The Fight Was For A Time A
Brisk One, And The Pioneers, Upon Whom The Brunt Of It Fell,
Behaved With Great Steadiness.
The skirmish is principally
remarkable for the death of Major Seymour of the Pioneers, a noble
American, who gave his services and at last his life for what, in
the face of all slander and misrepresentation, he knew to be the
cause of justice and of liberty.
It was hoped now, after all these precautions, that the last had
been seen of the gentleman with the tinted glasses, but on June
21st he was back in his old haunts once more. Honing Spruit
Station, about midway between Kroonstad and Roodeval, was the scene
of his new raid. On that date his men appeared suddenly as a train
waited in the station, and ripped up the rails on either side of
it. There were no guns at this point, and the only available troops
were three hundred of the prisoners from Pretoria, armed with
Martini-Henry rifles and obsolete ammunition. A good man was in
command, however - the same Colonel Bullock of the Devons who had
distinguished himself at Colenso - and every tattered, half-starved
wastrel was nerved by a recollection of the humiliations which he
had already endured. For seven hours they lay helpless under the
shell-fire, but their constancy was rewarded by the arrival of
Colonel Brookfield with 300 Yeomanry and four guns of the 17th
R.F.A., followed in the evening by a larger force from the south.
The Boers fled, but left some of their number behind them; while
of the British, Major Hobbs and four men were killed and nineteen
wounded. This defence of three hundred half-armed men against seven
hundred Boer riflemen, with three guns firing shell and shrapnel,
was a very good performance. The same body of burghers immediately
afterwards attacked a post held by Colonel Evans with two companies
of the Shropshires and fifty Canadians. They were again beaten back
with loss, the Canadians under Inglis especially distinguishing
themselves by their desperate resistance in an exposed position.
All these attacks, irritating and destructive as they were, were
not able to hinder the general progress of the war. After the
battle of Diamond Hill the captured position was occupied by the
mounted infantry, while the rest of the forces returned to their
camps round Pretoria, there to await the much-needed remounts. At
other parts of the seat of war the British cordon was being drawn
more tightly round the Boer forces. Buller had come as far as
Standerton, and Ian Hamilton, in the last week of June, had
occupied Heidelberg. A week afterwards the two forces were able to
join hands, and so to completely cut off the Free State from the
Transvaal armies. Hamilton in these operations had the misfortune
to break his collar-bone, and for a time the command of his
division passed to Hunter - the one man, perhaps, whom the army
would regard as an adequate successor.
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