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Updated: May 20, 2025
Ventersburg, in comparison with Kroonstad, where we had left them rounding up stray burghers and hurrying them to the firing-line, and burning official documents in the streets, was calm. Ventersburg was not destroying incriminating documents nor driving weary burghers from its solitary street. It was making them welcome at Jones's Hotel.
It was hoped now, after all these precautions, that the last had been seen of the gentleman with the tinted glasses, but on June 21st he was back in his old haunts once more. Honing Spruit Station, about midway between Kroonstad and Roodeval, was the scene of his new raid. On that date his men appeared suddenly as a train waited in the station, and ripped up the rails on either side of it.
The only vestige of real military discipline that was to be found in the entire Boer army was that which was maintained by Field-Cornet A.L. Thring, of the Kroonstad commando, who had a roll-call and inspection of rifles every morning. This extraordinary procedure was not relished by the burghers, who made an indignant protest to General Christian De Wet.
With the Heilbron, Harrismith and Vrede commandos, I had now a very considerable force at my command. When I met the burghers on the 25th of September I found that I must send a force in the direction of Kroonstad, in order to oppose outposts which the enemy had stationed some six miles from that town. I at once sent orders to General Hattingh that he was to come over to me with his burghers.
That night I saw clearly that it was necessary for us to cross the line if we wanted to keep ourselves and our prisoners out of the clutches of Lord Kitchener; he had failed to find us at Kroonstad, and would be certain to look for us in the country to the west of the line.
In less time than it takes to describe it, we were off. As we drew near to the English we saw they had taken up a very good position. The sun had already set, and nothing could be done save to exchange a few shots with the enemy. So, after I had ordered my men to post themselves on the enemy's front till the following morning, I rode back to Kroonstad.
It was somewhat risky to do so, as the place was full of English inhabitants, and of Afrikanders who did not favour our cause. In fact, I was surrounded by men who would have been only too pleased to do me an injury. I said farewell to Kroonstad at ten o'clock that night, and was carried to Rhenosterriviersbrug, thirty-four miles from Kroonstad, by the last train that left the town.
A commissariat train was leaving Johannesburg at two o'clock the next morning. His pass in his hand, Weldon clambered drearily on the train for the long ride back to Kroonstad. Motion of any kind was better than remaining longer in Johannesburg. Nevertheless, the jolting of the train was wellnigh unbearable. His shoulder throbbed, and the dull pain in his head was maddening.
The third side of the triangle consisted of an infinite number of men in khaki, and its density varied entirely according to its position. At first, it opened out to a thin line of troopers scattered over the arc of an immense circle; then it drew in until an army stood in fighting array straight across the veldt from Heilbron to Kroonstad. And Wolvehoek was the apex of the triangle.
Jacob De Villiers had been taken prisoner at Bothaville; but the Council appointed Mr. Hendrik Potgieter, Landdrost of Kroonstad, as Public Prosecutor. Various causes had made it impossible for a legally constituted Volksraad to sit. Some members had, as we called it, "hands-upped"; others had thought that they had done quite enough when they had voted for the war.
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