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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
.Article – Online Historic Information | Military
.Page 194
pied by the Boers under Assistant Commandant-general D. J. E. Erasmus on 15 October 1899.
After looting it, they moved on. It was reoccupied by the British in May 1900 and was briefly the
headquarters of General Sir Redvers Buller. It was on the railway between the port of Durban and the
Transvaal, and therefore became a British supply centre.
See also:
Botha’s Pass, Action at.
Reference:
Jones, Huw M. and Meurig G. M. Jones, A Gazetteer of the Second Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902
(Milton Keynes, The Military Press, 1999).
Nicholson’s Nek, Action at,
30 October 1899
As the British fell back towards Ladysmith before the Boer advance into Natal, the danger of a siege
became evident to Lieutenant-general Sir George White, who was in command of British forces in the
colony. He decided to attack positions on Pepworth Hill, but the true battle took place on the flanks,
at Lombard’s Kop and on Tchrengula, the hill south of the pass of Nicholson’s Nek. A night advance
to the Nek went wrong, forcing Lieutenant-colonel F. R. C. Carleton to seek a defensive position on
the hill where he was attacked by a Boer force including Christiaan De Wet. An unauthorised white
flag was raised by an isolated and surrounded group of the Glosters, and was seen and accepted by
the Boers. Carleton therefore felt obliged to honour this and surrendered on behalf of his thirty-seven
officers and 917 men, mostly from 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, to their fury and bewilderment, while
sixty-nine men lay dead and a further 249 were wounded. The day was dubbed Mournful Monday.
The purpose of the British force sent to Nicholson’s Nek was to cut off the Boer retreat that the
attack at Pepworth Hill was expected to precipitate. Carleton had six companies of 1st Royal Irish
Fusiliers and five-and-a-half companies, 450 men, of 1st Gloucestershire Regiment, together with
10th Mountain Battery. The Battery was equipped with six dismountable guns, which, with the 600
rounds of ammunition they took, were carried on 133 mules. The muleteers were black Africans,
Cape Boys (sic), and numbered 55 men. The whole force consisted of 1,149 men and 250 animals
and moved off from the railway junction in Ladysmith alongside Bell Spruit northwards at 11.15 p.m.
on Sunday night. They had difficulty both with navigating and with marching over rough ground in the
dark. By 1 a.m. they had only just reached a point alongside the southern tip of Tchrengula and
Carleton decided that the risk of being caught in the valley with Boers on the hills above as dawn
broke was too great. He chose to take to the hills. It was rough, hard climbing. A Boer piquet (a small
group of soldiers acting as sentinels) was disturbed and fled, passing clean through the British. Mules
slipped, then panicked, then stampeded. Men and animals tumbled down the slope. The guns went
with them, as well as the infantry’s ammunition reserve. Most of the men made it to the top and
hurried to build stone shelters.
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