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Updated: June 1, 2025
The witnesses were taken into a room where there were several groups of photos, but the biggest photo was that of Kritzinger, and these natives had seen it before. Probably it is the only photo they have seen in their lives. It was the same photo they had seen at Norval's Pont. What would one expect? One would naturally expect them to pick out that photo, and that is what occurred.
"We reached the frontier Norval's Pont at 6 P.M. yesterday, and after a long delay, moved slowly out in the dark, till the shimmer of water between iron girders told us we were crossing the Orange river. Once off the bridge, a shout went up for our first step on the enemy's country. Then all went on the same.
The feat of Popham and of Grant was not only most gallant but of extraordinary service to the country; but the highest credit belongs to Nolan-Neylan, of the Police, for the great promptitude and galantry of his attack, and to McNeill for his support. On that road bridge and on the pontoon bridge at Norval's Pont Lord Roberts's army was for a whole month dependent for their supplies.
After the occupation of Bloemfontein, the columns operating south of the Orange River were drawn into the Free State. Clements crossed at Norval's Pont, and Gatacre at Bethulie on March 15; Brabant, who commanded the colonial troops of the latter's Division, having reached Aliwal North four days previously.
As late as the end of September the Premier and the War Minister scouted the idea of war with the Free State, and the official plan of a central advance on Bloemfontein by way of Bethulie and Norval's Pont, which held good until some little time after Lord Roberts' arrival, must therefore have been subterraneously drawn up without their knowledge.
On March 15, two days after the occupation of Bloemfontein, Clements, whose temporary retirement has been noted, reached and held Norval's Pont, where the line from Naauwport to Bloemfontein crossed the Orange; while Gatacre, so long at a standstill, the same day occupied Bethulie, where the road from East London bridges the river.
The collapse of the Boer invasion of Cape Colony points to the early reopening of the railways from Naauwpoort and Sterkstrom to Norval's Pont and Bethulie, the repair of the railway bridges over the Orange River, and the concentration at Bloemfontein of sixty thousand men, with the railway from the Orange River working and guarded behind them, possibly with a new line of railway from Modder River or Kimberley to Bloemfontein as an additional resource.
On January 31 he passed through Dewetsdorp, gratified no doubt to find that since his capture of it in November his enemies had not ventured to set foot again in it. At that time he had not made up his mind whether to cross the Orange east or west of Norval's Pont.
The river section westward of Norval's Pont was therefore held lightly by a line of outposts at the drifts, thrown out from the main barrier based on Naauwpoort, nearly forty miles south of the river. Of this De Wet was at the time unaware. His information was that the eastward section was impassable. The westward section might possibly not be so, and he determined to make for it.
De Wet had from time to time to time been in communication with Kritzinger and Hertzog during their raids. His advanced patrols soon discovered that the section of the Orange lying eastward of Norval's Pont was very strongly held.
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