SPRINGFIELD BRIDGE: THE PIVOT OF THE FLANKING MOVEMENT.
MURRAY'S MOUNTED SCOUTS:
Natal farmers who volunteered when the Boers invaded that colony.
[Jan. 10, 1900.
Difficulties of the march.
Jan. 10-11, 1900.] Springfield Bridge Seized.
On this occasion the average of the infantry was scarcely a mile an hour. At the start Sir Charles Warren's men had to ford the Blaauwkrantz in flood, and the drifts were choked with waggons, carts, and refractory teams of oxen and mules. "The passages through the spruits were nightmares," says Mr. Atkins, "carts overturned in the water, wheels off, mules mixed up, fighting and knotted in their harness and half drowning, oxen with their heads borne down under water and heaving with all their mighty strength to the opposite bank, a gun or a waggon stuck, and the river of traffic looping round it as water flows round an island; spare teams of oxen moving about to help the unfortunate out of difficulties, a traction engine with one wheel almost buried in soft mud and two other engines pulling at it." One ox-waggon which stuck close to Frere station could not be moved by eighty oxen, and must have been abandoned but for the traction engines, one of which was harnessed to it with a steel hawser and hauled it triumphantly out of difficulty. The march, in consequence of these incidents, which, at first diverting enough, rapidly palled upon the men, was weary to a degree. Great caution had to be observed, for though the Tugela was in heavy flood and the Boer bridges broken, no one could be certain that the enemy had not some force south of the river carefully watching the British flanks and ready to cut off stragglers and vehicles in difficulty. The first halt for the infantry of the Second Division was to be made at Pretorius' Farm, six miles on the Frere side of Springfield and ten miles from Frere, and for the Fifth Division at Springfield itself; but that point was not reached by many of the men till long after midnight. At midnight the weather had broken once more and a terrific thunderstorm swept over the hills, drenching the tired men and inflicting upon them the misery of a sodden bivouac after their hard day's march. They slept as best they could, wrapped in their great-coats and blankets, in the mud and slush. Hildyard's Brigade, with the two great 4·7's dismounted from their carriages and placed upon carts, had already struck into the column, half way to Pretorius' Farm, coming from Chieveley, so now the turning force was complete.
