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Updated: June 16, 2025
Being secure from flanking movements, since the Border Mounted Rifles were on their right sweeping round Waggon Hill and some companies of the 60th in support, the Manchesters could devote all their attention to that long front, and beat back every attempt of the Boers to cross the valley where a tributary of the Klip River winds past Bester's Farm down to the broad flats by Intombi Spruit.
If, then, the combined attack of the two divisions forces the Boers back the situation would be that the Boer army would have to retreat eastward across the Klip River, its retreat in any other direction being barred by the defences of Ladysmith, by Warren's and Clery's divisions, and by the British force in the lines at Chieveley.
This movement was carried out on the night of February 15th, and had it been a little quicker it might have been concluded before we were aware of it. But the lumbering wagons impeded it, and on the Friday morning, February 16th, a huge rolling cloud of dust on the northern veld, moving from west to east, told our outposts at Klip Drift that Cronje's army had almost slipped through our fingers.
An ingenious but impracticable method of bringing the place to its senses by damming the Klip River below the town in the hope of isolating it by flood was put in hand, and some alarm was created, but the loyal stream refused to rise.
Between the town and Bulwaan, however, flows Klip River, with many windings through a broad plain, mostly pasturage, but with mimosa scrub closing it in towards the gorge where river and railway converge at Intombi Spruit.
His convoy in the main laager at Klip Kraal had had twelve hours' rest, and his rearguard had maintained itself on the second position; in spite of a frontal attack on the right bank, and of a flank attack on the left bank made by a battery and a force of mounted infantry which had crossed the semicircle formed by a northward bend of the river between Klip Drift and Klip Kraal Drift.
When the war began all the Meyer family moved further into the Transvaal, my son going with them as herd. I went up to Klip River with them as driver, where the river forms the boundary between the Free State and Transvaal. I returned at once, leaving my son with the Meyers. He was a small boy about twelve years of age. At the termination of the war the Meyers sent for me to drive them down.
They followed the road until within four or five miles of Ladysmith, then turned off, crossed the Klip river, and came to a spot where a hospital camp had been erected; here they halted for the night. The wounded were provided with soup and bread, and such as were able to walk were allowed to get out and stroll about.
I beamed when I tried the old, obsolete method and nearly burst myself with baffled fury just after I had exhibited the card bearing the words 'I will now try Klipstone's Kute Klip. I couldn't think what the vast crowd outside the window was laughing at till the boss, who chanced to pause on the outskirts of the gathering on his way back from lunch, was good enough to tell me.
Had the Transvaal been governed as the Orange Free State was, such an event as the second Boer war could never have occurred. Lord Roberts's tremendous march was now drawing to a close. On May 28th the troops advanced twenty miles, and passed Klip River without fighting.
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