199 
IN MEMORIAM — E. G. KENSIT 
Going to Ypres they got lost “and it rained all the way.. ..My only wish 
was for something hot.... Yes the time for hot tea is out of joint, but when it 
does come I shall make up for lost time.” Many a time after a long march, 
especially in Egypt, when all were spent, Kensit would come up with a little 
tea for someone else, some youngster or an oldish man more wearied than the 
rest, and his own time would still be out of joint. 
He talks of work in the trenches and one gets an impression of high good 
humour. 
One night he had a narrow escape — “I put my head up a little too high 
and a bullet was there at once but only put some dust in my face. It was a 
lesson I shall never forget. I shiver now, as it was an explosive bullet.” 
Another ticklish experience he had one night when he was chosen to put- 
some sandbags on the front trenches which they had just taken over. “I was 
chosen because I was so small — 10 minutes there seemed like hours and I 
was so sorry for being so small. But I was safe enough as the shots were going 
high. Mind you, our snipers go out in front, so I was not so brave after all.” 
On the last march “all along the road were cowslips” and later on “all 
the way looked like marching through Newlands Avenue” and just before 
the end “we marched through lands all red with red poppies.” 
Of the last fight, where our South Africans lost so heavily, there is this to 
tell, that unsuccess, as the world counts it, has oft equalled in splendour and 
endurance the most acclaimed success. A small band of men to take the wood 
and overwhelming odds against them. They began to move up on the- 14th 
at daybreak and were successful in taking most of Longueval and Delville. 
They fought steadily on throughout the 15th and on the 16th took another 
portion of the w T ood. The particular section of the line where Kensit was 
became very dangerous and was so thinly held that rifle pits holding two men 
each had to be dug instead of trenches. In the late afternoon of this 16th 
day, suddenly we see Ivensit coming down the line by himself, “having volun- 
teered to see that we were all fairly connected up.” 
He chats with his comrades going and coming and is “bright and cheerful 
as ever and pleased to be in the. thick of things.” Throughout the day and 
night of the 16th they held on. The officer in command early noticed Kensit and 
calls him “ a splendid man who cheered me a great deal in those hard hours. 
Early on the 17th they were more heavily attacked by bombs and machine 
guns and the enemy managed to pierce the line on the left. They managed to 
circumvent the Germans behind them. All that day and night they held on 
doggedly, raked by enemy fire and drenched by the rain. At dawn it "as 
found that another portion of the line just to the right was open and they 
had to fill, up this gap and connect with a flank whose whereabouts was 
unknown. A volunteer to ascertain the position of the flank and the stu ngth 
of the enemy, was asked for. Again Kensit ‘ stepped out at once and dis 
