Plumer Is An Officer Of Considerable Experience In
African Warfare, A Small, Quiet, Resolute Man, With A Knack Of
Gently Enforcing Discipline Upon The Very Rough Material With Which
He Had To Deal.
With his weak force - which never exceeded a
thousand men, and was usually from six to seven hundred - he had to
keep the long line behind him open, build up the ruined railway in
front of him, and gradually creep onwards in face of a formidable
and enterprising enemy.
For a long time Gaberones, which is eighty
miles north of Mafeking, remained his headquarters, and thence he
kept up precarious communications with the besieged garrison. In
the middle of March he advanced as far south as Lobatsi, which is
less than fifty miles from Mafeking; but the enemy proved to be too
strong, and Plumer had to drop back again with some loss to his
original position at Gaberones. Sticking doggedly to his task,
Plumer again came south, and this time made his way as far as
Ramathlabama, within a day's march of Mafeking. He had with him,
however, only three hundred and fifty men, and had he pushed
through the effect might have been an addition of hungry men to the
garrison. The relieving force was fiercely attacked, however, by
the Boers and driven back on to their camp with a loss of twelve
killed, twenty-six wounded, and fourteen missing. Some of the
British were dismounted men, and it says much for Plumer's conduct
of the fight that he was able to extricate these safely from the
midst of an aggressive mounted enemy.
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