It Had Been Long Evident That The Present British Tactics Of
Scouring The Country And Capturing The Isolated Burghers Must In
Time Bring The War To A Conclusion.
From the Boer point of view the
only hope, or at least the only glory, lay in reassembling once
more in larger bodies and trying conclusions with some of the
British columns.
It was with this purpose that De Wet early in
December assembled Wessels, Manie Botha, and others of his
lieutenants, together with a force of about two thousand men, in
the Heilbron district. Small as this force was, it was admirably
mobile, and every man in it was a veteran, toughened and seasoned
by two years of constant fighting. De Wet's first operations were
directed against an isolated column of Colonel Wilson's, which was
surrounded within twenty miles of Heilbron. Rimington, in response
to a heliographic call for assistance, hurried with admirable
promptitude to the scene of action, and joined hands with Wilson.
De Wet's men were as numerous, however, as the two columns
combined, and they harassed the return march into Heilbron. A
determined attack was made on the convoy and on the rearguard, but
it was beaten off. That night Rimington's camp was fired into by a
large body of Boers, but he had cleverly moved his men away from
the fires, so that no harm was done. The losses in these operations
were small, but with troops which had not been trained in this
method of fighting the situation would have been a serious one.
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