“I know my hair stood on end. A scramble ensued, which is rather amusing to look back upon. Some of us just slipped over the edge and hung on by the sleepers, with the torrent, thirty or forty feet below, to fall into, and rocks to land on if you missed the water. The train was, however, pulled up before getting on to the bridge, and all got safely over. I believe the rear-guard saw a lion on the last march down the Kaap valley into Kaapmuiden. One of the men in my company woke up one fine morning to find a snake asleep beside him. It was with some difficulty he was able to persuade his fellows he was not a de Rougemont, and when at last they carefully pulled off the blankets—the wretched fellow was sweating at every pore with fright—they discovered a particularly venomous-looking puff adder coiled up between his legs! The snake was duly killed, but I imagine that man will never forget the horrible five minutes he must have spent before persuading those around he was not blarneying them.”
On September 25, Hamilton caught up the advance-guard of the army at Komati Poort, where an amazing amount of stores and railway plant had been found, but no enemy. On the approach of the British the burghers had broken into small bands and disappeared along the Portuguese frontier; some returned to their homes and either took no further part in the war or joined our side; others, to whom all honour as brave and determined enemies is due, reassembled to form the guerilla bands which kept the war alive for twenty-one weary months after the Boer army had ceased to exist as a formed and organised body of men.
The troops composing Hamilton’s column received his thanks for their exertions in a general order, dated October 1, 1900—
“General Ian Hamilton wishes to congratulate his force on the fine work which has been performed by them since they marched out of Belfast on September 3rd, 1900. During this period they have driven the enemy out of his most formidable selected positions—first on the main Lydenburg road, where they barred the progress of the Natal arms; and secondly, on the height overlooking Lydenburg itself. They have also encountered and overcome every sort of natural obstacle, and have carried the British flag through tracts of waterless bush, and over ranges of lofty mountains to the most remote frontier of the enemy. All this has been done with so much spirit, and so cheerfully, as to excite the G.O.C.’s greatest admiration, who will take the first opportunity of informing Lord Roberts of the splendid work done by all ranks under his command.”
In an unofficial letter, written after the war was over, General Smith-Dorrien stated that of all the troops which came under his orders in South Africa, “none served me more loyally or gave me less trouble than the Royal Irish; I have nothing but pleasant associations to remember with regard to the time I had the honour of having the battalion under my command.”
The Royal Irish spent a few days in clearing the railway and in attending a review of the British troops, held in honour of the birthday of the King of Portugal, and then were ordered to entrain for Belfast; the journey, by no means an uneventful one, is vividly described by Captain Dease.
“The regiment returned from Komati Poort in several trains, as there was an excess of rolling stock on the line which wanted moving up towards Pretoria. The Boers had made quite a mess of things on the railway. They had fired great numbers of trucks and disabled a good many engines. The big bridge across the Kaap at Kaapmuiden had also been destroyed, and rather cleverly too. They had blown down the upper part of one of the piers, got steam up in one of the heavier ‘Free State Railway’ engines, set it going from Kaapmuiden station, and succeeded in absolutely smashing up the damaged pier, as well as the spans on either side. The volunteers and C company did most of the work on the building of a deviation and temporary bridge, which was taken in hand immediately. We left Kaapmuiden at about 5 P.M. on the 30th September. As I had had some mechanical training as a boy, I took on the driving of the second train, in which were most of our officers. The first train was given five minutes’ grace before I was told to start. My fireman was a corporal in the Royal Scots, I think, who had ‘been on’ a traction engine at home, while the second man was also a soldier from some other regiment, with an equal recommendation for his present job! I myself had a fair knowledge of locomotive work, but (at that time) little of the vacuum brake: anyway, I certainly had not sufficient knowledge of the work for the job in hand. All went well till we got to the deviation and bridge we had made over the Kaap. Here the fun began. The road up the other side was at so steep a gradient that I couldn’t get my train up it. We stopped and rolled back over the bridge. A second try met with as little success. It then occurred to my fireman and myself that if we ‘backed’ up the grade behind the bridge, and then rushed forward down on to the bridge the momentum would carry us over. This it did, but the train must have had a narrow escape of wrecking that frail, temporary structure. After this we proceeded ‘with caution,’ going not more than about 10 miles an hour. Darkness fell about three or four miles beyond the Kaap bridge. The ‘road’ here runs along the sides of hills, with a steep slope to the Krokodil Valley, a couple of hundred feet below. Naturally the curves are very sharp, and cuttings numerous. I was very ‘jumpy’ at the time, not knowing the road and uncertain of myself as a driver, and kept the speed down. It was fortunate I did so, for as we rounded a corner a group of men on the hillside shouted to me to ‘stop,’ ‘danger,’ &c. I jammed down the air-brake hard and shut off steam, bringing the train up with a terrific jerk, to find the buffer of my engine within a few yards of the rear of the train in front. The sudden pull up had caused quite an upset in the trucks behind, as the jerk was hard enough to roll everyone and everything in the trucks over. We found that the driver of the first train’s engine (also an amateur like myself) had allowed the water to run too low in his boiler, melting the plug over his fire-box, and rendering the engine totally useless. We were still talking about our narrow escape when suddenly round the curve behind us were seen the front lights of a third train. We happened to have no ‘tail lights,’ and before warning could be given our train had been run into with a terrific smash from behind. For a few minutes the confusion was indescribable. Then things straightened themselves out. A piquet was sent some distance down the line to prevent another train colliding with the third train, and parties went to work extricating the injured. The extraordinary thing was that although quite a number of trucks had been ‘piled up’ in our train, nobody was killed, and only about thirty or forty hurt. One of the latter was Deane-Morgan: he had been standing on the edge of a culvert when the crash came, and, without thinking, he involuntarily took a step backwards, and dropped about thirty feet or so into the bed of a nullah. He hurt his knee badly, but no bones were broken—another extraordinary escape.
“We spent that night and part of the next morning clearing away the wreck, and at last arrived at Krokodil Poort, the next station, in the afternoon. The journey thence to Waterval Onder was exciting only to me on the engine, as it was performed through the night, but peaceful to everyone else.”
After these adventures the Royal Irish reached Belfast on the 4th of October, and at once relieved the troops then holding the outposts round the town, where the duty was so heavy that when the Commander-in-Chief ordered the battalion to Pretoria to represent Ireland at the formal annexation of the Transvaal to the British Crown, only three companies could be spared to take part in the ceremony. Along the whole of the Pretoria-Komati Poort railway, as indeed on all the lines throughout the theatre of war, every station was held as a fortress; every train was guarded by soldiers;[311] every bridge and almost every culvert absorbed a detachment, great or small, for its defence; while flying columns were often required to disperse the guerilla bands which threatened weak points on the line of communication. Until December, the Boers in the eastern Transvaal occupied themselves chiefly in train-wrecking; but on the 28th of that month they stormed a strongly entrenched post at Helvetia, captured a large number of men, and carried away in triumph a 4.7-in. gun. Encouraged by this success, they determined to attack the posts along eighty miles of railway; the stations at Pan, Wildfontein, Wonderfontein, Belfast, Dalmanutha, Machadodorp, and Nooitgedacht were to be assailed simultaneously, though the main effort was to be against Belfast, where a great depôt of stores and much ammunition formed a prize worth striving for. Though the headquarters of three battalions were stationed at Belfast, the Colonels of the Royal Irish, the Shropshire Light Infantry, and the Gordon Highlanders could muster between them no more than 1300 men—a small number of foot soldiers with which to furnish outposts, guard the town and guns, and reinforce threatened points on the enormous perimeter of fifteen miles rendered necessary by the formation of the ground around the place. The remainder of the garrison consisted of two hundred and eighty of the 5th Lancers, a hundred and eighty mounted infantry, a battery of field artillery, and two 4.7-in. guns.