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Updated: June 27, 2025
On eight of the men examined he had found twenty-one serious wounds, counting the entrance and exit of the same bullet as only one wound. Veitch conducted no cross-examination of the witness. Joe Manning, J. H. Beyers, and Harvey Hubler, all three of them defendants, gave their testimony.
We captured a few guards who seemed to know nothing of our movements. Why General Beyers did not surprise one or both stations that morning early is still a mystery to us, as our movements were remarkably quick.
He had a slight success at Doornberg on 7 November, when his force amounted to 2000 men; but Botha now came south into the Orange State and completely defeated De Wet on the 11th to the east of Winburg. De Wet himself escaped and attempted a junction with Beyers who had fled south from the Transvaal.
A pale of blockhouses denied them access to the "protected area." Muller effected a trifling success in the middle north. Beyers in the Pietersburg district was unable to prevent Grenfell reaching a point but sixty miles from the Limpopo and there making prisoners of a local commando. No organized attempt was made to disturb Botha in the Ermelo district.
Monday morning, the 26th, arrived and found us still waiting; then the Bodyguard got twenty minutes' notice and entrained, horses, kits and everything for Rustenburg. We arrived there at five o'clock the following morning, and started at once in pursuit of rebel commandos which were led by Kemp and Beyers.
At Ventersdorp he and his 700 men, after eluding a ponderous force of nearly 6,000 men with 40 guns, doubled back; and soon the same columns unsuccessfully encountered him at Cyferfontein, where he ambushed a mounted detachment and then disappeared. Beyers, who went into the west after he was wrenched apart from Delarey, soon reappeared upon the stage in the Hekpoort Valley with 1,200 men.
Many of the farms were burned down, but some families had been left unmolested, because they said the enemy were ill at ease, owing to a rumour that General Beyers was going to attack them in the rear. The partly-burned granaries bore evidence to the great hurry the enemy were in. On some farms the very rooms that contained grain were set on fire.
The only other important operation undertaken by the British columns in the Transvaal during this period was in the north, where Beyers and his men were still harried by Grenfell, Colenbrander, and Wilson. A considerable proportion of the prisoners which figured in the weekly lists came from this quarter.
Steyn hurried southwards with the scheme, and was picked up at Ventersdorp by De Wet. Botha went to the high veld between the Natal Railway and the Delagoa Bay Railway, leaving B. Viljoen north of the latter railway. Beyers was ordered to join Delarey, who after the battle of Diamond Hill went into his own country near the Magaliesberg and was now lurking in the Zwartruggens.
Beyers' commando moved in the direction of Gatsrand, but had to turn to Zwartruggens, near Rustenburg, when it reached the farm Modderfontein, where we celebrated Christmas. The enemy was constantly at our heels, and made things hot for us; we often had to hurry most inconveniently not to be surrounded or cut off. We got a few days' rest on the farm Vlakhoek.
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