by Ken Tout
I am in good health and hope you are all the same at home.
Your loving brother,
Arthur
P.S. It seems to be the general idea that the war will soon be over.
Queenstown Camp,
March 9th, 1900
My dear sister,
We got to East London on Sunday night. Had a busy time getting ready to go off by train. Went at twelve o’clock and did not arrive in Queenstown until 7 o’clock the next morning, being on the train nineteen hours without getting out.
We got our horses on Wednesday. They are most of them Basuto ponies, not very big, but seem active and wiry. Reveille goes at five in the morning. Then we feed and water the horses. We have fifteen men in our tent so we are packed like sardines. We get fresh meat every day but we have to kill our own. It makes some of the best soup I have ever tasted.
There are a lot of rebels in this district. All the night sentries are warned that if they are found asleep at their post they will be shot. We are not allowed in town. Where we are camped is on the veldt, surrounded by kopjes. It is no wonder the Boers take a lot of shifting off them. It is sandy soil and very dry. It is very hot in daytime. We all sleep with 100 rounds of ball cartridges under our heads and a rifle at our feet. I think some of us will have to escort a baggage train. There will be about 200 wagons in it, with sixteen oxen to each, so it should reach a long way.
We get newspapers but none of us has yet had a letter from home. There are thousands of locusts. Sometimes the air is almost black with them while the ground is covered. I have not seen any wild animals yet but hear them in the night.
Just remember me to all my friends.
Your loving brother
Arthur
Hoopstad,
Saturday, May 20th, 1900
Dear father,
Just a few lines to let you know how I am getting on. We started from Boshof on Monday and marched to Driefontein (15 miles), then 15 miles the next day. Then on Wednesday we started three o’clock in the morning. Marched 15 miles then rested until half past six then started off again. It was twenty-four miles we marched in the night and for nineteen miles there was no water to drink.
I don’t think the war will last much longer as all the Free Staters are bringing in their arms, all sorts from muzzle loaders to the best Mauser rifles. Hoopstad is a small town and all the country is flat. We have seized a lot of cattle and horses, but do not allow looting.
We had a sergeant die last week with fever, but I keep in very good health, but have a job to keep free of lice, nearly all of us are lousy as jays.
I hope that you will have a good summer and shall not be surprised if I am home for the harvest.
Your affectionate son,
Arthur
Heilbron
August 17th, 1900
My dear sister,
We have had a pretty rough time of it since I last wrote. While we were at Lindley it was besieged by the Boers under General De Wet. Had a job to keep them out. They attacked the Yorkshire picquet, got close to them but they managed to drive them off although they lost a lot of men – 14 men killed and wounded. The Yeomanry got there just in time to save them.
A section of the 38th Battery R.H.A. was nearly captured in July 3rd. They crept up close to them disguised in khaki helmets and blue overcoats. Prince Alfred’s Guards ran away when they saw them and if it had not been for the Yeomanry coming up in the nick of time they would have been captured.
On July 13th we were sent out to repair telegraph lines. The officer in command of our troop made a great mistake and led thirty of our troop to attack a very steep kopje with 200 Boers on it. We got within 100 yards of it before we had the order to retire. Of our thirty men there were three killed, five wounded and three taken prisoner, beside the officer wounded in the legs.
On Monday July 23rd we looted two farms. I got a goose, some rice, flour, butter, jam and onions. On the Sunday we had to climb up a mountain which took us two hours to get to the top. When we got there we could see four Boer laagers a few miles off. Marched fifteen miles that day. I had to do it on Shanks’s pony [walking] as they shot up five grazing horses the day before, mine amongst them.
We all want new clothes now. Some of the men haven’t got a whole shirt to their backs while their breeches and jackets are all holes. The regulars had winter clothing weeks ago but the Imperial Yeomanry have had to manage without. Nearly everybody thought the war would be over now but as soon as we have smashed one lot of Boers up, there is another lot springs up somewhere else. The Boers never make a stand now.
I must conclude with best love to all, hoping that you will have a good harvest on the farm.
Your loving brother,
Arthur
Mafeking,
September 10th, 1900
My dear Mary,
Just to let you know how I have been getting on lately. We let Heilbron on 21st August for Kroonstad, got here on the 24th, got new clothing here, but did not find any letters, only some tobacco and a pipe from Neville Hepburn.
About two hundred of us went out on a patrol on Sunday 2nd under Major Rimington after De Wet who had blown the railway line up; but did not find him. Burned a farm down where he had been, got back on Monday morning two o’clock. Had orders to go to Mafeking to join [General] Lord Methuen. Started on Thursday morning. We rode on cattle trucks passed through Bloemfontein – got to Mafeking Sunday afternoon. Found Lord Methuen had gone and that our letters had been sent on to Krugersdorp.
We are busy today getting remounts and start after Methuen tomorrow morning, hoping that we catch him so that I can get my letters. I am in first rate health, now weigh thirteen stones all but a lb, more than two stones heavier than when I came out. A lot of the Yeomanry are joining the Police [on expiry of their twelve months’ service].
I expect you have finished harvest by now. Hope you had a good time. Mafeking is not a very big place. It is very flat all round. I expect that was what enabled BP [Baden Powell] to hold out so long.
Just remember me to all enquiring friends,
Your loving brother,
Arthur
Mafeking,
January 1st, 1901
My dear sister,
I was very pleased to get a letter from Fred dated Nov. 22nd. Today, we have two weeks mail. I had three letters, one from Aunt Jennie who sent me a box of Congleton gingerbread. It is the first parcel I have received although I know several have been sent out.
We have been doing garrison duty at Lichtenburg. On Christmas Eve we had a bottle of champagne to every three men, and some cake, and had a very good concert in the Dutch church. Christmas Day I was on guard at night but we had a quart of stout each and a plum pudding each.
On Saturday we had orders to pack up and come to Mafeking. It was one of the wettest nights I have been in yet. It simply poured. We halted at half past ten at night, but didn’t get our blankets and waterproof sheets off the wagons because we had to start again at two o’clock in the morning. So we just lay down, rather sat down, on our saddles in our cloaks and made the best of it. These twenty-two miles we have to march through the night always because there is no water. When we have to escort the ox convoy we only travel at the rate of two miles an hour.
We are waiting for orders. Think we are going down country to Vriburg after a commando named De Burr. There doesn’t seem much chance of us being home for some time yet. Think it is about time they sent some of the Regular Troops who are messing about in barracks at home, out to relieve us. We have just completed our twelve months service the time we signed on for.
I was sorry to hear that father is ailing and hope by this time he is much better.
Your affectionate brother,
Arthur
Lilliefontein,
February 7th, 1901
My dear Mary,
I have just received a letter from you dated Oct. 29th. On Sunday we got to a place where I was hit a few weeks before. Had a sharp go agai
n and 8 Bushmen and New Zealanders were wounded and one or two have died since. The next day we had a lot of sniping and a few horses shot.
This morning we went out commandeering and had a lot of sniping from the Boers. We get used to being shot at now, although there are not the half of us that there were at first, I think we are better now than the full squadron used to be.
You seem to be having a gay time at Deenethorpe this Christmas, having dances, taking part in entertainments, etc. I shall be left in the lurch when I come back but I suppose the khaki uniform will help me out!! It is rumoured we shall be on our way home in March but I have heard these tales so often … ???
Your affectionate brother,
Arthur
Warrenton,
March 27th, 1901
My dear sister,
Well, we have not done much except to cross the river which was a big job, it has been very wet and the Vaal was too swollen to ford. We had to bring all the wagons across by train and then lead the horses across the temporary railway bridge. We expect to move from here tomorrow and it is rumoured this will be our last trek.
There are about a hundred of the New Yeomanry here [1901 draft]. About a dozen of our troopers and NCOs have got commissions in the New Yeomanry. I could have had one if I applied. But it meant staying out for another twelve months. The officers’ pay is 15/6 a day but I should have had to keep a servant and pay a share of the mess.
We haven’t got last week’s mail yet. The ‘Norman Castle’ broke down so that they have been delayed.
Your affectionate brother,
Arthur
Doornfontein,
April 18th, 1901
My dear sister,
At last I think we are coming home, for it has been given out in Orders that the old Yeomanry are to be broken up today. Lord Methuen thanked us for our good service and said we had marched 2,900 miles. This doesn’t include the hundreds of miles we have done on little expeditions.
We have got a full squadron of New Yeomanry here now – rather a rough lot, very different from the old Yeomanry as hardly any of them can ride. Myself and several others have been told to teach them how to ride. The Captain calls them his ‘Freaks’.
Expect to rail at the end of this month or the beginning of the next so you needn’t write again.
Your loving brother,
Arthur
Perhaps Arthur was a little harsh for the ‘New Yeomanry’ regiments eventually fought well. In an epic convoy-guarding trek, Lieutenant English of the 2nd Scottish Horse led the fight against overwhelming odds and was awarded the Victoria Cross. Generally, on return, what Arthur called the ‘Old Yeomanry’ were received as heroes.
Judgements have been more severe in recent time with special contumely reserved for the concentration camps in which families of Boers were confined as the British tried to cut off the Boers’ bases, their family farms. Some of the reaction is coloured by parallels drawn with the later concentration camps of the Nazi regime, although the Boer War type were not intended to inflict suffering on the incarcerated families.
What is also forgotten is that Boer women were just as capable as their men at shooting and then retreating into civilian status. Sergeant George Harris later attested to this fact:
They approached a big farm when about thirty rifle shots came from one of the farmhouses … Before they could fire [their 7-pounder gun] a white flag appeared at the window and a bunch of women and children walked out. The officer asked the women where the men were and got the answer ‘gone to the hills to fight’ … He ordered the house to be searched and under the floorboards discovered a dump of rifles and ammunition. It had been the women who had fired on the patrol.
When accused, the ‘matriarch of the house’ became so violent that, after she had knocked the officer down, Sergeant Harris’ men had to tie her hands and ankles to get her into a waiting wagon.6
Finally, spare a thought for the horses! The Army Remount Depot in peacetime had the task of finding 2,500 horses a year. According to one source, during the Second Boer War they provided 518,794 mounts in South Africa, and of these 13,144 died on shipboard before arriving, while 347,007 were registered as ‘expended during the campaign’.7
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1 Arthur Arnold’s letters home from NY archives.
2 Lewis, Yeoman Soldiers.
3 Glover, Warfare from Waterloo to Mons.
4 Capt. Andrew French (Berks Yeo).
5 Arnold, op. cit.
6 Lewis, op. cit.
7 Glover, op. cit.
CHAPTER FOUR
FORMING THE FIGHTING FORCE
(1902–1914)
For the Northamptonshire Yeomanry 1902 seemed almost to be a repeat of 1794. At both dates there was an Earl Spencer who hunted with the Pytchley, chasing foxes across the large Althorp estates. Both held more than one high government office, both served as First Lord of the Admiralty, both had influence at court and both were largely responsible for the founding or re-forming of the county Yeomanry regiment as colonel or honorary colonel.
However, in other ways they were not alike. George John, 2nd Earl Spencer, appears to have been a quiet, almost bookish man, while John, the 5th Earl Spencer, was an extrovert, an ‘icon’ or ‘celebrity’ of the time, to use modern parlance. To begin with John Poyntz Spencer, the 5th Earl, sported a voluminous red beard and quickly became known as ‘the Red Earl’. One particular event sealed his celebrity status: in 1876 an outstanding woman celebrity, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, familiarly known as ‘Sissi’, decided to make a hunting trip to England. Famous at the time for her beauty and tragic story, Sissi has since been featured in film, literature, opera and ballet. She rented a house in Northamptonshire and, from the hunting point of view, was hosted by the Red Earl. The image of the Red Earl with his flowing beard, hunting the fox in the company of the romantic Sissi, caught the nation’s imagination.
However, the Red Earl was much more than an idle hunting squire; for instance, he was credited with introducing barbed wire into Britain. Barbed wire had been patented in the USA in 1867 and 1874 and was used in the Boer War, particularly for the construction of the infamous concentration camps for civilians. In a few years’ time the Red Earl’s newly reconstituted Northamptonshire Yeomanry, like so many more, would learn the bitter lessons of charging barbed-wire entanglements backed by machine-gun fire. The 5th Earl also served twice for long periods as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at critical stages of the painful progress towards independence of the southern Irish counties.1
Now in 1902, as other county Yeomanry returning from the Boer War re-formed their regiments for peacetime training, Earl Spencer wrote to the king offering to raise a Northamptonshire regiment after more than seventy years of operating as independent squadrons or troops. He also requested permission to use the king’s own badge, the ‘White Horse of Hanover’, as the regimental badge. The requests were granted, effective 21 February 1902. Due to the fact that there had not been a continuous regiment operating during those years, 1902 became the date for calculating the seniority of the regiment. This meant that it was now junior to other Yeomanry regiments which were founded later than 1794 but had maintained a continuous regimental structure throughout.
John Poyntz, 5th Earl Spencer, reformed NY in 1902. (Courtesy of Charles, 9th Earl Spencer)
Northampton newspaper report, 1902. (Chronicle & Echo)
Following on from the Boer War title the Yeomanry regiments were now designated ‘Imperial Yeomanry’ and the ‘IY’ was incorporated in cap badges. The NY full dress uniform was now of a dragoon pattern, dark blue with light-blue facings and a white metal dragoon helmet with a light-blue and white plume. The service dress was khaki with light-blue facings. Other county regiments were also re-forming and updating their uniforms: the County of London Yeomanry raised an entire regiment of expatriates nicknamed ‘The Colonials’, the five squadrons each recruited from different country or continent areas, namely Asians, American
s, Australians, Africans and New Zealanders.
Northamptonshire newspapers were now announcing:
THE IMPERIAL YEOMANRY FOR NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
Since the sanction of the King has been received for the formation of an Imperial Yeomanry Regiment for Northamptonshire the necessary steps have been taken to arrange for the enlistment of intending recruits and for the officering of the regiment. We understand that Lord Annaly will be the commanding officer and commanding each squadron will be Captain Wickham, of Barnwell, late of the Scots Greys, whose headquarters will be at Peterborough; Captain Gordon Renton, of Guilsborough, late of the 7th Lancers, headquarters Northampton; Major Jenkinson, Lamport, late of the Derbyshire Regiment, headquarters Kettering; and Captain Leslie Renton, of Guilsborough, late of the Scots Greys, headquarters Daventry.
Recruiting is to begin at once and the full strength of the regiment will be about 600, including about 120 men who will be transferred from the 3rd Squadron of the Royal Bucks Hussars. The headquarters of the regiment will be at Northampton, and this year’s training will probably take place in Althorp Park.
Luke White, 3rd Baron Annaly, belonged to the true Yeomanry officer tradition of hard-hunting countrymen, being at the time Master of the Pytchley Hunt. He had commanded the Northampton Squadron attached to the Royal Bucks Hussars, and among the men transferring to the new Northamptonshire Imperial Yeomanry was Trooper Arthur Arnold, the letter writer of the Boer War. Lord Annaly became lieutenant colonel commanding, with the Red Earl as honorary colonel.