TRAPPED
The enemy had little rest. The small hours were spent in constructing entrenchments round the laager. All owned that their stubborn energy was admirable, but further active resistance on the part of Cronje was now beginning to be regarded by all—even his own people—as an act of suicide and murder. “It was magnificent, but it was not war,” as the Frenchman said. The Mounted Infantry and a battery of artillery next morning turned their attention to an offending kopje, whence the Boers could yet pour their equivalent for “cold water” on the British plans, and while circling round the position were accosted with a morning salutation from the rifles of the Federals on the summit of the hill. Fortunately the fusillade was launched with more vigour than accuracy, and there were no casualties. Pursuing their investigations, the troops discovered a good defensive position and seized it.
Early in the morning Cronje sent a white flag, demanding twenty-four hours’ armistice for the purpose of burying his dead. This most probably being part of a wary plot to gain time for reinforcements to come to the rescue, a reply was sent back from Lord Kitchener to the effect that it was impossible to grant the request, which must await the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief. Lord Roberts was then on his way from Jacobsdal, and when the matter was referred to him, he at once sent a message refusing to accede to the proposition. General Cronje’s reply, being roughly translated, implied that he wished to surrender, but when Lord Kitchener requested him to surrender in person, it was discovered that he had no notion of capitulation—unconditional surrender being the terms offered. Lord Roberts then ordered the resumption of the bombardment.
About midday came the rumour that French was at hand, and that he was taking his share of the great hemming-in movement, but the cavalry division was then nowhere in view. Lord Roberts arrived later, and addressed the troops, who welcomed him with cheers. Meanwhile the 18th, 62nd, and 75th field-batteries and the 65th (howitzer) battery surrounded the laager, and commenced an avalanche of destruction, the howitzers battering the river-bed with an enfilading fire, the fumes of lyddite rendering the surrounding air green with noxious vapour. Waggon after waggon of ammunition exploded with infernal uproar, shrapnel and lyddite danced diabolically over the river-bed and laager, yet there were no signs of surrender—not the flutter of a white flag in the direction where remained the obdurate man who, his last chance gone, refused to bow to the inevitable. Prisoners now and then, worn out and disgusted, came in, their rifles slung, and gave themselves up. In the laager were sixty women and girls, they said, and Cronje, “disconsolate and defiant, sat holding Mrs. Cronje’s hand and comforting her in the river-bed.” Meanwhile Broadwood’s brigade had appeared, exhausted and starving. The cavalry had come along the river-bank to Paardeberg in order to reach the forage and the convoy which was accompanying the infantry divisions from Klip Drift. Their state was lamentable, for it must be remembered that General Broadwood had galloped off during the night of the 16th almost provisionless. His brigade had borne the brunt of the fray, for General Gordon had only been able to follow later with some 120 horses out of his whole brigade. Colonel Porter’s brigade marched later still, owing to some accident with the telegraph. The work of relieving Kimberley and heading Cronje had cost the cavalry some 990 horses out of a total of 4800.
The loss of life, however, had not been excessive considering the strain and the engagements that had taken place between the 14th and 16th, but some goodly young officers were missing. Lieutenant Carbutt (R.H.A.), Lieutenant Brassey (9th Lancers), Lieutenant Hesketh (16th Lancers), and Lieutenant the Hon. M’Clintock Banbury (Scots Greys), were among the killed. Among the wounded were Captain Humfreys (Q Battery), Lieutenant Houston (P Battery), Lieut. Barnes (Q Battery), Captain Gordon and Lieut. Durand (9th Lancers), Captain Tuson (16th Lancers), Lieut. Fordyce and Second Lieut. Long (Scots Greys), Lieut. Johnson (Inniskilling Dragoons), Lieut. Gray (Roberts’ Horse). The fatigued remnant of the cavalry division now engaged in tackling the reinforcements that Cronje had so ardently expected.
In consequence of the huge circumference of the British circle, it was almost impossible to chronicle the innumerable small but brilliant actions which were continually taking place, and which in the excitement of the investment were almost overlooked. On the night of the 19th the Gloucesters performed a dashing though futile feat. In the afternoon they neared a kopje in which the Dutchmen were ensconced. They bided their time, and just as the shades of night began to fall rushed on the enemy with bayonets and drove them off with considerable loss. The positions taken were evacuated, however, during the night.
On the 20th the Boers before dawn were again hard at work increasing their entrenchments all round their laager, but their plucky labours were impeded by continual shells which were launched now and again to prevent the work from being carried to completion. Meanwhile from the east came the echo of artillery, a rumour of battle which proved that the untiring French was actively engaged in standing between the Boer reinforcements and Cronje, who still held out gallantly in the fond yet forlorn hope of their ultimate arrival. He was humanely offered many chances to give in, but since he stoutly refused them all, measures were taken by Lord Roberts to bring the fighting to a speedy conclusion.
But the doggedly valiant attitude of the enemy was not lost on his assailants. It had been impossible to withhold from Cronje a certain admiration for the masterful manœuvres which extricated him from his impossible position at Majersfontein, or for the stubborn resistance with which his force, outwitted, harassed by the mounted infantry, and fighting a skilful rearguard action, had succeeded in getting at least thirty-five miles to Koodoosrand Drift. It was now equally impossible to overlook the magnificent energy of the man, who, with his means of flight at an end, his 50,000 lbs. of ammunition sacrificed, his stores captured, his oxen exhausted to the death, with almost certain defeat staring him in the face, could turn and fight an action both ferocious and sanguinary. Moreover, by the sheer magnetism of his personality he forced his followers to show a bold front and maintain a desperate, almost fatuous, courage in the face of the most terrific shelling that the century has known.
CRONJE’S STRONGHOLD ON THE MODDER RIVER.
Drawing by H. C. Seppings Wright, from a Sketch by Frederic Villiers, War Artist.
Little by little the enclosing circle began to grow narrower. The infantry—the Cornwalls assisted by the Engineers—again set to work to push the enemy still farther back into the river, but otherwise little advance was made. The position was now sufficiently terrible for the enemy. Cronje’s trap was about a mile square, while commanding it in every direction were guns multifarious; bushes and banks and ravines were swept by cataracts of shrapnel, while volumes of greenish-yellow smoke from bursting lyddite curved and twisted around the river-bed, then carried their noxious vapour to the serene sapphire of the heavens. In the clear atmosphere the reiterations of Maxims filled up the pauses between the steady booming of artillery, while now and again the impotent despairing splutter of rifles from the enemy’s laager mingled with the stertorous rampage.
On the fourth day of Cronje’s resistance what might have been an unfortunate incident occurred. The Gloucester and Essex regiments by an accident had bivouacked on the north side of the river too close to the enemy’s laager. The result was that on the first gleam of daylight they were discovered by the Dutchmen, who treated them to a volley by way of reveillé. Luckily the firing was not at all up to the Boer mark and the regiments came off scot-free.
During the day General Smith Dorrien’s force on the north worked towards the doomed laager while General Knox’s brigade held the containing lines on the south side of the river. In the east General French was keeping an eye on a swarm of Boers who were hoping to come to the rescue of Cronje. These held a strong position on a kopje which seemed to be specially constructed by nature for defensive purposes. Still, when General Broadwood’s brigade and a battery of horse-artillery turned their attention to the summit and scoured it thoroughly, the Dutchmen helter-skelter fled. Unluckily for them, their precipitate action took them straight into the arms of General French, who having headed them towards the drift, now gave them so warm a reception that numbers bit the dust. Some escaped, but fifty were taken prisoners. Forage, provisions, and equipment were also seized, though the corpses of the slain were carried off, so that the tale of loss could not be told.
The capture of the kopje was an excellent move, as it was a useful position whence to watch for and intercept reinforcements that might be coming from Ladysmith or elsewhere to the succour of the doomed. A message was sent to the obdurate Commandant offering a safe conduct and a free pass anywhere for the women and children. Lord Roberts also proffered medical attendance and drugs. The offers were curtly rejected. Finding courteous overtures of no avail, the bombardment of the position was resumed, and the artillery continued to fire till dusk put an end to the operations. While the firing was taking place the mules of the 82nd Battery, while still hitched to the waggons, took it into their heads to stampede, causing a scene of the wildest confusion. The next day, however, all save one waggon were recovered.
During the night the Shropshire Regiment accomplished a fine feat. They pressed forward some two hundred yards, captured new ground, and there entrenched themselves. It was an excellent finale to four days’ incessant work under a withering fire, and by the 22nd they were fairly exhausted. They were then relieved by the Gordons. Here be it noticed that the Gordons were now incorporated with the Highland Brigade, which was thus composed of four kilted regiments. The Highland Light Infantry, who wear “trews,” had joined General Smith Dorrien’s force.
The exchange of positions between the Shropshires and Gordons was effected in a manner worthy of the slim Boer himself, and showed that the Britons had speedily taken practical lessons from their adversaries. The Shropshires having, as said, seized 200 yards of new ground, they were relieved the following morning by the Gordons. The Highlanders, snake-like, wormed themselves forward to the trenches on their stomachs, while the Shropshire men in like manner crawled over the bodies of the relieving force. An officer who witnessed the evolution said, “I have often heard of walking on an empty stomach, but I’m hanged if I’ve ever seen the feat accomplished so well and so literally.”
Another tremendous thunderstorm broke over the position, causing considerable discomfort to the troops, but still more to the unhappy creatures who, through the stout resistance of Cronje, were held to all the horrors of the trap into which he had fallen. We were now closing in on every side.
A grand attempt was made on the morning of the 23rd to bring help to the Dutchman. Commandant de Wet with a horde of some 1000 Boers, collected from the region of Ladysmith, appeared, and made a desperate effort to thrust himself through the British lines. Part of the force on its way towards its hoped-for destination was luckily accosted from a kopje occupied by the Scottish Borderers. The greeting, smart and accurate, was scarcely to the Dutchmen’s liking, and they made off in another direction, but still with the same result. From position to position they were hunted, and in sheer despair they made for an unoccupied kopje, where they hoped at last to make a stand. But they were disappointed. The lively Scottish Borderers were “one too many for them.” Seeing the Boers in act of seizing this point of vantage, the Borderers promptly hurled themselves in the coveted direction. There was an animated neck-and-neck race, and the Borderers, who won by a nose, promptly took possession of the hill and completely routed the Federals.
Finally the Boers found shelter in a kopje which was vis-à-vis to a like eminence held by the Yorkshires. A passage at arms followed, with the result that the fusillade of the enemy died a natural death. Then the Yorkshires, who had so strenuously brought about this result, were reinforced by the Buffs, lest some more of the Boer hosts from Ladysmith should put in an appearance. At this time the 75th and 62nd Batteries gave tongue from an adjacent farm, but their vociferous notes produced little effect upon the crown of the Boers’ stronghold.
So great was the silence that the Yorkshires moved on with a view to prodding the enemy in his lair, but, in the attempt, they were so furiously assailed by the shot of the enemy that they, in default of cover, were unable to proceed. Meanwhile the Buffs persevered, moving warily round the position till within 150 yards of the Dutchmen, who were eventually driven off. More than eighty—their horses having been shot—surrendered. On many of these were discovered explosive bullets, and it became evident that desperation was driving the Boers to disregard the rules of civilised warfare. Many of our wounded were found injured by these unholy missiles; and other tricks—barbarous tricks—were reported. On one occasion a Vickers-Maxim gun was directed at an ambulance, which at the time was fortunately unoccupied.
During the week our losses were fewer than on the opening day. Captain Dewar and Lieutenant Percival, 4th King’s Royal Rifles, and Lieutenant Angell, Welsh Regiment, were killed. Among the wounded were:—
2nd Gloucester—Lieutenant-Colonel R. F. Lindsell; 2nd Derbyshire—Lieutenant C. D. M. Harrington; 9th Lancers—Captain Campbell; P.R.H.A.—Lieutenant Houston; Royal Engineers—Captain Crookshank; 1st Lincoln—Second Lieutenant Wellesley; Argyll and Sutherland—Lieutenant and Adjutant Glasford; 1st East Kent Regiment (attached 2nd Battalion)—Lieutenant Hickman; 2nd Lincoln—Captain Gardner; King’s Own Scottish Borderers—Captain Pratt; East Kent—Captain Marriott; Yorkshire—Captain Pearson, Lieutenant Gunthorpe, 2nd Lieutenant Wardle.
Lieutenant Metge (1st Welsh Regiment) was missing.
Daily the enemy was squeezed into a smaller space. General Smith Dorrien had now pushed up the river-bed to within two hundred yards of Cronje’s entrenchments. The object lesson in perseverance, both on the part of Boers and British, was becoming almost awe-inspiring—the tension was veritably appalling. Soaked with rain to the very skin—the fevered skin that had been scorched, and toasted, and begrimed with dust—our men, grim and fierce, with the storm-winds piping the pipe of death about their ears, held their ground. Rations had been intermittent till the convoys began to come in, and, almost fasting, they had been acutely conscious of the foul, the nauseating atmosphere that now enveloped them like a loathely vaporous entanglement. The river had swollen and bore upon its turbid breast horrific revelations—thousands of rotting carcases and festering loads of poisonous wreckage, that rendered the act even of drawing breath almost a heroism. All along the great march endurance had been put to supreme test, for the track had been margined with the dead bodies of exhausted oxen and horses. These lay littered about, unburied, disembowelled, and in various stages of putrefaction. Everywhere vultures and flies and other loathsome parasites of the veldt hovered and sidled and crawled, glutting themselves at veritable orgies of destruction, and contesting their prizes with the winds. These, taking their fill, hastened to diffuse the remains of the grisly banquet far and wide. Thus the foul dust, wantonly distributed, blew in the throats and eyes and ears of gallant men, and contributed death more liberally, more pitifully, than even the bullets of the Boers!
Guns Captured at Paardeberg.
Photo by Alf. S. Hosking, Cape Town.
Plentiful rain had fallen, saturating humanity, and causing the heated ground to retract the fumes of a charnel-house. But in one way better times had come. There was fuller fare. Large convoys made a daily appearance, and the men were refreshed after their labours with the promise of plenty. Food of a substantial kind was indeed necessary, for it served to attune the stomach to the noxious vapours that hourly grew almost tangible. Cronje, though he knew it not, was sowing the seeds of a harvest of revenge! He was killing his thousands! For many days our troops had been enduring lenten fare; they had rung the changes on hardships, fatigues, and self-abnegations of all kinds. They had been battered on by storms. They had outstripped transport and supplies. They had kept the inner man appeased and working on quarter rations. They had marched like giants in ten-league boots, and meanwhile fed like fairies; yet withal had borne countenances cheery and noble, full of confidence and unquenchable pluck. But these splendid creatures were but mortal. The foul fiends of enteric and malaria were already sapping their buoyant constitutions, and marking them, one after another, with the deadly seal of possession.
Every day of the Dutchman’s resistance was therefore full of horror, full of anxiety. There were continual rumours that the Boer reinforcements were in view, that the Federals were massing for a desperate effort. Wearied and battered, the cavalry at Koodoosrand were perpetually speeding on wild-goose chases, in one of which both General French and Colonel Haig nearly lost their lives. A reconnaissance in force had been ordered. The drift, swollen by rains, was now a torrent, and in crossing the General and his A.D.C. were thrown by their restive horses into the river, whence they only emerged safe and sound in consequence of their being fine swimmers and pneumonia-proof Britons.
Cronje, finding that the reinforcements failed to reach him, decided on the night of the 26th to cut his way out and seize a kopje before dawn. But his intention was frustrated by the Mounted Infantry, who, in spite of the darkness, kept a watchful eye on the slippery enemy.
Quite early on the morning of the 27th of February, the anniversary of Majuba day, the splutter of musketry greeted the ears of the dozing camp. Some one was up and doing early. It was the Canadians. They were acting on the principle of the early bird that catches the morning worm. Supported by the Gordons, Cornwalls, and Shropshires, they were advancing, building a trench in the very teeth of the enemy, and at fifty yards’ range were saluting him with such deadly warmth as to render his position untenable. How this energetic and gallant movement, the wonder and admiration of all, was brought about was described by the correspondent of the Times. “It appeared that Brigadier-General MacDonald sent from his bed a note to Lord Roberts, reminding him that Tuesday was the anniversary of that disaster which, we all remembered, he had by example, order, and threat himself done his best to avert, even while the panic had been at its height; Sir Henry Colvile submitted a suggested attack backed by the same unanswerable plea. For a moment Lord Roberts demurred to the plan; it seemed likely to cost too heavily, but the insistance of Canada broke down his reluctance, and the men of the oldest colony were sent out in the small hours of Tuesday morning to redeem the blot on the name of the mother-country.
“From the existing trench, some 700 yards long, on the northern bank, held jointly by the Gordons and the Canadians, the latter were ordered to advance in two lines—each, of course, in extended order—thirty yards apart, the first with bayonets fixed, the second reinforced by fifty Royal Engineers under Colonel Kincaid and Captain Boileau.
“In dead silence, and covered by a darkness only faintly illuminated by the merest rim of the dying moon, ‘with the old moon in her lap,’ the three companies of Canadians moved on over the bush-strewn ground. For over 400 yards the noiseless advance continued, and when within eighty yards of the Boer trench the trampling of the scrub betrayed the movement. Instantly the outer trench of the Boers burst into fire, which was kept up almost without intermission from five minutes to three o’clock to ten minutes past the hour. Under this fire the courage and discipline of the Canadians proved themselves. Flinging themselves on the ground, they kept up an incessant fire on the trenches, guided only by the flashes of their enemy’s rifles; and the Boers admit that they quickly reduced them to the necessity of lifting their rifles over their heads to the edge of the earthwork and pulling their triggers at random. Behind this line the Engineers did magnificent work; careless of danger, the trench was dug from the inner edge of the bank to the crest, and then for fifty or sixty yards out through the scrub. The Canadians retired three yards to this protection and waited for dawn, confident in their new position, which had entered the protected angle of the Boer position, and commanded alike the rifle-pits of the banks and the trefoil-shaped embrasures on the north.”
For some time it seemed as though hostilities were suspended, and then—a sign, a flutter of white, a signal of surrender caught the straining eyes of the regiment nearest the crest of the hill. In an instant the plains and the hollows, the kopjes, and even the dome of heaven, seemed animated—lending themselves to repeat the ringing cheer, to reiterate the cry of an immense joyous heart splitting a little universe in twain. Ears languid, ears hard-working, ears occupied, ears expectant, all caught the sound, echoed it and knew that at last the looked-for hour had come, Cronje had surrendered! Many Boers threw up their hands and dashed unarmed across the intervening space; others waved white flags and exposed themselves carelessly on their entrenchments, but not a shot was fired. Colonel Otter and Colonel Kincaid held a hasty consultation, which was disturbed by the sight of Sir Henry Colvile (commanding the Ninth Division) quietly riding down within 500 yards of the northern Boer trenches to bring the news that at that very moment a horseman was hurrying in with a white flag and Cronje’s unconditional surrender, to take effect at sunrise.