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The 22nd was comparatively quiet. The situation was not improving. Five miles of rough ground had been won in as many days' fighting, but the force was becoming lengthened out and the line weaker. Lyttleton's force had to guard the line from Potgieter's Drift to Warren's right against any attempt of the Boers to cut the lines of communication.
In a word, let no one despair of the Empire because a few thousand soldiers are killed, wounded, or captured Now for the story as plainly and briefly as possible. When Buller had arrived at Potgieter's he found himself confronted by a horseshoe position of great strength, enclosing and closing the debouches from the ford where he had secured a practical bridgehead.
Three hundred men and two guns were left to hold the Springfield bridge, seven hundred men and four guns hurried on through the afternoon to Potgieter's Ferry, or, more properly speaking, the heights commanding it, and reached them safely at six o'clock, finding a strong position strengthened by loopholed stone walls, unguarded and unoccupied.
Lyttelton had already started, and during the night occupied a position on the north side of the river near Potgieter's Drift. The task before Warren was hard. In order to carry out Buller's plan he must cross an unbridged river and struggle through a country of which little was known.
The Dorset Regiment the last of Talbot Coke's Brigade was ordered to support the struggling troops. The gallant Lyttelton of his own accord sent the Scottish Rifles and the 3rd King's Royal Rifles from Potgieter's to aid them.
Coke, who was still on the S.W. spur, and therefore not in direct touch with Thorneycroft, informed Warren that the enemy was being gradually cleared from the summit, and that he had been reinforced with the Scottish Rifles from Potgieter's Drift by Lyttelton, whom Warren, after receiving Crofton's mis-transmitted message, had ordered to co-operate.
Little rest was given to his hard-worked troops, and they were sent off again within the week under the command of Von Donop, with the result that on February 8th, near Wolmaranstad, they captured Potgieter's laager with forty Boer prisoners.
As soon as the bridge was complete Lyttelton's Brigade would cross, and, ignoring the fire from the Boer left, extended along the Doornkloof heights, attack the Vaal Krantz ridge, which formed the left of the horseshoe curve around the debouches of Potgieter's.
January 25th, 1900 The decisive operation is proceeding slowly but surely. On Wednesday, the 10th, Lord Dundonald reached the south bank of the Tugela at Potgieter's Drift, and on Thursday a brigade of infantry was up with him.
We are not as we were at Potgieter's 'formed to a flank. We derive an accession of strength from the fact that the troops holding Railhead are now available for the general action. Besides these inducements this road is the shortest way. Buller, therefore, has elected to lose his men and risk defeat without which risk no victory can be won -on this line.
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