In October Colonel Benson's Force Was Reorganised, And It Then
Consisted Of The 2nd Buffs, The 2nd Scottish Horse, The 3rd And
25th Mounted Infantry, And Four Guns Of The 84th Battery.
With this
force, numbering nineteen hundred men, he left Middelburg upon the
Delagoa line on October 20th and proceeded south, crossing the
course along which the Boers, who were retiring from their abortive
raid into Natal, might be expected to come.
For several days the
column performed its familiar work, and gathered up forty or fifty
prisoners. On the 26th came news that the Boer commandos under
Grobler were concentrating against it, and that an attack in force
might be expected. For two days there was continuous sniping, and
the column as it moved through the country saw Boer horsemen
keeping pace with it on the far flanks and in the rear. The weather
had been very bad, and it was in a deluge of cold driving rain that
the British set forth upon October 30th, moving towards
Brakenlaagte, which is a point about forty miles due south of
Middelburg. It was Benson's intention to return to his base.
About midday the column, still escorted by large bodies of
aggressive Boers, came to a difficult spruit swollen by the rain.
Here the wagons stuck, and it took some hours to get them all
across. The Boer fire was continually becoming more severe, and had
broken out at the head of the column as well as the rear. The
situation was rendered more difficult by the violence of the rain,
which raised a thick steam from the ground and made it impossible
to see for any distance. Major Anley, in command of the rearguard,
peering back, saw through a rift of the clouds a large body of
horsemen in extended order sweeping after them. 'There's miles of
them, begob!' cried an excited Irish trooper. Next instant the
curtain had closed once more, but all who had caught a glimpse of
that vision knew that a stern struggle was at hand.
At this moment two guns of the 84th battery under Major Guinness
were in action against Boer riflemen. As a rear screen on the
farther side of the guns was a body of the Scottish Horse and of
the Yorkshire Mounted Infantry. Near the guns themselves were
thirty men of the Buffs. The rest of the Buffs and of the Mounted
Infantry were out upon the flanks or else were with the advance
guard, which was now engaged, under the direction of Colonel
Wools-Sampson, in parking the convoy and in forming the camp. These
troops played a small part in the day's fighting, the whole force
of which broke with irresistible violence upon the few hundred men
who were in front of or around the rear guns. Colonel Benson seems
to have just ridden back to the danger point when the Boers
delivered their furious attack.
Louis Botha with his commando is said to have ridden sixty miles in
order to join the forces of Grobler and Oppermann, and overwhelm
the British column.
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