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Updated: June 27, 2025
The artillery had been left in the neck of the pass to protect the lagers. Beyers, with some Zoutpansbergers, turned away from us to the right to reach Elandskrans along the mountain ridge. It appeared, therefore, that Beyers and Kemp were going to make the attack from the north, with 1,000 men, and that Kemp had the centre and the left wing. We were again too late.
He acted with remarkable swiftness: on the 27th he dispersed the commandos of Beyers and Kemp, and on 7 November General Smuts announced that there were but a few scattered bands of rebels in the Transvaal. De Wet made a longer run by his elusive heels, but found the motor-transport of his enemies an insuperable bar to the repetition of his exploits of 1900-2.
French and Clements took the field without delay, and although they failed in their plan to pin Delarey and Beyers on to the wall of the Magaliesberg, the Boer leaders were compelled to separate. Their brilliant and brief co-operation did much to awake the British nation out of its torpor.
Better horsed, better riders, with better intelligence and a better knowledge of the country, their ventures were always attended by a limited liability. The attacks seem to have been delivered by a strong commando, said to have been under the command of Beyers, upon its way to join the Boer concentration in the Eastern Transvaal.
While the grant of self-government to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony in 1908 had placated the great majority and the better-educated Boers, tradition and prejudice kept their hold upon the more conservative minority; and some like Beyers, who had once been received by the Kaiser, looked to a war with Germany to restore their ancient independence.
The extreme Nationalists rebelled and it was Botha, aided by Smuts, who crushed them. Beyers, the ringleader, was drowned while trying to escape across the Vaal River, DeWet was defeated in the field, De la Rey was accidentally shot, and Maritz became a fugitive.
Commandant Kemp, with his men, was at the south on the foot of the ridge, and Veld-Kornet van Tender, with a small troop of Zoutpansbergers, was on the first kopje, while General Beyers, with the Waterbergers and Zoutpansbergers held the right wing to the west of Hekpoort, in Witwatersrand. The whole of that forenoon the enemy were ready to attack us, and we waited calmly.
The recrudescence of Botha, the intrusion of Beyers from the west, the hovering presence of Viljoen north of the Delagoa Bay Railway, and the rumour that an invasion of Natal was in contemplation to synchronize with raids beyond the Orange by De Wet, Kritzinger, and Hertzog, determined Lord Kitchener to try to sweep up and reduce the Eastern Transvaal.
He himself also was going home, but would return after a few weeks, as a large commando, led if possible by himself, was to invade Cape Colony. Kemp was made fighting General; the Rev. Mr. Kriel left with General Beyers; Klaassen took the place of Kemp, and Liebenberg was appointed Field-Cornet of our commando.
While General Beyers, with 400 or 500 men, passed to the rear of the enemy to destroy the Boksburg mines, our commando of horsemen moved rapidly in the direction of Boesmanskop in the Heidelberg district, to cut off the enemy who were pushing on to our part of the Hoogeveld. We arrived at Boesmanskop the following morning.
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