If Lord Roberts Needed Justification For This Decision, The Future
Course Of Events Will Furnish It.
One of Napoleon's maxims in war
was to concentrate all one's energies upon one thing at one time.
Roberts's aim was to outflank and possibly to capture Cronje's
army.
If he allowed a brigade to be involved in a rearguard action,
his whole swift-moving plan of campaign might be dislocated. It was
very annoying to lose a hundred and eighty wagons, but it only
meant a temporary inconvenience. The plan of campaign was the
essential thing. Therefore he sacrificed his convoy and hurried his
troops upon their original mission. It was with heavy hearts and
bitter words that those who had fought so long abandoned their
charge, but now at least there are probably few of them who do not
agree in the wisdom of the sacrifice. Our loss in this affair was
between fifty and sixty killed and wounded. The Boers were unable
to get rid of the stores, and they were eventually distributed
among the local farmers and recovered again as the British forces
flowed over the country. Another small disaster occurred to us on
the preceding day in the loss of fifty men of E company of
Kitchener's Horse, which had been left as a guard to a well in the
desert.
But great events were coming to obscure those small checks which
are incidental to a war carried out over immense distances against
a mobile and enterprising enemy. Cronje had suddenly become aware
of the net which was closing round him.
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