Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA: 1889 - 1931) Monday 5 August 1901
IN THE FIELD.
OUR BOYS IN SOUTH AFRICA.
LIKE AUSTRALIA BEST.
(From Trooper W. D. Teate, to Detective Northridge.)
Harrismith, June 25, 1901.
The Sixth Contingent (I.B.C.) are going continuously. We have not camped since the first week after we landed. All the horses we brought from Adelaide are dead, and now we are kept busy breaking in Boer ponies, which stand about a week's work, and then are no good. You have heard the great fight we had at Grasspan. It was a terrible affair; we fought hand to hand with an enemy that outnumbered us. We were sent out to capture a Boer convoy, consisting of about a hundred waggons and 20 Cape carts. This convoy was guarded by an escort numbering 500 Boers, under General De La Rey. We set out at 2 a.m., and came to a river, where our convoy took about six hours to cross with the guns and waggons. All the advance guard were Australians, and we were sent on to engage the Boer convoy. By the time our big convoy had come up to us with the 15-pounders and about 1,000 men we had won the battle. We captured 200 Boers, counting men and women, 80 waggons, and 14 Cape carts, and killed 50 Boers. It was a hard fight. We lost 11 men, and 10 wounded severely.

People in Adelaide think the war is over, but that is where the mistake is. We are not having it any too easy now. We get very little to eat, and very little sleep. The climate does not suit us chaps. It is too cold altogether at nights, and there is no shelter. We have slept in the open air every night since we landed, and when we get up in the morning the frost on our blankets is about an inch thick, and the rivers are frozen.

It is a strange country. There are no trees of any description. We have to do as the Boers do, hunt about and get a fire with cowdung. Every man has to cook his own tucker, that is when he gets the stuff to cook. Our rations are starvation rations. Five hard biscuits that you can hardly digest and some bully beef now and then. I don't think much of the way things are carried out. There are always mistakes about the allowance we are supposed to have. When we have been on the track a week the officers find they are running short, and they cut you down to half rations.

Lord Kitchener reviewed us at Kroonstad, and said the Australians were in good fighting condition. I think he is a fine looking man, and every inch a soldier.

This country is no good for stock. There is not enough salt and lime in the ground to strengthen the grass for stock. The horses are very weedy and useless, and the sheep are not up to much. As soon as I get my discharge I am coming back to South Australia. It is a better country than South Africa.

We are a different looking lot of men to what we were when we left Adelaide. Some of us have not had a shave since then. Our life is full of adventure. We don't know one day where we will be the next. Some nights just as we turn in for a few hours' sleep we have to get up, jump on our horses, and gallop like fury after a few Boers, who keep sniping at us as we are having our tucker. We always have 150 rounds of ammunition and a magazine rifle that carries eleven rounds, and also a sword bayonet in case we charge a kopje.

This country seems to be overrun with Kaffirs. They do all the work. The Boers lead a lazy life. The Kaffir works while the Boer lives in idleness.

I was terribly sick on the voyage, and could not go below to meals till after we left Albany, when I began to enjoy the trip. The Warrigal was a terror to roll about, even in a small sea. She heeled over till the water came over the decks. Our horses were much knocked about. Three died on the trip. We landed at Port Natal, and then led our horses to Durban, three miles inland. Thence we entrained to Elandsfontein. The train took a week to get there. From there we went to Standerton, where we camped six days to spell our horses. Since then we have been going from one place to another with- out stopping. I will be able to tell some yarns that will make your hair stand on end. We have joined the Fifth Contingent, so that the Fifth and Sixth are now all one.
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