Two Years on Trek: Being Some Account of the Royal Sussex Regiment in South Africa

by Louis Eugène Du Moulin

The leading company, G, was directed to advance towards Marble Kop, proceeding in a circuitous direction, and skirting the base of the narrow kopje, then in front and lying at our feet. This kopje G should have left on the right. The companies were to advance in column of sections, each extended to ten paces, and with large intervals between each line; all officers and supernumeraries were to be in among the men in line, so as not to render themselves too conspicuous. The companies were soon fairly launched and moving off across the grassy veldt in great parallel lines, about a hundred or more yards apart, and stretching well away to the right and left, so as not to afford to the enemy a more extensive objective than was necessary. The leading company was a long way off, and the men were appearing smaller and smaller as they got further away to the front, when it was noticed that the column, instead of skirting the narrow kopje in front and leaving it on their right, had misunderstood these instructions and were entering the funnel shaped passage, thus leaving the narrow kopje on their left.

There was then no time or means of recalling them without considerable delay, owing to the distance, fully a mile, which they had already traversed, so it was considered advisable to allow them to continue their advance in the direction which they had chosen; the point of attack had been distinctly pointed out to every one concerned, and if, as often happens in these widely extended movements, certain contingencies had arisen which necessitated the direction of the attack being changed, yet no further instruction could be given by the commanding officer, and the execution of the attack must, perforce, be left to the discretion of each company commander.

Under the extended order system as carried out during this war, the company commander becomes a far more important personage than he has been during the last twenty years, with an immensely free hand, within certain limits, directly active operations commence.

The machine guns under Captain Green had gone along with H company, and had by this time, with the three leading companies, gone quite out of sight into the funnel shaped passage; C company, which was the fifth in order of succession, was just inside the entrance, and E was following in rear: the ammunition cart and water cart and the rest of the first line were coming on behind. This was the situation about one o'clock, and I was walking up the narrow kopje, intending to watch the progress of events from its summit, when suddenly from inside the passage on the right, into which the companies had gone, came, like a clap of thunder, a most fearful outburst of firing, which continued for some time without intermission, and which echoed and re-echoed among the ravines and rocky hills, until one could hardly hear one's own voice.

From the top of the kopje nothing could be seen, either of our men or the enemy, and the infernal pandemonium still continued in the valley below; but to the incessant ping-boom, ping-boom of the Mauser, unmistakeable from its propinquity, was now added the ping, ping, ping of the Lee Metford, and the continuous stutter of the Maxim, as this highly strung machine, shaking and quivering with nervous energy, stammered out whole belts full of ammunition without ceasing. Undoubtedly, Captain Green had got hold of a soft thing and was taking the utmost advantage of it, and squeezing the last ounce out of the Maxim, which fired as it had never fired before and probably never will again. The water in the casing fizzed and spluttered, but more was handy; the empty belts littered the ground, but the ammunition cart was not far off, and so the vastly important work of spattering with bullets the hillside opposite, which a moment before had been as still as the grave, was continued without intermission. The companies in front had dropped into cover behind some huge rocks which fringed both sides of the valley, immediately on the first shots being fired; and they had ever since continued to fire at their invisible foe, who were lining the hillside and the jagged crest line not 800 yards away.

Captain Mackenzie had, at the outset, exposed himself somewhat recklessly, and had been knocked over in the open with a bullet in his ankle; his subaltern, Lieut. Hopkins, seeing this, shouted to a couple of men to accompany him, and dashed out without a moment's thought towards his captain, in the face of a murderous fire which covered the ground around them with a cloud of dust spirts. Together with the two men, who turned out to be Corporal Hoad and Lance-Corporal Neville, Lieut. Hopkins raised Captain Mackenzie and bore him, groaning and sweating with agony from his broken ankle, to safety.

For this gallant act these three, the young officer and the two Corporals (both young soldiers), were recommended for the Victoria Cross, the highest distinction to which a soldier can aspire. However, in lieu of this, Lieut. Hopkins was offered a company in the Manchester regiment, and the two Corporals were each awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

Nothing could be done to withdraw the companies in front, and the Maxim had also to remain; but orders were sent to B, C, and E companies to move to their left to the other side of the kopje. This they soon did, and the attack was launched again at Marble Kop, but on this occasion from the direction in which it had been originally intended to advance. As matters turned out, however, it was perhaps as well that the mistake had been made and the advance commenced in the wrong direction, as our three companies, although useless to the battalion in continuing the advance, were still of inestimable value where they were lying, as they held a good number of the enemy in check and prevented them from leaving their cover and proceeding to other positions, from which they could, perhaps, have done more damage. While our three companies kept up a dropping fire and while the Maxim rattled out its scattered shots at intervals, no Boer would dare to leave his cover; and so matters remained in statu quo in this valley until dusk.

Meanwhile, our battery had commenced shelling vigorously the slopes of the hills on the right of Marble Kop, and B and C companies, with E following, were moving over to the open ground directly in front of it; from here they advanced in succession by half-companies and stretched away out into the veldt, E company being meanwhile held in reserve.