I HAVE REAPED MY MEALIES

251 pages, frontispiece portrait, green cloth titled gilt on the upper cover and spine, a very good copy.

Note by Major D.D. Hall: My grandfather, Hugh Lanion Hall, came to South Africa in 1869, as a boy of eleven. When the Zulu War began in 1879, he was not yet twenty-one years old, but he had already gained experience as a Transport Conductor with the British Array in the Sekukuni War.

In 1937, he wrote his autobiography 'I Have Reaped My Mealies'. The origin of this title is interesting. Not many years before he was driving his car to a cattle sale near Lydenburg, when he was involved in a near-accident, which resulted in his car leaving the rood and plunging down the side of an embankment. Fortunately he was able to regain control of the car, and no one was hurt. One of his passengers was Jack, a wagon driver who had worked for him for about 33 years, and who jumped for safety when the car went over the edge. When asked why he had jumped out, Jack replied: 'It's all very well for the old baas - he's reaped his mealies, we haven’t sown ours yet.'

In his autobiography, H L Hall described his experiences in the Zulu War in a chapter entitled - 'With Assegai and Rifle'. The story starts in 1878 with some comments about the Sekukuni War. http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol045hh.html