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Broadwood on the other side of the range, to communicate with whom Clements had taken up an unsound position at Noitgedacht Nek, lost touch with him, and like many a British officer before him in South Africa, was groping in the Fog of War.
Buller crossed the railway, and on August 29 Helvetia was taken. Next day the British prisoners of war, whom the Boers had brought away in the scuttle from Pretoria when Lord Roberts entered the city, were released at Noitgedacht by their captors, who were no longer in a position to detain them.
There was no longer any talk of reducing the Army of occupation by one-half at the end of the year, and still more during the New Year; or of quenching the smouldering embers of the war with Baden-Powell's new South African Constabulary. Late in December the pursuit of Delarey, who had retired from Noitgedacht towards the S.W., was resumed.
He was based on Krugersdorp, but his command had been weakened and his transport was deficient. He received orders to act in the Hekpoort Valley, while Broadwood acted north of the Magaliesberg. When he reached Noitgedacht Nek he found Delarey a few miles away.
This stopping-place was adjacent to Noitgedacht, whose name recalled the unpleasant association of having been the home, for many weary weeks, of English prisoners, and traces of high wire palings which had been their enclosure were still to be seen.
It would be inequitable to surcharge the Noitgedacht misadventure and other "regrettable incidents" to any individual: they should rather be surcharged, not to this or that responsible commander, but to irresponsible Human Nature. The British Army was, to a great extent, stale and veld-sick. It was informed that the war would soon be over, and it had become slack and careless.
Unknown to him they had met at Boschfontein near the southern approach to Breedt's Nek; for when a commando was reported to be at hand, he did not doubt that it was Delarey's force only. Noitgedacht was tactically an unsound position which Clements, assuming that his right was safe, had taken up in order to maintain heliographic communication with Broadwood on the other side of the Magaliesberg.
It is, however, but just to say that when the occasion called for it, the fighting qualities of the British soldier showed no signs of deterioration. The Boers, after their habit, were content with the tactical victory at Noitgedacht and refrained from endeavouring to improve upon it.