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Brigadier-General Mahon's column left Mafeking on Monday, May 28th, taking the road that runs southward beside the railway, and I think that everyone breathed a sigh of satisfaction when we were once more fairly on the road. "The Happy Family" someone called Mahon's force, and there was certainly never a more united company.
To-day I have been reading of the "splendid retreat" of the Marines from Antwerp and their "unprecedented reception" at Deal. Everyone appears to have been in a state of wild enthusiasm about them, and it seems almost like Mafeking over again. What struck me most about these men was the way in which they blew their own trumpets in full retreat and while flying from the enemy.
To Captain Williams, Captain FitzClarence, and Lord Charles Bentinck great credit is due for the way in which they handled their men; but the whole affair was ill advised, for if a disaster had occurred Mafeking must have fallen, being left without a garrison. No possible results which could come from such a sortie could justify the risk which was run. On October 16th the siege began in earnest.
From a mere tin-roofed village Mafeking had become a prize of victory, a stake which should be the visible sign of the predominating manhood of one or other of the great white races of South Africa.
At the end of July Ian Hamilton's force was diverted from its movement towards the north and ordered westward to relieve and bring away Baden-Powell; and Carrington was instructed to co-operate from Mafeking. Lord Roberts had decided to abandon Rustenburg and Olifant's Nek and the greater part of the Magaliesberg.
As for the Kaffirs, that trouble turned out to be a very real one. On the next day's march four were captured by a patrol of General Barton and shot, and it almost seems as though their blood were upon the heads of those who failed to disarm them after the siege of Mafeking was raised.
Stead's assertion about Mafeking, I communicated with General Baden-Powell, the gentleman who is most qualified to speak as to what occurred there, and his answer lies before me: 'We had no expanding bullets in our supply at Mafeking, unless you call the ordinary Martini-Henry an expanding bullet.
Their own resistance and the advance of Brabant to their rescue had caused a hasty retreat of the enemy. Wepener, Mafeking, Kimberley, the taking of the first guns at Ladysmith, the deeds of the Imperial Light Horse it cannot be denied that our irregular South African forces have a brilliant record for the war. They are associated with many successes and with few disasters.
But his decision was soon reached, and in a quiet voice he said, "Let the ambulance go out." And that was the way in which Baden-Powell took the defeat of his great plan for breaking the tightening cordon round Mafeking.
I got those chances soon enough. I rejoined our men beyond Kimberley, on the way to Mafeking, we were the extreme British left in the advance upon Pretoria and I rode with Mahon and was ambushed with him in a little affair beyond Koodoosrand. It was a sudden brisk encounter.
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