So Skilful Had He And His Men Become At These
Night Attacks In A Strange, And Often Difficult Country, That
Out
of twenty-eight attempts twenty-one resulted in complete success.
In each case the rule was simply to gallop
Headlong into the Boer
laager, and to go on chasing as far as the horses could go. The
furious and reckless pace may be judged by the fact that the
casualties of the force were far greater from falls than from
bullets. In seven months forty-seven Boers were killed and six
hundred captured, to say nothing of enormous quantities of
munitions and stock. The success of these operations was due, not
only to the energy of Benson and his men, but to the untiring
exertions of Colonel Wools-Sampson, who acted as intelligence
officer. If, during his long persecution by President Kruger,
Wools-Sampson in the bitterness of his heart had vowed a feud
against the Boer cause, it must be acknowledged that he has most
amply fulfilled it, for it would be difficult to point to any
single man who has from first to last done them greater harm.
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.
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