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Updated: May 2, 2025
Moreover, in a circuit requiring time, he was hampered by the lack of transport which then fettered all British movements. He could take with him provisions for only five days. In any event he must fight again at Spytfontein; better therefore meet an enemy badly shaken by such determined assaults as those of Graspan and the Modder. Therefore, "I decided to attack the Magersfontein kopje."
We all helped pushing and digging and lifting and at length after several hours' delay steamed off to Modder River, too late for anything, except to wait for the morning and the wounded. We knew by this time that at 3:30 that morning the Highland Brigade had made a frontal attack on the Magersfontein lines and had been repulsed with terrible loss.
He boldly rode across French's front at De Kiel's Drift, and made S.E. for Winterhoek, closely followed by A.P.J. Cronje; and all French's horses could not find out where they had gone. Next day it was given out in Divisional Orders that the commandos had gone to the Modder River, and four weeks passed by before the Army ceased to suffer from the error.
To drive away De Wet, and to entangle him as Cronje had been fatally entangled in the Drifts of the Modder River, and cut off his retreat to Bloemfontein, was the tactical scheme of Lord Roberts, who had twice as many men, and at least five times as many guns, as his opponent. In his method of communicating his plan to the officers concerned Lord Roberts made an innovation.
The Modder forms the major axis of the ellipse, which it enters near Koodoos Drift and leaves at Paardeberg Drift, and like most South African rivers runs in a deep channel between banks intersected by the tributary dongas which the rains have scored in the soft soil, and which afford almost the only shelter from artillery fire. The whole area is commanded by the surrounding kopjes and ridges.
We are bivouacked ourselves far up the river, in a secluded nook among mimosas and kopjes with the thick current of the lately unknown, but now too celebrated, Modder rolling in front of us. The weather has changed of late. It is now autumn. We have occasional heavy rains, and you wake up at night sometimes to find yourself adrift in a pool of water. It gets chilly too.
"None of your blooming us," said the sentry, and shot the sergeant dead. However the sentry was soon persuaded, and when I passed the outpost, the sentry who should really have stopped me and examined my passport treated me as a field-officer and presented arms, so I rode away back to the dust of Modder.
That their plunge might stimulate Methuen to burn his boots and brave the turgid waters of the Modder, was the fervent wish of Kimberley at the end of fourteen weeks of irksome, emaciating duress. Week ending 27th January, 1900 The Sundays were now exceedingly dull, and on the particular Sabbath with which I am dealing little worthy of record came within the sphere of my observations.
While he was travelling the six hundred miles from Cape Town to the Modder River various preliminary moves which he had ordered were in course of execution. There had been a large display of British infantry near Colesberg, covering the withdrawal of General French and the cavalry division. This had the effect of causing the Boers to reinforce Colesberg, probably by detachments from Magersfontein.
When we approached Modder River he exclaimed that we were now within range of the Boer guns, and accordingly pulled up the windows as a sort of protection against shells and bullets. As we steamed into Modder River station the 4.7 gun called "Joe Chamberlain" loosed off a Lyddite shell at the Magersfontein trenches.
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