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Updated: May 26, 2025
It was a great lager that advanced through Olifantsnek the largest commando that we had seen yet, with numerous carts, waggons, beasts of burden, and other belongings. And it was then I made the acquaintance of President Steyn and De Wet. Our Commandant with his men accompanied President Steyn to Machadodorp to President Kruger.
The enemy took care to keep out of rifle range, and the big gun was an element of strength we could ill afford to lose. Besides, our Government were now moving about on the railway line near Machadodorp, and we had to check the enemy at all hazards from stealing a march on us.
I must not forget our banjoist, who of nights beguiled our careworn chief with cheery marches, quicksteps, and comic songs. Finally we emerge upon the hoogeveld of Middelburg, to find the town in the enemy's hands. We make for Roossenekal. Again the British are before us. We turn away towards Machadodorp. As we near the village Schalk Burger comes out to meet us.
Kruger, fearing lest his retreat by the Delagoa Bay railway should be cut off, slipped away to Machadodorp on May 29; the forts were emptied and abandoned, and Botha was bidden to do the best he could with the remnants of the Transvaal forces. On June 3 he took up a position on a ridge a few miles south of the city and prepared for the worst.
Every mess possessed one or two ox-waggons, loaded with a tent, portmanteaux, trunks, foodstuffs, and ammunition. We made about twenty miles daily, passing through Lydenburg, Machadodorp, Carolina, and Ermelo, and reached Volksrust on the fourteenth day.
The objective of the British Army was the railway from Pretoria to Komati Poort, on which the Transvaal Government, covered by Botha at Balmoral, was now dwelling at Machadodorp. The movements of Lord Roberts were for some time controlled by the situation in the Free State and the Western Transvaal, which called more pressingly for attention than the eastward advance.
Field-Cornet Van Zulch, who with Commandant Boshoff, took the officers to Machadodorp, and who is at present a fellow-prisoner, tells me that three officers Colonel Roberts, Lieutenants Davis and Lyall and 210 soldiers of the Lincolnshire Regiment were taken prisoners, and that four companies of the Scots Greys had early that morning escaped with two guns.
Again he crossed and re-crossed the river in order to bring Steyn away from Ventersdorp, whom two months previously he had conducted into the Transvaal, and who had in the meantime worked round the British Army to Machadodorp and back; and who after conferences with Kruger and L. Botha, now returned with him unscathed into their own land with schemes for the future.
From him I heard that when he came to Machadodorp President Kruger was just ready to sail from Lourenço Marques, in the man-of-war Gelderland, which had been specially sent by Queen Wilhelmina to bring him over to the Netherlands. This was shortly before Portugal ceased to be neutral the old President got away only just in time.
After I had carefully reconnoitred the enemy's positions, I resolved, after consulting my fighting-general, Muller, to attack the Helvetia garrison, one of the enemy's fortifications or camps between Lydenburg and Machadodorp. Those fortifications served to protect the railway road from Machadodorp Station to Lydenburg, along which their convoys went twice a week to provision Lydenburg village.
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