Part III
LORD ROBERTS'S ADVANCE TO BLOEMFONTEIN
IX
THE BOER PANIC AT OSFONTEIN
The carefully prepared attack of Lord Roberts on the Boer position at Osfontein was delivered on Wednesday, March 7th, with the result that the enemy fled without attempting to defend his extremely strong position. To understand the gravity of the attack you must have been there during the last few days of preparation, when hills and ridges, subsequently abandoned in a moment, were being strengthened and armed with trenches and guns. On Sunday and Monday, the 4th and 5th of March, I rode round the whole position, and, like everyone else, was led to expect a very severe struggle. The position was roughly this. The great plain through which the river winds is broken five miles east of Osfontein by a long range of kopjes extending about fourteen miles north and south. All these kopjes were until the day of our attack occupied by a force of 7,000 Boers, but to the west of them were a few lower hills and ridges which we held. We did not know exactly how far to the east the Boer kopjes extended; that is to say, we did not know how broad might be the line of their defences; all we knew was that there were other kopjes to the eastward, and that the enemy probably held them. Our force, 30,000 strong, was disposed over a square of perhaps eight miles; yet if you had ridden all day in circles round the farm of Osfontein, which was Lord Roberts's headquarters, you might have wondered whether there were even 5,000 men, so scattered were our camps. The whole air of the place was that of almost pastoral quietness, and the only sound to be heard was the lowing of oxen.
Out in the advanced pickets the silence was deeper, but it was not pastoral. I rode out on the Monday to a little kopje, our most advanced post—a place within rifle range of the opposite Boer position, about 2,000 yards away. Over the plain, here green and sweet with the smell of tiny flowers newly burst out by the heavy rains, I rode out from under the shelter of a big kopje held by Kitchener's Horse. Between it and the little hill held by the picket the ground was exposed, but a man and a horse make a poor target at extreme range, and the danger was small.
We cantered along in the midst of the great harmonious silence of populous fields; the locusts waltzed in the sun, the little mere-cats stood and watched us for a moment and then scampered into their holes; the ants were toiling busily beneath a thousand heaps. The plain stretched to the horizon, with the stone-covered kopjes standing out like larger ant-heaps.