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Updated: June 2, 2025
Komati poort, the frontier railway station already mentioned, is dreaded as a still worse death-trap than even Delagoa Bay, where it is very unsafe, say, from December to end of April. The season of horse sickness terminates upon the appearance of the first sharp frost in May.
This was made from Belfast, and the force, which consisted of about fourteen hundred men, advanced south to the Komati River. The infantry were Suffolks and Shropshires, the cavalry Canadians and 5th Lancers, with two Canadian guns and four of the 84th battery. All day the Boer snipers clung to the column, as they had done to French's cavalry in the same district.
To prolong it we were shunted on to a siding for eighteen hours either at Komati Poort or the station beyond it.
This corps had its headquarters at Komati Poort, under Major Steinacker, to whom was probably entrusted the task of guarding the Portuguese frontier, and he must have been given carte blanche as regards his mode of operation. From all accounts the primary occupation of this corps appeared to be looting, and the kaffirs attached to it were used for scouting, fighting, and worse.
I have just returned from an expedition to Komati, I and three friends with me, and we have succeeded in blowing up a large number of waggons containing a battery of field artillery, two very heavy long guns, which, by the marks on the case, came from Creusot, some eight or ten thousand rifles, and six truck-loads of ammunition."
The party was not composed of "Frenchmen cutting a military road," nor was Morisot in charge of it. He was, as a matter of fact, merely one of the gang, the same as I was. We were on convoy duty near the Komati River. It was a marrow-bone and not the heart that was roasted. I have a very clear recollection of the incident.
Botha and Steyn reached Pietersburg in September, where they were joined by B. Viljoen, who arrived a few weeks later after a circuitous journey from Komati Poort through the low veld. An important detail of Lord Roberts' plan of campaign had not been carried out. He had hoped that the Northern Transvaal would be denied to the Boers by Carrington, who failed to carry out his part of the programme.
I sat down and considered the matter. Crocodiles had always terrified me more than any created thing, and to be dragged by iron jaws to death in that hideous stream seemed to me the most awful of endings. Yet cross it I must if I were to get rid of my human enemies. I remembered a story of an escaped prisoner during the war who had only the Komati River between him and safety.
It was on the twenty-first day after starting that, from a hill commanding a broad extent of country, they caught sight of a train of waggons, and knew that their journey was just at an end. They had debated which side of the Komati river would be the best to follow, and had agreed to take the eastern bank. The Boer territory extended a few miles beyond this.
From Lichtenburg to Komati, a distance of four hundred miles, there was sporadic warfare everywhere, attacks upon scattered posts, usually beaten off but occasionally successful, attacks upon convoys, attacks upon railway trains, attacks upon anything and everything which could harass the invaders.
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