LIEUTENANT HUGHES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1509, 31 January 1901, Page 55

LIEUTENANT HUGHES.

THE PRIVATE WHO BECAME A

CAPTAIN.

AND EARNED, BUT DID NOT GET, A D.S.O.

Lieutenant Hughes, who was in com. snand of the contingent which returned on Friday, saw almost more than a fair fthare of fighting during the time he was in South Africa. He was at Colesburg during the operations of French; shared in the relief of Kimberley and the subsequent fighting round that place; then

rode to Paardeburg and participated in the operations there; thence on to Bloemfontein ; out to Thabanelri ; hack to Banna’s Past (where the First helped to cover, a British retreat) ; back again with. Ig,n Hamilton to Thabanc.hu (where the, fighting was fierce and willing); at the taking of Wynburg (which vhe enemy evacuated at night); to Kroonstad (where the First was joined by the Second and Third); joined General Hutton (acting in conjunction with General French) and crossed the Yaal at Viijoen’s Drift ; fought at Klip river (whore Corporal Burne was killed); thence to Johannesburg and Pretoria. Captain Hughes was twenty miles north-west of Pretoria when the town was taken, and took part in tiae jubilations consequent on the assumption .that that denoted “ the end of the wav.” Diamond Hill was the next place at which Captain Hughe.s participated in the fighting. Then he proceeded to Grietfontein (where, shortly after he left, a blot was recorded on New Zealand’s escutcheon owing to the capture of Lieutenant Bourne and twenty-five men); trekked away north-west of Pretoria to Rustenburg to relieve Baden-Powell (who did not, as it transpired, need reliev. ing); picked up by Kitchener and Bethune, and went in cna.se of De Wet (where the New Zealanders lost Lieutenant Bradbourne and Private Perrin killed, and had Captain jantson and a lot of men wounded ; got back to Pretoria, expecting a rest, and was sent immediately on anotner t-rekking expedition eastward to Barberton; with 300 New Zealanders occupied Barberton a month; then returned to Pretoria, the Cape, Australia and home. It is a singular fact that the men in Captain Hughes’s division were more knocked about than any others of the New Zealanders w r ho took part in the fighting. Asked if he had had any narrow escapes, he said he did not know. All he knew was that he had come out. of some very tight places, and had never been hit. His experience was right thi'oughout that the Boers were very bad shots.

Whilst at Barberton our troops had a\ very good time, and Captain Hughes was in his element. There are a large number of English families at that place, and they made the New Zealanders heartily welcome. A ball was held, at which the proportion of officers to ladies was ridiculously large; orioket matches were played;, a scratch pack of hounds was got together, and a day’s buck-hunting was indulged in ; on Kruger’s birthday .pony races were got off, and Captain Hughes won the first three races and the cup (an egg-cup full of sovereigns) on a pony called De Wet. On Kruger’s birthday 2000 Boer refugees who were ip Barberton held a parade, singing the “Volkslied,” waving the Boer flag in the faces of the garrison, and showering on the latter many opprobrious epithets. They also stoned a picket, and made them take refuge in a house.

While travelling between Pretoria and Capetown Captain Hughes became more intimately acquainted with the problem that is facing the British in South Africa than he ever had before. Every bridge and every culvert was guarded by armed men down the whole length of the railway, and as the Now Zealanders travelled from station to station _ they were warned to. keep their bandoliers full of cartridges, and theii' rifles ready in case of surprises! They were also cheer, ed by the intimation that trains which had gone the day before had been wrecked and burned by . the Boers, and, indeed, saw in one place the smoking ruins of. a pile of carriages taken by sudden assault by a party of marauders. Incidents of this kind made our boys wonder if they would reach Capetown alive, but they met with no startling adventures. .. /'h : .•■ •; •' v ;

: .Just; before;starting Captain. Hughes InicL an interview 1 frith Lord Kitchener, whb spoke highly of the services of the New Zealanders.! ; . >-

As Hughes was leaving the tent an orderly •ailed him. “Lord Kitchener wants to speak to you sir!” The Napier man wept back. “Is New Zealand going to federate?” queried Kitchener.

Hughes was somewhat taken aback. He had not been studying politics of late. But -he hazarded an answer , probably by prophetic instinct: “No sir! New Zealand will never federate!” One could not tell in columns all that Lieutenant Hughes did in Sydney. We already know that he became a universal, favourite., His version is that he had a great time- but that he has pome hack a /‘pauper,” '‘You see I had to hold. New Zealand's -end up!” he explained, to the; interviewer. And ho did it., v. : :

At Adelaide Captain Hughes was wildly applauded for a speech he made at a dinner attended by between three and four thousand persons; At Melbourne he again scored as an orator, once at the public reception and again at the Mayor’s banquet. At the Victorian capital he started out with ninety men in the big procession. The crowd swallowed them up. Captain Hughes came <?ut at the other end with three men, two clinging to his stirrups and another to his horse's tail I His thighs were sore for days afterwards by reason of the numbers of people who slapped him hard on the legs and called out “Good old New Zealand 1 Good boy, Hughes!”

As for Sydney, well, Captain Hughes’s opinion is that Mr Seddon and the New Zealanders ran, Sydney during the Commonwealth. Everywhere ‘‘Mr Seddon’s word was law, and the Australians would do anything in the world for the other fellows.” Hughes says words won’t convey the sort of good time that ho and his men had during tiiose happy few weeks. Reverting to the war Lieutenant 'Hughes is full of praise for the New Zealanders. He felt at times that they wore such a good lot of fellows, such staunch stayers, such “good-plucked ’uns” that they were too good for him to be leading. He cannot in fact speak well enough of their behaviour on field or off it. He denies the statements that his men got “off the chain” at ” Sydney. He put them on their honour to do the square thing and they acted up to it like men right throughout. When Hughes was farewelling Kitchener he asked him if he should bring along another contingent when ho got back. Kitchener smiled, and said “No thanks!”

r ‘l see lie has changed his mind in tho interval though,” said the officer to tho interviewer yesterday . Asked why he had not got his captaincy or perhaps something higher before leaving South Africa, the Lieutenant vas diffident. “I suppose it was a bit of bad luck,” he said. '‘You see I have had good luck in some ways; bad in others.” It appears that in some companies in South Africa service and merit quickly earned preferment. Hughes’s corps could not Lave been one of these. Else Major Madocks, the hero of New Zealand Hill, would have brought a V.C. back to New Zealand, and Hughes himself might have got a D.S.O. As it is he is to be made a captain in the Now Zealand Malitia.