TOPIC:

Hi all
I'm trying to determine which British units operated at Schimmelhoek in the Ermelo District in December and January of 1901?

How would you go about working out who was in that area at the time?
Would there be some sort of regimental diary available that one could access?

Thanks for any help with this

"British Army Postal Cancellations of the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902" by Peter Prime offers this .....

Apologies for the "presentation" but "resizing' is not working for me

















David

Hoarsecock,

If you enter that term into the search bar on the top right of the screen, you will see about a dozen matches, mostly to the Times History account of the war.

Hopefully these matches will help.

Hoarsecock
A bit late, but yesterday I had a look in the TH index volume for unit activities in the area you describe. There was a geographical mention of Schimmelhoek in Vol.5; however dealing with an action around October, 1901. There was no reference that I could find in Maurice's Official History. Can you enlighten us as to the reason for your query? With some time in digging, it might be possible to isolate likely units.
Good luck with your quest
Regards
IL.

From A Gazetteer of the Second Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 (Military Press, Milton Keynes 1999), HM & MGM Jones:

[2630: 2633-3017] a farm in the South African Republic (Ermelo district; Mpumalanga), 30 km east of Ermelo. Receiving intelligence that Chief-Cmdt L. Botha was at the farm owned by C.J. Bothma, Lt-Col M.F. Rimington's column reached the farm on the morning of 25 October 1901 only to see the Chief-Cmdt and his son riding off to the north. Col Sir H.S. Rawlinson's column was prevented from pursuing him by several actions directed by Asst Cmdt-Gen C. Botha. Times V pp.362-364 (second map facing p.562).

The Times History will you which troops were in Rimington's & Rawlinson's columns at this time.

I apologize for taking 3 months to reply, it was a bit hectic around here and this had to take a backseat.

The reason for my query is that a number of my relatives lived in the area.
According to the POW records they were all captured on the same day at Schimmelhoek.
I've read about the action around October 1901 where Louis Botha barely escaped and I believe four of his men were captured.

The thing is there were seven of them and they were captured (probably surrendered rather than being captured) at the end of December 1901.
I don't think it's likely that they were the chaps caught when Botha escaped from Schimmelhoek, since that happened 3 months before they became POW's and there was seven of them and not four.

I hope that by knowing which British units were active in the area I'd be able to learn more about the circumstances in which they became POW's.

Curiously as far as I know all but one of them was sent to Ceylon the other one was sent to St. Helena.
I often wondered how he ended up in St Helena and the others in Celon?
Was there some method by which it was decided where you'd be sent to or was it a random process?