It Appears To Have Been One Of The
Very Few Occasions During The Campaign When That Obsolete And
Absurd Weapon The Sword Was Anything But A Dead Weight To Its
Bearer.
And now the force had a straight run in before it, for it had
outpaced any further force of Boers which may have been advancing
from the direction of Magersfontein.
The horses, which had come a
hundred miles in four days with insufficient food and water, were
so done that it was no uncommon sight to see the trooper not only
walking to ease his horse, but carrying part of his monstrous
weight of saddle gear. But in spite of fatigue the force pressed on
until in the afternoon a distant view was seen, across the reddish
plain, of the brick houses and corrugated roofs of Kimberley. The
Boer besiegers cleared off in front of it, and that night (February
15th) the relieving column camped on the plain two miles away,
while French and his staff rode in to the rescued city.
The war was a cruel one for the cavalry, who were handicapped
throughout by the nature of the country and by the tactics of the
enemy. They are certainly the branch of the service which had least
opportunity for distinction. The work of scouting and patrolling is
the most dangerous which a soldier can undertake, and yet from its
very nature it can find no chronicler. The war correspondent, like
Providence, is always with the big battalions, and there never was
a campaign in which there was more unrecorded heroism, the heroism
of the picket and of the vedette which finds its way into no
newspaper paragraph.
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