TOPIC:

He had been shot through the shoulder, and had not felt a thing. 5 years 11 months ago #58957

Rory
Topic Author
Offline
Senior Member
Posts: 3351
Thank you received: 2158

Norman Hugh Collett

Trooper, Gorringe’s Flying Column – Anglo Boer War
Lieutenant, 8th Mounted Rifles (Midlands Horse) – WWI

- Queens South Africa Medal with clasps Cape Colony and South Africa 1901 to Tpr. N.H. Collet, Gorringe’s F.C.
- 1914/15 Star to Lt. N.H. Collett, 8th M.R.
- British War Medal to Lt. N.H. Collett
- Victory Medal to Lt. N.H. Collett

Norman Hugh Collett was born in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape of South Africa on 27 January 1877, the son of a farmer, John Collett, and his wife Mary Collett. As events will show Collett was to lead a long life and was highly thought of in many quarters. Much of what we know of him comes from the writings of Joan Collett in her book “A Time To Plant”, and the autobiography of Professor Guy Butler, “Karoo Morning” – Mrs Collett was Norman’s sister-in-law and Professor Butler was a much-loved nephew. Both will be liberally referred to as we weave the tale of this remarkable man.

Collett’s story and the history of the small Karoo town of Cradock are intertwined, the one not worth the telling without the presence of the other. As was almost a prerequisite in farming communities in late Victorian South Africa the families were large ones and the Collett’s were no exception. Joining Norman around the dinner table at various times were siblings Walter James; Lettie Butler; Herbert Joseph; Jessie Marion; Emma Butler; Rosie Phoebe; Owen; Agnes; Albert Henry; Gervase Chancellor and Dudley Templeton. Many of the boys, in addition to Norman, were to own and run their own farms in the district in later years.

Farming as a livelihood was not for the faint hearted, requiring as it did a strong and hardy physique. Collett, in the last years of the 19th century would have been a dab hand at riding and shooting – skills that were going to be put to good use in the years to come. He would also have been very familiar with the lie of the land and would have shown great ability as a scout when and where required.

South Africa, in October 1899, was on the brink of war – the two Dutch-speaking Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were at loggerheads with Great Britain and, on the 11th of that month, simmering tensions erupted into a full-scale conflict between the protagonists. Initially the Eastern Cape area (where the Collett family lived and farmed on Grassridge) was found to be far from the action but, as the war dragged on and entered its second or guerrilla phase, the Boers, in search of supplies and fresh recruits from amongst the Cape Dutch, ventured across the border into the Cape Colony where small but highly mobile Commandos would attack small towns, plunder their resources, and then fly away disappearing into thin air.

The need for locally raised units to assist in the fight thereby freeing-up the Imperial troops became more pressing and the call that went out was heeded by many. Lt Col G F Gorringe raised Gorringe's Flying Column in 1901 for precisely this purpose serving in the Cape Colony against numerous Boer Commandos. It was to this outfit that Collett gravitated enlisting as a Trooper with them on their formation on 12 January 1901.

By 18 January 1901 the wily Boer General, Kritzinger, (he was a man local to the area and after the farmed alongside the Collett family who would often pay him a visit) with about 400 men had reached Willowmore. The British troops were fast learning of the extreme mobility characteristic of all the Boer commandos. On 6 February Kritzinger's men overwhelmed a small detachment of 25 British troops at Klipplaat while on 12 February a patrol of Imperial Yeomanry was surprised and captured near Willowmore. These Boer commandos, all the time pursued by British columns, then fell back towards Graaff-Reinet and Murraysburg via Aberdeen.

Scheepers and Fouche now split off from Kritzinger who moved northwards and was in the vicinity of Bethesda Road siding on 19 February with the columns of Colonel G F Gorringe (whose flying column was noted for the rapidity of its movements and nicknamed 'Gorringe's Light Oxen') and Lowe on his heels. He was in an engagement with Colonel Gorringe north of Cradock at the Fish River Station on 23 and 24 February but gave the British the slip and on 3 March 1901 surrounded the village of Pearston. (It could well be the spot where Collett was wounded). They were able to overwhelm the town guard and loot the town, remaining there until 6 March. From here Kritzinger moved on to the Somerset East and Bedford districts sacking Sheldon Station on 9 March before continuing northward through the Adelaide and Tarkastad districts. When he reached Maraisburg Lotter split off and Kritzinger carried on towards the Orange Free State. This northward trek culminated in the retirement across the Orange River of half his commando (300 men) under Commandant G H P van Reenen. Kritzinger then led the remainder of his commando south meeting up again with Lotter, and eventually based themselves in the country between Tarkastad and Cradock – thus continuing to be a thorn in the side of the Imperial forces.

Page 219 of Joan Collett’s book refers to the brothers Collett’s role in the action as follows:-

“Gervase, Norman and Dudley all served for varying periods during the Boer War. Dudley was mentioned in dispatches for rescuing a wounded friend and Norman was part of the force that chased General Smuts through the Eastern Cape, and was wounded near Willowmore. Rebel Boer forces came and went in the Cradock district. A blockhouse was built at Fish River station to protect the bridge, but General Kritzinger’s men made themselves at home at Saltpansdrift and Grassridge. At Grassridge Dudley took all the rifles and hid them in the quince hedge, and though the Boers camped under the hedge that night they were never found. They were given meat and meal but their officer would not let them take the food cooking on the stove. The farmers were very short of horses – not only were they taken by the Boers but they were commandeered and bought by the British. The journal records Norman and Dudley walking miles to the outposts of the farm.”

20180104_150529_resized.jpgabw_2018-05-28.jpg

Another account of how Norman Collett was wounded and what followed thereafter comes courtesy of page 85 of Guy Butler’s previously mentioned autobiography:-

“Norman was with a column chasing Smuts up the Langkloof. He was lying behind a stone during a skirmish near Haarlem. The weather was hot. He was firing away. Then he felt he was sweating abnormally. He put his hand in his tunic – and brought it out, scarlet and sticky with blood. He had been shot through the shoulder, and had not felt a thing.

The wound was slow in heeling. He spent some time with his sister Lettie in Cradock and then went out to Grassridge. He was still in uniform, of course, and very weak, with no energy at all. Advance news reached the homestead that a commando of Boers was approaching. His younger brother Dudley took all the rifles and hid them in the quince hedge alongside the dry furrow – the grey slender shapes blending with grey stems, camouflaged by shadow.
Sure enough, a few minutes later the Boers cantered up to the front of the homestead. Norman, still in uniform, lost his nerve for a moment, and fled down the passage, out through the garden, and then sat down to think at the back of the kraals.

‘I didn’t know what to do. At last I said: No, dammit, I’m not going to let them find me hiding like this. So I got up and walked inside again. They did nothing to me.’

The Boers bivouacked for the night along the furrow. They did not spot the rifles. They left sometime during the night..”

The war over Norman Collett returned to the arduous but rewarding pursuit of farming. The world had other plans however, and a mere 12 years later was precipitated into a conflict of such a nature that it made the Boer War look like a small skirmish. South Africa, now one united country under Louis Botha, was called upon to do her bit on behalf of the Empire. This didn’t sit well with all her citizens and those whose memories were still alive with the injustices of the Boer War rebelled against Botha and his government. This internal rebellion needed to be quelled before German South West Africa could be invaded and taken for the Crown.

Norman, now 37 years old, lost no time in joining the 8th Mounted Rifles (otherwise known as the Midlands Horse) on 19 October 1914. Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant he gave as his address “Grassridge, Fish River”. Once the rebellion had been put down Collett and his men (who had been stationed in Upington during the rebellion) entered the theatre of war where he remained until 27 April 1915 on which date he was released from service and returned home to his farm having been awarded the 1914/15 Star, War Medal and Victory Medal for his efforts.

In 1922 Grassridge was chosen as the site for a State irrigation dam, the wall across the Brak River being built a short distance above the Grassridge weir. Apiece of the farm was flooded and the chance for which Norman had been waiting came; he sold his share in another farm and bought Katkop – a farm of just over 6000 morgen with good soil along the Fish River which fell under the irrigation scheme. At about this time he married Gladys Hart, a great granddaughter of Robert Hart of nearby Glen Avon.

But what sort of man was Norman Collett? Guy Butler, in “Karoo Morning” wrote that:-

“Norman had married late, so that his children arrived more or less at the same time as his nephew Ernest’s. So we grew up with Uncle Norman’s sons.

For many years Uncle Norman was my favourite uncle. Uncle Frank Biggs may have eclipsed Norman for some time and in certain respects, but, tall, rangy, in his dark waistcoat and khaki trousers, with a drooping moustache, just like the Sheriff in the cowboy films, Norman was the magical man, warm hearted, humorous, and for a Collett, loquacious. In fact one of his quieter relatives, once referred to him as “that chatterbox”

This was unfair. It suggests speaking to no effect. Norman never did. When he spoke, men listened; and when he got into a reminiscent vein about his boyhood or the Boer War, he held an audience in the palm of his hand, or changing his tone, he would have them rolling on the springbok mats in mirth.

He could make the most impressive bass sounds, coming deep out of his throat and chest like a “volstruis bromming” (an ostrich moaning); and he could roll his eyes for dramatic or comic effect. Also he smelt of Magaliesburg tobacco; he wielded a pipe and it was even rumoured that on rare occasions – during a campaign, or after a cold springbok hunt, or gemsbok shooting in the Kalahari during the winter – he might even take a shot of brandy.
Butler continued his reminiscences about Collett and the Boer War– on page 92 he wrote:-

“In the ‘fifties, when I was trying to write a play about the Anglo-Boer War, in which a colonial Englishman appears as a scout with the British Army, I asked:

‘Uncle Norman, how did you chaps get on with the Tommies?’

He looked at me a moment, and then said: ‘Guy, those fellows was always getting lawst.’

And he proceeded to give some hilarious and some pathetic accounts of Tommies stolidly marching, in terrible conditions of heat and cold, under enormous packs, miles off course – as many as twenty miles wrong. Instead of marching due east, the subaltern had marched them due west. Things like that.

‘Those poor Tommies. Those poor foot soldiers. Mind you, he said, ‘it was the horses I felt sorriest for. Ridden into the ground. Broken. Horse after horse.”

This much loved man and war veteran passed away at the venerable old age of 89 on 4 September 1966 and is buried in the Fish River cemetery in Cradock.