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Updated: June 13, 2025
Stormberg Junction stands at the southern end of a wide expanse of rolling grass country, and though the numerous rocky hills, or kopjes as they are called, which rise inconveniently on all sides, make its defence by a small force difficult, a large force occupying an extended position would be secure. Here we found the confirmation of many rumours.
"I want to own up that I'm pretty nearly all in and done for!" "Same here, Bud. The going was tough over that frozen side of old Stormberg mountain. Then we are carrying such loads into the bargain." "For one, I'm glad we are nearly there, Hugh." "Yes, another steady pull and we ought to strike the shanty. We aimed to get to it by nightfall, you remember, Bud."
He had occupied Dewetsdorp, an exposed and isolated position, with an inadequate force, although expressly instructed to leave it alone if he had not sufficient troops for the purpose. Mostert's Hoek supervening on Stormberg ended the career of a most gallant, energetic, and enthusiastic soldier. Bic peccare in bello non licet. He was removed from his command and sent back to England.
The original plan of campaign, a march on Pretoria through the Free State, had necessarily to be postponed; and the important railway junctions at Naauwpoort and Stormberg were too weakly held and too liable to investment by the Free State commandos which had crossed the Orange to justify their retention, and the little garrisons were withdrawn.
His expedition, however, had not been without good result, for he returned with about five hundred of those burghers who had gone home after our commandos had left Stormberg. We had to thank Lord Roberts for this welcome addition to our forces. The terms of the proclamation in which Lord Roberts had guaranteed the property and personal liberty of the non-combatant burghers had not been abided by.
On the 28th Kimberley had been relieved, the Boer army was scattered or taken, the lines of Magersfontein were in our possession, Clements found his assailants retiring before him, Gatacre was able to advance at Stormberg, Buller had a weakening army in front of him, and Ladysmith was on the eve of relief.
In the meanwhile Gatacre's force was reinforced by a fresh battery, the 79th, and by a strong regiment, the Derbyshires, so that with the 1st Royal Scots and the wing of the Berkshires he was strong enough to hold his own until the time for a general advance should come. So in the Stormberg district, as at the Modder River, the same humiliating and absurd position of stalemate was established.
I think that it was the report of the British defeat at Stormberg that clinched the matter. All the news we heard in Pretoria was derived from Boer sources, and was hideously exaggerated and distorted.
It had come at last the moment they had worked and waited for and they knew not whether to exult or to despair. The wind screams down from the naked hills on to the little junction station. A platform with dining-room and telegraph office, a few corrugated iron sheds, the station-master's corrugated iron bungalow and there is nothing else of Stormberg but veldt and, kopje, wind and sky.
The great basaltic sheets of the Cape Colony are found capping the highest elevations of the Camderboo and Stormberg ranges, as well as overspreading immense areas of less elevated land, to an extent, according to Professor A. H. Green, of at least 120,000 square miles. Amongst these sheets, innumerable dykes, and masses of solid lava which filled the old vents of eruption, are to be observed.
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