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Updated: May 12, 2025
In answer to these and other remonstrances the garrison of Natal was gradually increased, partly by troops from Europe, and partly by the dispatch of five thousand British troops from India. The 2nd Berkshires, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, the 1st Manchesters, and the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers arrived in succession with reinforcements of artillery.
The Manchesters were not so fortunate, having three men wounded, but none seriously. While I write, smoking concerts are being held in the camps of Imperial Light Horse and Natal Volunteers, from whose strong lungs the notes of "God Save the Queen" roll in a volume that can be heard a mile off. Perhaps some faint echoes of it may stir the air about sleeping Boers on Bulwaan. November 28.
Colonel Hamilton, however, had a firm conviction that the Boer movement against that flank was only a feeler for more determined enterprises to follow, and he accordingly stiffened the defensive lines there by mounting half a field battery in strong earthworks during the night, and sending up bodies of mounted infantry to support the Manchesters.
Long before they reach the top the Boers are seen retiring. They have no idea of making a stand yet, and as the khaki figures reach the summit the Lancers, sweeping round from the extreme right flank, join them. During this time the Devons and Manchesters have been pouring out of the train, and are now crossing the veldt in dotted lines towards the ridge of hills.
He joined the Argyles in 1914, and was stationed in Edinburgh for some time. Then he was discharged on account of weak eyesight. But he immediately enlisted again; this time in the Lancashire Fusiliers. His home is Higher Broughton. His father, who is forty-nine, is a sergeant in the Manchesters at Salonica; I believe he said that he was wounded. It was about 10 p.m. when we got there.
And then I had to lash my horse back to the place lest my hat should sail down-stream and adorn a Queen's enemy. There is nothing like shell-fire for giving lessons in horsemanship. The Manchesters had been having an uncomfortable time of it, and I found Sir George White and his staff up on their hill. As we walked about, the little puffs of dust kept rising at our feet.
On the day appointed the garrison turned out to receive the general and the troops who had struggled so long and gallantly to effect their rescue, and the Devons, Gloucesters, Rifles, Leicesters, Manchesters, Liverpools, sappers, artillerymen, and the Naval Brigade marched out from their camps and lined the road as far as the railway-station, where the remnant of the cavalry brigade were drawn up.
With the coming of night battalions of reserves formed and set forth on the march, going toward the flashes in the heavens which illumined the men in their steady tramp, the warmth of their bodies and their breaths pressing close to your car as you turned aside to let them pass. "East Surreys," or "West Ridings," or "Manchesters" might come the answer to inquiries.
Their anxiety to learn was palpable whenever we went the round of the chilly desert outposts under the starry sky. Battalion patriotism was kindled anew by the adoption as a flash of the old Lincoln green fleur-de-lis of the Manchesters, a cap badge worn by us since 1889, and a relic of the conquest of Guadaloupe by the 63rd Regiment in 1759.
Yeomanry passed by frequently, scouting far into the waste. The Manchesters were occupied exclusively in digging trenches and in laying entanglements in the deep soft sand, "according to plan" and on a scale sufficient to daunt any invader who could have surmounted the huge physical obstacles that already barred all approach to this spot from the Wadi Muksheib and the East.
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