Here the sequence of events may be appropriately interrupted for the sake of some amusing incidents and anecdotes[anecdotes] told by another correspondent, who, in connection with this great gathering of troops in our camp near Commando Nek, writes:
After considerable practice the amateur cooks could make a savoury repast out of very little. If there was a garden about we grubbed up some vegetables, with which even the trek-ox served out in Government rations made an excellent stew. It was our fortune this night, however, to be better provided for by a lucky chance. While engaged in drawing the meagre rations and arguing with the Quartermaster-Sergeant over details of ounces and pennyweights, that had come to be regarded by us as very important matters, we suddenly espied a great scurry going on about a mile away, crowds of men rushing after what we at last made out to be a small deer. In and out it went among patrol tents, horses, saddles, carts, and guns. Frantic efforts were made in vain to catch it; men left whatever they were doing to join in the chase, rolling over in their endeavours to be first. Everybody threw something, and many dangerous missiles came hurtling through the air. But the deer ran on and suddenly turned our way. We also missed it by yards, and the shouting crowd swept by, losing sight of their quarry presently, and not knowing whither it had gone. A man of ours happened to be lying rolled up in his blanket asleep. The din roused him, and just as he was beginning to move the buck rose for a leap over his body. He caught it in the outspread blanket and kept it there. So the game came to our mess after all by sheer luck. On the strength of it we invited our very good friends and next-door neighbours, the Bushmen (Queensland Mounted Infantry) to dine with us that night, and soon after sunset they came round to our fire. Very good fellows they were, and a very genial dinner we had. Our guests brought their own stew, which was excellent, and their coffee too, with which to eke out our supplies. One of our men produced some good cheroots afterwards, and we sat on into the night, smoking, sipping coffee, and telling stories, the hills all around being lighted up with lines of veldt fires and the sky illuminated by a glorious full moon. Some of the Bushmen’s stories against themselves were most amusing. They had as good a name as anybody for horse-stealing and cattle-lifting. One of them told us gravely that when he was walking one day through another regiment’s lines a sergeant spotted him and gave the order ‘Stand to your horses.’ He said he was so overcome by the ‘compliment,’ that he could hardly acknowledge it. On another occasion, at a midday halt, when the ‘cow-gun’ teams were brought back from watering, the distracted officer in charge found one of the fattest and best oxen was missing. He only just discovered it in time to save its life and deprive the Bushmen of a feast. They told us many tricks for changing a horse’s marks, brands, colour, and general appearance, so that no man might know his own horse thus transformed, and I looked anxiously towards my own chestnut quite expecting to find that he had either been taken away to the camp of our neighbours or ‘faked’ practically before my own eyes. Others joined our circle as the moon rose higher. The whole camp seemed in excellent spirits. Sounds of revelry, wafted on the still night air, reached us from many a camp-fire; snatches of song, broken anon by outbursts of cheering; elsewhere uprose the strains of the Highland pipes. Rumour is busy that we are to join in the chase after De Wet, who is breaking away north. We wonder as we roll into our blankets when will be our next day of rest.
And the rumours were true for once. Not many hours elapsed before Mahon’s brigade, with the remainder of Hamilton’s force, was on the move southward and westward through Commando Nek into Rustenburg again, and then away north-east, still pursuing into the bushveldt the elusive force which they took to be De Wet’s. As a matter of fact, De Wet had already left this force. He, personally, did not quit the Magaliesberg range, but, doubling back with a small band of trusty followers the day after his passage of Oliphant’s Nek, he slipped through a neighbouring poort, and so got at once in rear of his pursuers. They were thenceforth on the heels of a fresh force, which De la Rey had detached to serve as a will-o’-the-wisp. All these facts the Editor has learned from the lips of General De la Rey himself recently. The next rest did not come for several weary days, owing to circumstances that are described by other correspondents in the following letters:
After a day’s rest (General Baden-Powell being left behind with a small force to guard Commando Nek) the division advanced again in a south-westerly direction to try to cut off De Wet, who was being driven north by Kitchener, Methuen, Smith-Dorrien, Hart, and Broadwood. We encountered a small body of fifty Boers, but a few shells sent among these soon dislodged them from the kopje on which they had taken up a position, and we did not see them again.
We got to a place called Hekpoort the next day, and here it was decided to convert Mahon’s brigade into a flying column, which meant that we were to travel without any Transport, each man being served out with three days’ rations, which he carried with him. This column was to work independently of the rest of the division and be ready to start in pursuit of De Wet at a moment’s notice, should we get news of him.
Leaving Ian Hamilton to follow on slowly by another route, Mahon’s brigade marched at daybreak on the 12th, we acting as advance scouts. The country hereabouts is very hilly, and affords excellent cover for the wily sniper, so scouting was not all ‘beer and skittles.’ Visions of grouse moors at home were naturally strong upon some of us that day, and one’s thoughts ran irresistibly to parallels between the driving of grouse and our attempts to round up De Wet. One was constantly on the qui vive, expecting to be shot at any moment, as the enemy were known to be about. Nothing happened, however, and the next few days were spent in loafing along, doing about ten miles or so, in momentary expectation of getting in touch with De Wet. But this gentleman’s movements were as erratic as usual, and it was evidently impossible to get any reliable information as to his exact whereabouts. It was known that he was being driven towards Oliphant’s Nek by Lord Methuen and the others mentioned above, and it would appear that the proper course to have pursued was to have held this pass, which was the only possible avenue of escape left to De Wet, and wait for him there, instead of wandering about more or less aimlessly, as we were doing. This could very easily have been done, one imagines, with a small portion of the large force at General Hamilton’s disposal, and why it was not tried is an unsolved mystery to a great many of us up to the present. As far as an outsider can see, a very serious blunder was committed here, and we apparently lost a chance of bringing the war to a speedy conclusion. Had De Wet been caught, Botha would probably have surrendered, and the other commandants would have followed suit.
As it was, however, we moved along slowly, the monotony being broken now and again by an exchange of shots between our scouts and scattered parties of Boers on the adjacent hills. About midday on August 13 Lumsden’s Horse were detached from the main body and sent off to the flank to reconnoitre, and on our way met a party of the Imperial Light Horse who had been sent out to burn a farm situated in a hollow among some hills from which the Boers had been sniping. The officer in charge of the Imperial Light Horse party requested Captain Noblett, under whose command we were, to keep us on the top of the hill to prevent surprise while he and his men went and destroyed the farm. This was done, but for some reason or another the Imperial Light Horse officer changed his mind and did not burn the farm. While on the hill we were told by some Kaffirs that the enemy (about eighty in number) had left a few moments before; seeing our scouts coming over the hill, they had fled precipitately. We went down to the farm after the Imperial Light Horse party had gone on, and had hardly left it to return to the main body again when we saw a small party of Boers on the hill on our right, and these were doubtless the men referred to by the Kaffirs we had spoken to. Instead of going by the road we took a short cut across the veldt, as it was rather late and we wanted to get back to the main body before nightfall. It turned out afterwards that it was as well we did so, as on the way we heard firing on our right, and on approaching to see what it was all about saw that the road led through a deep hollow among some low hills in which the Boers had taken up their position. Had we taken the road we should have walked right into the trap which they had evidently laid for us, and should have got slaughtered. The firing we heard was an exchange of compliments between these Boers and some dozen Australians[Australians] who had also been sent out on reconnaissance duty, and who had posted themselves on a hill opposite. Finding that they did not want any assistance, we pushed on and joined the brigade again at about 5 o’clock, camping shortly afterwards. It is interesting to note that the spot we camped at was the one that heard the first shots fired during the Jameson Raid. The Boer sangars still exist, and were occupied that night by Lumsden’s ‘outlying picket.’ Having no Transport, we had to depend on whatever we had in our saddle-bags, and were consequently on rather short commons; and the horses, too, fared badly, poor beasts, having to subsist mostly on what grass they could pick up on the veldt and on such oat-hay and mealies as we could get out of the farmhouses we passed. The latter were very few and far between in that part of the country. Next day we continued our march in the same direction, and both flanking parties engaged the enemy’s snipers on several occasions. The Imperial Light Horse reported having killed one Boer and wounded four others. On the 15th we acted as advance guard, and had not proceeded far when we found ourselves wound up with five brigades—viz., Lord Kitchener’s, Lord Methuen’s, General Hart’s, Smith-Dorrien’s, and a column under Colonel Pilcher—that had all been co-operating with us, bent on surrounding De Wet. But the Boer leader of a lost cause proved as slippery as ever, and had again escaped viâ Oliphant’s Nek towards Rustenburg. The valley we had passed through was mainly occupied by English and German farmers, who complained bitterly at the constant visits of English and Boer troops, as sympathy of any kind with either cause got them into hot water with the other side, and the Boers are past masters as looters. The good people of Rustenburg were in a like predicament, hence its evacuation. We heard at a store here that De Wet had passed through the previous day with our men in close pursuit. Later we were informed that he had got through Oliphant’s Nek, which he had found unoccupied, and that now the place was strongly held by the Boers.
In the evening I understand the various Generals got into consultation, and it was decided that General Ian Hamilton should advance with his division to attack the Nek and continue the chase after De Wet, while Lord Kitchener and the others were, I believe, to proceed to the west of Rustenburg, where the Boers under De la Rey were again giving trouble.[[13]]
We joined General Ian Hamilton that evening, and next day the whole force marched in the direction of Oliphant’s Nek and got within a few miles of it by about 4 that afternoon. As it was so late, and the place was said to be so strongly held, General Ian Hamilton decided on deferring his attack till next day. Before we camped for the night the advance scouts got into touch with the enemy, and we heard several exchanges of shots going on in front. Shortly afterwards we were moved up in support, and stayed till dark, after which we went back to camp, which had been pitched about two miles off, leaving a strong mounted picket behind. Lumsden’s Horse alone supplied forty men. Writing about picket duty reminds me that it was particularly trying during this march. Since leaving Pretoria we had been supplying forty or fifty men nearly every night—i.e., about 50 per cent. of our number. This duty we hated more than any other. One did not mind hard work all day if one’s nights in camp were undisturbed; but to come in at dark and hardly have time to off-saddle before being ordered to fall in for outlying picket was simply ghastly. On some occasions we went out without any food or drink, and if, as often happens, the post was a long way off and difficult to find in the dark, one’s fellow messmen were unable to take anything out. Whenever possible, however, bully-beef or Army rations and biscuits were served out to the picket before it marched off, and when this was done things were not so bad.
The Boer camp fires were seen quite distinctly on the hills close to where our pickets were, and from the number of these we judged that the report that the Nek was strongly held was not an exaggerated one. It is naturally a grand place to defend, and could be made almost impregnable, I should think, with its high commanding kopjes on either side. Besides which, it was said to have been strongly fortified by Colonel Kekewich some time before. We naturally thought, therefore, that we should have a hard nut to crack next day. Just before dawn, however, a spy who had been sent into the Boer camp returned with the news that they had been on the move all night getting away their baggage, &c., and that they would not offer any very great resistance to our passage—probably just enough to allow their convoy ample time to get away. This man, by the way, while returning from the Boer camp ran into our outlying picket, and, not being prompt in replying to the sentry’s challenge ‘Who comes there?’ he very nearly got shot.