Remembering

When I went to South Africa a couple of weeks ago with my wife, Jill, her sisters, two cousins and sundry husbands and partners (13 of us in total – and, yes, we are still talking to each other!), I thought I was simply off for a twice-postponed battlefield tour. But it turned out to be more than that.

Our tour drew on the letters and photographs of Jill’s maternal grandfather during the Boer War of 1899-1902. An 18-year old 2nd?Lt in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (RWF), and reputedly the youngest officer deployed on operations in South Africa, Henry Vernon Venables Kyrke (known as Vernon to his family), wrote vividly of his experiences, ranging from his first battle (Colenso, which he described as ‘nothing more than defeat’ despite optimistic newspapers describing it as a draw), to living in the field and the South African countryside and weather. Despite being wounded twice, the death of his CO and fellow subalterns and soldiers, his enthusiasm – and the invincibility of youth – is clear. Occasionally he gets fractious, such as when he reprimands his mother for trying to find out how badly wounded he is, when she should know that the battalion would let her know if it was serious!

With the help of a local tour company, Catz Tours ([email protected]) and two excellent and hugely knowledgeable battlefield guides: Pat Rundgren ([email protected]) and Allan Gordon ([email protected]), we were able to visit not just the familiar battlefield sites of the Boer War such as Spion Kop and the hills around Ladysmith, but to go well off the beaten track to see where Vernon had fought.

If the site of a dozen or so Brits gathered round a map board and pointing a lot must at times have looked odd, it did bring home the realities of the fight. What at Colenso we’d thought was a hill was, in fact, just a slight rise. At Tygersfontein, a koppie that the RWF had climbed under fire and where Vernon was commended for seizing a high point with 13 men and firing on the retreating Boers, proved to be a steep, rocky challenge even without being fired on.

We also visited a number of graves and memorials. The photo above shows six of Vernon’s granddaughters in front of the RWF memorial at the foot of Horse-Shoe Hill on the Tugela Heights near Ladysmith. It was poignant to see them there, just yards from the spot where their grandfather was wounded 122 years before and recognising that there were many ways in which the visit might not have taken place – and how many other names on the memorial did not live to have grandchildren to come back to visit. Perhaps more poignant still were the many graves and memorials (to both British and Boer) in obscure spots, hidden on hillsides by bushes and trees, barely accessible and weed-covered – how long since they were they last visited? In each spot, we paused and offered a thought to those recorded there. As we approach Remembrance Day, I was struck by the importance of remembering not just those close to us, but those who do not have anyone to remember them anymore.?