TOPIC:

14190 Tpr. E.R. Walker, 47th Coy. 13th Imp. Yeo. PoW Lindley 31 May 1900

QSA: CC, ODS, TR – 14190 Tpr. E. R. Walker, 47th Coy. 13th Impl. Yeo.
BWM: E.R. Walker (for work with the YMCA)
Defence Medal (unnamed as issued)

Ernest Robert Walker was born on 10 May 1872. He was the son of Sir James Robert Walker, 2nd Bt. And Louisa Susan Marlborough Heron-Maxwell. On 10 October 1901, he married Beatrice Mary Maxwell, the daughter of Sir Hubert Eustace Maxwell of Monreith, 7th Bt and Mary Fletcher-Cambell. They had three children, Silvia Mary, James Herbert and Kthleen Elizabeth Jean. He was an architect. He died when 70 years old on 17 May 1942. He was the last member of the family to live in the family estate at Sand Hutton.

E. R. Walker, an Architect by occupation, served in the 47th Company 13th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry in South Africa, 1 March-17 October 1900. Was taken prisoner at Lindley on 31 May 1900. He was one of the ‘special’ prisoners who was sent along with the officers to a prison camp at Barberton, being released on 13 September 1900 when liberated by French when he captured Barberton. (The Times for 4 Sept. 1900)

Architectual Example: Walker designed the WWI Memorial a Wall mounted rectangular bronze plaque mounted onto a hopton wood stone backboard with dedicatory inscription carved above and below the plaque at St. Clements Church, Scarcroft Road, York, N. Yorks. (Church of England)

History
The Battalion to which the 47th Duke of Cambridge’s Own Company joined out the in South Africa, the 13th Battalion, was as one write put it, ‘the Imperial Yeomanry dream’, as Wyndham, the creator of the Yeomanry, had wanted it to represent the cream of British manhood and the ‘13th Battalion took his scheme to its ultimate extreme’. The 45th Company from Dublin had Masters of Foxhounds and the sons of much of Ireland’s legal establishment in its ranks. The 47th Company, as mentioned, came from some of England’s wealthiest families, and the 46th and 54th from Belfast represented Ulster Unionism’s commitment to the Imperial cause. The battalion’s officers included Lord Longford, Lord Ennismore, the Earl of Leitrim, James Craig, later Lord Craigavon, and Sir John Power of the Irish whiskey distilling family. Politics, money, patriotism and class, the combination was irresistible to the press and public, some of whom dubbed the battalion the ‘Millionaires’ Own’. All the Troopers in the D.C.O. were wealthy 'gentleman troopers' (aside from the officers' servants). What made them unique is that they volunteered to serve in South Africa without pay and to provide the costs of their own equipment, horses and transport to the war. They donated their yeomanry pay from the government to the war widows and orphans fund. The D.C.O. were massively oversubscribed and only 110 chosen - one rejected gentleman even asked for a medical certificate so that he could prove his rejection to his wife. Despite their wealth there was only one thing the Troopers wanted - the Queen's Shilling as reported in The Times on 25 January 1900,
"The swearing in of recruits took place at Duke Street (St James's, London) yesterday under Major Morland, approving officer, and Lord Arthur Hill, in his capacity as a magistrate. The men exhibited much eagerness to be possessed of 'the Queen's Shilling' as a memento of the occasion and the wish was gratified".


On arrival in South Africa, the 47th Duke of Cambridge’s Own Company, well connected as well as well heeled, only spent a week in the unpleasant surroundings of the Imperial Yeomanry camp at Maitland. Admittedly their reward was weeks of training on the edge of the Karoo Desert north of Cape Town but life there was eased by the arrival of the Dublin men to keep them company and of a spectacular array of food, drink and other luxuries which had been sent out from England. On 15th May the two companies arrived in Bloemfontein to meet the Ulstermen, who had come straight from Maitland, and just a week later he newly assembled battalion was given its first orders for active service.

The 13th Battalion was then tasked with joined General Colvile’s 9th Division, which was short of mounted troops, and as such the yeomanry was detailed to link up with Colvile at Ventersburg, south of Kroonstad, but because they were delayed waiting for forage, they did not arrive in time, and Colvile had by then begun his march east to Lindley and then north to Heilbron, taking the right flank during Robert’s march on Johannesburg. The 13th Battalion Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Basil Spragge, was an experienced regular infantry officer, and he was then handed a telegram, the origins of which are still a mystery. The telegram basically ordered Spragge to join Colville at Lindley. Colvile later denied all knowledge of this telegram, and there is speculation that the Boers had tapped the telegraph lines and sent a bogus message to lure the yeomanry to destruction. It was still a risky deception, as Colvile himself was heading to Lindley with the 9th Division, and it he had done so, and then lingered long enough, the yeomanry would have caught up with him, providing much needed strength to the 9th Division. Colvile’s intelligence officer later confirmed that Colvile did not give this order, but despite the speculation it does not seem likely that the Boers did send the order, and more than likely it was just down to bad staff work at British headquarters who had issued the orders to Spragge, and failed to inform Colvile. Nevertheless, it played right into the hands of the Boers.

The 13th Battalion marched for Lindley at daybreak on the 26th May, and that afternoon met a party of armed Boers who claimed to be going to Kroonstad to surrender, and Spragge naively disarmed them, invited them to lunch and then allowed them to go. The Boers promptly returned to Lindley with much valuable information. As Private Maurice Fitzgibbon of the Dublin company, son of one of Ireland’s most senior judges, recalled: “The scouts of the Boer commandos at Lindley had been permitted to enter our lines to find out our numbers, our armaments and the amount of our supplies, had even had lunch with us and all this information and hospitality at the expense of a few out-of-date rifles and a few perjured oaths.” The Boer’s now knew of the yeomanry’s approach but Colvile did not. When the yeomanry rode into Lindley the following afternoon, it quickly became apparent that all was not well. Colvile was gone, and no letter or message of any sort left, the town being ominously deserted and the people too frightened to give any information. Within an hour of the yeomanry’s arrival, the Boers opened fire from some of the houses, and the yeomanry were ordered to evacuate the town, which was commanded by hills and difficult to defend, and then retreat to where they had left their baggage some three miles to the west on the Kroonstad Road. After fighting a rear guard action they regrouped on the northern bank of the Valsh River.

Spragge now made the most crucial decision of the entire Lindley affair. He could either make a run for it, or set up his defenses and send for help. His decision to do the latter was later heavily criticized, but in reality Spragge could not have ordered a move that night, although there was a window of opportunity, albeit a brief and highly risky one the following morning. By the time the entire Battalion had regrouped outside Lindley it was 5 pm, the men were tired, and so were the horses which had come 87 miles in three days. If Spragge had abandoned the baggage and tried to escape the Boer noose that night, the 13th Battalion would have probably met with disaster. These were inexperienced troops, still soft from too much good living in Britain and unfamiliar with the country; to expect them to make a successful night march on exhausted horses was unrealistic. The only time Spragge might have successfully withdrawn was early the following morning, when his horses and men had got some rest, and before the Boers had gathered about him in large numbers. But even then, if he had abandoned his baggage and ridden as fast as possible towards safety, it was a desperately dangerous course of action. The Boers loved nothing more than sweeping down on vulnerable British columns and the 13th Battalion, which had never fired a shot in anger before it rode into Lindley, would have been easy prey for the Commandos. Furthermore, Cragge knew that Rundle’s 8th Division was in the area as well as Colvile, and so his expectations of help were not unreasonable. His decision to stay where he was may have lacked the dash and drama of a gallop for safety but it was based on sound military common sense.

The position which Spragge had chosen was not a bad one, although the need to incorporate grazing for the horses and for a flock of sheep which the battalion had commandeered, meant that it was rather extended. Its center was a 500-yard-wide valley running south from the Kroonstad Road to the Valsh River. On the eastern side were two strong kopjes, the keys to the entire position, which were defended by the 47th Duke of Cambridge’s Own Company under Captain Clive Keith, a former officer in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. The valley was bounded to the north-west by a low plateau rising to a ridge with two conical kopjes. Soon after sunrise on the 28th the yeomen heard the crack of the first Boer rifle shots. The ground was mostly too hard to dig trenches and they lacked the right tools but the British had managed to build a number of stone shelters during the night which provided some cover. Gradually the fire increased in intensity, and as one man of the 47th recalled: “The men on the kopjes under Captain Keith were having a hot time of it. They signaled that there was a heavy fire on them from three different points but they had managed to build breastworks and were keeping the Boers at a distance. It was evident that the Boers outnumbered us and were increasing in strength.” That afternoon Captain Keith, the DCO’s popular commander, was killed by a bullet through the head. But despite some casualties and gnawing hunger, on the 28th and 29th May the British were not under serious pressure from the Boers.

However on the evening of the 29th, Piet De Wet arrived with reinforcements bringing the Boer forces up to about 2,500 men. More crucially, he brought with him four artillery pieces which were to seal the fate of the defenders. On the 30th the Boers drew the circle in more tightly and Spragge found that the grazing for his animals was becoming restricted. By the morning of the 31st the writing was one the wall for the defenders, who had acquitted themselves well despite their lack of experience. During the night the Boers had brought three guns into position south of the Valsch and the fourth onto a flat-topped kopje about a mile north of the DCO’s. Crouching in their positions the latter heard a boom followed by what one observed: “a peculiar shrieking in the air immediately above out heads” as the first shell came in. The DCO’s on the two crucial kopjes took the brunt of the artillery fire. The 47th man observed: ‘Another distant boom and a few moments of expectation. Someone had left a helmet and a greatcoat on a ledge of rock on the summit of the kopje a few yards in front. A few moments after the last boom there was a deafening crash and the piece of rock and the coat and helmet disappeared in a confused volcano of smoke and dust. They had got the range and our minutes were numbered.”

As more and more shells his the DCO’s position, under cover of this fire the Boers galloped up and ensconced themselves among some boulders on the southernmost of the two stony kopjes. The DCO’s abandoned the position from the southern kopje, and as they retreated towards the northern kopje a white flag was raised by one of their men manning a picquet between the two hills, he being immediately shot in the thigh by one of his comrades. This however caused confusion, and others began to surrender, and also the northern kopje, making Spragge’s position untenable, and shortly after 2,30 pm, he ordered his force to surrender. The casualty list was a long one, Captain Keith and sixteen other ranks were killed, and later Sir John Power and three men died of their wounds, and four officers and twenty-eight men had been wounded. Another fifteen officer’s and 367 men were captured unwounded bringing the total Boer bag of prisoners to more than 400. In Britain news of the disaster was received with stunned incredulity. Questions were asked in the House of Commons and The Times called the surrender a humiliating episode.

Sand Hutton, N. Yorks. (demolished)

azyeoman,

A really well written-up and documented, not to mention unusual, group. Many thanks.