On The Left Flank Was A
Farmhouse, Which Was Held By Two Hundred Men Of The Artillery
Rifles.
On the extreme right was another outpost of twenty-four
Canadians and forty-five Mounted Infantry.
They occupied no
defensible position, and their situation was evidently a most
dangerous one, only to be justified by some strong military reason
which is not explained by any account of the action.
The Boer guns had opened fire, and considerable bodies of the enemy
appeared upon the flanks and in front. Their first efforts were
devoted towards getting possession of the farmhouse, which would
give them a point d'appui from which they could turn the whole
line. Some five hundred of them charged on horseback, but were met
by a very steady fire from the Artillery Rifles, while the guns
raked them with shrapnel. They reached a point within five hundred
yards of the building, but the fire was too hot, and they wheeled
round in rapid retreat. Dismounting in a mealie-patch they
skirmished up towards the farmhouse once more, but they were again
checked by the fire of the defenders and by a pompom which Colonel
Keir had brought up. No progress whatever was made by the attack in
this quarter.
In the meantime the fate which might have been foretold had
befallen the isolated detachment of Canadians and 28th Mounted
Infantry upon the extreme right. Bruce Carruthers, the Canadian
officer in command, behaved with the utmost gallantry, and was
splendidly seconded by his men. Overwhelmed by vastly superior
numbers, amid a perfect hail of bullets they fought like heroes to
the end. 'There have been few finer instances of heroism in the
course of the campaign,' says the reticent Kitchener in his
official despatch. Of the Canadians eighteen were hit out of
twenty-one, and the Mounted Infantry hard by lost thirty out of
forty-five before they surrendered.
This advantage gained upon the right flank was of no assistance to
the Boers in breaking the British line. The fact that it was so
makes it the more difficult to understand why this outpost was so
exposed. The burghers had practically surrounded Cookson's force,
and De la Rey and Kemp urged on the attack; but their artillery
fire was dominated by the British guns, and no weak point could be
found in the defence. At 1 o'clock the attack had been begun, and
at 5.30 it was finally abandoned, and De la Rey was in full
retreat. That he was in no sense routed is shown by the fact that
Cookson did not attempt to follow him up or to capture his guns;
but at least he had failed in his purpose, and had lost more
heavily than in any engagement which he had yet fought. The moral
effect of his previous victories had also been weakened, and his
burghers had learned, if they had illusions upon the subject, that
the men who fled at Tweebosch were not typical troopers of the
British Army. Altogether, it was a well-fought and useful action,
though it cost the British force some two hundred casualties, of
which thirty-five were fatal. Cookson's force stood to arms all
night until the arrival of Walter Kitchener's men in the morning.
General Ian Hamilton, who had acted for some time as Chief of the
Staff to Lord Kitchener, had arrived on April 8th at Klerksdorp to
take supreme command of the whole operations against De la Rey.
Early in April the three main British columns had made a rapid cast
round without success. To the very end the better intelligence and
the higher mobility seem to have remained upon the side of the
Boers, who could always force a fight when they wished and escape
when they wished. Occasionally, however, they forced one at the
wrong time, as in the instance which I am about to describe.
Hamilton had planned a drive to cover the southern portion of De la
Rey's country, and for this purpose, with Hartebeestefontein for
his centre, he was manoeuvring his columns so as to swing them into
line and then sweep back towards Klerksdorp. Kekewich, Rawlinson,
and Walter Kitchener were all manoeuvring for this purpose. The
Boers, however, game to the last, although they were aware that
their leaders had gone in to treat, and that peace was probably due
within a few days, determined to have one last gallant fall with a
British column. The forces of Kekewich were the farthest to the
westward, and also, as the burghers thought, the most isolated, and
it was upon them, accordingly, that the attack was made. In the
morning of April 11th, at a place called Rooiwal, the enemy, who
had moved up from Wolmaranstad, nineteen hundred strong, under Kemp
and Vermaas, fell with the utmost impetuosity upon the British
column. There was no preliminary skirmishing, and a single gallant
charge by 1500 Boers both opened and ended the engagement. 'I was
just saying to the staff officer that there were no Boers within
twenty miles,' says one who was present, 'when we heard a roar of
musketry and saw a lot of men galloping down on us.' The British
were surprised but not shaken by this unexpected apparition. 'I
never saw a more splendid attack. They kept a distinct line,' says
the eye-witness. Another spectator says, 'They came on in one long
line four deep and knee to knee.' It was an old-fashioned cavalry
charge, and the fact that it got as far as it did shows that we
have over rated the stopping power of modern rifles. They came for
a good five hundred yards under direct fire, and were only turned
within a hundred of the British line. The Yeomanry, the Scottish
Horse, and the Constabulary poured a steady fire upon the advancing
wave of horsemen, and the guns opened with case at two hundred
yards. The Boers were stopped, staggered, and turned.
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