At about 4 P.M. the enemy’s fire began to dwindle, and eventually ceased altogether, and just as we meditated leaving our ridge to cross over to theirs our Infantry became visible, advancing from westward along the ridge which the enemy had occupied, while to our right front, some two miles off, more British Infantry appeared on the sky line, showing that the Boer position had been quitted. At this period our Brigadier’s orders came for us to retire from the kopje and make our bivouac for the night somewhere on the plain below.
June 5 was the day on which we reached the goal we had been struggling for. Pretoria at last, not fighting our way in, as anticipated by everybody, but forming a peaceful procession, with our baggage behind us, news having arrived that the Governor had surrendered the town late the previous night.
We were not allowed to halt, but just passed through the city and out to Irene, a station ten miles south of Pretoria and on the Johannesburg line, which we at present occupy, the whole corps protecting the rail from Pretoria to Johannesburg.
CHAPTER XIII
ON LINES OF COMMUNICATION AT IRENE, KALFONTEIN,
ZURFONTEIN, AND SPRINGS—THE PRETORIA PAPER-CHASE
That march through Pretoria, marked by none of the pomp and pageantry which imagination conjures up as essential features of a great triumph, must have seemed a lame and impotent conclusion to the stirring drama of real life in which Lumsden’s Horse had played their manful part, cheered always by the prospect of a glorious reward for all their struggles, hardships, and sacrifices in the final downfall of Boer power when the Transvaal capital should be in our hands. They were not the only people who entertained such sanguine hopes and felt proportionally disappointed at the inadequate realisation. For nearly every soldier at that time in South Africa, from Lord Roberts downwards, Pretoria had been the goal, and its conquest the climax beyond which no operations of serious importance could possibly be called for. Few people, if any, realised then how little value Boers attach to great towns as strategical bases. With the capture of Johannesburg and Pretoria we had theoretically all their arsenals and main lines of communication in our hands, and according to all hard-and-fast rules of warfare the campaign should have ended then. That impression was certainly strong on the Commander-in-Chief’s mind shortly before dusk of June 4, when Colonel De Lisle, whose Mounted Infantry had followed the enemy to within 2,000 yards of Pretoria, sent an officer under a flag of truce to demand the surrender of the town. The end might possibly have come then, if, instead of waiting five hours for a reply to that summons and seven hours longer for the unconditional surrender which Lord Roberts insisted upon when Commandant-General Botha’s tardy message reached him, we had risked everything in a night attack on the town. But at dawn the next morning Botha sent a simple message to say that he was not prepared to defend Pretoria further, and therefore he entrusted the women, children, and property to his enemy’s protection. In other words, we were quite at liberty to march into a town from which every fighting commando, all treasure, and nearly every munition of war had by that time been safely removed. One big gun was still in the station on a train that waited to take British prisoners away, but they had risen in mutiny at the last moment and refused to go, wherefore the train went without them, its movements being hastened by the sight of British troops coming over the hills. To Colonel Henry’s Mounted Infantry, of which Lumsden’s Horse formed a part, was given the honour of being first to enter Pretoria by the Rustenburg Road, as the Guards Brigade of General Pole-Carew’s division marched in on another side, without firing a shot. So the goal was reached; but we found it to all intents and purposes a hollow triumph. There had been no surrender of the Boer army or of anything that could weaken its power for further resistance. The cage was in our hands, but the hawk had gone with wings unpinioned. Every soldier probably felt, as Lumsden’s Horse did, that any show of triumph would have been out of place in the circumstances. They took no part even in the ceremonial parade when Lord Roberts made his formal entry and the Union Jack was hoisted on the Raadzaal that afternoon, but had at least the satisfaction of knowing that their services of the previous day were appreciated by the Commander-in-Chief, who, in his despatches, wrote:
I marched with Henry’s Mounted Infantry, four companies Imperial Yeomanry, Pole-Carew’s division, Maxwell’s brigade, and the naval and siege guns, to Six-mile Spruit, both banks of which were occupied by the enemy. The Boers were quickly dislodged from the south bank by the Mounted Infantry and Imperial Yeomanry, and pursued for nearly a mile, when our troops came under artillery fire. The enemy then moved along a series of ridges parallel to our main line of advance, with the object of turning our left flank; but in this they were checked by the Mounted Infantry and Imperial Yeomanry, supported by Maxwell’s brigade.
J. SKELTON
