Numbers Of Bullocks Were Soon Shot Down, And The Removal Of
The Hundred And Eighty Wagons Made Impossible.
The convoy, which
contained forage and provisions, had no guard of its own, but the
drift was held by
Colonel Ridley with one company of Gordons and
one hundred and fifty mounted infantry without artillery, which
certainly seems an inadequate force to secure the most vital and
vulnerable spot in the line of communications of an army of forty
thousand men. The Boers numbered at the first some five or six
hundred men, but their position was such that they could not be
attacked. On the other hand they were not strong enough to leave
their shelter in order to drive in the British guard, who, lying in
extended order between the wagons and the assailants, were keeping
up a steady and effective fire. Captain Head, of the East
Lancashire Regiment, a fine natural soldier, commanded the British
firing line, and neither he nor any of his men doubted that they
could hold off the enemy for an indefinite time. In the course of
the afternoon reinforcements arrived for the Boers, but Kitchener's
Horse and a field battery came back and restored the balance of
power. In the evening the latter swayed altogether in favour of the
British, as Tucker appeared upon the scene with the whole of the
14th Brigade; but as the question of an assault was being debated a
positive order arrived from Lord Roberts that the convoy should be
abandoned and the force return.
If Lord Roberts needed justification for this decision, the future
course of events will furnish it. One of Napoleon's maxims in war
was to concentrate all one's energies upon one thing at one time.
Roberts's aim was to outflank and possibly to capture Cronje's
army. If he allowed a brigade to be involved in a rearguard action,
his whole swift-moving plan of campaign might be dislocated. It was
very annoying to lose a hundred and eighty wagons, but it only
meant a temporary inconvenience. The plan of campaign was the
essential thing. Therefore he sacrificed his convoy and hurried his
troops upon their original mission. It was with heavy hearts and
bitter words that those who had fought so long abandoned their
charge, but now at least there are probably few of them who do not
agree in the wisdom of the sacrifice. Our loss in this affair was
between fifty and sixty killed and wounded. The Boers were unable
to get rid of the stores, and they were eventually distributed
among the local farmers and recovered again as the British forces
flowed over the country. Another small disaster occurred to us on
the preceding day in the loss of fifty men of E company of
Kitchener's Horse, which had been left as a guard to a well in the
desert.
But great events were coming to obscure those small checks which
are incidental to a war carried out over immense distances against
a mobile and enterprising enemy. Cronje had suddenly become aware
of the net which was closing round him. To the dark fierce man who
had striven so hard to make his line of kopjes impregnable it must
have been a bitter thing to abandon his trenches and his rifle
pits. But he was crafty as well as tenacious, and he had the Boer
horror of being cut off - an hereditary instinct from fathers who
had fought on horseback against enemies on foot. If at any time
during the last ten weeks Methuen had contained him in front with a
thin line of riflemen with machine guns, and had thrown the rest of
his force on Jacobsdal and the east, he would probably have
attained the same result. Now at the rumour of English upon his
flank Cronje instantly abandoned his position and his plans, in
order to restore those communications with Bloemfontein upon which
he depended for his supplies. With furious speed he drew in his
right wing, and then, one huge mass of horsemen, guns, and wagons,
he swept through the gap between the rear of the British cavalry
bound for Kimberley and the head of the British infantry at Klip
Drift. There was just room to pass, and at it he dashed with the
furious energy of a wild beast rushing from a trap. A portion of
his force with his heavy guns had gone north round Kimberley to
Warrenton; many of the Freestaters also had slipped away and
returned to their farms. The remainder, numbering about six
thousand men, the majority of whom were Transvaalers, swept through
between the British forces.
This movement was carried out on the night of February 15th, and
had it been a little quicker it might have been concluded before we
were aware of it. But the lumbering wagons impeded it, and on the
Friday morning, February 16th, a huge rolling cloud of dust on the
northern veld, moving from west to east, told our outposts at Klip
Drift that Cronje's army had almost slipped through our fingers.
Lord Kitchener, who was in command at Klip Drift at the moment,
instantly unleashed his mounted infantry in direct pursuit, while
Knox's brigade sped along the northern bank of the river to cling
on to the right haunch of the retreating column. Cronje's men had
made a night march of thirty miles from Magersfontein, and the
wagon bullocks were exhausted. It was impossible, without an
absolute abandonment of his guns and stores, for him to get away
from his pursuers.
This was no deer which they were chasing, however, but rather a
grim old Transvaal wolf, with his teeth flashing ever over his
shoulder. The sight of those distant white-tilted wagons fired the
blood of every mounted infantryman, and sent the Oxfords, the
Buffs, the West Ridings, and the Gloucesters racing along the river
bank in the glorious virile air of an African morning. But there
were kopjes ahead, sown with fierce Dopper Boers, and those
tempting wagons were only to be reached over their bodies.
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