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Updated: June 10, 2025
They had seen nothing of the fighting, being kept down at Potgieter's Drift in readiness to advance the moment that orders came.
All was now in readiness for the attack, and the sailors had with steel hawsers, and the aid of the troops, got four more naval guns on to Swartz Kop. Before daybreak the troops were ready to advance. The regular cavalry were near the base of Swartz Kop, while all the Colonial Horse, under Lord Dundonald, were near Potgieter's Drift.
On February 8 the Army was retracing its steps on the road by which four weeks before it had marched from Springfield to Potgieter's Drift; and on the 11th it was concentrated at Chieveley, from which eight weeks before it had been thrown at the Colenso heights. All the Tugela operations had been conducted in a rarified medium.
He therefore masked Potgieter's with seven battalions and twenty-four guns, and sent Warren with twelve battalions and thirty-six guns to turn the right, which rested on the lofty hill almost mountain of Spion Kop. The Boers, to meet this turning movement, extended their line westwards along the heights of the Tugela valley almost as far as Acton Homes.
There, on the 17th, a pontoon bridge had been erected, and a strong force was thrown over in such a way as to turn the right of the trenches in front of Potgieter's. It was admirably planned and excellently carried out, certainly the most strategic movement, if there could be said to have been any strategic movement upon the British side, in the campaign up to that date.
A passage for Warren's division was chosen at Trichardt's Drift five miles above Potgieter's and near to Wagon Drift which is marked on the sketch map issued by the Intelligence Division. From Trichardt's Drift there is evidently a road leading into the Bethany-Dewdrop Road, and parallel to that which runs from Potgieter's Drift.
They had suffered very heavily in the first attack at Potgieter's Drift, but they now volunteered to take Grobler's Hill; and this, aided with the fire of the artillery and Colonel Wynne's brigade, they did in gallant style, the Boers being evidently nervous that they might find their retreat cut off should the Lancasters advance farther up the spruit.
Here he was to meet the mounted forces from Spearman's Hill, and with these troops he was next day, the 17th, to throw bridges, force the passage of the river, and operate at leisure and discretion against the right flank of the enemy's horseshoe before Potgieter's, resting on Spion Kop, a commanding mountain, ultimately joining hands with the frontal force from Spearman's Hill at a point on the Acton Homes-Ladysmith road.
Fortescue Carter, the historian of the previous Boer War. January 18. Kaffir runners report that General Lyttelton's division crossed the Tugela at Potgieter's Drift yesterday, and Sir Charles Warren's at Trichard's Drift to-day. We also hear of Lord Dundonald being near Acton Homes with a force of Irregular Horse, some of whom wear sakkabulu feathers in their hats and carry "assegais."
The crescent has its convex side to the south-west. One of its horns touches the Acton Homes Ladysmith road; its broadest part bulges south towards the river bank between Wagon Drift and the loop near Potgieter's Drift; its other limb is broken into irregular heights, Brakfontein kopje apparently marking its south-eastern apex.
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