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Updated: May 1, 2025
A little before sunset the ominous Cape Railway line stared us in the face. We were again precisely in the same plight as on the 15th of August, when we had to cut the wire near Springfontein Junction, only with this difference that the danger was much more imminent, the enemy forming a semi-circle at my back, and before me was a line more strongly fenced and better guarded than the first.
"After Green Point Camp and Orange River I shall never forget the dust-storm we had there! and Springfontein and Kaffir River oh, the heat there, Rose! and Kaalfontein and all the rest of it. It was near Kaalfontein that we first came under fire. I shan't forget that." He was silent for a moment. She looked at him across the tea-table.
On the 7th day, having cut the wire near Springfontein, we found large numbers of springbucks in Fauresmith district, and though our supply of ammunition was very limited, we could still afford to spare as many cartridges as would provide sufficient food for men reduced to starvation's point.
On Thursday, at two p.m., we left the battlefield with our wounded for Reddersburg, where the people received us most kindly and placed the Government school-room at our disposal. After burying the dead, and assisting the wounded to Bethany railway station, Mr. Burgess returned to headquarters at Springfontein and gave General Gatacre an account of the disaster.
For Weldon, the days at Springfontein differed not one whit, one from another, yet each day was full of an excitement which sent his blood stinging through his veins. Every man in the regiment could ride a broken horse; but, for many of them their attainments stopped there, and broken horses were few and far between.
Lord Roberts instantly despatched the Camerons, just arrived from Egypt, to Bethany, which is the nearest point upon the line, and telegraphed to Gatacre at Springfontein to take measures to save his compromised detachment.
From the little farmhouse hospital I was sent on in an ambulance train to the hospital at Springfontein, where all the nurses and medical staff are foreigners, all of them trained and skilful. Even the nurses had a soldierly air about them. Here everything was as clean as human industry could make it, and the hospital was worked like a piece of military mechanism.
On March 15th Gatacre's force passed over into the Orange Free State, took possession of Bethulie, and sent on the cavalry to Springfontein, which is the junction where the railways from Cape Town and from East London meet. Here they came in contact with two battalions of Guards under Pole-Carew, who had been sent down by train from Lord Roberts's force in the north.
General Knox, I heard, proceeded to Bloemfontein; thence he sent his troops to the railway bridge across the Orange River, near Bethulie. He was now aware that we were determined to enter the Colony at all costs, and so he stationed troops everywhere to turn us back. He placed forces not only at Bethulie railway bridge, but also at Springfontein, and Norvalspont.
He had been neither deft, dignified nor devout; and, in all truth, Alice Mellen would have found it hard to recognize her finical patient in the dusty, unshaven man whose hair bore unmistakable signs of having been pruned with a pair of pocket scissors. Little of Carew's past month had been spent in the base camp at Springfontein.
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