In The Meantime Plumer's Force Upon The North Had Been Strengthened
By The Addition Of C Battery Of Four 12-
Pounder guns of the
Canadian Artillery under Major Eudon and a body of Queenslanders.
These forces had been part of
The small army which had come with
General Carrington through Beira, and after a detour of thousands
of miles, through their own wonderful energy they had arrived in
time to form portion of the relieving column. Foreign military
critics, whose experience of warfare is to move troops across a
frontier, should think of what the Empire has to do before her men
go into battle. These contingents had been assembled by long
railway journeys, conveyed across thousands of miles of ocean to
Cape Town, brought round another two thousand or so to Beira,
transferred by a narrow-gauge railway to Bamboo Creek, changed to a
broader gauge to Marandellas, sent on in coaches for hundreds of
miles to Bulawayo, transferred to trains for another four or five
hundred miles to Ootsi, and had finally a forced march of a hundred
miles, which brought them up a few hours before their presence was
urgently needed upon the field. Their advance, which averaged
twenty-five miles a day on foot for four consecutive days over
deplorable roads, was one of the finest performances of the war.
With these high-spirited reinforcements and with his own hardy
Rhodesians Plumer pushed on, and the two columns reached the hamlet
of Masibi Stadt within an hour of each other.
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