50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF SIEGE AND RELIEF OF LADYSMITH
29 February - 4 March 1950

List of some of the veterans attending the celebrations, with place of residence and regiment where given - many of these people are undoubtedly included in the group photograph taken on this occasion.

Abbreviations:
NC Natal Carbineers (or RNC Royal Natal Carbineers)
SALH South African Light Horse
RE Royal Engineers
VCR Volunteer Composite Regt
ILH Imperial Light Horse
NNV Natal Naval Volunteers
BMR Border Mounted Rifles
NMR Natal Mounted Rifles
DLI Durban Light Infantry
KRRC King's Royal Rifle Corps
R I L Royal Irish Lancers
SA Druitt Milton Hankey Cape Province RE
Alex Lyle Capt NC 432 Bulwer St PMBurg
WA Poulton (?) Maritzburg 5 R I Lancers
James E Greig Ladysmith NC
C Page Wood Umkomaas SALH
ER Baldock Bulawayo
R Tomlinson Pietermaritzburg NC
WH Smith Ladysmith Town Guard
AT Rowsell Ladysmith attached to RE Corps
KM Champion Sister Durban*
M Rowland Sister Durban*
K Boyd Nurse Cape Province*
Thos Hackland Richmond NC and VCR
GR Reynolds Port Nolloth Namaqualand
TA Lewis Richmond NC and VCR
WT Hamp Durban
ES MacGillivray Pretoria
WJ Crouch NC Colenso
Dan Yeadon Kings Own (R L) Regt Durban
FS Hornby Donnybrook NC
CR Carter Parkhurst JHBurg NC
EE Houshold 49 Loop St PMB NC
B Buntting Babanango Natal NC
M Taylor Sunrise PO Highbury NC
WE Antel NC
CW Lewis 48A Vause Rd Durban NP
AL Cooper Salisbury S Rhodesia ILH
CR Turner Durban NNV
Geo Craw McArthur Dannhauser BMR and VCR
Thos Gee Camperdown VCR
HG Finch NMR
FM Sivil Scottburgh NNV (with HMS Powerful)
A Joyner Matatiele East Griqualand NC
CF Thomson BMR PMB
C Francis PMB NC
JH Harwin Johannesburg
AA Mason Capt RIL
HE Smith NMR
CE Freeman BMR
JA Greer BMR
AW Starr NMR
J Foster BMR
AB Jones NMR
HGB Finch NMR
C Gottschalk BMR
HD Archibald BMR
LGray BMR
AH Shuttleworth BMR
BW Martin BMR and NC
JD Watson BMR
WH London BMR Umkomaas
AP Jefferson Currie Rd Durban
JG Shaw Howick NC
AS Clouston St Winifreds South Coast NC
TE Stubbings Royal Scots Fusiliers Ladysmith
GW Stevens Brakpan 2nd Dorset Regt
F(?) Brooks Voortrekker Rd 3rd Batt Rifle Brigade
R Rogers NMR
EC Chittenden PMBurg BMR
CL Tomlinson Bellair DLI
Lucky Lockwood Capt Felixton RFA
JW Tunmer Nicolson Rd Durban NMR
H Evelyn Haddon Kenilworth CP RNC
GD Kettle Durban RDLS
W Haworth Zululand NRR
Hbt T Mitchell Dundee NC
CG Kemp Tpr NC Dundee
O Hesom Trpr NC Dundee
? McMaster Ladysmith SAAF and RLI
R Grant PMB
F (?) A Gifford Ladysmith NC
JB Nicholson Underberg NC and VCR
HN Shaw Ladysmith NC
AB Alexander Durban NMR
C (?) Dunning Rondebosch Cape NNV
FE Follwell St Winifreds S Coast NC
F Yeadon Durban 45A Aliwal St
H Scott Richmond Natal
Mrs K Boyd Onrust Rivier
Mrs CF Cook Durban
? Hawkslee Chelsea Pensioner Royal Hospital Chelsea 1st KRRC Bugles
John Murray Durban NC Med Staff
AA Mason RNC
W Wright NC PMB
(Source: Ladysmith Siege Museum Collection)

*These three women were Siege nurses. Mary Rowland's maiden name was PENTNEY; she was Kate Champion's 'tentmate', and survived an attack of enteric fever while working at Intombi Hospital Camp. Kate Boyd was previously Kate DRIVER, whose diary of her experiences in the Siege has been published by the Ladysmith Historical Society.

Kate Matilda Champion was a descendant of the HILLARY family who came to Natal from Hampshire in the 1850s. She was born ca 1870, the 3rd child of Charles and Emma Champion, and grew up in the Orange Free State. Kate Champion never married but was once engaged to a young lawyer who died of blackwater fever.

At the time of the 1950 celebrations, Kate was 81 years of age. In a manuscript held at the Campbell Collections, Durban, she describes her trip to Ladysmith in 1950, and the nostalgic reunion of herself and her two colleagues with some of the men whom they had nursed fifty years before. According to Kate Champion, Mrs Boyd 'came round by boat with 5 overseas men' (veterans of the Siege) for the celebrations. The three nurses stayed at Ladysmith's Royal Hotel, and were included in the group photographs taken in front of the Town Hall. 'It was a never-to-be-forgotten trip and memories which will keep green to the end of my days'.

TODAY, 50 YEARS AGO, LADYSMITH'S SIEGE WAS LIFTED ...
by W A POULTON (member of the 5th Lancers during the Siege)

Today, February 28, Ladysmith commemorates the 50th anniversary of its relief after a siege of 120 days by the Burgher forces of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State Republics.

For this occasion, most of the few survivors who are able will be in Ladysmith to join in the arrangements made by the Corporation to celebrate this anniversary appropriately.

Siege and relief veterans will be present from many parts of the Union and Rhodesia, and a small party of veterans - none of whom has seen Ladysmith since 1900 - have come from England¹ to take another look at the town where they underwent so many anxious and unhappy experiences in their young days.

The topographical features of the town and its surrounding areas remain as they will be remembered by the veterans, but many old landmarks have disappeared and modern buildings will be found where wood-and-iron structures used to be familiar ports of call.

The veterans will recall the days when their rations consisted of horse meat and one biscuit and a quarter a day, when the stuff called tea, minus milk, was made with the muddy water of the Klip River - the only supply available for troops posted on the outlying areas of the town. Because of the lack of the clarifying medium, alum, the liquid had necessarily to stand for a while to allow the mud to settle in the bottom of the container.

ADDING TO RATIONS

They will also call to mind when it was possible to purloin plums, peaches and pears from certain gardens as a means of supplementing rations, nor will they have forgotten Chevril, that nauseating beverage product of boiled horse-meat, that was prepared primarily for patients in Intombi Hospital², and was made available for the issue of nearly one pint each to all troops on outposts and pickets.

Many of the old soldiers will recall how they used to search for wild spinach, which was much enjoyed as a vegetable while it lasted, and will probably remember with a smile how gardens were visited on occasion to gather peach leaves which, after being dried, were used as a substitute for tobacco.

In rare instances a few pieces of tobacco had been retained by the owners, and when these were put up for auction they reached terrific prices. A ¼ pound cake of Fair Maid tobacco - a popular brand among soldiers of those days, costing 6d normally, was sold for £2 5s. Fantastic prices were reached for small lots of fruit, vegetables and eggs, put up for sale by some of the residents of the town.

UNLAWFUL SUPPLY

An unlawful supply of food was discovered in a camp near where some Indian hospital bearers were billeted. The bearers had a small supply of flour and any soldier who was prepared to pay half a crown could be supplied with a chupatti (flour and water pancake baked on a pan over a charcoal fire). This illegal source of supply did not last long.

An officer of the 5th Lancers, Captain E O Wathen, discovered another source of food supply by converting ordinary household starch into blancmange, and the discreet use of a little cochineal³ disguised the real substance.

In between periods of looking for food, troops and residents spent time in dodging shells from Long Tom, Puffing Billy and Fiddling Jimmy - the Boers' big Creusot 96-pounder with which they plastered the town - as well as a number of 12 pounders, particularly one nasty little weapon which gave no warning because of its firing smokeless powder. The troops nick-named this Silent Susan, so-called because the shell arrived before the report.

BURROWED INTO BANKS

Bearing in mind that the town was shelled for 120 days, excluding Sundays when the Boers did little firing, the damage to the town was relatively small. Troops protected themselves behind schanzes⁴ and reverse slopes, and some of those who were camped near the Klip burrowed holes in the river banks and found protection there. A great deal of good-humoured chaff was made about these excavations, which were generally referred to by some troops as funk-holes, and in a four-sheet folder written and published by war correspondents under the title Ladysmith Lyre, a good deal of capital was made of this by reference to Funkamsdorp.

This little paper and another which made several appearances under the title The Ladysmith Bombshell, provided interesting and amusing reading for weary troops and residents.

A verse from the Bombshell dated December 12 1899, will be remembered by surviving members of the Natal volunteer regiments, Natal Carbineers (now Royal N.C.), Natal Mounted Rifles, Border Mounted Rifles, Natal Police, Natal Naval Volunteers and others who served in the Siege:

When once again from flies we're freed,
When southwards merrily we speed,
Our 'Mercury' and our 'Witness' read -
For this relief much thanks!

HEAVY LOSSES

It is no part of this account of the Siege to refer to any of the engagements, except to say that there was desperate fighting with heavy losses on both sides. For the last two months the Siege resolved itself into spasmodic shelling, and it dragged wearily on, the spirits of the Siegeites rising and falling in proportion as the sound of General Buller's⁵ guns approached nearer and were then driven back to await the time when preparations were ready to make another attempt to break through.

On the evening of February 28, about sundown, the troops of Lord Dundonald's⁶ cavalry brigade were seen trickling through the hills to the south of Ladysmith, and by this time it was realized that relief had come.

¹ Among these veterans from England was HAWKSLEE, a Chelsea Pensioner of the Royal Hospital, London, 1st King's Royal Rifle Corps Bugles
² Intombi Hospital Camp outside the town
³ A red dye used in baking
⁴ Current Afrikaans spelling 'skans' = bulwark or trench
⁵ General Sir Redvers BULLER VC GCB KCMG: born in 1840, he entered the 60th Rifles in 1858 and served in the Red River Expedition in Canada in 1870, and the Ashanti War in 1873-1874. He received the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the Anglo-Zulu War 1879 and was one of the young officers selected by Lord Wolseley for the reform of the army. He was at Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt in 1882, and the Sudan in 1884-85. He became Quarter-Master General, then Adjutant-General and was commanding Aldershot District at the start of the Anglo-Boer War. A brave man, popular with the troops and highly regarded by his contemporaries, he was discredited by his failure in the war. Best known for his various attempts to break through the Thukela line to relieve Ladysmith - battles of Colenso, Spioenkop, Vaalkrans, the Thukela Heights - he was eventually successful. He then moved into the Transvaal and was successful in pursuing Botha over the Long Tom Pass, then followed up the Boer withdrawal to Komatipoort. He returned to England in October 1900.
⁶ Major General the Earl of DUNDONALD CB MVO: born in 1852, Douglas Mackinnon Baillie Hamilton Cochrane entered the Life Guards in 1870. In 1884 he commanded the 2nd Life Guards detachment of the Sudan Camel Corps in the Gordon Relief Expedition. He was in the Battle of Abu Klea and mentioned in dispatches; he was promoted to Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel. He inherited his Earldom in 1885. In 1895 he commanded the 2nd Life Guards. He had an inventive mind, one of his achievements being the Dundonald Galloping Carriage for Maxim guns. He commanded the 3rd Mounted Brigade under General Buller, taking part in all the major battles leading to the Relief of Ladysmith, and then into the Transvaal.

(From the Ladysmith Siege Museum collection.)