18. Transport of Boer heavy guns

In 1897 the government of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) purchased four 155mm siege guns made in the Schneider factory in the town of le Creusot, France – three of these were sent to Ladysmith. These were in addition to four 12cm Krupp howitzers imported in 1896. TheCreusots became known to the British as “Long Toms”. They had been extremely sceptical about the possibility of this ordnance being used in field service. Their appearance outside Dundee and then Ladysmith was a rude awakening for the British. The Boers had a Long Tom, a 12cm (4.7
inch) Krupp howitzer and a Maxim machine gun on Gun Hill due east of Ladysmith. These were the closest guns to Ladysmith, together with another Krupp howitzer on Surprise Hill to the north.

19. Krupp howitzer

A Krupp 12cm howitzer weighed close to a ton and was drawn by a team of twelve mules. To succeed in dragging it up the reverse slope of Surprise Hill was a considerable feat. The reverse slope of the hill is considerably less steep than the front but nevertheless it took considerable resource and ingenuity to get it up onto the fairly flat but very rocky summit. It was done without the British realising, until it opened fire, that there was even a gun on Surprise Hill. Several redoubts were built out of the rock existing on the hilltop and the gun may have fired from at least two positions. The provision of ammunition was a serious difficulty. Each round weighed 35 pounds and would have to be brought from Modderspruit Station and carried up to the hilltop. Possibly local black people were employed for this laborious task. This clearly explains why the gun fired only intermittently even though it could easily hit any target in Ladysmith.

36. Gunners of the ZAR Staatsartillerie on Surprise Hill

Its flat summit was a superb position for one of the best Boer artillery pieces, a 12cm Krupp howitzer. This gun outranged all of the British field guns in Ladysmith, except for their 4.7 inch Naval gun for which there was very little ammunition.. It was mounted low on its carriage which had relatively small, sturdy wheels. Although intended as a siege weapon, the Boers managed to transport it easily over rough terrain. It was a quick-firing gun which used a brass cartridge case.

65. Mr Uggla and his assistants

The repair of the two Krupp howitzers was thus a different story. All that could be done was to remanufacture one gun from the parts that remained. Both barrels were beyond repair but there were enough other pieces to repair the running gear. In the workshops of the Zuid Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappij in Pretoria a Norwegian engineer, a Mr Uggla and his colleagues manufactured a new barrel from a steel section found somewhere in Johannesburg. It was necessary also to make a new breech block. The photograph of Mr Uggla and his colleagues with the new parts that they had made (and what remained of the old gun) includes a shiny new breech block. Certainly, they were talented engineers to have managed such an undertaking. It is said that the new gun had the same ballistic qualities as the original which is even more of a tribute to their expertise.

66. The Krupp howitzer in Winchester

How long it took to repair the gun is not known but it was apparently returned to service with the Boers in the eastern Transvaal. Only once the war had ended was the gun discovered by Colonel Urmston’s column, near Roos Senekal. From the inscription on this gun it is safe to say that this was the Surprise Hill howitzer, the gun that was
damaged and remade at the Z.A.S.M. workshop. This photograph shows the gun at Peninsula Barracks, Winchester, the site of the headquarters of The Rifle Brigade and its sister regiments. It dates probably from the 1930’s but the gun is no longer there. What eventually happened to it can only be guessed at. In 1941 during the darkest days of the Second World War, Winston Churchill made an appeal for the British population to turn in all metal items to assist the war effort. All kinds of things went into the melting pot – including pots and pans, fence posts and railings, indeed anything of metal that could be used to make armaments. Numbers of trophy guns around the country suffered this fate and the 12cm Krupp was probably melted down and turned into guns for another war.