With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900)

nd fifty marines were now ordered off to the front at once to fill up these casualties. Naturally we all wanted to go, but the Admiral could not send us and drafted us off to various ships, my own destination being H.M.S. Philomel, then at Durban, which I reached in the transport Idaho, a Wilson Liner. We had on board a Field Battery and other details with six guns and 250 horses. I was much interested in the horses, who had a fine deck to themselves and were very fit; they were in fact 'Bus horses, and very good ones.

There were some Highland officers and others on board who had been wounded and were now going back to Natal after recovery; they told us how cunning the Boers were in selecting positions; one saw nothing of them, they said, on a hill but the muzzle of their rifles; they are only killed in retreat; they pick out any dark object as a man, such as a great-coat, training their rifles on it so as to fire directly he rises and advances. One of the officers told us ho