By the 12th of May Kroonstadt had been occupied; the Boers had, of course, destroyed the railway bridge that crosses the Valsch River, and it took our railway engineers the best part of a week to span that very fair-sized stream with a temporary bridge that could carry the train. By the 22nd we were on the move again to the northward, and on the 27th the Main Army crossed the Vaal River at Vereeniging, and the invasion of the Transvaal had definitely begun. On the 31st May Johannesburg was captured. I am again quoting from a letter which I wrote home at the time.
“It was rather fun riding into Johannesburg, but really anything like the villainous faces of the crowd I have never seen. All the Boers, and most of the Dutch and English, had either cleared out or been cleared out. There was nothing left but a mob of low-class foreign Jews, most of them Germans. Never have I seen such brutes, and my first feeling was one of intense regret that the Boers had not exploded the mines and blown up the entire population at the same time.”
A little less than a week later (June 5th, 1900) Pretoria was reached and was entered by the Commander-in-Chief after a very trifling opposition. The central column, with which the Headquarter Staff moved, had done the 300 miles—that is the distance from Bloemfontein to Pretoria—in thirty-four days, which was good going. The flank columns had even a harder time. Ian Hamilton started three days earlier from Taban-Tchu with his column, and marched 380 miles, having only had eight days’ halt during the whole thirty-seven days. The night we arrived at Pretoria a most amusing dinner was organised by Lord Rosslyn to celebrate the occasion, and I suppose also to commemorate his personal release from captivity, for he had been for some time a prisoner of war at Pretoria. It was immense fun, every one being in the highest spirits. The dinner took place at the hotel, and the company consisted more or less of junior officers from every branch of the Service, released prisoners, and a number of special correspondents; and I, having managed to commandeer a bedroom on the premises, did my dinner party very comfortably.
Life on the Headquarter Staff at Pretoria was very much on the model of Bloemfontein, with even more telegrams to cope with, but the monotony was broken by the two days’ indecisive action at Diamond Hill—a position that Botha had occupied about sixteen miles from the capital, which was, so long as there was a decent-sized Boer Army there, a distinct menace to Pretoria. The action began early on June 11th, and fighting went on during that and the ensuing day. It was successful in that the Boers retreated and left us in possession of their position, but was quite indecisive, as there was no pursuit, and for more than a month Botha’s commandos were giving us trouble in the neighbourhood of the battlefield.
Personally, I was a heavy loser in the action of Diamond Hill, for my next brother, Lionel, then second in command of the 17th Lancers, was shot dead by a bullet through the heart when in command of a squadron of that regiment. He and a subaltern of his, Lieut. Charles Cavendish, a son of the late Lord Chesham, and the late Lord Airlie, commanding the 9th Lancers, all fell there and were buried together on the field.
A few days after the action of Diamond Hill I was in attendance on the Chief on rather an interesting occasion, namely when he rode out to meet Baden-Powell, who arrived at Pretoria just about a month after the relief of Mafeking. A few days afterwards I went by train to Johannesburg, partly on a shopping expedition and partly to see a great friend of mine, Bobby White, who was about to start a syndicate there to finance the tramways. My travelling companions were two of the ladies who had arrived with Baden-Powell from Mafeking—Lady Sarah Wilson and Mrs. Godley, both of whom had been through the siege there and were on their way home to England, whither I was, before very long, to follow them.
After two days at Johannesburg I was back again at Pretoria; but my time in Pretoria was rapidly drawing to an end. The Naval Brigade had left the vicinity of Headquarters, so I had no excuse in the way of looking after their wants, as they were far out of my reach. Life at Pretoria was more dull than words can describe, the only duty being the eternal ciphering, which I came to the conclusion could be done just as well by the numerous subalterns on Lord Roberts’ Staff as by an officer of my standing. I consequently decided, as there was nothing to do, that I might just as well return to my duties on the Staff of the Prince of Wales. Early in July I left Pretoria for Cape Town, and arrived in England at the end of the month.
Africa had been an interesting experience, especially the long marches from the Modder to Pretoria, and my time there was, as long as we were on the move, really delightful. There is something extraordinarily attractive about the high veldt; the air is as exhilarating as champagne, and the endless rolling plain without a boundary to be seen has a charm which it is not easy to describe; and though the sun may be occasionally too fierce, and the cold at nights rather too severe after the heat, it is none the less a marvellous climate, and, barring the want of water, it is an ideal place for campaigning. Moreover, the greater part of the time I was living with some of my best friends, and, for a sailor, it was a new experience to see a large British Army doing its job. Besides my old friends, I made the acquaintance of many new ones, several of whose names have since become household words during the late war. To say nothing of such celebrities as Lords Roberts and Kitchener, there were Douglas Haig (or rather Lord Haig as he is now), General Lord Rawlinson, Admiral Sir Walter Cowan, all of whom were Staff Officers in those days; and looking over some old letters, written out there, I can congratulate myself on the prescience which led me to prophesy that the then Major Douglas Haig was sure to make a name for himself in the future. The only fly in the ointment was that, by going abroad, I had missed a very interesting treble event, namely Ambush winning the Grand National, and Diamond Jubilee securing the Two Thousand Guineas and Derby for the Prince; but it does not need much philosophy to grasp the fact that a man cannot be in two places at once, and good fun as it is to back winners, it was far more satisfactory to have had the privilege of seeing the most interesting part of the South African War from the vantage point of the Headquarter Staff.