'Yes, perhaps.'
On receiving this problematic reply, the Marshal explained the situation to his men. They immediately replied with acclamations: 'For Lord Roberts we would march without any ration at all!'
The Black Watch, out of a thousand men, their strength on landing, mustered about sixty behind their pipers. The others lie in the trenches of Magersfontein and at the foot of Dorn Kop.
Save for a few battalions that have arrived recently, the regiments are skeleton corps.
As we watched these haggard, exhausted troops dragging themselves along, involuntarily we called to mind him who once marched our fathers through all the capitals of Europe. In spite of fatigue, privation, and hard fighting, it was in a very different guise that the Grand Army entered Vienna and Berlin behind the Emperor and his glittering staff.
The artillery was in better form. Some fifteen batteries were drawn by magnificent horses, and I saw men on cobs that looked well worth from two to three hundred louis.
There were also some siege-guns, and some 15 centimetre naval guns--one from the Monarch--drawn by thirty-two oxen. It was behind this powerful artillery, devastating the whole region with it on principle, whether occupied or not, that the English army had advanced from Bloemfontein.
If we had had a body of cavalry, I believe that rapid and energetic action would have resulted in a considerable loss of matériel to the English army; for, relying on the absolute lack of offensive measures on our side, they often left their batteries defenceless.
Next came a strong train--telegraph apparatus, balloonists, engineering implements for digging wells, pumps, etc.
The troops merely passed through the town, leaving in it a garrison under the command of Colonel Mackenzie (Seaforth Highlanders), who was appointed Governor of Johannesburg.