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Updated: May 18, 2025
Horses and riders fell, officers leaped to the ground and shouted encouragement to their soldiers, men sprang behind rocks and discharged their rifles. Minutes of agony passed. Officers gathered their men and attempted to lead them forward, but they had not progressed far when the Boers in the spruit in front of them swept the ground with the bullets of their rifles.
He advanced, wherever possible, under cover of the steep left bank of the river along a trail so narrow that the men were compelled often to move in single file; and at one place, where the Langewacht Spruit enters the Tugela, it was necessary to make a detour and cross the spruit by the railway bridge, and to quit the dead ground and emerge on to a defile under heavy fire.
French, on the left front of the advance, was ambushed in a defile by a commando which had come up out of the west, but cleared himself with slight loss. The forts were dumb. Only the ridges between the city and Six-Mile Spruit were found to be held.
About eleven we passed a spruit where there was a camp of infantry and the 9th Field Battery, who told us they came out when we did, but had only fired four rounds since! Near here there was a pathetic incident. Many must have looked in vain.
From there they severely bombarded us with shrapnel shell. While the English troops were running to find cover in the buildings, they suffered very heavily from our fire, and the ground between the station and the spruit was soon strewn with their dead and wounded, lying in heaps.
Fortunately they had the time and presence of mind to blow up the "Long Tom" and other guns before going; but a tremendous lot of provisions and ammunition must have fallen into the hands of the enemy. At Hector's Spruit half a score of cannon of different calibre had been blown up, and many things buried which may be found some day by our progeny.
As soon as our reinforcements had crossed the river, General Broadwood was forced to retire; and his troops came hurrying through Koorn Spruit both on the right and on the left of our position. We fired at them as they passed us, and took several more prisoners. Had I but commanded a larger force, I could have captured every man of them.
Major General Hunter with a brigade of infantry, three batteries, and a small cavalry force were to attack Meyer's commando to the east, while General White, with two infantry brigades, French's cavalry, and six batteries of field artillery moved against Joubert's force on Modder Spruit.
When it reached the incline, men sprang up out of the spruit and lined the bank, and without firing a shot made prisoners of the gunners, who, jammed by the transport, could neither fight nor retire, and were easily taken from their teams and guns, and conducted by their captors down to the bed of the spruit. Only the Major commanding the Battery and the Serjeant-Major got away.
Into this the same spruit alongside which we had outspanned at midday found its way and widened out into a broad, shallow, reed-bordered sheet of water, much frequented by wild duck, widgeon, and geese, and also the favourite drinking place of all the game haunting its immediate neighbourhood.
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