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Good Afternoon Everyone...…

Was working on doing some more transcribing of the documents / letters from the Prince Edward Island Provincial Archives.....

I looked at all of the posts and I realized that there is one thing missing that I should have added a long time ago...…

I wish to say thanks to the member of the BMF who found the World War One pair as awarded to:

LIEUTENANT S. W. MUNSEY

Note the spelling of the name..... In going through his WW1 papers there are a number of cases where the name is spelt MUNCEY and MUNSEY, there are even a few locations where the name is spelt with a "C" and that has been crossed out and an "S" imposed yet on all his signatures he spells his name with a "C"..... Got to love those regimental clerks.....

I now have a re-unite.....

Mike

Hi Mike,
Great story about Muncey and his correspondence with Collins 27 years later. I enjoyed that one.

It is a dream of mine to come across a batch of correspondence with the envelopes complete to study and report. They are still out therein n the back of someone's bookshelf!
When my dad passed away in 2019,we had to check every single book and batch of paperwork for little gems he had inserted therein! It revealed many a surprise, but alas, no boer war artefacts......yet.
We are still sorting!
Cheers Steve

Good Day Everyone......

I found the following the other day and thought it would be an interesting read. It is another version of the battle where Muncey lost his boots and other pieces of equipment. It was written by a fellow member of the Canadian Scouts who later in life was a Whisky and Rum runner across the Great Lakes and the name of his Schooner of which he was Captain was “I'm Alone”, also the name of his book written in 1930. Randall also served in W.W. 1 with the Royal Naval Reserve as a Lieutenant Commander, won a Distinguished Service Cross, Mentioned In Despatches and a French Croix de Guerre and he also served in the Merchant Marine in W.W. 2

If someone has the Boer casualty list for the battle / skirmish on February 4th, 1901 at Schurwekop. The Scouts casualties February 4th, 1901 – 1 Killed and 4 Wounded.

Mike


I'M ALONE

By

Captain Jack Randell

Published: 1930
Indianapolis
Bobbs-Merrill, Co. Ltd

CHAPTER IV (Page 57)

Twenty-five of us saddled one morning and rode out into the Transvaal. We were about half-way between Pretoria and Peit Retief. Captain Charlie Ross was in command of our detachment.

We rode along several hours without sighting another human being. The sun was getting high and blazing down. It was hot.

Suddenly, some distance ahead, we saw four Boers fide up on the crest of a gentle rise.

“Yoicks and away!” called one of the scouts, burlesquing the fox hunt cry.

Captain Ross raised his hand and signaled us to come on as, out in front of us, he set spurs to his horse.

We gave our horses the spurs and charged after him, whooping and yelling like a crown of schoolboys.

Out there ahead of us the four Boers sat on their horses easily on the crest of the rise. They took a couple of shots at us. We came charging on. We were close to them before they wheeled their horses and rode out of sight down the other side of the rise. We dashed over the crest in hot pursuit.

It started like a fox hunt, but ended in a dog fight. For there, waiting for us on the other side of the rise, was a band of about a hundred and twenty-five armed and mounted Boers. Their rifles rose and pointed at us. By the time we could have checked our charge and wheeled, they could have shot us to pieces. Make no mistake about it those Boers could shoot as well as they could ride, and most of them had started riding before they could walk.

Captain Ross, still riding in the lead, took in the situation in a glance.

“Smash through them and ride back again!” he shouted.

It was the only thing to do. We spurred our horses once more. Our reins dropped to their withers. Gripping them with our knees, our carbines and our Colts blazing, we smashed straight into the middle of the mass of them.

The crash of our impact carried us clean through. It was man-to-man stuff. I had a Colt in each hand, and I remember getting three Boers at such close range that the powder burned their shirts. You couldn't miss. Twenty-five but there were more than fifty of them on the ground when we came out the other side.

We swung around as quick as we could. We had our losses, too. What was left of us bunched up as Captain Ross shouted his commands. Then he yelled “Charge” again. We smashed back through the disorganized mass of them, shooting as fast as we could squeeze the trigger. A lot more of them dropped.

But they were shooting too. When we came out into the clear, there were just five of our twenty-five left. And there were still some thirty or forty of them.

About a mile and a half away, as we had ridden up, we had noticed a Boer farmhouse with a stone walled horse-kraal beside it.

“Make for that kraal!” shouted Captain Ross. “We can hold them off behind those walls!”

We dashed for the kraal. The Boers came after us, hell-for-leather. We'd ride a few hundred yards, halt and wheel, fire at them and slow them up, and then wheel and gallop toward the kraal, reloading as we rode.

At one of those halts I was sighting my carbine at a Boer when the earth came up and hit me in the face. My horse had been shot out from under me. Luckily I had kept my grip on my carbine.

Captain Charlie Ross empties his carbine at the racing Boers, and then saw me jump to my feet.

“Grab my stirrup!” he shouted.

I grabbed. He put spurs to his horse. Talk about seven-league boots. It seemed to me that I only hit the veldt once in a hundred yards.

We sailed over the stone wall of that horse kraal like birds, and just in time. From behind it we pumped carbine fire into the Boers and halted their advance. They dismounted and started the attack on foot, or rather on their bellies, for they came crawling up Indian fashion and shooting as they came. We began dropping them one by one. They never got to the wall.

But there they had us ringed in. We were beginning to wonder how long the five of us could hold them off.

Then a could of dust showed across the veldt. We began to yell and cheer like maniacs. The column was coming!.

The Boers saw it, too. They crawled back to their horses, leaped into the saddle and rode off. We sent a volley after them to speed them on their way, and stayed right where we were until the column came up.

Then we drank about a canteen of water apiece. I got a horse, and we rode out to see if any of our men who had fallen in that fight were still living.

I found my chum, Sergeant Muncey, stretched out on the veldt, shot through the body. At first I thought he was dead. The Boer bullet had entered over his heart and come out over his left kidney. It caught him as they were riding toward them, bent forward in his saddle and shooting. But then I found he was breathing. I got some rum and water down his throat and he came back.

He came back mad. Not because of the wound, though that was bad enough. But because he saw with is first conscious glance that the Boers had stripped him of his shirt.

His tailored tunic, his whip-cord breeches, his high laced leather boots and his silver spurs were with some Boer now. His carbine and two Colts, too. The language he used!

But Sergeant Muncey recovered and got back to Canada. And long after the war a rich Boer visited Canada in the course of a trip round the world and advertised in the Canadian newspapers to try to get in touch with the sergeant in Howard's Canadian Scouts whose boots and silver spurs he had worn through the rest of the war. Muncey read the advertisement and I believe they got together. I wasn't there, but it must have been a real party.