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Updated: May 16, 2025
Owing to the steepness of its banks the Riet River could only be crossed at Waterval and De Kiel's Drifts, and on these the Army converged, and trickled through them like the sands in the neck of an hour-glass.
The moral was not lost upon Delarey, who determined to try whether a better stand could not be made in a river position, and selected the junction of the Modder and the Riet for the experiment. His idea was not so much to dispute the passage of the river as to use the deep channels as covered ways and as natural trenches from which the plain could be grazed by rifle fire.
He assumed that the initial direction of French's march would be continued indefinitely towards Koffyfontein, possibly even that it was a retirement from the Modder River position caused by bad news from the centre, and he sent a commando of observation, under C. de Wet, up the right bank of the Riet.
The veld around the Riet water-holes is just a mass of small kopjes and rocks; it narrows to a small defile that opens suddenly on to the coverless Husab Road. This defile is the only main approach to the Riet wells, and it is commanded close up on both flanks on the right by the great bare kopje, Langer Heinreich, on the other by small kopjes and a line of ridges.
Headquarters rested all day on the 28th at Riet, left it at 8 p.m., trekked by moonlight along the Swakop River for three hours, outspanned till an hour before dawn, and made Salem at 6.45 a.m. on March 29.
The fighting in the Free State and in Natal has been simultaneous, and it may be worth while briefly to review the two campaigns. Lord Roberts set out from Modder River on Monday the 12th. On that day began the march of his force to the attack of Cronje. French with the cavalry seized Dekiel's Drift on the Riet and was followed by two infantry divisions.
The rest of the day was spent at Husab; at 6.30 in the evening the Commander-in-Chief, and with him General Brits, left for Riet, outspanned for a few hours and attacked the German position at Riet at dawn on the 20th. The general action which was fought on the Pforte-Jakalswater-Riet front on this day was conceivably the most important move of the campaign.
I remained where I was throughout the next day; but in the evening I saw the convoy camping near Blauwbank, just to the west of the Riet River. I also observed that the greater part of the troops had gone forward with Lord Roberts. On the 18th I still kept hidden, for the English army had not yet moved out of camp.
Every credit is due to the other units, but it was our artillery that cracked the nut at Riet. The range was 2,700 yards; but the Germans never got it. Why it is difficult to say; they had every advantage, and one understands that the Germans are nothing if not artillerists. But they were a wash-out at Riet; they were over-firing the whole time.
At the time of the change the 75th Battery had lost three officers out of five, nineteen men, and twenty-two horses. The infantry could not advance and would not retire. The Guards on the right were prevented from opening out on the flank and getting round the enemy's line, by the presence of the Riet River, which joins the Modder almost at a right angle.
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