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Updated: September 18, 2025
He spoke the pretty Zulu language it is something like Italian. We went on. The track went steep down hill to a spruit where the water lay in pools. And there on the opposite hill was that gallant little British Army, halted in a position of extreme danger, absolutely commanded on all sides but one, and preparing for tea as unconcernedly as if they were in a Lockhart's shop in Goswell Road.
On October 23rd they were at Beith, on the 24th at Waselibank Spruit, on the 25th at Sunday River, and next morning they marched, sodden with rain, plastered with mud, dog-tired, but in the best of spirits, into Ladysmith amid the cheers of their comrades.
I now left them and rode on to Koorn Spruit, not knowing that General Broadwood had left Thaba'Nchu after nightfall and had proceeded to the Water Works. My advance was made as quietly as possible, and as soon as we reached Koorn Spruit I hid my burghers in the ravine, placing some to the right and some to the left of the drift on the road from Thaba'Nchu and Sanna's Post to Bloemfontein.
Whether the affair of Bronkhorst Spruit can be called an act of treachery on the part of the Boers is rather a nice question. Colonel Anstruther's words the words of a dying man rather go to prove that he was unfairly treated, though he does not say so directly.
But Potchefstroom did not enjoy a monopoly of murder. In December 1880, Captain Elliot, who was a survivor from the Bronker Spruit massacre, and Captain Lambart, who had been taken prisoner by the Boers whilst bringing remounts from the Free State, were released from Heidelberg on parole on condition that they left the country.
He was reinforced by his brother, and at once drew his spoils out of the spruit and easily got away with them to the right bank of the Modder, where at noon he met the advanced guard of Olivier's force.
Everybody went back half-a-dozen miles on the Ladysmith road to Modder Spruit Station. The men on reconnaissance duty retired, as is their business. They had discovered that the enemy had guns and meant fighting.
General Barton with the rest of his forces occupied a hill some distance off. Between the two was a valley down which ran the line, and also the spruit upon which the British depended for their water supply.
The next morning we were all astir with the dawn, and while the "boys" prepared breakfast I made my way down to the spruit, bathed, with the dogs for company, and got back to the wagon just in good time for the first meal of the day, with an appetite to which a keen edge had been put by the fresh, clean air of the open veld.
The result of this was that the British gained one of our positions, that, namely, which was held by Veldtcornet Meyer, an officer under Commandant Spruit. Meyer was entirely unable to beat off the attack, and, at nightfall, was compelled to retire about two or three hundred paces, to a little ridge, which he held effectively.
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