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Updated: May 29, 2025
On February 14th Kimberley was in danger of capture, a victorious Boer army was facing Methuen, the lines of Magersfontein appeared impregnable, Clements was being pressed at Colesberg, Gatacre was stopped at Stormberg, Buller could not pass the Tugela, and Ladysmith was in a perilous condition.
Then I mopped my eyes, took one long quavery breath, and said out loud, as Birdalone Pebbley said Shiner did when he was lying wounded on the field of Magersfontein: "Squealer, squealer, who's a squealer?" I found the big wagon-box filled with our things and Olie sitting there waiting, viewing me with wordless yet respectful awe. Olie, in fact, has never yet got used to me.
The force had even been set in motion when certain disturbing news came out of the west. Gatacre had suffered a reverse at Stormberg, and simultaneously Methuen had been roughly handled at Magersfontein, and was unable to continue his march on Kimberley.
On the other hand Jolly could not abide such as his set called 'cranks, and Val's set called 'smugs, so that he was still balancing when the clock of Black Week struck. One two three, came those ominous repulses at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso. The sturdy English soul reacting after the first cried, 'Ah! but Methuen! after the second: 'Ah! but Buller! then, in inspissated gloom, hardened.
This morning, well before light, we took out our gentleman, dragged by an immense string of oxen, to introduce him to his future victims and whet his appetite by a taste. The Boer position lies some six miles to the north of the river. The most conspicuous feature of it is a hill projecting towards us like a ship's ram and dipping sharply to the plain. Magersfontein, they call it.
The march of twenty-five thousand men round Jacobsdal towards the Modder tactically turns the Boer position at Magersfontein, so that it need not be carried by a frontal attack.
In the Boer War the usefulness of the balloon was frequently tested, more particularly during the siege of Ladysmith, when it was deemed of great value in directing the fire of the British artillery, and again in Buller's advance, where the balloon is credited with having located a "death-trap" of the enemy at Spion Kop. Other all-important service was rendered at Magersfontein.
The extreme right wing, thanks to the Koodoosdrift demonstration, was fifty miles off, and this line was naturally very thinly held, save only at the central position of Magersfontein. Cronje could not denude this central position, for he saw Methuen still waiting in front of him, and in any case Klip Drift is twenty-five miles from Magersfontein.
Long lucid intervals of perfect sanity give them time to learn the meaning of the locks and bars. "Yes, I know; I went off my head after Magersfontein," one poor fellow tells you; another repeatedly asks, "Will they put me into an asylum when I go home?" What a home-coming! Sure enough it is to the asylum they are going.
At Magersfontein, Paardeberg, and other engagements, he was always to be found in the firing line, with a cheerful word or a kindly nod of encouragement, and on many occasions has acted as A.D.C. to our generals.
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