, some of modern pattern, others so obsolete as to be fit for nothing but a museum of antiquities. On the 4th of April, the 12th brigade reached the capital of the Free State, where it remained stationary for several weeks, fully, though by no means agreeably, occupied in the drudgery which fell to the lot of every soldier fated to garrison any of the towns wrested from the enemy. There was much wood cutting: many fatigues at the railway station: heavy guards and outposts, and frequent route marches. For men whose drill was not perfect there were parades; and when drafts began to arrive from home, courses of musketry and judging distance were carried out for the benefit of the new-comers. The use of the rifle was not the only part of a soldier’s trade in which the youngsters required training. As they were ignorant of the art of making themselves comfortable on active service their comrades, who had learned much since they landed at Port Elizabeth, took this branch of their education in hand, and taught the recruits to live together in groups of three men, dividing the work among them: one collected fuel—e.g., cow-dung or scraps of wood; the second looked after the fire and cooked; while the third pitched the bivouac and acted as orderly man to the little mess.

In May the battalion was in great strength, for although exposure, hardships, and enteric fever had begun to take toll, the drafts had more than made good the waste of the campaign. The deficiency of officers was a thing of the past, for many had found their way out to South Africa within two or three weeks of the landing of the battalion at Port Elizabeth, and others had brought out drafts from home. In March six officers and a hundred and ninety-six other ranks joined near Arundel; in April two officers and ninety six men (chiefly from the militia reserve) reached Bloemfontein; and on May 8, two large parties reported themselves to Colonel Guinness: the first consisted of two officers and ninety-six men from the depôt; the second was a company of volunteers—three officers and a hundred and nine other ranks from the 5th (Irish) battalion of the King’s (Liverpool regiment). In no war ever waged by Britain has the stream of reinforcements been so abundant, so evenly distributed, and so well maintained as in the long struggle with the Boer republics. The Royal Irish were not more favoured than other corps, yet from the time the battalion landed until peace was declared no less than 1180 non-commissioned officers and men joined headquarters. The second battalion provided 150 seasoned men from India, and eight drafts, 443 in all, were sent out from home by the officer commanding details: the militia battalions of the Royal Irish territorial regiment contributed 423 (exclusive of three officers),[291] and the Irish volunteers in Liverpool furnished a contingent of 164 (also exclusive of five officers).

In years to come, when the nation has realised that for its own safety every male citizen must be trained to arms, students of regimental history will wonder how so many partially instructed troops found their way into the ranks of the Royal Irish. Neither the militia nor the volunteers were liable to serve abroad in case of war, but as has been said in [Chapter x]., in the militia a reserve of men had been established, picked for physique and character, who in return for a small annual retaining fee had assumed the liability to serve in time of war as regular soldiers in any part of the world. As soon as the reserve of the regular army was called out, these men were summoned to the depôt of their territorial regiments, and gradually sent out to the battalions in South Africa. The militia reservists joining the Royal Irish were for the most part hardy, though not highly trained peasants who after a short experience in the field became very valuable soldiers. When the United Kingdom began to understand that the campaign in South Africa was developing into the most difficult and arduous war she had waged for nearly a century, all branches of the Auxiliary Forces volunteered for active service. The regiments of Yeomanry became the nucleus of the mounted force sent to South Africa under the name of Imperial Yeomanry: many militia battalions went out as complete units, and volunteer battalions were permitted to form from their ranks companies of picked officers and men, whose function it was to reinforce the infantry of the line at the seat of war. The Royal Irish were fortunate in their volunteer company, which was well officered and composed of men mostly Irish by descent, whose trades as engineers, boilermakers, fitters, carpenters, and bricklayers had developed both their muscles and their brains. The company landed on March 11, but on its way up country, to use the slang of the South African war, it was “snaffled on the L. of C.,” or in other words, detained at various posts on the lines of communication, where all ranks learned so much of their duty in the field that a week after they joined at Bloemfontein they were considered fit to take their turn at the outposts: and in the forcing-house of active service they speedily developed into a very useful body of men.

When the militia reservists and the volunteers reached Bloemfontein it was anything but a cheerful place, for enteric still raged in the hospitals, and the road to the cemetery was daily trodden by long processions of soldiers, bearing on their shoulders stretchers whereon rested the bodies of the comrades whom they were carrying to the grave. To counteract these depressing influences the officers organised rifle meetings, inter-company football matches, and athletic sports of various kinds. The effect of these amusements was good, but better still was the news that the brigade was once more to take the field, when on the 17th of May General Clements was ordered to entrain his command to Winburg, a little town about sixty-five miles north-east of Bloemfontein.

Since the battalion had landed at Port Elizabeth the military situation had improved marvellously. Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking had been relieved. Lord Roberts had forced his way across the south-east of the Free State, captured Cronje with 4000 burgers at Paardeberg on February 27, and entered Bloemfontein on March 13, to find that the enemy had scattered northwards before him in panic. When the burghers who faced Gatacre and Clements in the north of Cape Colony heard of Cronje’s surrender, they fell back into the east of the Free State, leaving rear-guards to watch the Orange river, and if possible prevent the British from crossing it at Bethulie and Norval’s Pont. Lord Roberts’ first care on reaching the capital of the Free State was to join hands with Gatacre and Clements; to make himself master of the railway from Bloemfontein to the Orange, and to secure the waterworks on which the troops were dependent for pure water. From the country west of the railway no serious attack was anticipated, but as there was danger that the large number of Boers who had betaken themselves to the mountainous regions in the east of the Free State might rally, destroy the waterworks, and cut the railway—the line of communication with the coast—the Commander-in-Chief sent a strong mounted flank-guard into the hills east of the waterworks, while with smaller detachments he covered the right or eastern side of the railway. At the end of March and beginning of April these flank-guards were overtaken by a series of misfortunes: the largest and most important was defeated with heavy loss at the waterworks in an engagement known as Sannah’s Post; the second was captured at Reddersberg; a third narrowly escaped a similar fate by a hasty and exhausting retreat;[292] at Wepener only did we still hold our ground. Yet, though these reverses were annoying, their effect was very transitory, for the Boers failed to seize the opportunity of falling upon the railway, and by frittering away their strength in an unsuccessful siege of Wepener allowed an uninterrupted stream of supplies to reach the army at Bloemfontein. Strengthened by large reinforcements from England and from Natal, Lord Roberts then began a series of manœuvres by which he succeeded in pushing the enemy backwards towards their eastern fastnesses, and at the end of April the danger to the line of communication was so greatly diminished that he was free to resume the main object of the campaign.

The Commander-in-Chief’s plan was as vast as it was simple. Upon Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, were to converge several columns working on a front nearly three hundred miles in length. On the extreme right of the line, General Buller was to sweep the Boers out of the mountains of northern Natal, where they had established themselves after they had been obliged to abandon the siege of Ladysmith. Far away on the extreme left, a force, based on Kimberley and commanded by Lieutenant-General Hunter, was to relieve Mafeking and invade the Transvaal from the west. Lord Roberts was to lead the main army along the railway from Bloemfontein to Pretoria, with his left covered to some extent by Lieutenant-General Lord Methuen, who was to move northwards through the west of the Free State; his right was to be guarded by two strong columns under Lieutenant-Generals Ian Hamilton and Colvile,[293] while to Lieutenant-General Rundle, who commanded the recently landed 8th division and the body of South Africans styled the Colonial division, was entrusted the duty of preventing raids upon the railway between Bloemfontein and the Orange river by commandos from the hilly country east of the line. The area which Rundle had to watch has been described as “the granary and the manœuvre ground of the Orange Free State, a region dotted with towns and villages, wealthy in crops, and abounding in the water-courses, ridges, and kopjes on which the Boers had fashioned their favourite tactics. Here men could both hide in safety and subsist in ease; the harvest of the past year had been too rich for its owners to be willing to desert their stores. The region, in short, formed an irresistible attraction both to farmers and fighting men; and it flanked the British communications from end to end.”[294] In a series of successful skirmishes Rundle gradually pushed the enemy before him, and by the middle of May his line stretched from Clocolan to Winburg. Lord Roberts had entered Kroonstad on the 12th, and so satisfactory did the situation in the south-east of the Free State then appear that a redistribution of the forces was sanctioned, in the course of which the 12th brigade was ordered from Bloemfontein to Winburg.

For a few days after its arrival the battalion was employed in building sangars at various points round the town, and as no enemy appeared to test these works many a young soldier thought that his labour had been wasted; but this was not the case, for when at the end of August the place was suddenly attacked, the fortifications thrown up by Clements proved of great value in the defence, in which some of the mounted infantry of the regiment took part. On May 26, the battalion started for the town of Senekal, now the advance base in the eastern Free State, and during a three days’ “trek” realised the truth of the camp saying that the march of a British column in South Africa could be traced by “bully-beef” tins and dead animals, for the dreary, dusty, khaki-coloured plain was littered with empty rations cases, and with the carcases of mules and oxen abandoned by the troops as they pressed forward to the front. With this very uninviting piece of country the Royal Irish were destined to make further acquaintance, as during the month of June they furnished several strong escorts to convoys over the forty miles of road between Senekal and the railhead at Winburg. The 12th brigade remained nearly a month at Senekal, where the Royal Irish, who spent two nights a-week shivering in the works round the town, became painfully aware that though the winter days on the veld are glorious the nights are abominably cold.

While the battalion was at Senekal the Free State burghers under Christian De Wet had taken the initiative in the eastern part of their republic: they had made prisoners of considerable detachments, captured large and valuable convoys, and by breaking up the railway at several points to the north of Bloemfontein had interrupted the line of communication with Pretoria, where Lord Roberts, after occupying Johannesburg, had hoisted the British flag on the 5th of June. Among the measures at once taken by the Commander-in-Chief for the pacification of the Orange Free State was the formation of strong flying columns to penetrate into the districts in which the burghers were still in arms. One of these columns was to be commanded by Clements, who, with his own brigade and that of Major-General A. H. Paget (the 20th), was to march upon Bethlehem where a considerable number of the enemy were known to be assembled. With nearly 5000 men[295] Clements left Senekal on June 28, bound in the first place for Lindley, a village forty miles to the north-east, where he was to join hands with Paget before moving towards Bethlehem. The column marched in what the troops called “the picture-frame formation”: half battalions in very extended order formed the front, sides, and rear of a vast hollow square, covering two or three miles of ground, while the mounted troops scouted widely in every direction. At Klipplaat Drift, three miles from Senekal, the Boers opened fire upon the advance-guard with four guns, a pom-pom, and a maxim, and made so stout an opposition that Clements had only gained seven miles when the approach of night obliged him to bivouac, with the enemy still in strength on his front and flanks. Though most of the work fell on the mounted troops, part of the Royal Irish regiment was engaged during the afternoon. A young officer who had recently brought out a number of recruits to the battalion thus describes his experiences in this, his first engagement: “The regiment was the left flank-guard. It was the first time that many of us had been in action, and we realised the truth of the saying that ‘it takes a ton of lead to kill a man,’ for though for several hours we were under a hot rifle fire from invisible enemies at more or less effective range, with shells falling among us, I don’t think we lost more than one man killed.[296] Our militia reservists were splendid in their ignorance of danger. As the bullets were whistling over their heads one of them was heard to ask his comrade whether ‘it was the birds making that noise!’ He must have been brother to the man who, when ordered to set his sights at a prescribed range, explained his failure to do so by saying that he ‘didn’t know figures.’”