A West Pointer with the Boers /

by John Y. Fillmore Blake

To meet Buller, General Botha withdrew all his forces from Spion Kop and vicinity, and put them in their old positions in front of Colenso. As to whether General Buller really discovered that Langwani Hill was the key to our positions, or tumbled on to it by accident, I do not know, but, certain it was, that he was intent on getting possession of this hill, by making a flank attack on our extreme left. Langwani Hill was on Buller's side of the river, and once our left was turned, we could no longer hold it. It was not till February 18th that General Buller brought fifteen or sixteen batteries to play upon the Boer positions. It would prove tedious to describe the ten days of terrible fighting that preceded the relief of Ladysmith; so I will simply speak of it in a general way.

Buller finally succeeded in turning the Boers' left, and so Langwani Hill was abandoned, but not until the English had suffered severely. At Pieters Hill, Groblers Kloof, and the neighboring hills where the Boers were well placed by General Botha, the hardest fighting took place. In the struggle to force the Boers from their positions, the English were driven back repeatedly to the river, although their numbers were about twenty-five to one against ours. Their dead and wounded ran well into the hundreds at each attempt, and on two or three occasions were allowed to remain as they had fallen on the open veld, during the whole night, to suffer and die. The English have little or no regard for their dead and wounded, as I will in time to come show. In all these advances the English shells were constantly bursting among their own men and were directly responsible for many of their own dead and wounded. Three Irish regiments were always placed in front, and these were supported by English regiments who kept safely in the background. As on previous occasions, some Irish regiments had surrendered after making a slight resistance. I believe, and hundreds of others believe, that the English deliberately and intentionally made the "mistake" of firing their shells into the Irish regiments, to drive them on and force them to take the entrenched positions from the Boers. This was not the first time, nor was it the last time that they made a mistake of this kind, and in every case it was the Irish who were chosen to suffer. Twice during these first five days of fighting, the good General Botha had granted an armistice to Buller to be used in caring for his dead and wounded, but these were wofully neglected and advantage taken to make better dispositions of his troops.

It is just as much of a latter-day Englishman's nature to be treacherous as it is for an American Indian to be suspicious. Every repulse was followed on the next day by another advance. The heavy lyddite shells kept continually pounding the hills, tearing off their very tops and filling the air with smoke and stones; yet the brave Boers remained unmoved in their positions, and kept up their deadly fire on the advancing Irish regiments. Each day's work was practically a repetition of the preceding one, until the 27th of February, when there was a great change. The Boers had now lain in the mud and water that half filled their trenches and, without relief and without food, fought incessantly for ten days till, being weary and worn and completely exhausted, they reluctantly left their positions and began their retreat.

The famous Krugersdorp Commando under Kemp held Pieter's Hill to the very last moment, and no one about Ladysmith, be he Boer or English, will ever forget the wonderful stand made by those 400 patriots against Buller's whole army and 100 guns. It is perfectly certain that every man of them accounted for at least one Tommie before the final retreat.

On the 28th, Ladysmith was relieved, and the Boers went back to the Biggarsberg Mountains. General White in Ladysmith could plainly see a line of wagons fifteen miles long, yet he made no move to delay or capture them. Worn out and exhausted as the Boers really were, I do not believe that Buller would have been successful in relieving Ladysmith had they not received the report of General Cronje's surrender at Paardeberg on the 27th. This news was deeply felt, and it so thoroughly discouraged the Boers that they lost heart and left positions without orders, which they could have easily continued to hold. To relieve General White and his 12,000 skeletons, General Buller had exploded hundreds of tons of Mr. Chamberlain's lyddite and lost as many men as he succeeded in relieving. Mr. Chamberlain was a big winner, the English heavy losers, and the Tugela Valley is now renowned as an Irish graveyard. A few more wars like the South African would settle all of Ireland's many troubles, because the Irish would all be laid under the sod. How strange it is that a people who have fought against England's tyranny for centuries to secure their freedom, and are still fighting for the same end, will voluntarily join with their old and detested oppressor to deprive another people of their liberty, knowing, too, as they must, that in every instance they weaken themselves and strengthen their old enemy.

Yet, this is exactly what the Irish have done, and I have no sympathy for those who are to-day sleeping in the Tugela Valley as a result of their own voluntary acts.

During a terrific rain storm on the night of the 27th, and in the very eyes of Buller's army on one side and White's on the other, our Irish boys were the chief instruments in pulling down Long Tom from the top of Bulwana Kop. It was fearful and exasperating work, and it was not until two o'clock in the morning that our large gun safely landed at the foot of the kop and started on its way to Elandslaagte. General Botha was near at hand with some 300 or 400 men, but he could have offered little or no resistance had an attempt been made to capture the gun.

Our hundreds of wagons, with all our cannon and maxims, were hauled through heavy mud and across an open flat for twenty miles, and safely landed in the Biggarsberg Mountains, and that, too, in the very presence and before the eyes of an English army of 45,000 trained officers and men, who never moved an inch in our direction.

Quite a cavalry force came out of Ladysmith, but when a few of the Irish boys opened fire on them, they all turned and fled back to town. The English should have captured all our wagons and cannon, and would have done it, too, had they known anything about their business. Buller and White together could have easily trained 150 cannon on us and forced us to abandon everything, but they seemed satisfied to stop just where they were, and, no doubt, congratulated themselves that the Boers had escaped without doing them further damage. Some time before the relief of Ladysmith, the Free State Commandos had left and gone to meet Lord Roberts, who was advancing towards Bloemfontein; so it was only the Transvaal Commandos who took up positions in the Biggarsberg Mountain passes. As the English had a big force on the Tugela River, about eighteen miles in front of Helpmakaar, the Irish Brigade was ordered to go to Helpmakaar and hold them back. Should the English get hold of this place, our positions in the Biggarsberg would no longer be tenable, for the line of retreat to Laing's Nek would then be seriously threatened. We found the Piet Retief Commando there, but about four miles behind the position it should have occupied. We learned, on questioning the officers, that it was too dangerous a place for Piet Retief men, and they would not risk a stand there. We then went and had a look for ourselves, and we decided that 200 men in the position could easily prove a match for any 5000 Englishmen who might come, so we were satisfied to try our luck. It was the strongest position for defence that I had yet seen, for it was impossible to flank it; and to take it, the attacking force had to come along one road, and the distance from the foot of this steep mountain to the top was at least two miles. The English knew that position and that mountain, and never made any effort to take it during our month's residence there.

In the month of April, I received word from Pretoria that about 1,000 Irish and Irish-Americans had arrived at Delagoa Bay, on their way to join my brigade. I was in great glee on receiving this long expected news, and lost no time in going to Pretoria, not only to meet them, but to prepare for them a red hot time with the English. I arranged with the President and Executive Council, to recall the brigade from Helpmakaar, bring it to Elandsfontein, where I would join it with something like a thousand Irish-Americans, and all proceed to Fourteen Streams, where I knew there would be some interesting fighting. Having done this, I at once took the train to Middleburg where I would meet the good boys from free America. I was thoroughly convinced that the Irish and Irish-Americans were intent on doing something good for down-trodden Ireland by proving that England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity. My hopes were high, and all sort of plans and schemes were passing through my mind when the steam whistle announced that I was in Middleburg. Here I found that the long expected boys would arrive on the following morning. The whole town learned of their coming, and all turned out to greet them. Finally came what I at first supposed to be the advance guard, the American Ambulance Corps of fifty-eight men from Chicago and Massachusetts. They were warmly received with the shouts and hurrahs of the assembled multitude. When I found time to breathe I asked when the fighters would arrive. The answer was "We are the fighters! No more coming that we know off." Now I felt so thoroughly disappointed that I made up my mind to drop dead on the spot, but was saved from such a terrible ordeal by the idea suddenly occurring to me that possibly others would soon follow. I long lived in hope, but only to be disappointed in the end, for no more ever came.