DOORNKOP.
On the way to Johannesburg--29th May--2 p.m.--Attack begins--The
advance--Checked by flanking fire from One Tree Hill--Attack of
this position--Through veldt fire--Final charge--Boer retreat--
Gordons attack simultaneously--Main attack pushed home--Casualties.
On Sunday, the 27th of May, we started at 8.30 a.m., and marched some
sixteen miles before camping. Bitterly cold it was that night, and we
felt it a good deal the next day, when we started at 6.45 a.m. and
trekked 10 miles to a small hill a little south of Cypherfontein; here,
during most of the afternoon, we heard shells and pom-poms and other
indications of a brisk fight going on towards the north. Away to the
south we could see dimly Lord Roberts' troops, who had crossed the Vaal
at Vereeniging, higher up than we did, pressing on to the junction of
the railways at Elandsfontein. Our business, we now learned, was to push
off to the left and make an enveloping movement on the enemy's right,
whilst General French delivered his blow in front and Lord Roberts fell
on the Boer left.
We therefore made an early start, and were under way at 6.30, despite
the severe cold, and, with the 19th Brigade leading, headed north-west,
so as to come up on the left of Johannesburg. We spent the earlier part
of the day marching and halting and moving on again, and watching the
cavalry on our right, and the shrapnel and pom-pom shells bursting;
until about two o'clock we were moved out from behind a hill, upon which
was a battery busily engaged in shelling the enemy's guns, one or two of
which were in position on some low hills about a mile and a half away.
We lay down in the open grass with big intervals between companies. At
the same time the City Imperial Volunteers had pushed on to the left of
the guns, and the Derbyshire had also gone out in companies in widely
extended order. And so we lay and watched and waited.
We were at the end of a long grassy valley, with smooth, rolling hills
rising on our left and on our right, these latter separating us from
Smith-Dorrien's Brigade; in front of us and blocking the end of the
valley the hills swung round from the left and trended off to our right
front, leaving a sort of gap in what might be called the right top
corner of the picture; this we afterwards found to be the nearest way to
Johannesburg. The smooth hills on our right rose gradually and ended in
a cluster of rocks, surmounted by a solitary tree--an ideal position, in
which we afterwards found that the enemy had a field gun, a Maxim and
endless riflemen.
In front of us, the low hills which seemed to close in the valley, and
indeed part of the valley itself, had suffered from a grass fire, and
only an occasional ant-hill showed up grey against the black soil.
We had moved slightly to our right and had extended a little, and were
again lying down in the grass; suddenly the enemy's guns spotted us and
sent along a couple of shells, clear of us, luckily, but near enough to
the lagging water-cart to make it increase its pace somewhat abruptly.
We had watched the C.I.V.'s pass out of sight along the ridge to the
left, and then we had seen the Derbyshire moving along in the same
direction. The enemy's gun, right in front of us, up the valley, we
could with difficulty locate, but it was carrying on a plucky duel with
our battery.
At last we got orders to move: D company led off first, followed by E,
both in widely-extended lines, officers and all supernumeraries being in
the ranks; and, with intervals of some 80 or 100 yards between the
companies, after these followed F and G, and, behind them again, came H,
the Volunteers, A, B and C. The Maxim gun went with the leading company,
and, under charge of Captain Green, operated on its left. Soon after the
companies led off they began to come under the long range fire of the
Mausers, and the little spirts of dust were rapidly becoming more
numerous as the lines of skirmishers diminished the distance between
themselves and the enemy. At last it became necessary to subdue the
enemy's eagerness somewhat, and the leading lines dropped down on the
veldt and opened fire on the invisible Boers. After a while the
skirmishers rose to their feet and advanced, whereupon the enemy's fire
redoubled in intensity: regardless of the bullets, which were falling
pretty thickly by now, a few men having been hit, our men pushed on,
and, with the supporting lines which came up in rear, rapidly drew
nearer to the enemy's position. Soon shots were observed to be coming
from a new direction, from our right front, where, a long distance away,
was the cluster of rocks and the solitary tree, which we had previously
noticed as being a likely position for the enemy's sharpshooters.
After a little while there was no possible doubt upon this question,
because, as our leading lines crept forward, the dropping shots from the
right front became vastly more numerous, while one or two more
casualties occurred. All this time the enemy on our front were keeping
up a brisk rattle of musketry, but as our men were fully seven to ten
paces apart this shooting had little effect upon them; not so however,
the cross fire from our right front, which caught us diagonally, as it
were, and caused a few more casualties. The machine-gun had come into
action on the left, but was soon spotted by the Boers, who concentrated
a pretty heavy fire on the unfortunate Maxim, which, with its big
wheels, and the huge shields to the limber boxes sticking up in the air,
provided the Boers with a target that they did not often get. Sergeant
Funnell was shot in the head almost immediately the gun came into
action, Archer and Hunnisett were knocked over, and only two men left to
work the gun, which ceased firing for some minutes until Corporal Weston
and two men from the nearest company, D, volunteered to assist. As it
was so palpable that the enemy's fire was being concentrated on the gun,
Captain Green ordered the detachment to lie down and use their rifles.
The wheel mule, an acquisition of the battalion dating from Bethulie
(where the animal, a fine specimen of its kind, was found wandering in
an ownerless state), was hit in two places, while the lead mule was so
alarmed at this untoward accident to his stable companion, as to be
quite petrified with fear and unable to move. When the advance took
place he had to be abandoned, and the gun went on with "Bethulie" alone.
The leading companies had by now been reinforced by some of the
supporting companies in rear, but had reached a limit from which further
advance would not have been possible without very serious loss, so they
lay down and blazed at the rocks and clumps of bushes which concealed
the enemy. For some little distance now the advance had been carried out
over the scene of the grass fire, which was even then still burning away
on our right, and the only cover the men had was an occasional ant heap;
but even this was but little protection from the stinging flanking fire
which was whistling over from the right.
Noticing that the firing line seemed to be checked temporarily, and soon
discovering the cause, an officer from the rear succeeded in turning the
flank sections of F and G companies, together with some men of E
company, and making a demonstration against our friends on One Tree
Hill. These fellows, however, were quite wide awake, and made it hot for
this small party, who were attempting to create a diversion in the state
of affairs.
Their firing increased in intensity; Corporal Hollington and one or two
others were shot, and our men, who were only about 800 yards from the
position, soon abandoned the drill-book style of advancing by alternate
sections (which only caused the enemy's fire to be doubled and redoubled
as they gleefully took aim at the full-length figures of our soldiers),
and continued their advance by crawling on their hands and knees through
the long grass, and by keeping up a continued dropping fire on the rocks
concealing our enemies. Not a single Boer had any of us seen since we
started, and, at this stage of the proceedings, none of the enemy were
likely to show themselves. Looking back, we could see heads behind us--a
long way, certainly, but they showed that the Colonel had observed our
flanking movement and had despatched a company to our support.
Emboldened by this, we pressed on, but our crawling progress through the
grass was brought to a sudden end by our reaching the edge of a
rapidly-advancing grass fire, while before us stretched a waste of burnt
ground, with a few, a very few, grey ant heaps showing up. There was
only one thing to do, and that was done quickly; springing to their
feet, the two or three officers with this little party yelled to their
men, who dashed on with shouts and cheers, through the flickering fire
and the smoke, on to the bare ground beyond. They raced on rapidly, the
faster runners outpacing the others, until breath began to go and knees
to totter; and after a couple of hundred yards or so, we were glad to
drop into a schanz, or long trench, which we found suddenly at our
feet, and halt there to regain our breath.
We still kept up our fire, and the enemy's began to slacken, and at last
almost ceased; there was no time to waste if we wanted to see a Boer, so
we jumped out of the schanz and dashed on as fast as our heavy equipment
and cumbrous roll of blanket would permit us towards the rocks, now
silent as the grave.
Bearing off a little to the left to some slightly rising ground, we
found ourselves alone; but what a sight was in front of us!
The ground dipped and rose again in a gentle slope of grassy fields with
a rocky patch on the summit, about 1,100 or 1,200 yards away; and these
grassy fields, about twenty or thirty acres in extent, were alive with
fugitives moving rapidly towards the rear. Among them (and this is a
curious circumstance which puzzled us not a little at the time and
afterwards) were a number of mounted men, dashing furiously amongst the
runaways. The sight of these riders careering wildly among a crowd of
flying Boers stayed our volleys for some moments, while we overhauled
the scene with our glasses. Could these mounted men be our cavalry
suddenly appearing from the right flank, where we had left them?
No, they could surely not have travelled the distance in the time, so we
formed up what men we had at hand and poured several volleys at 1,200
yards into the retreating enemy. After ten or a dozen volleys had been
fired, a Highlander appeared among the rocks on our right, and, holding
up his hand, shouted to us to stop firing. Wondering at this,
reluctantly we complied, and the enemy quickly dwindled away; we had
serious thoughts of following them rapidly, but, seeing how few men of
ours were actually on the spot, and in view of the possibility that the
Boers would hold the rocky patch on the summit, we decided against it,
and proceeded to overhaul the rocks on our right, which but a short time
before had been teeming with riflemen.
In a cunningly-selected nook was the spot where the enemy's gun had been
at work; all round the ground was strewn with empty shell boxes, fifteen
or twenty of them, and the grass was thick with the little cardboard
boxes in which Mauser ammunition is issued. Several large tins still had
a quantity of rusk biscuit remaining in them, but these soon disappeared
into our fellows' haversacks; a few blankets were lying about, and the
usual camp litter and rubbish showed that a party of some strength had
had their head-quarters on that spot since the day before. Two or three
dead horses were in the vicinity, and a couple of wounded ones were put
out of their agony; while several others browsing on the short grass
were quickly collared.
Ensconced among the rocks were two or three Boers, shot dead behind
their cover by the bullets of our little flanking attack, as was proved
conclusively by the attitudes of the bodies. All around, scattered in
the most ingenious clefts among the rocks, were heaps and heaps of
cartridge cases, Mauser, Lee-Metford, Steyr, and Martini, showing
exactly the well-chosen positions of their former owners, and convincing
us that thousands of our bullets might splash and splatter on the rocks
close by without disturbing the occupants, until the fixing of the
bayonets and the unrestrained advance of British soldiers caused that
cold feeling down the back which no Boer could afford to disregard.
In a most ingeniously selected corner between several big rocks,
improved by the addition of a few stones into a bullet-proof sangar, had
been the enemy's Maxim, luckily for us not laid in our direction, but
pumping forth lead against the attack of the Gordons, which, unknown to
us, had been carried out on the other side of the ridge separating the
two regiments. Apparently the dashing 800 yards' charge of the Gordons,
in which they suffered such severe loss, had been taking place about the
same time as our advance from the schanz, across the burnt grass; but
whether it was our appearance so close to them, or the sight of the
Gordons, so gallantly pushing on, which caused the enemy to retreat in
such a hurry, none but the Boers themselves can decisively say.
Anyhow, we claim for the Royal Sussex the honour of being the first to
reach One Tree Hill. When we originally rushed up to this spot, some few
minutes were wasted in searching with glasses the crowd of flying Boers,
one or two more minutes before men could be hastily gathered together on
the knee ready to fire, and about a dozen volleys had been hurriedly got
off before the Highlander, to whose appearance I have before alluded,
came out from among the rocks and waved to us to stop firing.
Dusk was closing in, so we reformed the companies which had taken part
in this attack on One Tree Hill; they were principally the flank
sections of E, F, and G, with a few men of D and some of the rear
company, C, who were following in our support; and we moved off to join
the remainder of the battalion.
We found that they had been at first checked by the cross fire from One
Tree Hill, and by a considerable fire directed on them from the front,
but had held their own, pouring in a constant fire, until the pressure
on the right weakened somewhat the intensity of the Boer musketry, and
enabled our men to continue their advance over the bare, level, burnt up
ground.
The advance became quicker and quicker, the men came up with a livelier
step and at last could be restrained no longer, and, with cheers and
yells, which were taken up by the supports in rear, they dashed up the
slope.
Here, amongst the rocks on the summit, they found the usual signs of
recent occupation, cartridge cases and so on, and traces of the gun,
which had evidently been removed some time earlier, besides a number of
loose ponies, whose owners had apparently been unable to ride or
unwilling to waste time in mounting.
The companies then formed up and joined hands with those who had been
engaged on the right; the rolls were called,[5] and we moved off to find
the Brigade, eventually discovering that our camp was to be just beyond
One Tree Hill and practically on the field of action. Here in the dark
we sat and waited for our baggage: no water, no wood was procurable, and
we had eaten nothing except a scrap of biscuit since six o'clock that
morning. Those who had husbanded their water during the day now scored,
and, with what bits of wood they had secured from the Boer shell cases,
and had since carried on their backs, soon had their canteens boiling.
Later, the baggage arrived, and the water carts, the contents of the
latter being divided among the companies; and the men soon settled down,
tired out and hungry, and dropped off to sleep among the piled arms.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] Our casualties were as follows:--
KILLED:--
Private J. Simmonds, D Co.
" H. Braiden, G Co.
DIED OF WOUNDS:--
Corporal J. Hollington, E Co.
Private W. Lucas, F Co.
" G. White, G Co.
" H. Wells, Vol. Co.
WOUNDED:--
Sergeant W. Funnell, C Co.
Corporal W. Backshall B Co.
Private J. Archer, C Co.
" C. Ellis, D Co.
" E. Honeysett, "
" E. Cooper, E Co.
" T. Smith, F Co.
" G. Pelling, "
" E. Colwell, "
" G. Fuller, G Co.
" E. Young, "
" A. Vitler, H Co.
" H. Wells, Vol. Co.