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Barberton Garden of Remembrance

Guard Ross and the railway disaster at Barberton, 30 March 1902

Barberton Town Guard




The dying embers of the war: The final stage of the fight that led to the capture of Barberton

A correspondent writes:—“After Machadodorp we (1st and 4th Cavalry Brigades, under General French) moved to Carolina, where we were joined by General Mahon, with about 1,000 mounted men, and by a force of two battalions of infantry, who had with them a naval detachment with a ‘cow* gun. This force, under General French, was the Barberton column. We moved off on Sunday, September 9, and, I fancy, took the enemy unawares. After we had been going four hours we killed four (at any rate we buried that number) and took twenty prisoners. Tuesday evening, the 11th, brought us to the foot of what is well known all over this part of the Transvaal as the ‘Red Hill' where the road from Carolina to Barberton ascends the mountains, which it crosses before dropping down Barberton Chute to Barberton Plain. Ox waggons have fifty-six oxen apiece to drag them up, and our R.H.A. guns the next day had sixteen horses each and then could only make good a few yards at a time. This road was flanked by mountainous hills held by the Boers, which on our side sloped fairly gradually to the plain where we were bivouacked on Tuesday night. The Inniskillings were selected to rush these hills next morning, and for this purpose we were strengthened with two squadrons of Carabineers and a Pom-pom (which latter had to be left behind as it couldn’t keep anywhere near us). After breakfasting by moonlight at 3 a.m., we moved off at 4, and our advanced squadrons fairly surprised the Boers about six o’clock, and, galloping, scrambling and shooting, we drove them from all except the last hill by 7.30 a.m. There we were stopped by a gully some two hundred feet deep, and the Boers hung on the opposite hill, two hundred feet higher than the one we were on. By 11.30 two R.H.A. guns had been got up, and our Pom-pom, and we had the Boers cleared away, and the pass on to the plateau in our possession by 2.30 p.m., and General Mahon’s irregulars galloped on and captured five Boer waggons and some stock. From the kopje in the foreground I lay for hours watching the Boers streaming away over the distant hills, oxen, sheep, waggons, Cape carts following one another in an endless stream, making a wide detour and finally breaking back to Ermelo, as we have since heard, where most of them belong. Perhaps we shall see them again shortly. We were in Barberton next day.”

The Graphic 24 November 1900

The Barberton Commando awaiting transport

Image from the collection of Martin Plaut

Also look here for another Barberton thread..... Mike

www.angloboerwar.com/forum/5-medals-and-...ton-town-guard#82926

Pilgrim Street, Barberton

Source: www.angloboerwar.com/forum/19-ephemera/3...under-the-union-jack