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Updated: May 2, 2025
A few days ago the camp was moved forward from Paardeberg to Osfontein, and beyond Osfontein the Boers were observed collecting their troops from day to day and extending their position, which ran roughly north and south across the Modder. Yesterday Lord Roberts advanced to the attack with three and a half infantry divisions, a cavalry division and a brigade of mounted infantry.
French, having handed over the operations at Colesberg to Clements, had gone down to Cape Town to confer with Roberts and Kitchener. Thence they all three made their way to the Modder River, which was evidently about to be the base of a more largely conceived series of operations than any which had yet been undertaken.
Next day, Tuesday the 13th, French was holding the drifts of the Modder, and on Thursday morning the sixth division was at Klip Drift. Thereupon French pushed on with his cavalry to Kimberley. The same night Cronje marched off between Kimberley and Klip Drift, making eastwards along the north bank of the Modder, which he was to cross near Paardeberg. But his march was discovered.
At noon Ramdam was reached, and the division halted till 3 A.M. of the 12th, when it again marched due east for a ford called Waterval Drift, on the Riet River, which it will be remembered is a tributary of the Modder, flowing from south-east to north-west. Reaching there soon after sunrise, the ford was found to be held by a party of the enemy.
The hillocks in the Graspan district are by no means lofty none of them seemed to get beyond a few hundred feet but beyond Modder River the big kopje on the right which was seamed with Boer trenches must be, I should guess, well over six hundred feet from the plain.
"A dead level stretches below us to the river, marked by some bush tufts and the few roofs of Modder River village. The Naval Brigade have got their four guns in the plain just near the foot of our hill. They are hard at work now bombarding the enemy's big gun by the river. This, after a while, is almost silenced. Each time it speaks again the deadly naval guns are on to it.
It is reported to me from Modder River that farms within the actual area of the British Camp have never even been entered, the occupants are unmolested, and their houses, gardens, and crops remain absolutely untouched. On March 26 Lord Roberts's Proclamation spoke with no uncertain voice upon the subject of private property.
Next day the British troops took up a position north of the river. So far, the Kimberley relief force had done its work well. The obstacles in its way at Belmont, Graspan, and Modder River had been thrust aside, and it was now within two easy marches of its destination.
Kelly's farm, about fifteen miles from De Wet's Dorp. At two o'clock the next morning Tuesday, April 3, 1900 a man, of the name of Murray, of the Cape Mounted Rifles, brought despatches, informing us that the enemy were in considerable numbers in the direction of Thaba 'Nchu, on the Modder River, and were likely to threaten our advance.
There was a train going to Kimberley with cattle and forage on the afternoon of Thursday, February 22nd, and the stagnation of everything except dust at Modder being complete, I jumped on the twenty-ninth truck as the engine was taking up the slack of the couplings and was immediately jerked forward on the newly-mended road to the north.
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