TOPIC:

Hi David,

You are quite right; the casualty list is regimentally diverse given the relatively small number of Mounted Infantry involved.

The following is an extract from the casualty roll:



The other thing that stands out is that it reminds me of Inkermann where the troops on the ground took their own initiative; that's what I took away from Private Jacksons account.

I agree the differing accounts is confusing but the aftermath must have been quite confronting given the close quarters of the action.

Regards,
Shaun

PS: As you noted this is a good account of the battle:
samilitaryhistory.org/vol166rs.html

Shaun - thanks for the casualty list which appears to be a bit longer than the one given in The Scotsman and I think adds another MIC.

Maurice adds yet another account of the battle which mentions the Worcesters on p486:

"The 5th M.I. (Major K. E. Lean) now became hotly engaged. They were disposed as follows: the Worcestershire company in the centre, the Royal Irish Company holding a kraal on the left, and the Buffs company on the right and right front. After a few minutes a forward rush was made to rising ground a little in advance of the kraal held by the Royal Irish. This new position was actually on the edge of the Boer laager. In an enclosure barely twenty yards away crouched two Boer marksmen, who, during the next five hours, remained undetected whilst they shot down any man of the 5th M.I. who showed himself on the ridge."

4153 T. Smith had an interesting life story. His real name was Thomas Henry Lane but he enlisted as Thomas Smith for some unknown reason. At Bothaville he received a GSW to the arm but recovered and rejoined his unit and saw the war out when he confessed to having served under an alias. He appears on the QSA Medal Roll as 4153 T. Smith but on the KSA Medal Roll as 4153 T. H. Lane. He married later in 1902 and had 3 children and went on to serve in the Great War. In France he was kicked by a horse and invalided home and transferred to a home battalion. His wife went to visit him in 1916 and they went out for a ride in a horse & trap. The horse misbehaved and took them up a bank overturning the trap. Thomas landed on his head and died shortly afterwards in the local VAD Hospital. So horses carried him through the ABW but did for him in the end.

Regards, David.

Shaun - The 2nd Worcester MIC, 2nd East Kent (Buffs) MIC, 2nd East Yorkshire & 1st Royal Irish MIC made up the 5th MI – so 14/45 (31%) on your casualty list were 5th MI who obviously bore the brunt.

Also, according to the info I have, abstracted from a PhD thesis (on-line and downloadable as a PDF) entitled “The British Regular Mounted Infantry 1880 – 1913. Cavalry of Poverty or Victorian Paradigm?” by Andrew Philip Winrow, Buckingham University:


The 7th MI consisted of the 2nd Northants, 2nd Lincolns, 1st KOSB & 2nd Hampshires – which accounts for only one on your casualty list – Welch who was an officer and died of his wounds about 4 days later.

The 8th MI consisted of the 2nd Cheshires, 1st Oxon & Bucks LI, 2nd East Lancashire & 2nd North Staffs – which accounts for only two on your casualty list.

Thus we appear to have a lot of MIC members who were not in the 5th, 7th or 8th MI – that is assuming Andrew Winrow’s analysis is correct. The situation had some fluidity, for example the 2nd Gloucesters were originally part of the 5th MI but by early November 1900 had moved to the 14th MI and been replaced by the East Yorks.

I am digging out stuff I discovered last June and ended up getting so confused about that I put further studies into abeyance for the good of my mental health. They include a long account of the activities of the 2nd Worcesters MIC on 5th/6th November – I found it on the Worcestershire Regiment website. The copy I managed to extract needs some tidying up before posting. In itself it is confusing because the bloke who wrote it does not appear on the 2nd Worcesters MIC medal roll but on the one for the foot sloggers. He also does not mention the death of his two comrades. The two Boers in the pig pen commanded a lot of his attention.

The extras on your casualty list as opposed to the one published in The Scotsman appear to be the two who were wounded on the 5th rather than the 6th, the two IYers and Bilborough of Loch’s Horse but I need to do some more work on that.

David.

Shaun – My view on the possible origin and accuracy of your maps plus the battle itself.

You wrote the maps appear to have come from the Alexander family archives and suggested two members, Claud & Boyd, were likely candidates for drawing them. The Alexander family in question were closely related to minor Scottish aristocracy, namely the Baronets of Ballochmyle, and their wealth is shown by the 1881 Census. In 1881 Claud & Boyd were living at 2 Granville Place, Marylebone, London with their parents, two sisters and three other brothers plus a butler, cook, six undefined domestic servants (5 female, 1 male), a Governess and a Nurse – Claud the youngest was only two years old at the time. Their father was cited as a “Lt.Col (Retired) Army, owner 405 acres Kent”. Their paternal grandfather’s military pedigree went back to the Indian Mutiny.

So we actually have five brothers to consider but we can rule one out straight away as he died in 1895 aged 18. Boyd and his twin Robert were the eldest. I have mis-lead you regarding Boyd, the medal ribbon he is sporting in the photo I posted previously is not that of the QSA but that of the Ashanti Medal 1900. In April 1900, Captain Boyd Alexander was “selected for an assistant inspectorship in the Gold Coast constabulary”. According to his 1910 obituary this led to him being involved in the Relief of Kumasi during Ashanti Wars and this, thanks to the IWM website, is the medal he received (not the actual one).



The British garrison at Kumasi was relieved on 15th July 1900. The clasp seems to have Kumasi misspelt. So I think we can rule Boyd out, especially as his obituaries do not mention he served in the ABW.

His twin Robert did serve in the ABW as a member of the Rifle Brigade. He was wounded in August 1900 and then appears back home on the 1901 Census. So we can probably rule him out although he did return to his unit before the end of the conflict.

Herbert was an artist whose watercolours of British country scenes, such as the “Blackberry Gatherers”, fetch several hundred pounds today at auction. I became a bit excited about him when I learned he served in the Buffs in WW1 but further investigation indicates he did not serve in the ABW. So I think we can rule Herbert out.

So that just leaves Claud, your favourite. He served in the Scots Guards in the ABW:



According to the unit information write up on this site regarding the Scots Guards: “After the brigade came back from Koomati Poort to Pretoria the battalion, now under Colonel Pulteney, was employed for a time in the Krugersdorp district. On 7th November 1900 they were railed to Springfontein to assist in keeping De Wet out of the colony.” I think this rules him out as being present on the day but perhaps in his actions against De Wet he ended up on the battlefield and from newspaper reports tried to reconstruct the battle.

Having reviewed, updated and increased my knowledge of the battle, both maps even when correctly orientated appear to have my “beloved” 5th MI out of position and much too remote from the centre of the action. Comparing them to the map in the Times History there are other things wrong most noticeably the Red Farmhouse (B ) and White House (D) are the wrong side of the road.

Simplifying the happenings of the 6th November 1900. At dawn Le Gallais ordered the 5th MI to be the advanced guard & scouts and set them in motion. He instructed the 7th MI (of which Private Murray Cosby Jackson was a member) to finish getting the baggage across the Valsch River drift and then stay in reserve guarding the baggage. Le Gallais, along with the 8th MI and the Imperial Yeomanry, then headed south but behind the 5th MI. It was the 5th MI who came across the sleeping Boer piquet and took them prisoners. It was the 5th MI who then came across De Wet and his men, and roused them with several fusillades, thus starting the battle, and putting those Boers who managed to grab a horse (including De Wet & Steyn) into flight. At his stage the 5th MI were still outnumbered something like three to one by those Boers who had no option but to stay and fight and the 5th MI were to suffer the heaviest losses of the day. The gunfire caused Le Gallais to speed up, perhaps a bit too much, but he did first order his staff officer, Major Hickey back to the heliograph post to signal to Major Welch the commander of the 7th MI and three miles away, to make haste with all available men, the7th MI were a bit short on horses which is why they had been put in charge of the baggage. Le Gallais and his number two Colonel Ross were a bit negligent of their own safety when they arrived at the Red Farmhouse and Le Gallais was mortally wounded and Ross lost his lower jaw. At this stage Major Taylor, in charge of U Battery, took command and for a time it was a desperate matter until De Lisle who had collected the 7th MI, various “Colonials” and other troops which I have yet to identify arrived on the scene and the Boers realised the game was up and showed the white flag.

Thus Murray Cosby Jackson was really a “Johnny come lately” and I am not sure his account is the best one to come to conclusions about the overall happenings of 6th November 1900. His account has some obvious faults as he insists on naming Col Ross as Col Cross and Major Hickey as Major Hickie.

General Charles Knox, who was in overall command, did eventually arrive and arrange a half hearted chase of the Boers but it was too late by then and De Wet continued to be a thorn in the side of the Imperial forces. At the time, it was cited as a glorious Imperial victory against the odds with the taking of seven Boer guns being cited as the pinnacle rather than the respective casualty numbers. In actuality as the war was now descending or ascending, depending on your point of view, into the guerilla phase the capturing of the Boer guns was reduced in value and the capturing of De Wet & Steyn would have been much more significant. That this did not happen Major Hickey firmly blamed on the tardy General Knox – Major Hickey, who was Irish, went on to serve in the Great War with distinction and then became an Irish Nationalist Politician of note!

I have looked at a few of those on the casualty list starting, as ever, with the those with unusual surnames – thus we have 19251 Gunner Louis Ruhl of U Battery – at least one report says that all 8 members of U Battery, excluding their commanding officer mentioned above, ended up on the casualty list but I have manged to identify only 7. Anyway, Louis Ruhl had a German father and German paternal grandparents but his mother and maternal grandparents were Dutch! He was actually born in Paris but when he attested he made himself out to be a Cockney claiming to be born in Bow in London. After the ABW he married a French lady in Paris but the 1911 Census found them living in Dorset running a nursery in the garden sense. What happened to Louis next is open to conjecture.

Hi David,

That was a fantastic summary and great write-up; anyone looking to research the battle will certainly do well to review your notes.

Thanks to your research we can also conclude that none of the Alexander brothers drew the map; it's definitely contemporary with a few errors as you noted.

Thanks again.

Regards,
Shaun