ECHO OF JAMESON RAID

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 14, 30 December 1930, Page 8

ECHO OF JAMESON RAID

I 35TH ANNIVERSARY YESTERDAY. BOERS’ CLEVER AMBUSH. There are two men in Auckland, Messrs. 0. J- Kirk and D. Grieves, a no participated in the Jameson raid, the 36th. anniversary of which fell on Monday (states the “Star’’). In is remarkable that, out of the survivors of a force of only 640 men gathered from the ends of the earth, two should be found in this city, there were only two New Zealanders in the raid, Mr. Kirk and Mr. Monk, whose father, the late R. Alonk, was a well-known Auckland member of Parliament. The majority of the men had served in the Bechaunalaud Border Police and had been transferred to the Police of the British South African Chartered Company of Rhodesia when the raid was being secretly planned. It was a very cosmopolitan body. There were ex-army and pavy officers, discharged soldiers and sailors. Mr. Kirk although only 20 vears of age, had already been twice round the Horn in a sailing ship, and the type of wanderer that is tound on the outposts of civilisation. Among them was a nephew of the late Mr. Gladstone. “We did not know much about the plan,” said Mr. Kirk in describing the raid. “We were assembled with three field guns and several Maxims on galloping carriages—the first Maxims ever used in action—and we were ordered to march on Johannesburg, from which city a message had come appealing for assistance for the protection of women and children on the Transvaal border. At midnight on December 29, 1895, we were told that, if any man wanted to withdraw, ho could do so. None did so. Wo were told that, in the morning a force of 1000 Australians would join us. and we imagined that Johannesburg was ours. But instead of reinforcements there were Boers on the kopje and they collected halt the troops sent up to meet them. “I was afterwards through the Matabele war, but experienced nothing so arduous as that forced march of 140 miles to the outskirts of Johannesburg. We had no sleep except what we got while dozing in the saddle and horses and men were done when, in terrific rain our laager was hemmed in at Dornkop within sight of the smoke stacks of, the town. There was a swamp behind us and kopjes in front and the Boers held the kopjes. They fired on us all night and. when it was seen, that wo had no chance through having been completely ambushed, the white flag was sent up. Commandant Cronje’s reply was ‘I shall spare you and vours.’ If it had not been for his nromise. we probably would all have been shot.”