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Updated: June 3, 2025
The first of the tropical summer rain showers fell at Darmali on the 27th of May. On the 18th of June Major-General Gatacre went off on a shooting excursion up the Atbara, taking with him a party of ten officers and a few orderlies. They found relatively little big game but plenty of gazelle and birds.
Another interesting and far from improbable story was current at the time, that Joubert's retirement was due to peremptory orders from Pretoria, elicited by the progress of Methuen, the operations around Naauwport, and the increase of British force in that central region which French's movements, and those of Gatacre before Stormberg, seemed to indicate.
General Gatacre commanded the British division Colonel Wauchope the first brigade, and Lyttleton the second. As before, Macdonald, Maxwell, and Lewis commanded the first three Egyptian brigades, and Collinson that newly raised, General Hunter being in command of the division.
Whilst Methuen and Gatacre were content to hold their own at the Modder and at Sterkstroom, and whilst the mobile and energetic French was herding the Boers into Colesberg, Sir Redvers Buller, the heavy, obdurate, inexplicable man, was gathering and organising his forces for another advance upon Ladysmith.
Major-Generals Hunter and Gatacre, having learned that the dervish infantry had been withdrawn from Shabluka, scouted south up to the cataract and selected Wad Habeshi as a suitable camp and rendezvous. That village, or rather district, is on the west bank, south of Nasri Island and but fifteen miles north of Shabluka. A big zereba was made at Wad Habeshi and trenches were dug.
He was then thirty miles away from the commandoes, but instantly despatched a report to us to come post-haste so as to attack the enemy at Dewetsdorp or intercept them, should they try to join the main body, which was advancing under Gatacre on Reddersburg. In the meanwhile the burghers of that district, who had gone to their farms on the fall of Bloemfontein, were commandeered.
The Boers, to the number of 1,700 men, were in occupation of the Kissieberg ridge, and of a nek which runs westward from its southern end towards a higher hill overhanging Stormberg Junction called Rooi Kop. Gatacre had originally intended to attack the Boer position frontally, but the reports which he received on arrival at Molteno determined him to turn it.
A Kaffir brought in a newspaper only two days old. It said Gatacre had suffered a reverse on the Free State frontier. There was nothing about the German Emperor, and no football news. In the late afternoon I rode up to the Manchesters' lines on Cæsar's Camp, our nearest point to Colenso.
But in the whole of Cape Colony south of the Orange River there appear to be only nine battalions, perhaps a couple of regiments of cavalry, and on the most favourable assumption five batteries. Of these battalions Sir William Gatacre has half-a-dozen on the lines running north from Algoa Bay and East London, the greater part at Putters Kraal, north of Queenstown.
Buller would have handed them over to his second in command for disposal, and then if any accident occurred would have disclaimed responsibility for it. Gatacre would have taken the chances, but would not have hesitated to pitch his tent if necessary beside them. Colvile would have searched his orders for instructions.
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