PRINSLOO’S COMMANDO RETREATING TO THE BRANDWATER BASIN AFTER THE FIGHT AT RETIEF’S NEK
From a Sketch by M. F. R.
As may be imagined the situation was now verging on disaster. Major Oldfield had received his death-blow, Captain Fitzgerald was helpless with a bullet in the thigh, Lieutenant Belcher was shot at his guns. The gunners and drivers of the guns had nearly all dropped dead or were disabled—their horses in death agonies strewing the ground. It was impossible, therefore, to remove the guns. The Bushmen had been forced to retire at a critical moment, and it seemed as though the day were lost. Then up came the C.I.V. Battery, and with the assistance of Captain Budworth—whose wits and gallantry were never better displayed—fired their two guns trail to trail over the heads of the 38th, battered the triumphantly advancing foe on the left front and, in a word, saved the situation. Off scudded the Boers, after them went the Bushmen, Budworth riding at the head, and finally with the assistance of the Infantry—the Yorkshire Light Infantry, the Munster Fusiliers, and the Imperial Yeomanry who had rushed up the hills and scattered the remaining Dutchmen at the point of the bayonet—they succeeded in getting the guns limbered up and away! The dashing work cost forty killed and wounded, besides Captain Dill, 2nd Yorkshire Light Infantry, wounded, and Lieutenant and Adjutant A. F. C. Williams, Indian Staff Corps (Attached Brabant’s Horse), dangerously wounded.
Railway Map of Eastern Portion of Orange River Colony and Natal.
(Scale, 1 inch=64 miles. By permission of the Publishers of “South Africa.”)
On the following day, 4th, the enemy was pursued as far as Blaauw Kop, fifteen miles north-west of Bethlehem, where Mr. Steyn’s seat of government was now supposed to be. Mr. Steyn had cautiously betaken himself to Fouriesburg (between Bethlehem and Ficksburg), leaving De Wet and some 3000 men to await the attack of the British forces. Meanwhile round Ficksburg fierce fighting was taking place, the Boers making a midnight attack with the despairing idea of reoccupying that town. Their furious effort lasted but an hour, when they found themselves beaten.
On the 5th the position at Doornberg, on the Winburg-Senekal road, which the Dutchman had evacuated, was promptly taken possession of by General Brabant, who thereby ousted them from a vantage-point whence they could pounce on convoys proceeding to and from the base at Winburg, and secured the line of rail in the vicinity of Zand River, round which hovering gangs of wreckers had persistently congregated.
To return to the Dutchmen inside Bethlehem. The town, like many other South African towns, is dominated by cliffs or kopjes, two of these being on the north-west, while another (Wolhunter Kop) rises in the south in a high and solitary peak above the plain, and descends steeply towards the side of the town. Naturally these obstructive eminences were chosen as the stronghold of the foe, and as naturally the object of the British was now to clear the Boers from them, and to this end General Arthur Paget marched his force to within two miles of his objective, and encamped near the northerly spurs of the north-western kopjes.
General Clements’s column, consisting of the Royal Irish, Worcesters, Wiltshires, a battery of Field Artillery, and two 5-inch guns moved about six miles on the left rear of General Paget’s force towards the east of the town; where, on all the available ridges and cliffs were Boer trenches and gun emplacements, some of these knowingly and skilfully arranged at a right angle with the cliffs and with their backs to the town, in order that any approaching force could be swept from all directions as they neared the position. General Clements sent to De Wet a flag of truce demanding the surrender of the place, and on receipt of a refusal the hammer-and-tong process of warfare began.
Both Generals simultaneously attacked from different points, but owing to the crusted and gibbose nature of the ground in this part of the Orange Colony it was impossible for the Cavalry to attempt any very wide turning movement. The result was that on the dash and daring of the Infantry much was found to depend and that eventually carried all before it. The Cavalry, the 14th and 15th Imperial Yeomanry, and Imperial Australian Regiment operated on the right, and made themselves masters of a position on a kopje at the northerly ridge of the eminences held by the Boers. General Clements engaged the foe in his eastern fastnesses, capturing them on the following day through the gallantry of the Royal Irish Regiment, while the Infantry with General Paget fought with splendid persistence, till their ammunition being exhausted they finally charged with the bayonet so gallantly, so effectively, that the Boers were routed, and General Paget at nightfall found himself in possession of a kopje which faced and was the key to the terrific steeps leading to the precipitous peak of Wolhunter’s Kop. This charge of the Munsters, supported by the Yorkshire Light Infantry, was described by one of the officers of the former splendid regiment in glowing terms: “The Royal Munster Fusiliers had to storm a kopje at the point of the bayonet. For the last 800 yards my men had not a round of ammunition left. We kept advancing, cheering as we went on, with bayonets fixed. We got within fifty yards, when the Boers fired their last volley and bolted. The position was won. The G.O.C., in his despatch to Lord Roberts, said the gallantry displayed by the Munsters was beyond all praise.... My men behaved excellently. I never want finer fellows to be with in an attack.”