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Updated: June 22, 2025
"I have three pages of congratulatory telegrams from His Majesty the King downward which I will read to you, with also a very nice letter from our army commander, Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien.
But Le Cateau had taken the sting out of the German pursuit, and touch was at last regained with French forces to the east, with a newly-formed corps under D'Amade to the west, and with a Sixth French army which Maunoury was collecting on the Somme. On the evening of Friday the 28th Smith-Dorrien reached the Oise between Chauny and Noyon and Haig at La Fère.
Dartnell was on the right of the line and Smith-Dorrien on the left. Most of the fugitive commandos had, however, retired into the S.E. corner of the Transvaal; a movement which Hildyard, who was in charge of the district as well as of the whole of Natal, was not strong enough to check.
There is still shown the remains of one of Cæsar's Camps, and underneath its walls William the Silent of Orange fought one of his most notable battles. For review our brigade was drawn up in a field below the city walls. This field was in the form of an amphitheatre and the troops looked splendid in the bright spring sunshine. General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien did not keep us waiting long.
The closing incident of French's ten weeks' campaign, the chief harvest of which was the capture, surrender, wounding, or killing of 1,300 Boers, the seizure of a considerable amount of ammunition, and the taking of eleven guns, was the return of Smith-Dorrien to the Delagoa Bay Railway in the middle of April.
Francis Ryan, Northumberland Fusiliers, tells in the Scotsman how young lieutenant Smith-Dorrien pleaded to be allowed to remain with his men in the trenches after a retirement had been ordered. The South Staffordshires thought they were "getting along splendidly," says one of the men, "until the General came and told us we must retreat or we would be surrounded."
The passages at Arras and La Bassée were held by General Maud'huy and General Smith-Dorrien respectively. The former defended his position for the first three weeks in October when the German attacks weakened; the latter, with the British Second Corps, had reached the farthest point in the La Bassée position by October 19, 1914.
But by Monday afternoon Haig's First Army Corps was back on the line between Maubeuge and Bavai, and Smith-Dorrien fell into line from Bavai westwards to Bry. The design was to offer a second battle in this position, and entrenchments were begun.
The first two army corps, under Haig to the right and Smith-Dorrien to the left, were in position on Saturday the 22nd hard at work throwing up entrenchments and clearing the ground of obstacles to their fire. That day was more eventful for the French, and it is not quite clear why they were not assisted by a British offensive on their left.
To which General Smith-Dorrien replied: "As the lady you refer to is not accustomed to sleep in the open air, I would recommend you to try flannel next to the skin." I had been instructed to keep the officers we had taken prisoners until further orders, and these four were therefore lodged in an empty building near Roos Senekal under a guard.
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