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EFV wrote: Is the photo of the burial that of Lord Roberts son?

René Bull sketched this same scene, the drawing being worked up by John H. Bacon and published in Black & White Magazine on 6 January 1900. Here it is captioned "The War: Funeral Service at Estcourt". The officer in the foreground is General Hildyard, who was indeed present at Freddy Roberts's interment. However, I think it unlikely that Black & White would have failed to mention that this was Lieut. Roberts's burial if that were the case. The various reports covering Bull's lectures describe this image simply as "a clergyman conducting a burial service over our soldiers". There was a photograph of Roberts's grave, but it seems not one of the actual burial.

The helmet flashes (see below) indicate that all the men present were from the West Yorkshire Regiment, who suffered casualties at Willow Grange (c.11 killed) and Venter's Spruit (5 killed). As Willow Grange Cemetery is relatively close to Estcourt, I have always assumed that the René Bull photograph showed the burial of W.Y.R. men at Willow Grange. As General Hildyard commanded the 2nd Brigade, of which the West Yorkshires were part, one would expect him to be present at the burial of that regiment's men. It is also worth noting that other slides shown by Bull included views of the West Yorkshires in action at Willow Grange and the aftermath of the battle.


















eGGSA Graves - KwaZulu-Natal

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Nice detective work!

Neville, thanks for the explanation of the funeral photograph. There are two other indications, I don't see Buller who, given the importance of the occasion, must have been at Freddy's funeral and secondly there are cows grazing in the background which one doesn't expect on or near a fresh battlefield.

The 5th photograph shown in Neville’s original post is interesting as it presumably depicts the stones which were placed near Chieveley on the train track on November 15, 1899 by Louis Botha’s men. If this is indeed the case, these relatively small boulders caused the derailment of three of the six carriages of the armoured train that day and consequently changed the course of history by providing Winston Churchill with a massive career boost. In contrast to the sketch shown in the thread that describes Churchill’s account of the incident, the track is constructed to accommodate two axle-widths. Perhaps this fact played some role in the derailment.

Both photograph and sketch partly reproduced for comparison.




To return to the subject of this thread. Beside making photographs and drawings, Rene Bull also kept notes during his stay in South Africa. Below a page in his handwriting with the text that is printed on the Gouvernement’s Noten translated into English. The original Dutch text in is still visible in the background. The bottom part of the page is Bull’s sketched design for a cigar lighter based on a PomPom shell and clips of Mauser bullets.

Oddly, reports appear to indicate that Buller did not attend the burial. Clery, on the other hand, did.

The photograph does indeed show the point where the armoured train was derailed. It was reproduced in the same edition of Black & White as the burial drawing above, with the caption "The exact spot where the armoured train left [the track]".




Superb note and sketch, though I fear René Bull might have been a little disappointed when he returned home to find that almost every silversmith in the country was already converting pom-pom shells into cigar lighters. However, most were rather rudimentary in comparison to his design ...







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Regarding the boulders on the line: yes, seemingly too small to derail a train in their present state. But it looks like there are several very fresh fragments - could they have been broken up, either by the impact, ot later by sledge hammer?
Re: the twin rails - this is odd, since I previously believed Cape Gauge (3'6") was universal in South Africa (hence also in Sudan 1898 to enable Cape-to-Cairo links}?

It is probably worth noting that this was not René Bull's first foray into lecturing on his campaign experiences. Immediately previous to the outbreak of hostilities in South Africa, he had been engaged on an 8-month-long tour describing his time during the Sudan War. These slides, the first two of which depict the aftermath of the Battle of Omdurman, were purchased with the armoured train images included in my first post. Bull's photographs bear similarities with those taken by van Hoepen and Lund Bros after the battle of Spion Kop.



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