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Updated: May 13, 2025
The Governments retreated by train to Nelspruit, and thence to Hectorspruit, the commandoes following by rail and road. Here the forces were divided, those without horses being sent to entrench Komatipoort, while the rest made ready to slip past the approaching enemy's outstretched arms. It was decided that President Kruger should leave for Holland, Schalk Burger acting in his place.
We still believed that we would contrive to get back somehow sooner or later, but were soon cruelly undeceived. President Kruger, who was the guest of the District Governor, wrote to General Coetser at Komatipoort, asking him not to destroy the bridge and advising him to take refuge in Portuguese territory.
After the dispersal of the main army at Komatipoort there remained a considerable number of men in arms, some of them irreconcilable burghers, some of them foreign adventurers, and some of them Cape rebels, to whom British arms were less terrible than British law.
One find of the utmost importance was made at Komatipoort, and at Hector Spruit on the Crocodile River. That excellent artillery which had fought so gallant a fight against our own more numerous guns, was found destroyed and abandoned.
From that moment the issue of the campaign was finally settled, and though a third leap was needed, which carried him to Komatipoort, and though brave and obstinate men might still struggle against their destiny, he had done what was essential, and the rest, however difficult, was only the detail of the campaign.
Coetser himself, with the few of his men who had fairly decent horses, preferred to follow Botha, who by this time had begun his trek from Hectorspruit, and left General Pienaar in charge of Komatipoort.
On September 24th came the last chapter in this phase of the campaign in the Eastern Transvaal, when at eight in the morning Pole-Carew and his Guardsmen occupied Komatipoort. They had made desperate marches, one of them through thick bush, where they went for nineteen miles without water, but nothing could shake the cheery gallantry of the men.
Ian Hamilton's force, after the taking of Lydenburg and the action which followed, turned back, leaving Buller to go his own way, and reached Komatipoort on September 24th, having marched since September 9th without a halt through a most difficult country. On September 11th an incident had occurred which must have shown the most credulous believer in Boer prowess that their cause was indeed lost.
From all sides in the third week of September the British forces were converging on Komatipoort, the frontier town. Already wild figures, stained and tattered after nearly a year of warfare, were walking the streets of Lourenco Marques, gazed at with wonder and some distrust by the Portuguese inhabitants.
We were too late to go on up to Komatipoort, and had some rather blank and troublesome work on the north side of the town. That was indeed the end of the great war; the rest was a struggle with guerillas. Everyone thought things were altogether over. I wrote to my father discussing the probable date of my return.
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