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

by Louis Eugène Du Moulin

As the Brigade was likely to proceed on the trek again, it never having been known to rest more than two or three days at a time, the opportunity was taken to fill up the Brigade Canteen wagons with stores, and a small party went shopping with a traction engine and three trucks and bought all they could get; as usual the shopkeepers, some English, some German, declined to part with any quantity of their stock, which they were, of course, hanging on to in the hope of prices rising, and I had to obtain an order from the District Commissioner to compel them to sell, though at enormous prices—eighteenpence for a tin of milk or a pot of jam, and other things in proportion.

As luck would have it, I succeeded, at my next visit to the town, in discovering the exact profit which these firms had made out of the Brigade Canteen over this transaction, and as all this talk about stores and prices serves to show how an English soldier is treated by his affectionate countrymen on his arrival in a beleaguered town, this must be my excuse for harping so long on one string.

There was an enterprising man who had arrived from Bloemfontein with several wagons full of stores, which he sold equally to the few merchants in Kroonstad. On the very day and at the time delivery was being made, I turned up with my traction engine and trucks and my order from the District Commissioner, and purchased most of these stores, nearly all the cases being handed over at the storehouse of the enterprising man. The prices I was charged by the various storekeepers were those fixed as the selling prices in the shops; the prices the traders paid to the enterprising man I was afterwards fortunate enough to drop upon, and I found that in every case the profits were enormous, averaging over 36 per cent., and ranging from 75 per cent. for sardines to 20 per cent. for jam and milk.

Since our last stay in the town Kroonstad had developed strong breezes, which fetched up clouds of dust and hordes of flies from the Remount Depôt, and poured them both unceasingly into our camp. The 21st of August was a particularly dusty day, and we were not so very sorry, therefore, when in the evening orders were received for us to be off again: some of us, this time, went by train, as one half battalion was to proceed by rail and the other by road, marching with all the wagons and carts of the Brigade, to Geneva Siding, about 15 miles down the line.

The first party to move was the right half battalion, composed of B, C, D and E companies, under myself: they paraded at eleven o'clock in the evening and marched to the station, and waited there for some time, after loading the first line transport and some guns—the 76th Battery of the Field Artillery; we eventually made a start about three o'clock in the morning. On arrival at Geneva I found there the General and the Camerons, who had proceeded by an earlier train, and was then directed to proceed to Ventersburg Road in the same train, and to remain there until the arrival of the General. So we steamed off again, enjoying, as we knew the other half battalion would also do, the new experience of sitting in a train and being dragged to our destination.

On our way down we passed Holfontein, where were some troops guarding the bridge, and, a few miles further on, we reached the spot where, some weeks previously, a train had been held up at night by the Boers, an officer and a few men who were in the train being taken prisoners and the train looted and burned. The officer was bringing up some stores for the General, which, of course, were looted; but a few of the Boers paid for their recklessness, as they found some liquor, got drunk, and were easily captured, about eight or a dozen of them, by the Mounted Infantry from Ventersburg Road, who rode out on hearing the explosions of dynamite.

They were too late, however, to save the train, which was burning fiercely; many wagons of biscuits, beef and other supplies were burned clean out, only the iron frames of the wagons and thousands of blackened and empty tins being left on the line. Some of the wagons, thrown off the line, and tons of empty tins, showed us, as we passed, where the incident had occurred.

We reached Ventersburg Road about seven o'clock, and found some troops there under command of Lieut.-Colonel White, R.A.; the permanent garrison was composed of the Malta Company of Mounted Infantry, under Captain Pine-Coffin, who had come out with us on the "Pavonia," and a company of the Buffs Militia, under Captain O'Grady, a cousin of our Major of the same name. We camped outside the station, and bye-and-bye the General arrived, with the Camerons, followed about six o'clock by our Head Quarters and the other half battalion.

Ventersburg Road, a little roadside station, boasted only a couple of sheds besides the usual station buildings, water tank and goods shed; everything, however, was strongly entrenched and defended; a huge Supply Depôt had been established, and the boxes and the bags were utilised to form protection for the garrison, an interesting sight being a machine gun mounted on a pyramid of sacks of oats. The Supply subordinates had made themselves comfortable inside houses built of biscuit and beef boxes and roofed with tarpaulins, but the valuable sacks of oats, bags of mealies, sacks of sugar and other stores were pitched about anywhere, and were rotting and mouldering away on all sides; four bags of costly sugar were utilised to form steps up to a water tank, and were, of course, ruined with wet and mud; the enormous goods shed, which would have held the whole stock of the more valuable Supply stores then going to waste in the open, was full of bales of wool belonging to Boer farmers, of which the greatest care was apparently being taken by the railway authorities, while valuable food supplies were being ruined. The responsible man was a Corporal of the Army Service Corps, who was some time afterwards placed under arrest for selling rum and stores to the Boer residents and sympathisers in Ventersburg; they had run out of supplies, and thus replenished their larder. On our next visit, some time later, we brought with us the Brigade Supply officer, Lieut. Lloyd, whose energy was only equalled by his capability; and he very soon had things put shipshape, the wool bales fired out of the shed, and everything done Bristol fashion, as they say at sea.