Two Years on Trek

At war on the veldt

This book, written by a colonel of the regiment, recounts the experiences of the Royal Sussex Regiment throughout its service during the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. The story of the Royal Sussex is typified as 'a trek,' a phrase used by the Boers themselves to describe the long and usually gruelling marches they undertook across the African veldt and a phrase which perfectly describes the doings of one of Queen Victoria's foot-slogging county regiments of infantry upon whom much of the hard campaigning and fighting fell in this last imperial war at the end of the nineteenth century. The reader joins the Sussex men in many hard fought engagements, including the fight on the Zand River, the fiercely contested action at Diamond Hill and many others. The campaign landscape of the Boer War meant that mounted men could move across huge distances quickly and the enemy demonstrated the effectiveness of these tactics in the use of the incomparable Boer 'commandos.' In response the British raised mounted columns employing mounted infantry and the Royal Sussex were actively involved in both the 13th and 21st M. I. whose activities are also detailed here. The book also contains an honour role which will be of interest to genealogists. Available in softcover and hardcover with dustjacket for collectors.