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Updated: June 3, 2025
But it also places the British force on the direct line of the Boer communications with Bloemfontein, and if Commandant Cronje values these communications he must either make a precipitate retreat by Boshof, offering his flank during the process to attack by French, or must attack the sixth and seventh divisions on their march from the Riet to the Modder.
Moreover, the same thing was now going on in the Transvaal after the capture of Pretoria, as we had witnessed in the Free State after the fall of Bloemfontein nearly all the burghers were leaving their commandos and going back to their farms. Plenty of officers, but no troops! This was the pass to which we were come.
One Canadian battery shared in the honor of raising the siege of Mafeking, where Baden-Powell was besieged, and both contingents marched with Lord Roberts from Bloemfontein to Pretoria and fought hard and well at Doornkop and in many a skirmish.
We are lucky to have found one another, for the Secretary's inquiries led to nothing. I have been reading in the Bloemfontein Post a report of the Hospital Commission.
Meantime we can make out in our break-of-day scoutings up the river that bodies of men are approaching from the east. They have made a laager about ten miles up, and evidently mean to dispute our passage to the capital. The longer old Cronjé holds out, the more men from Colesberg and Natal will come up, the more entrenchments will be cut, and the harder will be our way to Bloemfontein.
"May 22. Tuesday. As I write we are standing just outside Bloemfontein; cold, sunny morning; the Kaffir quarter just on our right, a hideous collection of mud houses with tin roofs; camps and stores on the left; boundless breadth of veldt beyond; the town in front under a long, low kopje, a quiet, pretty little place.
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.
Railway and postal communication is now stopped, but the last mail brought a copy of the Bloemfontein 'Express, with an appeal to the Colonial Boers concluding with the words: "We shall continue the war to the bloody end. You will assist us. Our God, who has so often helped us, will not forsake us."
Bloemfontein is a town of hospitals, red crosses flying at every turn. The mortality is high, even, I was surprised to hear from our friend, among sisters and hospital orderlies. Out of six sisters in his hospital, which seemed a very good one, four had enteric at the time, and one had died of it. I was on picket duty this night, and had a lively time chasing loose horses in the dark.
The War Departments at Pretoria and Bloemfontein and the officers of the commandos at the front had no means of learning the exact strength of the forces in the field except by making an actual enumeration of the men in the various commandos, and this was never attempted.
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