Taking part in the action were two companies of the Bucks Yeomanry, one of the Berks Yeomanry, one of the Oxford Yeomanry, one company of the Sherwood Rangers, one of the Yorkshire Yeomanry, and also the Kimberley Mounted Volunteers. With these was the Fourth Battery R.F.A.
Types of Arms.—12-lb. Field Gun of the Elswick (Northumberland Service) Battery. By permission of Messrs. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., the makers.
The Imperial Yeomanry under Lord Chesham on this occasion had their first chance of distinguishing themselves and seized it, behaving, as some one who looked on said, “like veteran troops.” The affair began in haste. A Yeomanry patrol suddenly discovered the enemy and announced his near approach. There was a rush. “To horse! to horse!” sang out the troopers keen for action. Their steeds were grazing, but in less than thirty minutes every man was careering off to duty. The Boers, some sixty-eight in number, were tenanting a kopje, and round their lair the troops disposed themselves, Lord Scarborough’s Squadron of Yeomanry to left, and the Kimberley Mounted Corps to right. The rest of the Yeomanry attacked from the front, occupying two small kopjes some fourteen hundred yards distant from the enemy. These promptly greeted them with a persistent fusillade. Then the right flank slowly began to creep up, taking advantage of cover as nature had provided, while the front marched across the open. This advance of the troops was masterly, though no cover was available till the base of the kopje occupied by the enemy was reached. Method and coolness were displayed to a great extent, and to these qualities was due the day’s success. For three and a half hours the operations lasted, the men closing gradually in, and finally surrounding the kopje and storming it. The surrounding process, both by the Yeomanry and the Kimberley force, was carried on with amazing skill and coolness till the moment came for which all were panting. The Yeomanry then fixed bayonets and charged. A rush, a flash of steel, and then—surrender. The Boers hoisted a white flag! but even as they did so their comrades poured deadly bullets on our advancing men. Captain Williams of the “Imperials,” who was gallantly in advance of his comrades, dropped, shot dead in the very hour of victory. There was small consolation in the fact that the murderer was instantly slain by an avenging hand.
At this time the men had gained the hill and were within seventy yards of the Boer trenches. But the Boers, notwithstanding their display of the white flag, continued to blaze with their rifles till a Yeomanry officer shouted that he would continue to fire unless the enemy threw down their rifles and put up their hands. This threat brought the cowards to their senses. They obeyed, and the position was gained with a rousing, ringing cheer. Then came the sad part of triumph, the collection of the gallant dead and the succour of the wounded. Among the first were three, Captains Williams and Boyle, and Sergeant Patrick Campbell. The enemy’s dead and wounded numbered fourteen, while our wounded numbered seven.
Captain Cecil Boyle was shot through the temple within eighty yards of the Boer position while gallantly leading his men. He was a soldier to the core, one who, merely from a sense of patriotic responsibility, was among the first to leap to his country’s call, and who threw into his work so much energy, zeal, and grave purpose that the atmosphere of the camp made him feel at the end of a week as if, to use his own words, “I had done nothing but soldiering all my life.” He, at the invitation of his old chum, Colonel Douglas Haig, began work at Colesberg “to watch the cavalry operations.” There he had what he thought the supreme good luck to be appointed galloper to General French. After the relief of Kimberley and the capture of Cronje he went to the Cape to meet the Oxfordshire Yeomanry, and with them gallantly advanced to meet his fate—the first Yeomanry officer in this history of ours to fall in action.
COLONEL LORD CHESHAM, Imperial Yeomanry
Photo by Russell & Sons, London