I will here mention the names of the Transvaal commandos that occupied the ridges opposite Colenso, because it was by them that the attack of General Buller was repulsed. They consisted, to begin with the most easterly wing, of a portion of the Krugersdorp Commando; next to them were in succession westward the burghers of Heidelberg, Boksburg, Johannesburg, the Swazieland Police; the Ermelo burghers and the Zoutpansberg Commando on the wing farthest west.
These men worked night and day digging trenches and throwing up earthworks. They did not make these works on the top of the mountain range, where one would have expected them to, but on low ridges close to the river. The enemy would thus, in case they attacked, first bombard the wrong places, and the troops would approach to within a very short distance of the position, and be subjected to a severe rifle fire, before they knew from whence they were being fired on.
The first days of December passed by, and although there was no attack, there were, however, signs every day to show that the English were making preparations, and all held themselves in readiness.
Two or three days before the 15th of December one of the Transvaal gunners, an Englishman, deserted, and as there was reason to fear that he might acquaint the enemy with the preparations that had been made to repulse an attack, General Louis Botha changed the positions of the guns and also made the men dig other trenches and throw up new earthworks. These trenches were dug on the level ground between the ridges I have mentioned above and the river. If the former trenches were made where the enemy would not expect them, this was still the case with the new ones which were now made, as the result proved.
On the 14th of December Commandant de Villiers rode in the direction of Colenso to see if he could discover any new developments in the preparations of the enemy. He came to the top of the high hill between Colenso and the Boer laagers around Ladysmith, and saw from there that the British troops were approaching nearer and nearer to the village. He computed them at about 10,000. "To-morrow," he said, on his return to the laager, "there will certainly be a battle"; and he asked me if I wished to go to the hill on the following day, in order to see what might take place. I answered that I would like to go. Early on the following morning, December 15th, we heard the roar of the great naval guns. Commandant de Villiers had not been mistaken. The battle had commenced.
I had my horse saddled and rode to the hill with a few burghers. There lay the tiny hamlet of Colenso about five thousand yards from where we stood, and down below with great curves the majestic Tugela flowed onward, calmly and placidly. But there was no calm on its banks. The ground shook with the thunder and reverberation of the great naval guns. Everywhere, on both sides of the river, upon Boer and Briton, the shells burst and the shrapnels exploded. Far away on the horizon seven or eight miles from us, a little to the west of the railway, I saw the great camps, looking like plantations of black-wattle trees, from which the troops had marched that morning. About two miles on this side of the camps, the batteries of British field-guns stood in an irregular semicircle, and in front of these the whole plain, for about three miles to the west of the railway and a mile and a half to the east of it, was covered with troops; not in compact masses, but widely scattered.
I also saw ambulance waggons riding to and fro. When the cannons fired, no volumes of smoke rose in the air as was the case with our Krupps, so if one looked for smoke as a sign that a gun was fired, one would never know that a shell had been despatched. But even in the broad glare of the day you could constantly see a small flash, and presently a terrific crash somewhere on our positions would proclaim that a great naval gun had been fired. Our projectiles too were aimed at the troops and guns down in the plain. I could continually see our shrapnels exploding there. And the tiny shells of our Maxim-Nordenfeldts created havoc among the troops; while thousands of little clouds of dust, like those which rise when the first great raindrops of a thunderstorm fall on a dusty road, showed where the Mauser bullets fell.
The scene constantly changed.
What also struck me was, that the hundreds of small objects which I saw down there were continually appearing and disappearing. I could not at first understand what this meant; but I soon perceived that when the objects seemed to rise from nowhere it meant that the soldiers were making some dash or other to a certain spot, and when they disappeared it meant that they were forced to lie down because of a destructive hail of bullets which was poured upon them. This was the state of affairs when I reached the top of the hill.
I must now relate something of what had taken place up to that moment. General Buller had ordered four brigades of troops early that morning to make an attack on us, supported by great naval and other cannon, with the purpose of breaking through our lines and forcing a way to Ladysmith. The troops had hardly commenced their advance before General Botha perceived it, and ordered that all the men's horses without exception should be taken away from the positions. He also issued a strict command that no one should fire a shot before he gave the signal by the firing of a cannon from one of the ridges behind the burghers. Our burghers lay behind their schanzes and awaited the enemy.