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Updated: June 11, 2025
Certain districts which had been Boer centres, where they habitually collected time after time, were devastated and destroyed. Such districts were those of Kroonstad, Heilbron, Ventersburg, and Winburg. In these four districts about one hundred and seventy houses were destroyed. The village of Bothaville, which was a depôt of the enemy, was also destroyed. It consisted of forty-three houses.
When I was there a reinforcement of cavalry approached from the direction of Bloemfontein. After we had fired a few shots the English abandoned that fort and fled to the nearest fort to the east. Shortly afterwards this fort was also abandoned. The fort to the west was captured by Commandant Steenekamp and the Heilbron burghers.
I went back along the line, and eventually found the fault. After having repaired it and given my pony an hour's rest, I took a short cut for Heilbron, and arrived there at ten that night, only to find that during the time occupied by my return ride the wire had again stopped working.
On my return I learnt that the enemy were occupied in building a line of blockhouses from Heilbron to Frankfort. It has always seemed to me a most unaccountable circumstance that England the all-powerful could not catch the Boers without the aid of these blockhouses.
The following day I sent well on to twelve hundred prisoners of war including Kaffirs to the President's camp, which lay east of Heilbron. We then advanced to a point on the Rhenoster River, near Slootkraal, remaining in concealment there until the night of the 16th of June.
I consoled myself with the prospect of a good breakfast in Heilbron the next morning, and slept as well as the cold would let me. We were awakened the next morning while it was still dark. I roamed about in the gloom searching for my errant Rosinante.
Lindley and Heilbron were each in telegraphic communication with all the other towns still in our possession, and consequently also with each other; but no telegraph line ran between the two. A message from one to the other had to travel viâ Johannesburg and Kroonstad, involving a delay of several hours. It was our task to make good this missing link.
Nothing decisive was effected; and, as is always the case in such battles, little was done except by the big guns, which kept up a perpetual roar from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon. At that hour the British fell back on Ladysmith. Our loss was one killed and six wounded, among the latter being Veldtcornet Marthinus Els, of Heilbron.
An English force had encamped two days previously on the farm of Jagersrust, which lies some ten miles to the south-east of Heilbron, and about the same distance from Blijdschap. I had wished to make an attack on them the night they arrived, but they were too near to Heilbron for me to venture on it.
Twenty head of cattle had been killed or wounded, and one of the men's horses had been shot under him. The burghers who had accomplished this valiant deed were: Jan Potgieter, Gert Potgieter, Jzoon, and Wessel Potgieter all from the district of Heilbron. I have, myself, seen a report in an English paper of my breaking through the blockhouse line.
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