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Not a few yielded up their life's blood on the altar of liberty, and many will carry the scars of bullet-wounds to the grave. In the early part of the campaign there was no military rule which forbade women journeying to the front, and in consequence the laagers enjoyed the presence of many of the wives and daughters of the burghers.
Among those who were most forward in fighting were the Johannesburg police, the much-despised "Zarps" of peaceful times; the Pretoria commando, and the younger men of other commandos. There were many old Boers who left their laagers whenever they heard the report of a gun, but the ages of the great majority of those who were killed or injured were between seventeen and thirty years.
He never realized that it would be the cause of the death of many burghers, and of indescribable panic throughout not only all the laagers on the veldt, but even those of Colesberg, Stormberg and Ladysmith. If the famous Cronje were captured, how could any ordinary burgher be expected to continue his resistance?
Whilst the darkness lasted, they could, by the glittering of the watch-fires, trace from this point of vantage the position of the Boer laagers that lay 2000 yards beneath them, whilst the dawn of day revealed every detail of the defensive works, and showed the country lying at their feet like a map.
During the Natal campaign the force was so large, and the work seemed so comparatively easy that the majority of the burghers never went to the firing line, but when British successes in the Free State placed the Boers on the defensive it was not so easy to remain behind in the laagers and allow others more willing to engage in the fighting.
We forded the Klip River breast high, and, still surrounded by our escort, trudged on towards the laagers behind Bulwana. But it was just three o'clock, after about ten hours' marching, that we reached the camp where we were to remain for the night.
We had courage; you seem to have none." After the President had encouraged the officers, and had secured their promises to continue the resistance against their enemy he wandered about in the laagers, shaking hands with and infusing new spirit into the burghers who had flocked together to see their revered leader.
By half-past five French was across the Modder River, having forced a drift and seized the hills beyond so as to secure the passage for the infantry, while Gordon had seized two drifts further to the west. Between them the two cavalry commanders had captured five Boer laagers, and the slightness of the opposition they encounter proves that the Boers were completely surprised.
They had deprived themselves of their mobility and were confined in a house of detention, where they could do no mischief except to each other. They realized too late that De Wet was right. The commandants were at variance and there was indiscipline in the laagers. De Wet saw that the Brandwater Basin was no place for him.
One day, when for the thousandth time word came that the advance-guard of the Relief was in sight, when the commotion visible in the enemy's laagers suggested a poked-up ant-hill, and seemed to confirm the report, there was a brief flicker of excitement.
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