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General Gatacre was nominally in command of a division, but so cruelly had his men been diverted from him, some to Buller in Natal and some to Methuen, that he could not assemble more than a brigade. Falling back before the Boer advance, he found himself early in December at Sterkstroom, while the Boers occupied the very strong position of Stormberg, some thirty miles to the north of him.
A blow delivered here and followed by a march into the Free State places Lord Roberts on the communications of the Boers now at Stormberg and Colesberg and between the two halves of the Boer army, of which one is on the border of Cape Colony and the other in Natal. The objective, therefore, has been chosen with strategical insight. In the next place forces have been concentrated for the blow.
Of the four British armies in the field I have attempted to tell the story of the western one which advanced to help Kimberley, of the eastern one which was repulsed at Colenso, and of the central one which was checked at Stormberg. There remains one other central one, some account of which must now be given.
We saw for some months a gallant and well equipped if somewhat amorphous British Army impotently endeavouring, though in superior numbers, to make headway against an aggregation of Boer commandos, and checked at various points on an arc drawn wholly in British territory and extending in a circuit of over 500 miles from Ladysmith in Northern Natal through Stormberg and Colesberg to Kimberley and Mafeking; and at each extremity of the arc was a besieged city.
From this place there are two country roads, one direct to Stormberg, the other branching to the left toward Steynsburg, on the Stormberg-Naauwport railway.
First of all, Lord Roberts has chosen his objective, the Boer force before Kimberley, on the right flank of the Boer front Stormberg Colesberg Magersfontein.
Stormberg Junction on the right of the line was evacuated at the same time as Naauwport, the troops falling back upon Queenstown, fifty miles distant by rail.
Brief and garbled references to Stormberg, Colenso, and Nicholson's Nek were allowed by "Law" to illumine the columns of the Press getting lightly treated as trifles of no consequence. There existed a small, astute minority who hazarded unpleasant opinions of these "trifles."
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?
The facts, of course, speak for themselves; and it did seem strange to see soldiers like Buller and Warren being arraigned, and Gatacre getting recalled, while others passed through the fire officially unscathed. Speaking of Gatacre, we having just been made acquainted with the Stormberg affair were saying nasty things of him.
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