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Updated: June 7, 2025
Now, however, the railway, which until his arrival at Bloemfontein was his only line of communication, was threatened. The Prieska and Herbert districts on the left bank of the Orange, and even the remote Gordonia district lying in the angle between the Orange and the Molopo, which was too far away to be included in the first batch of proclamations, were annexed by the Boers.
The idea of resistance en masse was abandoned, and a policy of flying columns unencumbered with wagons and acting aggressively against the British lines of communication was adopted. It was hoped that a timely demonstration would lure the enemy out of his hold, and that a little encouragement would revive the Prieska rebellion.
Two days later De Wet crossed the railway between De Aar and Hopetown, after a rearguard action with Plumer, into whose hands fell next morning the transport which De Wet had been compelled by bad weather to leave behind him. De Wet now proposed to fetch a compass towards Prieska, where he hoped to effect a junction with Hertzog, but the driving power of the raid was slowly exhausting itself.
Lord Roberts did not capture another Boer army, as he fully expected to do, but he expelled it from a good position, and put it on the run; and the British Army was one stage nearer to Bloemfontein. Next day Kitchener was again, in his capacity of military foreman, sent away to superintend the carrying out of the arrangements he had already made for dealing with the disaffected Prieska district.
On the 22nd they occupied Britstown, which is eighty miles inside the border, and on the same day they captured a small body of yeomanry who had been following them. These prisoners were released again some days later. Taking a sweep round towards Prieska and Strydenburg, they pushed south again.
Lord Kitchener, who chanced to be passing through De Aar on his way back from Naauwpoort, where he had been sent to look after the central advance, made arrangements for the Prieska operations and rejoined Lord Roberts at Kimberley; but his presence was soon required again at De Aar.
The rebellion in the Colony was now absolutely dead in the north-east, while in the north-west in the Prieska and Carnarvon districts it was only kept alive by the fact that the distances were so great and the rebel forces so scattered that it was very difficult for our flying columns to reach them.
Commandant Hasebroek held the enemy in check whilst we continued our march to a place called Vrouwpan. On the following day we struck the Brak River at a point ten miles south-east of its confluence with the Orange River, to the east of Prieska. It was not fordable, and we had to off-saddle.
Near Khies, lower down the Orange, the force which had been left to watch the banks after the suppression of the Prieska rebellion, some of the fugitives from which had returned to the river under the leadership of a Jew, attacked and carried their laager. This and the Faber's Put affair were the only serious fights in the clearing of the Colony north of the Orange.
"By the 19th we had pushed on as far as Brak River, about twelve miles from Prieska. Here we met with another disappointment, which almost proved fatal to our whole commando. The river was in flood and no transit possible. In what a dreadful plight we were!
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