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Updated: May 14, 2025
The kopjes which were ultimately carried by the gallantry of our troops at Graspan had been subjected to an awful shell fire before the infantry attack. Nevertheless, the enemy was able to meet the advance with a rifle fire which swept our men down by scores. On the right of the naval brigade there was a little group of nineteen men, of these one only remained!
Just below Graspan Station the Boers had made one of their many attempts to wreck the line. They had torn up the metals and the sleepers, and a good many bent and twisted rails lay beside the permanent way. But this sort of injury to a railway is very speedily set right. In an hour or two a party of sappers can relay a long stretch of line if no culverts or bridges are destroyed.
At midday on February 11 the Cavalry Division under French reached Ramdam, a farm east of Graspan and fronting the drifts of the Riet, where the Army was being concentrated for the advance. Some hours elapsed before Cronje became aware that French had trekked away to the S.E., and to his slow and sullen spirit the movement did not appear to have much significance.
The Boers had carefully measured their ground beforehand, as we did at Omdurman, and knew exactly how to adjust their sights as we advanced against their position. The battle of Graspan consisted, as at Belmont, in a frontal attack upon a line of kopjes held by a much larger force of the enemy than was present at the earlier engagement.
Any detailed account of Lord Methuen's battles lies outside the scope of this little volume, and the British public know already practically all that can be known about the general plan of such engagements as Belmont, Graspan and Modder River. Belmont is an insignificant railway station lying in the middle of as dreary a bit of veldt as can well be imagined.
The hillocks in the Graspan district are by no means lofty none of them seemed to get beyond a few hundred feet but beyond Modder River the big kopje on the right which was seamed with Boer trenches must be, I should guess, well over six hundred feet from the plain.
Prinsloo withdrew with his Free Staters across the border, but was persuaded by Delarey, who had fallen back on Graspan about eight miles N.E. of Belmont, to rejoin him; and a favourable position was occupied on a group of kopjes astride the railway, where on November 25 another battle was fought, in which the Naval Brigade suffered a loss of nearly half its strength.
Right opposite where I am sitting a family group, or all that is left of the family, is sitting, as the custom is at evening, out on the stoep. On the side nearest me is a young widow. I have made inquiries concerning her. Her husband was killed fighting against our troops at Graspan. She, poor thing, is dressed in deepest mourning.
When, therefore, it had been found by a few experiences Talana Hill, Elandslaagte, Belmont and Graspan, in all of which the kopje bore a principal part in the scheme of defence that the British soldier could not be stopped by them alone, the Boers, without abandoning the kopjes, reinforced them where the ground allowed by utilising the beds of the streams, which except in time of flood are nearly waterless.
Diverging slightly from the railroad, they marched due south away from the enemy seventeen miles to Ramdam, which is about ten miles east of Graspan Station. At sunrise they were out of sight of the empty tents, standing deceitfully behind them.
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