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Updated: June 28, 2025
Yet whenever we picked up reports of engagements in the camping places of the English we repeatedly saw that they had taken a Boer camp and their greatest delight was to say that it was one of De Wet's convoys. They could not have been convoys of mine, because for the last fifteen months I had had no waggon-camp with me.
Methuen on the morning of the 10th struck away to the west, sending messages back to Broadwood and Kitchener in the rear that they should bear to the east, and so nurse the Boer column between them. At the same time he sent on a messenger, who unfortunately never arrived, to warn Smith-Dorrien at Bank Station to throw himself across De Wet's path.
Life, surely, was not dealing too fairly by him. Following Mushroom Valley, we trekked, with two brief outspans only, to Clocolan, all the time scattering De Wet's followers. At Clocolan we paused for one day, entrained men and horses and reached Kimberley, via Bloemfontein, on the 18th of November.
If, on the British side at Paardeberg, the commanders were not at their best when acting in partibus beyond the personal control of Lord Roberts, on the other hand De Wet's release from immediate subordination to Cronje seemed to make him a more dangerous foe.
De Wet added samples of the British volunteer and of the British regular to his bag of militia. The station and train were burned down, the great-coats looted, the big shells exploded, and the mails burned. The latter was the one unsportsmanlike action which can up to that date be laid to De Wet's charge.
It was now evident that De Wet's objective was the Zand Drift on the Orange west of Phillipolis. He had had a long start, and the nearest troops available for the pursuit of him were the columns of Knox and Hamilton at Bethulie.
All the way they knew that De Wet's retreating army was just in front of them, and they knew also that a force had been sent out from Bloemfontein to Thabanchu to head off the Boers. Lord Roberts might naturally suppose, when he had formed two cordons through which De Wet must pass, that one or other must hold him.
At that time we also heard of De Wet's retreat from Cape Colony, but not officially. It was broken to us gently, and at first as if he had been successful, so that we all thought peace was to follow soon. How we rejoiced! But a few days later De Wet's official report was read out to us, and then our courage sank indeed. What was the good of our fighting if the Colony would not help us?
Kelly's farm, about fifteen miles from De Wet's Dorp. At two o'clock the next morning Tuesday, April 3, 1900 a man, of the name of Murray, of the Cape Mounted Rifles, brought despatches, informing us that the enemy were in considerable numbers in the direction of Thaba 'Nchu, on the Modder River, and were likely to threaten our advance.
De Wet's plan for the invasion of the Colony was not yet destined to be realised, for a tenacious man had set himself to frustrate it. Several small but mobile British columns, those of Pilcher, of Barker, and of Herbert, under the supreme direction of Charles Knox, were working desperately to head him off.
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