CHAPTER 29.
THE ADVANCE TO KOMATIPOORT.
The time had now come for the great combined movement which was to
sweep the main Boer army off the line of the Delagoa railway, cut
its source of supplies, and follow it into that remote and
mountainous Lydenburg district which had always been proclaimed as
the last refuge of the burghers. Before entering upon this most
difficult of all his advances Lord Roberts waited until the cavalry
and mounted infantry were well mounted again. Then, when all was
ready, the first step in this last stage of the regular campaign
was taken by General Buller, who moved his army of Natal veterans
off the railway line and advanced to a position from which he could
threaten the flank and rear of Botha if he held his ground against
Lord Roberts. Buller's cavalry had been reinforced by the arrival
of Strathcona's Horse, a fine body of Canadian troopers, whose
services had been presented to the nation by the public-spirited
nobleman whose name they bore. They were distinguished by their
fine physique, and by the lassoes, cowboy stirrups, and large spurs
of the North-Western plains.
It was in the first week of July that Clery joined hands with the
Heidelberg garrison, while Coke with the 10th Brigade cleared the
right flank of the railway by an expedition as far as Amersfoort.
On July 6th the Natal communications were restored, and on the 7th
Buller was able to come through to Pretoria and confer with the
Commander-in-Chief. A Boer force with heavy guns still hung about
the line, and several small skirmishes were fought between
Vlakfontein and Greylingstad in order to drive it away. By the
middle of July the immediate vicinity of the railway was clear save
for some small marauding parties who endeavoured to tamper with the
rails and the bridges. Up to the end of the month the whole of the
Natal army remained strung along the line of communications from
Heidelberg to Standerton, waiting for the collection of forage and
transport to enable them to march north against Botha's position.
On August 8th Buller's troops advanced to the north-east from
Paardekop, pushing a weak Boer force with five guns in front of
them. At the cost of twenty-five wounded, principally of the 60th
Rifles, the enemy was cleared off, and the town of Amersfoort was
occupied. On the 13th, moving on the same line, and meeting with
very slight opposition, Buller took possession of Ermelo. His
advance was having a good effect upon the district, for on the 12th
the Standerton commando, which numbered 182 men, surrendered to
Clery. On the 15th, still skirmishing, Buller's men were at
Twyfelaar, and had taken possession of Carolina. Here and there a
distant horseman riding over the olive-coloured hills showed how
closely and incessantly he was watched; but, save for a little
sniping upon his flanks, there was no fighting. He was coming now
within touch of French's cavalry, operating from Middelburg, and on
the 14th heliographic communication was established with Gordon's
Brigade.
Buller's column had come nearer to its friends, but it was also
nearer to the main body of Boers who were waiting in that very
rugged piece of country which lies between Belfast in the west and
Machadodorp in the east. From this rocky stronghold they had thrown
out mobile bodies to harass the British advance from the south, and
every day brought Buller into closer touch with these advance
guards of the enemy. On August 21st he had moved eight miles nearer
to Belfast, French operating upon his left flank. Here he found the
Boers in considerable numbers, but he pushed them northward with
his cavalry, mounted infantry, and artillery, losing between thirty
and forty killed and wounded, the greater part from the ranks of
the 18th Hussars and the Gordon Highlanders. This march brought him
within fifteen miles of Belfast, which lay due north of him. At the
same time Pole-Carew with the central column of Lord Roberts's
force had advanced along the railway line, and on August 24th he
occupied Belfast with little resistance. He found, however, that
the enemy were holding the formidable ridges which lie between that
place and Dalmanutha, and that they showed every sign of giving
battle, presenting a firm front to Buller on the south as well as
to Roberts's army on the west.
On the 23rd some successes attended their efforts to check the
advance from the south. During the day Buller had advanced
steadily, though under incessant fire. The evening found him only
six miles to the south of Dalmanutha, the centre of the Boer
position. By some misfortune, however, after dark two companies of
the Liverpool Regiment found themselves isolated from their
comrades and exposed to a very heavy fire. They had pushed forward
too far, and were very near to being surrounded and destroyed.
There were fifty-six casualties in their ranks, and thirty-two,
including their wounded captain, were taken. The total losses in
the day were 121.
On August 25th it was evident that important events were at hand,
for on that date Lord Roberts arrived at Belfast and held a
conference with Buller, French, and Pole-Carew. The general
communicated his plans to his three lieutenants, and on the 26th
and following days the fruits of the interview were seen in a
succession of rapid manoeuvres which drove the Boers out of this,
the strongest position which they had held since they left the
banks of the Tugela.
The advance of Lord Roberts was made, as his wont is, with two
widespread wings, and a central body to connect them. Such a
movement leaves the enemy in doubt as to which flank will really be
attacked, while if he denudes his centre in order to strengthen
both flanks there is the chance of a frontal advance which might
cut him in two. French with two cavalry brigades formed the left
advance, Pole-Carew the centre, and Buller the right, the whole
operations extending over thirty miles of infamous country. It is
probable that Lord Roberts had reckoned that the Boer right was
likely to be their strongest position, since if it were turned it
would cut off their retreat upon Lydenburg, so his own main attack
was directed upon their left. This was carried out by General
Buller on August 26th and 27th.
On the first day the movement upon Buller's part consisted in a
very deliberate reconnaissance of and closing in upon the enemy's
position, his troops bivouacking upon the ground which they had
won. On the second, finding that all further progress was barred by
the strong ridge of Bergendal, he prepared his attack carefully
with artillery and then let loose his infantry upon it. It was a
gallant feat of arms upon either side. The Boer position was held
by a detachment of the Johannesburg Police, who may have been
bullies in peace, but were certainly heroes in war. The fire of
sixty guns was concentrated for a couple of hours upon a position
only a few hundred yards in diameter. In this infernal fire, which
left the rocks yellow with lyddite, the survivors still waited
grimly for the advance of the infantry. No finer defence was made
in the war. The attack was carried out across an open glacis by the
2nd Rifle Brigade and by the Inniskilling Fusiliers, the men of
Pieter's Hill. Through a deadly fire the gallant infantry swept
over the position, though Metcalfe, the brave colonel of the
Rifles, with eight other officers, and seventy men were killed or
wounded. Lysley, Steward, and Campbell were all killed in leading
their companies, but they could not have met their deaths upon an
occasion more honourable to their battalion. Great credit must also
be given to A and B companies of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, who
were actually the first over the Boer position. The cessation of
the artillery fire was admirably timed. It was sustained up to the
last possible instant. 'As it was,' said the captain of the leading
company, 'a 94-pound shell burst about thirty yards in front of the
right of our lot. The smell of the lyddite was awful.' A pom-pom
and twenty prisoners, including the commander of the police, were
the trophies of the day. An outwork of the Boer position had been
carried, and the rumour of defeat and disaster had already spread
through their ranks. Braver men than the burghers have never lived,
but they had reached the limits of human endurance, and a long
experience of defeat in the field had weakened their nerve and
lessened their morale. They were no longer men of the same fibre as
those who had crept up to the trenches of Spion Kop, or faced the
lean warriors of Ladysmith on that grim January morning at Caesar's
Camp. Dutch tenacity would not allow them to surrender, and yet
they realised how hopeless was the fight in which they were
engaged. Nearly fifteen thousand of their best men were prisoners,
ten thousand at the least had returned to their farms and taken the
oath. Another ten had been killed, wounded, or incapacitated. Most
of the European mercenaries had left; they held only the ultimate
corner of their own country, they had lost their grip upon the
railway line, and their supply of stores and of ammunition was
dwindling. To such a pass had eleven months of war reduced that
formidable army who had so confidently advanced to the conquest of
South Africa.
While Buller had established himself firmly upon the left of the
Boer position, Pole-Carew had moved forward to the north of the
railway line, and French had advanced as far as Swart Kopjes upon
the Boer right. These operations on August 26th and 27th were met
with some resistance, and entailed a loss of forty or fifty killed
and wounded; but it soon became evident that the punishment which
they had received at Bergendal had taken the fight out of the
Boers, and that this formidable position was to be abandoned as the
others had been. On the 28th the burghers were retreating, and
Machadodorp, where Kruger had sat so long in his railway carriage,
protesting that he would eventually move west and not east, was
occupied by Buller. French, moving on a more northerly route,
entered Watervalonder with his cavalry upon the same date, driving
a small Boer force before him. Amid rain and mist the British
columns were pushing rapidly forwards, but still the burghers held
together, and still their artillery was uncaptured. The retirement
was swift, but it was not yet a rout.
On the 30th the British cavalry were within touch of Nooitgedacht,
and saw a glad sight in a long trail of ragged men who were
hurrying in their direction along the railway line. They were the
British prisoners, eighteen hundred in number, half of whom had
been brought from Waterval when Pretoria was captured, while the
other half represented the men who had been sent from the south by
De Wet, or from the west by De la Rey. Much allowance must be made
for the treatment of prisoners by a belligerent who is himself
short of food, but nothing can excuse the harshness which the Boers
showed to the Colonials who fell into their power, or the callous
neglect of the sick prisoners at Waterval. It is a humiliating but
an interesting fact that from first to last no fewer than seven
thousand of our men passed into their power, all of whom were now
recovered save some sixty officers, who had been carried off by
them in their flight.
On September 1st Lord Roberts showed his sense of the decisive
nature of these recent operations by publishing the proclamation
which had been issued as early as July 4th, by which the Transvaal
became a portion of the British Empire. On the same day General
Buller, who had ceased to advance to the east and retraced his
steps as far as Helvetia, began his northerly movement in the
direction of Lydenburg, which is nearly fifty miles to the north of
the railway line. On that date his force made a march of fourteen
miles, which brought them over the Crocodile River to Badfontein.
Here, on September 2nd, Buller found that the indomitable Botha was
still turning back upon him, for he was faced by so heavy a shell
fire, coming from so formidable a position, that he had to be
content to wait in front of it until some other column should
outflank it. The days of unnecessary frontal attacks were for ever
over, and his force, though ready for anything which might be asked
of it, had gone through a good deal in the recent operations. Since
August 21st they had been under fire almost every day, and their
losses, though never great on any one occasion, amounted in the
aggregate during that time to 365. They had crossed the Tugela,
they had relieved Ladysmith, they had forced Laing's Nek, and now
it was to them that the honour had fallen of following the enemy
into this last fastness. Whatever criticism may be directed against
some episodes in the Natal campaign, it must never be forgotten
that to Buller and to his men have fallen some of the hardest tasks
of the war, and that these tasks have always in the end been
successfully carried out. The controversy about the unfortunate
message to White, and the memory of the abandoned guns at Colenso,
must not lead us to the injustice of ignoring all that is to be set
to the credit account.
On September 3rd Lord Roberts, finding how strong a position faced
Buller, despatched Ian Hamilton with a force to turn it upon the
right. Brocklehurst's brigade of cavalry joined Hamilton in his
advance. On the 4th he was within signalling distance of Buller,
and on the right rear of the Boer position. The occupation of a
mountain called Zwaggenhoek would establish Hamilton firmly, and
the difficult task of seizing it at night was committed to Colonel
Douglas and his fine regiment of Royal Scots. It was Spion Kop over
again, but with a happier ending. At break of day the Boers
discovered that their position had been rendered untenable and
withdrew, leaving the road to Lydenburg clear to Buller. Hamilton
and he occupied the town upon the 6th. The Boers had split into two
parties, the larger one with the guns falling back upon Kruger's
Post, and the others retiring to Pilgrim's Rest. Amid cloud-girt
peaks and hardly passable ravines the two long-enduring armies
still wrestled for the final mastery.
To the north-east of Lydenburg, between that town and Spitzkop,
there is a formidable ridge called the Mauchberg, and here again
the enemy were found to be standing at bay. They were even better
than their word, for they had always said that they would make
their last stand at Lydenburg, and now they were making one beyond
it. But the resistance was weakening. Even this fine position could
not be held against the rush of the three regiments, the Devons,
the Royal Irish, and the Royal Scots, who were let loose upon it.
The artillery supported the attack admirably. 'They did nobly,'
said one who led the advance. 'It is impossible to overrate the
value of their support. They ceased also exactly at the right
moment. One more shell would have hit us.' Mountain mists saved the
defeated burghers from a close pursuit, but the hills were carried.
The British losses on this day, September 8th, were thirteen killed
and twenty-five wounded; but of these thirty-eight no less than
half were accounted for by one of those strange malignant freaks
which can neither be foreseen nor prevented. A shrapnel shell,
fired at an incredible distance, burst right over the Volunteer
Company of the Gordons who were marching in column. Nineteen men
fell, but it is worth recording that, smitten so suddenly and so
terribly, the gallant Volunteers continued to advance as steadily
as before this misfortune befell them. On the 9th Buller was still
pushing forward to Spitzkop, his guns and the 1st Rifles
overpowering a weak rearguard resistance of the Boers. On the 10th
he had reached Klipgat, which is halfway between the Mauchberg and
Spitzkop. So close was the pursuit that the Boers, as they streamed
through the passes, flung thirteen of their ammunition wagons over
the cliffs to prevent them from falling into the hands of the
British horsemen. At one period it looked as if the gallant Boer
guns had waited too long in covering the retreat of the burghers.
Strathcona's Horse pressed closely upon them. The situation was
saved by the extreme coolness and audacity of the Boer gunners.
'When the cavalry were barely half a mile behind the rear gun' says
an eye-witness 'and we regarded its capture as certain, the LEADING
Long Tom deliberately turned to bay and opened with case shot at
the pursuers streaming down the hill in single file over the head
of his brother gun. It was a magnificent coup, and perfectly
successful. The cavalry had to retire, leaving a few men wounded,
and by the time our heavy guns had arrived both Long Toms had got
clean away.' But the Boer riflemen would no longer stand.
Demoralised after their magnificent struggle of eleven months the
burghers were now a beaten and disorderly rabble flying wildly to
the eastward, and only held together by the knowledge that in their
desperate situation there was more comfort and safety in numbers.
The war seemed to be swiftly approaching its close. On the 15th
Buller occupied Spitzkop in the north, capturing a quantity of
stores, while on the 14th French took Barberton in the south,
releasing all the remaining British prisoners and taking possession
of forty locomotives, which do not appear to have been injured by
the enemy. Meanwhile Pole-Carew had worked along the railway line,
and had occupied Kaapmuiden, which was the junction where the
Barberton line joins that to Lourenco Marques. Ian Hamilton's
force, after the taking of Lydenburg and the action which followed,
turned back, leaving Buller to go his own way, and reached
Komatipoort on September 24th, having marched since September 9th
without a halt through a most difficult country.
On September 11th an incident had occurred which must have shown
the most credulous believer in Boer prowess that their cause was
indeed lost. On that date Paul Kruger, a refugee from the country
which he had ruined, arrived at Lourenco Marques, abandoning his
beaten commandos and his deluded burghers. How much had happened
since those distant days when as a little herdsboy he had walked
behind the bullocks on the great northward trek. How piteous this
ending to all his strivings and his plottings! A life which might
have closed amid the reverence of a nation and the admiration of
the world was destined to finish in exile, impotent and
undignified. Strange thoughts must have come to him during those
hours of flight, memories of his virile and turbulent youth, of the
first settlement of those great lands, of wild wars where his hand
was heavy upon the natives, of the triumphant days of the war of
independence, when England seemed to recoil from the rifles of the
burghers. And then the years of prosperity, the years when the
simple farmer found himself among the great ones of the earth, his
name a household word in Europe, his State rich and powerful, his
coffers filled with the spoil of the poor drudges who worked so
hard and paid taxes so readily. Those were his great days, the days
when he hardened his heart against their appeals for justice and
looked beyond his own borders to his kinsmen in the hope of a South
Africa which should be all his own. And now what had come of it
all? A handful of faithful attendants, and a fugitive old man,
clutching in his flight at his papers and his moneybags. The last
of the old-world Puritans, he departed poring over his well-thumbed
Bible, and proclaiming that the troubles of his country arose, not
from his own narrow and corrupt administration, but from some
departure on the part of his fellow burghers from the stricter
tenets of the dopper sect. So Paul Kruger passed away from the
country which he had loved and ruined.
Whilst the main army of Botha had been hustled out of their
position at Machadodorp and scattered at Lydenburg and at
Barberton, a number of other isolated events had occurred at
different points of the seat of war, each of which deserves some
mention. The chief of these was a sudden revival of the war in the
Orange River Colony, where the band of Olivier was still wandering
in the north-eastern districts. Hunter, moving northwards after the
capitulation of Prinsloo at Fouriesburg, came into contact on
August 15th with this force near Heilbron, and had forty
casualties, mainly of the Highland Light Infantry, in a brisk
engagement. For a time the British seemed to have completely lost
touch with Olivier, who suddenly on August 24th struck at a small
detachment consisting almost entirely of Queenstown Rifle
Volunteers under Colonel Ridley, who were reconnoitring near
Winburg. The Colonial troopers made a gallant defence. Throwing
themselves into the farmhouse of Helpmakaar, and occupying every
post of vantage around it, they held off more than a thousand
assailants, in spite of the three guns which the latter brought to
bear upon them. A hundred and thirty-two rounds were fired at the
house, but the garrison still refused to surrender. Troopers who
had been present at Wepener declared that the smaller action was
the warmer of the two. Finally on the morning of the third day a
relief force arrived upon the scene, and the enemy dispersed. The
British losses were thirty-two killed and wounded. Nothing daunted
by his failure, Olivier turned upon the town of Winburg and
attempted to regain it, but was defeated again and scattered, he
and his three sons being taken. The result was due to the gallantry
and craft of a handful of the Queenstown Volunteers, who laid an
ambuscade in a donga, and disarmed the Boers as they passed, after
the pattern of Sanna's Post. By this action one of the most daring
and resourceful of the Dutch leaders fell into the hands of the
British. It is a pity that his record is stained by his
dishonourable conduct in breaking the compact made on the occasion
of the capture of Prinsloo. But for British magnanimity a drumhead
court-martial should have taken the place of the hospitality of the
Ceylon planters.
On September 2nd another commando of Free State Boers under Fourie
emerged from the mountain country on the Basuto border, and fell
upon Ladybrand, which was held by a feeble garrison consisting of
one company of the Worcester regiment and forty-three men of the
Wiltshire Yeomanry. The Boers, who had several guns with them,
appear to have been the same force which had been repulsed at
Winburg. Major White, a gallant marine, whose fighting qualities do
not seem to have deteriorated with his distance from salt water,
had arranged his defences upon a hill, after the Wepener model, and
held his own most stoutly. So great was the disparity of the forces
that for days acute anxiety was felt lest another of those
humiliating surrenders should interrupt the record of victories,
and encourage the Boers to further resistance. The point was
distant, and it was some time before relief could reach them. But
the dusky chiefs, who from their native mountains looked down on
the military drama which was played so close to their frontier,
were again, as on the Jammersberg, to see the Boer attack beaten
back by the constancy of the British defence. The thin line of
soldiers, 150 of them covering a mile and a half of ground, endured
a heavy shell and rifle fire with unshaken resolution, repulsed
every attempt of the burghers, and held the flag flying until
relieved by the forces under White and Bruce Hamilton. In this
march to the relief Hamilton's infantry covered eighty miles in
four and a half days. Lean and hard, inured to warfare, and far
from every temptation of wine or women, the British troops at this
stage of the campaign were in such training, and marched so
splendidly, that the infantry was often very little slower than the
cavalry. Methuen's fine performance in pursuit of De Wet, where
Douglas's infantry did sixty-six miles in seventy-five hours, the
City Imperial Volunteers covering 224 miles in fourteen days, with
a single forced march of thirty miles in seventeen hours, the
Shropshires forty-three miles in thirty-two hours, the forty-five
miles in twenty-five hours of the Essex Regiment, Bruce Hamilton's
march recorded above, and many other fine efforts serve to show the
spirit and endurance of the troops.
In spite of the defeat at Winburg and the repulse at Ladybrand,
there still remained a fair number of broken and desperate men in
the Free State who held out among the difficult country of the
east. A party of these came across in the middle of September and
endeavoured to cut the railway near Brandfort. They were pursued
and broken up by Macdonald, who, much aided in his operations by
the band of scouts which Lord Lovat had brought with him from
Scotland, took several prisoners and a large number of wagons and
of oxen. A party of these Boers attacked a small post of sixteen
Yeomanry under Lieutenant Slater at Bultfontein, but were held at
bay until relief came from Brandfort.
At two other points the Boer and British forces were in contact
during these operations. One was to the immediate north of
Pretoria, where Grobler's commando was faced by Paget's brigade. On
August 18th the Boers were forced with some loss out of Hornies
Nek, which is ten miles to the north of the capital. On the 22nd a
more important skirmish took place at Pienaar's River, in the same
direction, between Baden-Powell's men, who had come thither in
pursuit of De Wet, and Grobler's band. The advance guards of the
two forces galloped into each other, and for once Boer and Briton
looked down the muzzles of each other's rifles. The gallant
Rhodesian Regiment, which had done such splendid service during the
war, suffered most heavily. Colonel Spreckley and four others were
killed, and six or seven wounded. The Boers were broken, however,
and fled, leaving twenty-five prisoners to the victors.
Baden-Powell and Paget pushed forwards as far as Nylstroom, but
finding themselves in wild and profitless country they returned
towards Pretoria, and established the British northern posts at a
place called Warm Baths. Here Paget commanded, while Baden-Powell
shortly afterwards went down to Cape Town to make arrangements for
taking over the police force of the conquered countries, and to
receive the enthusiastic welcome of his colonial fellow-countrymen.
Plumer, with a small force operating from Warm Baths, scattered a
Boer commando on September 1st, capturing a few prisoners and a
considerable quantity of munitions of war. On the 5th there was
another skirmish in the same neighbourhood, during which the enemy
attacked a kopje held by a company of Munster Fusiliers, and was
driven off with loss. Many thousands of cattle were captured by the
British in this part of the field of operations, and were sent into
Pretoria, whence they helped to supply the army in the east.
There was still considerable effervescence in the western districts
of the Transvaal, and a mounted detachment met with fierce
opposition at the end of August on their journey from Zeerust to
Krugersdorp. Methuen, after his unsuccessful chase of De Wet, had
gone as far as Zeerust, and had then taken his force on to Mafeking
to refit. Before leaving Zeerust, however, he had despatched
Colonel Little to Pretoria with a column which consisted of his own
third cavalry brigade, 1st Brabant's, the Kaffrarian Rifles, R
battery of Horse Artillery, and four Colonial guns. They were
acting as guard to a very large convoy of 'returned empties.' The
district which they had to traverse is one of the most fertile in
the Transvaal, a land of clear streams and of orange groves. But
the farmers are numerous and aggressive, and the column, which was
900 strong, could clear all resistance from its front, but found it
impossible to brush off the snipers upon its flanks and rear.
Shortly after their start the column was deprived of the services
of its gallant leader, Colonel Little, who was shot while riding
with his advance scouts. Colonel Dalgety took over the command.
Numerous desultory attacks culminated in a fierce skirmish at
Quaggafontein on August 31st, in which the column had sixty
casualties. The event might have been serious, as De la Rey's main
force appears to have been concentrated upon the British
detachment, the brunt of the action falling upon the Kaffrarian
Rifles. By a rapid movement the column was able to extricate itself
and win its way safely to Krugersdorp, but it narrowly escaped out
of the wolf's jaws, and as it emerged into the open country De la
Rey's guns were seen galloping for the pass which they had just
come through. This force was sent south to Kroonstad to refit.
Lord Methuen's army, after its long marches and arduous work,
arrived at Mafeking on August 28th for the purpose of refitting.
Since his departure from Boshof on May 14th his men had been
marching with hardly a rest, and he had during that time fought
fourteen engagements. He was off upon the war-path once more, with
fresh horses and renewed energy, on September 8th, and on the 9th,
with the co-operation of General Douglas, he scattered a Boer force
at Malopo, capturing thirty prisoners and a great quantity of
stores. On the 14th he ran down a convoy and regained one of the
Colenso guns and much ammunition. On the 20th he again made large
captures. If in the early phases of the war the Boers had given
Paul Methuen some evil hours, he was certainly getting his own back
again. At the same time Clements was despatched from Pretoria with
a small mobile force for the purpose of clearing the Rustenburg and
Krugersdorp districts, which had always been storm centres. These
two forces, of Methuen and of Clements, moved through the country,
sweeping the scattered Boer bands before them, and hunting them
down until they dispersed. At Kekepoort and at Hekspoort Clements
fought successful skirmishes, losing at the latter action
Lieutenant Stanley of the Yeomanry, the Somersetshire cricketer,
who showed, as so many have done, how close is the connection
between the good sportsman and the good soldier. On the 12th
Douglas took thirty-nine prisoners near Lichtenburg. On the 18th
Rundle captured a gun at Bronkhorstfontein. Hart at Potchefstroom,
Hildyard in the Utrecht district, Macdonald in the Orange River
Colony, everywhere the British Generals were busily stamping out
the remaining embers of what had been so terrible a conflagration.
Much trouble but no great damage was inflicted upon the British
during this last stage of the war by the incessant attacks upon the
lines of railway by roving bands of Boers. The actual interruption
of traffic was of little consequence, for the assiduous Sappers
with their gangs of Basuto labourers were always at hand to repair
the break. But the loss of stores, and occasionally of lives, was
more serious. Hardly a day passed that the stokers and drivers were
not made targets of by snipers among the kopjes, and occasionally a
train was entirely destroyed. [Footnote: It is to be earnestly
hoped that those in authority will see that these men obtain the
medal and any other reward which can mark our sense of their
faithful service. One of them in the Orange River Colony, after
narrating to me his many hairbreadth escapes, prophesied bitterly
that the memory of his services would pass with the need for them.]
Chief among these raiders was the wild Theron, who led a band which
contained men of all nations--the same gang who had already, as
narrated, held up a train in the Orange River Colony. On August
31st he derailed another at Flip River to the south of
Johannesburg, blowing up the engine and burning thirteen trucks.
Almost at the same time a train was captured near Kroonstad, which
appeared to indicate that the great De Wet was back in his old
hunting-grounds. On the same day the line was cut at Standerton. A
few days later, however, the impunity with which these feats had
been performed was broken, for in a similar venture near
Krugersdorp the dashing Theron and several of his associates lost
their lives.
Two other small actions performed at this period of the war demand
a passing notice. One was a smart engagement near Kraai Railway
Station, in which Major Broke of the Sappers with a hundred men
attacked a superior Boer force upon a kopje and drove them off with
loss--a feat which it is safe to say he could not have accomplished
six months earlier. The other was the fine defence made by 125 of
the Canadian Mounted Rifles, who, while guarding the railway, were
attacked by a considerable Boer force with two guns. They proved
once more, as Ladybrand and Elands River had shown, that with
provisions, cartridges, and brains, the smallest force can
successfully hold its own if it confines itself to the defensive.
And now the Boer cause appeared to be visibly tottering to its
fall. The flight of the President had accelerated that process of
disintegration which had already set in. Schalk Burger had assumed
the office of Vice-President, and the notorious Ben Viljoen had
become first lieutenant of Louis Botha in maintaining the struggle.
Lord Roberts had issued an extremely judicious proclamation, in
which he pointed out the uselessness of further resistance,
declared that guerilla warfare would be ruthlessly suppressed, and
informed the burghers that no fewer than fifteen thousand of their
fellow-countrymen were in his hands as prisoners, and that none of
these could he released until the last rifle had been laid down.
From all sides in the third week of September the British forces
were converging on Komatipoort, the frontier town. Already wild
figures, stained and tattered after nearly a year of warfare, were
walking the streets of Lourenco Marques, gazed at with wonder and
some distrust by the Portuguese inhabitants. The exiled burghers
moodily pacing the streets saw their exiled President seated in his
corner of the Governor's verandah, the well-known curved pipe still
dangling from his mouth, the Bible by his chair. Day by day the
number of these refugees increased. On September 17th special
trains were arriving crammed with the homeless burghers, and with
the mercenaries of many nations--French, German, Irish-American,
and Russian--all anxious to make their way home. By the 19th no
fewer than seven hundred had passed over.
At dawn on September 22nd a half-hearted attempt was made by the
commando of Erasmus to attack Elands River Station, but it was
beaten back by the garrison. While it was going on Paget fell upon
the camp which Erasmus had left behind him, and captured his
stores. From all over the country, from Plumer's Bushmen, from
Barton at Krugersdorp, from the Colonials at Heilbron, from
Clements on the west, came the same reports of dwindling resistance
and of the abandoning of cattle, arms, and ammunition.
On September 24th came the last chapter in this phase of the
campaign in the Eastern Transvaal, when at eight in the morning
Pole-Carew and his Guardsmen occupied Komatipoort. They had made
desperate marches, one of them through thick bush, where they went
for nineteen miles without water, but nothing could shake the
cheery gallantry of the men. To them fell the honour, an honour
well deserved by their splendid work throughout the whole campaign,
of entering and occupying the ultimate eastern point which the
Boers could hold. Resistance had been threatened and prepared for,
but the grim silent advance of that veteran infantry took the heart
out of the defence. With hardly a shot fired the town was occupied.
The bridge which would enable the troops to receive their supplies
from Lourenco Marques was still intact. General Pienaar and the
greater part of his force, amounting to over two thousand men, had
crossed the frontier and had been taken down to Delagoa Bay, where
they met the respect and attention which brave men in misfortune
deserve. Small bands had slipped away to the north and the south,
but they were insignificant in numbers and depressed in spirit. For
the time it seemed that the campaign was over, but the result
showed that there was greater vitality in the resistance of the
burghers and less validity in their oaths than any one had
imagined.
One find of the utmost importance was made at Komatipoort, and at
Hector Spruit on the Crocodile River. That excellent artillery
which had fought so gallant a fight against our own more numerous
guns, was found destroyed and abandoned. Pole-Carew at Komatipoort
got one Long Tom (96-pound) Creusot, and one smaller gun. Ian
Hamilton at Hector Spruit found the remains of many guns, which
included two of our horse artillery twelve-pounders, two large
Creusot guns, two Krupps, one Vickers-Maxim quick firer, two
pompoms and four mountain guns.
