CHAPTER VI
FROM KROONSTAD TO JOHANNESBURG
From the 12th to the 22nd of May was spent by the main army, at Kroonstad, where, owing to sickness and other causes, a halt was obligatory. It was necessary that supplies should be collected, an advanced depôt formed, the railway repaired, and the safety of both flanks secured. Meanwhile, efforts were made to protect the farmers who had surrendered from the revengeful tactics of the Boers. Lord Lovat’s gillies arrived at Kroonstad and met with the approval of the Commander-in-Chief. General Hutton, with a force of mounted infantry, had reported an attack on Bothaville and the capture of three commandants and about a score of Zarps, from their hiding-place near Smaldeel. On the 20th, the 1st Cavalry Brigade marched out from their camp near Kroonstad, to open up the country on the left of Lord Roberts’s main advance along the western fringe of the railway. They were accompanied by the 4th Cavalry Brigade (7th Dragoon Guards and 8th and 14th Hussars), and supported by General Hutton’s Brigade of Mounted Infantry (Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders). On the 21st, the cavalry seized the drift at the confluence of the Honing Spruit and the Rhenoster; and on the 22nd, Lord Roberts and the main army, leaving only the 1st Suffolks behind, marched from Kroonstad to Honing Spruit, the third station to the north, and some eighteen or twenty miles off. General Ian Hamilton, after a series of engagements with De Wet’s hordes, from Lindley, onwards, had secured an advanced position at Heilbron, while the cavalry division had moved up, crossed the Rhenoster River, and threatening the right rear of the enemy had forced the Dutchmen to leave a strongly-entrenched position on the north bank of the river. The presence of French and Hamilton to west and east of them had served to unnerve the hostile hordes, who now had our cavalry within twenty miles of either flank. They spent their bellicose ardour by destroying some miles of railway, the bridge over the Rhenoster, and some culverts, and then flying in hot haste before the vast machinery of the advancing army, to a new point of defence some twenty miles in front, a point which promised shortly to become equally untenable.
THE GREAT ADVANCE: ROYAL HORSE ARTILLERY (CAVALRY DIVISION) CROSSING THE VAAL
Drawing by R. Caton Woodville
The following casualties took place in the Winburg Column, May 21st:—New South Wales Mounted Infantry—Wounded severely, Lieutenant A. J. M. Onslow, 1st Royal Irish—Lieutenant M. H. E. Welch.
On the 23rd, Lord Roberts and his majestical and magnificent apparatus of war, its thousands of gallant souls, its multiplicity of vehicles, its endless supplies and zoological train, encamped on the south bank of the Rhenoster River. The Boers, apparently demoralised in their preparations for resistance, and having had their left flank turned by Hamilton at Heilbron, were now continuously “on the run.” Meanwhile burghers hourly came in to surrender arms and ammunition, the last vestige of truculence having evaporated. The Boer Government telegraphed to Lord Roberts offering to exchange an equal number of prisoners on parole, and threatening if the offer should be refused to remove from Pretoria to some other district the 4000 prisoners now confined there. As to the fate of the Johannesburg mines there was considerable uncertainty; reports declared they would be destroyed in the event of entry to the Transvaal by the British, and also that the town itself would be defended, as defence works were being rapidly pushed forward, guns got into position, and trenches and defences constructed.
On the other hand it was stated that, on hearing of the threat to destroy the mines and possibly the town, Commandant Louis Botha had hastened to the President, and in a stormy interview had asserted his intention, if such a thing were contemplated, himself to defend Johannesburg from such an act of vandalism. He concluded by denouncing the diabolical intention and saying, “We are not barbarians.” Mr. Kruger did not argue the subject—possibly his conscience tweaked him on the subject of barbarity—but gave in. Terrible altercations were daily taking place between the Boers, the Free Staters, and their mercenaries, and the burghers were inclined to throw all the blame of defeat on the Hollanders who had brought about the war and left the Boers to bear the brunt of the loss to life and property that hostilities entailed. These were merely reports, but they served, as the passage to the north proceeded, to show which way the wind blew.
On the Queen’s birthday the 4th Brigade of cavalry crossed the Vaal near Pary’s Drift, and the 1st Brigade at a drift farther east of Pary’s, while General Ian Hamilton’s column was ordered to move towards Boschbank still higher up. They arrived just in time to save the coal-mines from being destroyed. The operation of crossing the Vaal was one of the most risky that has been undertaken in the campaign, as the road down to the drifts led through about six miles of mountainous country forming a narrow pass, well suited to Boer tactics. Fortunately, although the Boers were seen hovering in the vicinity, the arrival of the cavalry was unexpected, and they made no effective resistance.