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Updated: May 12, 2025
The Boers came hurrying down in groups from Spion Kop's crest, their waggons were trekking from laagers across the plain towards Van Reenan's, and men could be seen rounding up cattle as if for a general rearward movement. To us watching it seemed as if the Boers were beaten and knew it. January 25.
Or, to omit the passing testimony of my Spion, and take my own personal experience, why does my young friend Max, brightest of all schoolboys, who already wears the cap that denotes the highest class, why does he shock me by suddenly drawing forth a pair of spectacles, that upon his fresh, rosy face would be an obvious mocking imitation of the Herr Papa if German children could ever, by any possibility, be irreverent?
Wynne's Brigade, which had been Woodgate's, recovered already from its Spion Kop experience, carried out this part of the plan, supported by six batteries of field artillery, one howitzer battery, and two 4.7 naval guns. Three hours later a telegram was on its way to Pretoria to tell how triumphantly the burghers had driven back an attack which was never meant to go forward.
Then a badly shaven man in a bowler cried: "Spion Kop has won! Bravo!" and clapped his friend on the back. The rest of us looked at him with contempt. The tinker-nosed man who played the instrument that sang like a dog or barked like a nightingale began to squeak it into people's ears.
It soon became suspected, however, that certain things were being kept back, and the controversy dragged on for two years; Buller to the end maintaining that as he was not present at, nor in command of, the Spion Kop operations, it was not incumbent on him to write a simple narrative of them; and that his duty was to write a critical account of the affair, such as would be sent in by an Umpire in Chief during peace manoeuvres.
Colenso, with its bare kopjes and great stretch of veldt, is one of these, and so, also, is Spion Kop, and, in Manchuria, Nan Shan Hill. The photographs have made all of us familiar with the vast, desolate approaches to Port Arthur. These are among the waste places of the earth barren, deserted, fit meeting grounds only for men whose object in life for the moment is to kill men.
Of the physical features of the Spion Kop position he knew little more than what his telescope told him, and he read optimistically the meagre, inconsistent, and misleading reports which reached him occasionally from the summit.
At Spion Kop, when the Boer leader, Schalk Burger, vacated the splendid position he had been ordered to take up, Louis Botha's genius grasped the mighty import of the situation, and he at once realised that Schalk Burger had blundered terribly, and it was he who retook those positions with such disastrous consequences to our forces.
It said I must return to Brussels by way of Ath, Enghien, Hal, and that I must report to the military governor on the 26th or "be treated as a spy" "so wird er als Spion behandelt." The pass, literally translated, reads: "The American reporter Davis must at once return to Brussels via Ath, Enghien, Hal, and report to the government at the latest on August 26th.
Spion Kop, with 1733, is the nearest approach. The advance of Lord Roberts to Bloemfontein after Cronje's surrender met with little resistance. The first position taken by the Boers to contest his progress appears to have been four or five miles east of Koodoosrand Drift.
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