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Updated: May 31, 2025
But besides the horses there was urgent need of every sort of supply, from boots to hospitals, and the only way by which they could come was by two single-line railways which unite into one single-line railway, with the alternative of passing over a precarious pontoon bridge at Norval's Pont, or truck by truck over the road bridge at Bethulie.
Their numbers were probably less than ours, and the quality of their shooting and want of energy in pursuit make the defeat the more galling. On the other hand, their guns were served with skill and audacity. They consisted of commandos from Bethulie, Rouxville, and Smithfield, under the orders of Olivier, with those colonials whom they had seduced from their allegiance.
We shall confine ourselves to the engagements in which we personally took part, and shall record only the more remarkable among them. In the beginning of November, 1899, the commandoes of Rouxville, Smithfield, and Bethulie entered the Cape Colony at different points. Having occupied several villages in the Eastern Province, they concentrated towards the end of the month in the Stormbergen.
General Knox, I heard, proceeded to Bloemfontein; thence he sent his troops to the railway bridge across the Orange River, near Bethulie. He was now aware that we were determined to enter the Colony at all costs, and so he stationed troops everywhere to turn us back. He placed forces not only at Bethulie railway bridge, but also at Springfontein, and Norvalspont.
A fussy or nervous general would have harassed his men and worn out his horses by endeavouring to pursue a number of will-of-the-wisp commandos. Roberts contented himself by building up his strength at the capital, and by spreading nearly twenty thousand men along his line of rail from Bloemfontein to Bethulie. When the time came he would strike, but until then he rested.
But Knox, after the skirmish at Vaalbank, had trekked swiftly south to Bethulie, and was now ready with three mobile columns and a network of scouts and patrols to strike in any direction. For a few days he had lost touch, but his arrangements were such that he must recover it if the Boers either crossed the railroad or approached the river.
When half-way between that town and Dewetsdorp, De Wet suddenly changed direction and made for Phillipolis, detaching a portion of his force under Froeneman, who on February 5 captured and burnt a train a few miles south of Edenburg and crossed the railway. On the following night, De Wet crossed it with the main body near Springfontein, while Knox was hunting for him near Bethulie.
They were formed, therefore, by the Government at convenient centres, chiefly at Pretoria, Johannesburg, Krugersdorp, Middelburg, Potchefstroom, Rustenburg, Heidelburg, Standerton, Pietersburg, Klerksdorp, and Volksrust in the Transvaal; Bloemfontein, Kroonstad, Bethulie, and Edenburg in the Orange Free State.
After my men had gone northwards, those burghers of Hoopstad, Jacobsdal, Fauresmith, Philippolis, Bethulie, Smithfield, Rouxville, Wepener, Bloemfontein and the southern part of Ladybrand, who had laid down their arms and remained at home between the beginning of March and the end of May, were left undisturbed by Lord Roberts so far as their private liberty was concerned.
On March 15, two days after the occupation of Bloemfontein, Clements, whose temporary retirement has been noted, reached and held Norval's Pont, where the line from Naauwport to Bloemfontein crossed the Orange; while Gatacre, so long at a standstill, the same day occupied Bethulie, where the road from East London bridges the river.
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