QUEENS SOUTH AFRICA MEDAL TO PTE ANDERSON DORDRECHT DISTRICT VG & CAPE COLONY

Description

Queens South Africa Medal 1899, 1 clasp CAPE COLONY, impressed named 412 PTE B. ANDERSON. DORDRECHT D.V.G. Comes with copy medal roll & newspaper article.

Private Berlin Anderson would have seen action in regards to the constant fighting, which took place in the Dordrecht District and throughout the war, with Dordrecht itself was captured by the Boers for a period.

He is also entitled to the Kings South Africa Medal for when he was serving with E Squadron, Cape Colonial Forces.

How Jan Smuts cheated death. Farmer’s Weekly (South Africa) 7/9/2018

The British had anticipated the entry of Smuts into the Cape and had concentrated forces in the east to contain him. When the commando crossed the Orange River on 4 September, they were attacked by the Herschel Native Police, losing four men.

By the time the commando reached Moordenaarspoort three days later, scouts had confirmed an enemy force on the nearby farm, Leeufontein. Although Smuts did not regard the locally raised Dordrecht District Volunteer Guard (DDVG) and the Wodehouse Border Rifles (WBR) as highly as professional soldiers, he was concerned about their proximity to a poort that he wanted to follow further south. He therefore insisted on travelling up the poort with three men to reconnoitre, against the advice of Daniel Wilhelmus Schoeman, Schoeman warned that the enemy were watching the Boers: 10 men from the DDVG and the WBR under Lieutenant Keith Jackson were concealed on high ground above the Moordenaarspoort homesteads. Seeing the four Boers making their way up the poort in the late afternoon, Jackson decided on an ambush higher up the poort and with three men took up positions under an overhang.

The mounted Boers in single file were stunned by a sudden hail of bullets unleashed on them from just 20m away. All four horses were shot from under their riders, while the lead rider, Martiens Adendorff, was killed outright. His brother, Willem, who was second in line, and Johannes Neethling, who took up the rear, were both severely wounded.

Smuts, third in line, was the only one to escape the fusillade, but he fell from his horse in such a way that Jackson believed he had been shot in the head. He then rolled into a donga and made a run for it under heavy fire. In those moments, he later told his son, he had “worried more about the shame of capture than the fear of being killed’’. Eventually, Smuts slipped out of sight and Jackson and his men retreated. It was a miraculous escape, which Daantjie believes had to do with the shooters’ military inexperience.