The Result
Was To Show That The Danger Was Real And The Hope Fallacious.
It was on March 2nd that Methuen left Vryburg.
The column was not
his old one, consisting of veterans of the trek, but was the
Kimberley column under Major Paris, a body of men who had seen much
less service and were in every way less reliable. It included a
curious mixture of units, the most solid of which were four guns
(two of the 4th, and two of the 38th R.F.A.), 200 Northumberland
Fusiliers, and 100 Loyal North Lancashires. The mounted men
included 5th Imperial Yeomanry (184), Cape Police (233), Cullinan's
Horse (64), 86th Imperial Yeomanry (110), Diamond Fields Horse
(92), Dennison' s Scouts (58), Ashburner's Horse (126), and British
South African Police (24). Such a collection of samples would be
more in place, one would imagine, in a London procession than in an
operation which called for discipline and cohesion. In warfare the
half is often greater than the whole, and the presence of a
proportion of halfhearted and inexperienced men may be a positive
danger to their more capable companions.
Upon March 6th Methuen, marching east towards Lichtenburg, came in
touch near Leeuwspruit with Van Zyl's commando, and learned in the
small skirmish which ensued that some of his Yeomanry were
unreliable and ill-instructed. Having driven the enemy off by his
artillery fire, Methuen moved to Tweebosch, where he laagered until
next morning. At 3 A.M. of the 7th the ox-convoy was sent on, under
escort of half of his little force.
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