-
Frank Kelley
-
-
Offline
-
Senior Member
-
-
Posts: 6739
-
Thank you received: 954
-
-
|
Very nice indeed Brett, the nasty spiteful little cross next to Waller's name in WO100/363 suggests to me that you may well throw that piece of KSA ribbon away!
Brett Hendey wrote: Corporal S G H Waller, Natal Mounted Rifles & Volunteer Composite Regiment
John Parker Waller arrived in Durban as a 14 year old in 1850. He later became prominent in the legal fraternity in Natal. He married Rachel Elizabeth Household Pepworth, and they had seven children.
Their second son, Sidney George Household Waller was born in Durban in about 1871. Little is known of his life before and after the Boer War. Prior to the war he evidently lived in the recruitment area of the Natal Mounted Rifles (NMR), which was the coastal region of Natal between the Umkomaas and Tugela Rivers, and including Durban. When his Will was drawn up in 1913, he was living in Umzimkulu, an enclave of East Griqualand in southern Natal. It was in Umzimkulu that he married Flora Emily Low. They had no children. In his retirement he lived with Flora in Durban and he died there on 9/10/1948. Flora was his sole heir and she inherited an estate valued at £1279.
MILITARY CAREER
By 1899 and the start of the Boer War, Waller was a Corporal in the NMR with the regimental number 250.
The NMR was mobilised on 29/9/1899, by which time the threat of war with the Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics was real, and Boer Commandos were gathering on Natal’s borders. The regiment was posted to Ladysmith, where Lieutenant-General Sir George White, the Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Natal, was gathering his army. Soon after the NMR’s arrival, 21 men under Captain F S Tatham were detached to serve as General White’s Bodyguard. In addition to their guard duties, the men served as messengers, scouts, guides and interpreters.
One of the Bodyguard’s scouting expeditions nearly ended in disaster. On 23 October, five men were sent along the road to Newcastle with the aim of ascertaining the position and strength of the Boers in that area. Contact was made, the Boers opened fire on the patrol, and the men hastily retreated. In doing so one man’s horse bolted and he was left stranded. On seeing the man’s predicament, Trooper A W Evans caught the runaway horse and returned it to its fallen rider, thereby saving him from certain capture or death. In spite of retreating under heavy fire, all five men returned safely to Ladysmith. It was expected that for his gallant action Evans would be awarded the Victoria Cross, and he was commemorated as a VC hero on a cigarette card issued at the time. In fact, he was later awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) instead.
(Trooper Evans was the son of the Officer Commanding the NMR, Major R W Evans, who, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, later commanded the Volunteer Composite Regiment. He was killed in action on 20/2/1902. Trooper Evans went abroad after the war, and eventually settled in New Zealand. With the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, he commanded the 3rd Battalion of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade during World War I. He added the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) to his DCM before being killed at Passchendale on 13/10/1917.)
The rest of the regiment joined other Natal Volunteers under the command of Colonel W Royston of the Volunteer Staff. Much of the account that follows is based on information included in the Natal Volunteer Record (1900), and in Goetzsche (1971). Since other ranks are seldom mentioned by name, it was assumed that Corporal Waller took part in some, if not all the actions described below.
Initially, the NMR was employed in patrolling the Ladysmith district, and their most significant patrol took place soon after the war started on 12/10/1900. Between 17 and 19 October, a group of 50 men from the NMR joined a group commanded by Captain A T G Wales, District Adjutant for Volunteers, in reconnoitring the Waschbank Valley towards Dundee, where the first set-piece battle of the war on Talana Hill was about to take place. This patrol was intended to keep the railway line between Dundee and Ladysmith open, and to monitor the movement of any Boers south of Dundee. The men on this patrol were in the saddle for most of 48 hours, and covered a distance of 126 miles. They succeeded in their tasks and received high praise on their return to Ladysmith.
On 20 October, a party of Boers moving south from Dundee, captured a supply train at Elandslaagte, and occupied the area. The NMR was amongst the strong force under Major-General Sir John French that was sent to Elandslaagte to engage the Boers. The Battle of Elandslaagte took place on 21 October and ended in a decisive victory for the British. The NMR did not take an active part in the battle, but was held in reserve, and, later, the men helped to clear the wounded from the battlefield. Its only recorded contact with the enemy came when Surgeon-Lieutenant R W Hornabrook came across 25 armed Boers and successfully demanded their surrender.
As was the case with the Battle of Talana, the British did not hold their ground, but retreated to Ladysmith. The garrison there was later joined by the men from Dundee, who had retreated southwards to reach the town by a circuitous route.
The British were to be much less successful in their next three meetings with the Boers.
On 24 October, a force of over 5000 men under General White moved north to attack the Boers at Rietfontein (Tinta Nyoni, Modder Spruit). A fierce engagement ensued, and the British were forced to retreat after suffering heavy losses. It was during this action that the NMR had its first battlefield casualties. They were light, with only three men wounded.
The next engagement took place on 30 October, when General White launched a two-pronged attack on the Boers who were closing in on Ladysmith. One group attacked Lombard’s Kop east of Ladysmith, and the second attacked Nicholson’s Nek to the north. The NMR was with the first group. Both British attacks were repulsed with heavy losses, although again the NMR had few casualties. Lieutenant W J Clapham was killed, and three men were wounded. Clapham was to be the only man in the regiment to be killed on a battlefield, although another two died during the shelling of Ladysmith, while six men died of disease.
Ladysmith was effectively besieged on 2 November, and on the following day there was an ill-conceived action by the British to test the Boer’s strength. The attacking force, which was made up largely of mounted Colonials spearheaded by the Imperial Light Horse (ILH), moved along the Colenso road in Long Valley towards Bester’s Kop (Lancer’s Hill). They met with strong resistance and soon retreated in disarray. The NMR had one man wounded, but the ILH and Natal Carbineers (NC) had more serious losses.
The monotony of the siege soon set in, and it was relieved only by the bombardment of the town. Both NMR Troopers G Schram (asleep in his tent) and J R Crickmore (exercising his horse) were killed by random shelling during the early phase of the siege.
In one of the attempts to relieve the monotony, the NMR formed ‘The Ladysmith Siege Band’, which played during the daily physical drills, and at concerts. However, adding to the shelling, the shortages of food, the abundance of flies, and the spread of illnesses made life in Ladysmith increasingly unpleasant.
The next action to take place was on the night of 7/8 December when a force of Colonials under Colonel Royston raided the Boer gun emplacement on Gun Hill. The group was made up largely by men from the ILH, NC, Natal Police (NP) and Border Mounted Rifles (BMR), although a group of Natal Guides and 24 men from the NMR also participated. A demolition team was provided by the Royal Engineers. The raid was a complete success, with the Boers abandoning their guns, and with minimal casualties amongst the attackers. The guns put out of action were a 6” Creusot (‘Long Tom’) and 7” Howitzer, while the breech block and ramrod of the Long Tom, and a Maxim gun, were captured and taken back to Ladysmith.
There was little to celebrate over Christmas and New Year, and 1900 brought with it the first and only Boer ground attack on Ladysmith. This took the form of a surprise attack on Platrand, a high ground that formed part of the town’s southern defences, and which was known to the British as Caesar’s Camp in the east, and Wagon Hill in the west. Early in the morning of 6 January, Transvaal commandos attacked Caesar’s Camp, while commandos from the Orange Free State attacked Wagon Hill. The NMR assisted in the defence of Caesar’s Camp. Although both sides incurred many casualties during the day-long battle, the NMR had no men killed and only a few men wounded. Special mention was again made of the role played by Surgeon-Lieutenant Hornabrook, who helped rally a group of Gordon Highlanders, whose officers had all been killed. The battle ended in a defeat for the Boers, who retired in a torrential thunder storm at the end of the afternoon. Hornabrook’s orderly, Trooper H W Redpath, was awarded the DCM, while Hornabrook, Lieutenant H W A Richardson, and Trooper PN Field, all of whom had been wounded, were Mentioned in Despatches.
In spite of this morale-boosting victory, the worst days of the Siege still lay ahead. Rumours about the war and Buller’s Relief Force abounded in the sweltering summer days, with food severely rationed and diseases rife. In the first three months of the siege, about 500 people had died of diseases, mainly enteric and dysentery, in the Intombe Neutral Camp Hospital, ten times the number killed in Ladysmith by the bombardment.
The 118-day Siege was finally lifted on the afternoon of 28 February when a column of mounted Colonials from the Composite Regiment of the Mounted Brigade rode into Ladysmith. This column included 12 men from the NMR who had missed the Siege, and who had served in General Buller’s Relief Force instead. They were met by those besieged members of the NMR who were still fit enough to report for duty. There were three NMR squadrons at the start of the Siege, but only enough fit men to make up one squadron at its end.
There were 26 members of the NMR who served with the Relief Force. The Composite Regiment of the Mounted Brigade was made up mainly of Colonials (ILH, NC, NP, NMR, BMR), with one Imperial Mounted Infantry Company (2nd King’s Royal Rifle Corps). The men were used mainly on scouting patrols during the Relief operations, although the Mounted Brigade did take an active, but ultimately fruitless part in the attack on Hlangwane during the Battle of Colenso on 15/12/1899. One man from the NMR was wounded. The Composite Regiment’s scouting prior to the battles around Spioenkop (16-24/1/1900) led to the defeat of a Boer patrol at Acton Homes, west of Ladysmith, on 18 January. One NMR trooper was wounded at Acton Homes. The British high command failed to exploit this success to outflank the Boer army, and an opportunity to approach Ladysmith from the west was lost. The NMR was present at Spioenkop, but not in the front line, although two troopers were wounded during the battle. Otherwise it was largely the infantry that fought in Buller’s battles to lift the Ladysmith Siege, which he succeeded in doing after the prolonged and bloody Battle of Tugela Heights (12-28/2/1900).
The immediate post-Siege period was one of rest, recuperation and reorganisation for the regiments in Buller’s army. The Natal regiments assembled at Highlands between Estcourt and Mooi River, and men were given leave to return home to recuperate. Four men from the NMR were invalided, but later returned to duty, 12 were granted extended leave, and 50 were invalided to the end of the war. Replacements were recruited and 71 men joined the NMR when it reassembled at Highlands towards the end of March.
The NMR then joined the 3rd Mounted Brigade and took part in Buller’s drive through northern Natal. There was little resistance and Dundee was occupied on 15 May. The army then crossed into the south-eastern Transvaal. The NMR was one of the regiments that crossed first into the Orange Free State before entering the Transvaal, and their Queen’s South Africa Medals (QSA’s) carry both state clasps. The Natal Volunteers were soon sent back to Natal, since their service was restricted to the Colony. The NMR then engaged in patrolling the Dundee district. The mobilisation of the NMR and other Natal regiments was terminated on 23 September, and by mid-October most men had returned to their civilian pursuits.
The exceptions were about 300 men who chose to serve in a new regiment, the Volunteer Composite Regiment (VCR), which was not restricted to service only in Natal. The CO of the NMR, Major R W Evans, was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and given command of the VCR. He was joined by at least another 36 men from the NMR. Clearly, this number is incorrect. Waller’s name was not on the VCR roll in the Volunteer Record (1900) list of 285 names, nor that in Goetzsche (1971). However, it is on the VCR nominal roll on the angloboerwar.com site with the service number 305, and with the service dates of 1/10/1900 to 5/6/1901.
The VCR came into being on 1/10/1900, and it was disbanded on 31/7/1902. During the 22 months of its existence it had an unusually high turnover of enlistments, and replacements were still being enrolled as late as June 1902, shortly before its disbandment. By then its service numbers exceeded 650. Coghlan (2004) in his commentary of the records kept by J B Nicholson (NC and VCR) ascribed this instability “to the low-key war of attrition being waged .... [and] the frequent periods of inactivity”.
Waller’s early resignation from the VCR suggests that he was one of the men who became disenchanted with the regiment. Judging from the records in Coghlan (2004), the period of Waller’s service was largely taken up with patrols and convoy escorts. Initially, the VCR was confined to northern Natal, but in December 1900 it included the Transvaal district of Vryheid in its activities. During February and March1901, it was based at Utrecht in the Transvaal, and in April it was back in Natal. Before Waller left the regiment early in June, it had added patrols into Zululand to its duties.
There were few contacts with the Boer commandos during this time, and casualties were minimal. However, what did become increasingly frequent was the implementation of the British army’s “scorched earth” policy. The destruction of crops and confiscation of livestock on Boer farms, together with the destruction of homesteads and their contents, and the removal of women, children and servants to concentration camps, was distasteful to the men of the VCR (Coghlan, 2004). Many of the Natalians were farmers themselves, and they may have had a better appreciation than the British soldiers of both the short and long term effects of the “scorched earth” policy.
Given the events during Waller’s service with the VCR, and his early resignation, he was probably pleased to return to his civilian life. One benefit to Waller was that it resulted in the award to him of the King’s South Africa Medal (KSA). Waller’s name is on the NMR roll for the KSA, with the notes “VCR” and “305”, and, presumably, he did receive the medal, although it is now missing. Whether or not his half a year’s service in 1901, and no service during 1902, breached the conditions for the award is now a moot point.
REFERENCES
Coghlan, M. 2004. From the very beginning to the very end. Anglo-Boer War Diary
and Letters of J B Nicholson. Part 2. Natalia 34: 17-49.
Goetzsche, E. 1971. The Official Natal Mounted Rifles History. Durban: Published
by the Regiment.
Natal Volunteeer Record. 1900. Durban: Robinson & Co.
Brett Hendey
|
