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During my absence the English broke through at Pieter's Heights, where Willem was made prisoner and Lüttig, Malherbe and Stuart de Villiers were killed. Meanwhile Frits had gone, with some other Pretoria men, to the Orange Free State, where the enemy had surrounded General Cronje. Since the beginning of the siege our burghers always thought the town would fall soon.
When General Cronje entered the river-bed on Saturday he was certain that he could fight his way out on the following day.
One Christian man who had earned among his comrades the nickname of 'Smiler, and who was wounded, signs himself, 'Still smiling, with a hole in my back. And this was typical of all. During that dreadful march to overtake Cronje, the officers of the Guards had as their mess-table on one occasion a rectangular ditch about eighteen inches wide and as many deep.
Then he too laughed as he folded up the letter and went to Lord Kitchener and said: "This is only an invitation to lunch, and you have told me you are not here to propose or take terms. That, of course, was official, but personally " K. of K. stiffened up, and a harder glint came into his eyes. "I can say nothing personally, your Majesty, except to ask you to remember my reply to Cronje."
When asked to surrender to avoid further bloodshed, he replied that the only blood hitherto shed was the blood of a chicken in a compound; and on another occasion he reproved Cronje for inactivity. Many of the incidents read like passages from the Iliad.
It is to be hoped that Cronje also possessed some sense of humour, or else he must have been as sorely puzzled by his eccentric opponent as the Spanish generals were by the vagaries of Lord Peterborough.
When I had left my commando 15 days previously, we had had heavy losses in the battle of Vaalkrantz, and now again my burghers had been badly cut up. We had lost over 100 men in one month. But there was no time to lose in lamenting over these matters, for I had just received information that General P. Cronje had been taken prisoner with 4,000 men.
On the contrary, when compared with other nations, they are remarkable for their sobriety, and it is considered by them a disgrace for a man to be drunk. They were respectively under Commandants Piet Fourie, Crowther, Fouche, De Villiers, Michal Prinsloo and Vilonel; and these Commandants took orders from Vechtgeneraals J.B. Wessels, A.P. Cronje, C.C. Froneman, W. Kolbe and Philip Botha.
Loosberg's Cape Cart and five mules having arrived we packed our things on it and started again for the Sand River where we spent the night on Cronje's farm. Mrs. Cronje had taken away all the bedding but Dr. Reid gave Cecil his field mattress and I made one out of rugs and piano covers. In the morning I found that the iron straps of the mattress had marked me for life like a grilled beefsteak.
Cronje emerges with a casualty roll of 170 men, and the only inconvenience from our bombardment experienced by the ladies was the slight abrasion of a young woman's forefinger!
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