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I say it freely, for by the time the admission reaches England it may be needed to explain failure, or pleasant to add lustre to success. If the Army Corps were in Africa, which is still in England, this position would be a splendid one for it three lines of supply from Capetown, Port Elizabeth, and East London, and three converging lines of advance by Norval's Pont, Bethulie, and Aliwal North.
While on this farm I set free the Kaffirs whom I had taken prisoner at Dewetsdorp; they pretended they had not been fighting, but were only waggon-drivers. I gave them a pass to go into Basutoland. We then proceeded towards Karmel, and just as we were approaching the farm of "Good Hope," we caught sight of an English column which had come from Bethulie, and was making for Smithfield.
Sub-district of Petrusburg: the men under Commandant Van du Berg. All of these were under Vice-Commander-in-Chief Judge J.B.M. Hertzog, who also was in command of the western part of Bloemfontein. The district of the southern part of Bloemfontein: the men under Commandants Ackerman and Willem Kolbe. Sub-districts of Bethulie and Smithfield: the men under Commandant Gideon Joubert.
General Gatacre, who had retrieved his reverse at Stormberg by forcing Commandant Olivier to vacate his almost impregnable position without striking a blow, and later by his masterly move in swooping down on Bethulie Bridge and preventing the Boers from wrecking the line of communication between Lord Roberts and his supplies from Capetown, only remained long enough with his old command to see them equipped in a manner fit to take the field, and then retired in favour of General Chermside.
The collapse of the Boer invasion of Cape Colony points to the early reopening of the railways from Naauwpoort and Sterkstrom to Norval's Pont and Bethulie, the repair of the railway bridges over the Orange River, and the concentration at Bloemfontein of sixty thousand men, with the railway from the Orange River working and guarded behind them, possibly with a new line of railway from Modder River or Kimberley to Bloemfontein as an additional resource.
After the occupation of Bloemfontein, the columns operating south of the Orange River were drawn into the Free State. Clements crossed at Norval's Pont, and Gatacre at Bethulie on March 15; Brabant, who commanded the colonial troops of the latter's Division, having reached Aliwal North four days previously.
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