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As soon as the Boers perceived that an enveloping movement was in train, they withdrew towards the river, and French reported that he had turned their left flank, and was in pursuit, and that Seven Kopjes was open to Kelly-Kenny's advance.
General French was in command of the left wing, which included Kelly-Kenny's Division, the first cavalry brigade, and Alderson's Mounted Infantry. His orders had been to keep in touch with the centre, and to avoid pushing his attack home.
Kelly-Kenny's wilful and successful "use of deep formations, limited front, and of a wasting fire to obtain ascendancy before crushing the enemy with a simultaneous charge" is considered to uphold the correctness of the German theory of attack, which thirty years of new conditions of warfare have not modified.
Kelly-Kenny's ambiguous and humiliating position; Kitchener's impatience and impetuosity; his lack of a staff to carry out his plan; his omission to explain it to the divisional and brigade commanders; and his habit of "short-circuiting" orders to subordinates while their superior officers stood passively in the background, made unity of action impossible and February 18 a day of misunderstanding and ill-success.
The same day his former command, weakened by his own withdrawal with the cavalry, and by that of Kelly-Kenny's division, and now under General Clements, had been forced out of Arundel by greatly superior numbers; but to what avail?
Our loss was two killed and twenty wounded, and we found ourselves for the first time firmly established in one of the enemy's towns. In the excellent German hospital were thirty or forty of our wounded. On the afternoon of Thursday, February 15th, our cavalry, having left Klip Drift in the morning, were pushing hard for Kimberley. At Klip Drift was Kelly-Kenny's 6th Division.
On the east Kelly-Kenny's Division was to the south of the river, and French with his cavalry and mounted infantry were to the north of it. Never was a general in a more hopeless plight. Do what he would, there was no possible loophole for escape. There was only one thing which apparently should not have been done, and that was to attack him. His position was a formidable one.
It is for military critics to decide whether it was that the flankers were too slow or the frontal assailants were too fast, but it is certain that Kelly-Kenny's Division attacked before the cavalry and the 7th Division were in their place.
The victory, if such a word can apply to such an action, had cost some fifty or sixty of the cavalry killed and wounded, while it is doubtful if the Boers lost as many. The finest military display on the British side had been the magnificent marching of Kelly-Kenny's 6th Division, who had gone for ten hours with hardly a halt. One 9-pound Krupp gun was the only trophy.
The mounted infantry had galloped round from the north to the south of the river, crossing at Klip Drift and securing the southern end of Klipkraal. Thither also came Stephenson's brigade from Kelly-Kenny's Division, while Knox, finding in the morning that Cronje was gone, marched along the northern bank to the same spot.
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