With the Guards’ Brigade During the Boer War

The Guards in the last of the Queen Empress's wars

These are the doings of the Guards Brigade as experienced by one of their number—a padre—through the Great Boer War. The inexorable slowness of the British column, the heat and dust of the South African terrain, sickness within the troops, the elusive Boer enemy often just beyond reach except during lightning fast close encounters, the suffering and displacement of the civilian population and the retaliatory burning of farms all appear within the pages of this first hand experience of the British Army's most renowned regiments on campaign at the turn of the twentieth century.

After two more days of heavy marching we found abundant and beautiful spar stones springing up out of the barren veldt, as in my native Cornwall; and we needed no seer to assure us that the vast and invaluable mining area of Johannesburg was close at hand. Presently we passed one big set of mining machinery after another, each with its huge heap of mine refuse. If only some clotted cream had been purchasable at one of the wayside houses, or a dainty pasty had anywhere appeared in sight, I could almost have fancied myself close to Camborne. <br>
Instead, however, of marching straight towards Johannesburg, we suddenly pounced on Elandsfontein, the most supremely important railway junction in all South Africa—its Clapham Junction—and following swiftly in the footsteps of Henry’s mounted infantry took its defenders delightfully by surprise. The Gordons on our far left had about a hundred casualties, and the C.I.V.’s on our right, fighting valiantly, were also hard hit, but the Guards escaped unscathed. Shots enough, however, were fired to lead us to expect a serious fight, and to necessitate a further exhausting march of five or six miles, out and back, amid the mine heaps lying just beyond the junction. Fortunately, the fight proved no fight, but only a further flight; though the end of a specially heavy day’s task brought with it, none the less, an abounding recompense. Whilst most of the Boers precipitately vanished, those unable to get away gave themselves up as prisoners of war, and thus without further effort we secured a position of vast strategic importance, including the terminus of the railway line leading to Natal; but it was also the terminus of the long line from Johannesburg and the regions beyond; so that there was now no way of escape for any of the rolling stock thereon. It might peradventure be destroyed before the troops could rescue it, but got away for the further service of the Boers it could not be. Among other acquisitions we captured at Elandsfontein a capitally equipped hospital train, hundreds of railway trucks laden more or less with valuable stores, and half a dozen locomotives with full head of steam on; so that had we arrived a little less suddenly, locomotives, trains and empty trucks would all have eluded our grasp and got safely to Pretoria. It was indeed an invaluable haul, especially for haulage purposes, and we had tramped 130 miles in the course of a single week to secure it!<br>
Long after dark, weary and footsore and famished, we stumbled back three miles to our chosen camping ground. Since the previous evening some of the Scots Guards had managed to secure only a hasty drink of coffee, so they told me, as their sole rations for the four-and-twenty hours; but they seemed as happy as they were hungry, like men proudly conscious that they had done a good day’s work that brought them, so they fondly supposed, perceptibly nearer home. Assisted by many an undesirable expletive, they staggered and darkly groped their way over some of the very roughest ground we had thus far been required to traverse; they got repeatedly entangled in a profusion of barbed wire; scrambled into deep railway ditches, then scrambled out again; till at last they reached their appointed resting-place, and in dead darkness proceeded as best they could to cook their dinners.