Three Years' War

CHAPTER XXX

The Last Proclamation

I now impressed upon my officers as forcibly as I could the importance of intercepting the communications of the enemy by blowing up their trains. A mechanical device had been thought of, by which this could be done. The barrel and lock of a gun, in connexion with a dynamite cartridge, were placed under a sleeper, so that when a passing engine pressed the rail on to this machine, it exploded, and the train was blown up. It was terrible to take human lives in such a manner; still, however fearful, it was not contrary to the rules of civilized warfare, and we were entirely within our rights in obstructing the enemy's lines of communication in this manner.

Owing to this, the English were obliged to place many more thousands of soldiers along the railway line, in order to keep the track clear. Even then, the trains, for a considerable time, could not run by night. The English soon discovered how we arranged these explosions, and the guards carefully inspected the lines each day to find out if one of these machines had been placed beneath the rails. We knew that one had been found and removed, whenever we saw a train pass over the spot without being blown up. This, however, only made us more careful. We went to the spot which we had fixed upon for the explosion, hollowed out the gravel, placed the machine under the sleeper, and covered it up again, throwing the gravel that was left to a good distance from the line. After this, the guards could not discover where the machine was placed. They trebled the troops on the line in consequence.

The month of July had passed, and we wondered what August held in store for us. The customary fights of the different commandos still went on; here five, here ten, here thirty of the English were killed, wounded or made prisoners. If these numbers had been put down they would have mounted up to a considerable total; but the war was not of such a nature that an office could be opened to record them. Reports of battles were sent to me, and after I had allowed them to accumulate for three or four weeks, they were sent to the different Vice-Commandants-in-Chief for their general information, and then torn up.

Many reports and much correspondence concerning the beginning of the war have been preserved. I gave them to a trustworthy friend with instructions to bury them, but do not know where he placed them, as he was taken prisoner later on, and I have never been able to find out where he was sent to. These documents are of great value, and ought to be published.

I was on the farm of Blijdschap, between Harrismith and Bethlehem—my English friends, Generals Knox, Elliott and Paget, with their Colonels Rimington, Byng, Baker, etc., etc., will not have forgotten where Blijdschap is—when I received a letter from Lord Kitchener, enclosing his Proclamation of the 7th of August, 1901.

This proclamation was as follows:

I answered Lord Kitchener very carefully in the following words:—

It would have been childish to fear that letter and that Proclamation. From the short answer which I sent to Lord Kitchener, the reader will clearly see the opinion that I and my officers held concerning it: "Bangmaak is nog niet doodmaak,"[98] as our proverb says.

It was curious to see how this Proclamation was taken by the burghers. It had no effect whatsoever. I heard many burghers say that it would now be seen whether the officers had the cause of their country really at heart or not, and whether they were themselves to surrender and lay down their arms before the 15th of September. I must here declare that I know of no single case where an officer in consequence of this proclamation surrendered; on the contrary, when the day fixed by Lord Kitchener for the surrender had passed, the burghers had more reason to trust in their officers than before; and I can assure my readers that if at the beginning of the war we had had officers of the same kind as we had towards the end of the strife, it would have been easier to have maintained discipline.

September the 15th was thus fixed upon by Lord Kitchener as the last day on which we should have an opportunity of surrendering. The President and Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State returned answer that they would still continue the war, and subsequent events put a seal to their answer.

Three battles were fought—one by General Brand at Blakfontein, another by General De la Rey in the west of the Transvaal, and yet another by General Botha at Itala, all in the month of September.

President Steyn sent Lord Kitchener a long letter, in which he showed most clearly what the causes of the war had been, and what was the condition of matters at that time. The letter was as follows:—

CHAPTER XXXI

Blockhouses and Night Attacks

While the great events recorded at the end of my last chapter were in progress, I paid a visit to the Harrismith burghers, who were under the command of Commandant Jan Jacobsz, and also to some of the Bethlehem men. On my return I learnt that the enemy were occupied in building a line of blockhouses from Heilbron to Frankfort.

It has always seemed to me a most unaccountable circumstance that England—the all-powerful—could not catch the Boers without the aid of these blockhouses. There were so many other ways in which the thing might have been done, and better done; and the following incident, which occurred during the war, serves to show that this policy of the blockhouse might equally well have been called the policy of the blockhead.

On the 27th of February, 1902, the English made one of their biggest "catches" in the Free State. They had made a great "kraal"—what they themselves call a "drive"—and stood, "hand in hand," one might almost say, in a ring around us, coming from Heilbron, Frankfort, Bethlehem, and Harrismith, and stretching, on the Transvaal side, from Vrede to the Drakensberg.

Narrower and narrower did the circle become, hemming us in more closely at every moment. The result was that they "bagged" an enormous number of men and cattle, without a solitary burgher (or, for the matter of that, a solitary ox) having been captured by means of their famous blockhouse system.

The English have been constantly boasting in the newspapers about the advantages of their blockhouses, but they have never been able to give an instance of a capture effected by them. On the contrary, when during the last stages of the war it happened, as it often did, that they drove some of our men against one or other of the great blockhouse lines which then intersected the country, and it became necessary for us to fight our way through, we generally succeeded in doing so. And that, with fewer casualties than when, as in the instance I have just given, they concentrated their forces, and formed a circle around us.

The English then were busy when I returned from the south in building a blockhouse line from Heilbron to Frankfort. They accomplished this speedily, and then proceeded to the construction of other similar lines, not being contented until they had "pegged out" the country as follows:—

On the Natal frontier there was a line from Vrede to Bothaspas, continued westward by a series of forts to Harrismith, whence the line went on, still westward, to Bethlehem, and thence down to the Basutoland border at Fouriesburg.

Kroonstad was made, so to speak, the "axle," whence a series of "spokes" proceeded; one to the north-east, to Vrede; a second to the north-west, through Driekopjes Diamond Mine, to Winkledrift, and thence down the Rhenoster River to its confluence with the Vaal; a third, to the south-east, to Lindley; and a fourth, to the south-west, along the railway line, to the frontier of Cape Colony.

In the western districts there was a line along the left bank of the Valsch River to the point where it joins the Vaal, and another (also terminating at the Vaal River) starting from Zand River railway bridge, and running parallel to the Zand River. There was also a line from Boshof, across the Cape Colony frontier, to Kimberley.

Last, but not least, came the "White Elephant" with which the reader is already acquainted—the line from Bloemfontein to Ladybrand, through Thaba'Nchu.

All these lines were in the Free State. I make no mention here of the thousands of miles of similar blockhouse lines, which made a sort of spider's web of the South African Republic.

The blockhouses themselves were sometimes round, sometimes angular, erections. The roofs were always of iron. The walls were pierced with loop-holes four feet from the ground, and from four to six feet from one another. Sometimes stone was used in the construction of these walls, at other times iron. In the latter case the wall is double, the space of from six to nine inches between the inner and the outer wall being filled with earth.

These buildings stood at a distance of from a hundred to a thousand paces from one another; everything depended upon the lie of the ground, and the means at the enemy's disposal; a greater distance than a thousand paces was exceptional. They were always so placed that each of them could be seen by its neighbours on both sides, the line which they followed being a zigzag.

Between the blockhouses were fences, made with five strands of barbed wire. Parallel with these was a trench, three feet deep and four to five feet across at the top, but narrower at the bottom. Where the material could be procured, there was also a stone wall, to serve as an additional obstacle. Sometimes there were two lines of fences, the upper one—erected on the top of the earth thrown up from the trench—consisting of three or four strands only.

There was thus a regular network of wires in the vicinity of the blockhouses—the English seemed to think that a Boer might be netted like a fish. If a wild horse had been trapped there, I should like to have been there to see, but I should not have liked to have been the wild horse.

The building of these blockhouses cost many thousands of pounds, and still greater were the expenses incurred in providing the soldiers in them with food, which had to be fetched up by special convoys. And it was all money thrown away! and worse than thrown away! for when I come to describe how I broke through these blockhouse lines (see next page), the reader will see that this wonderful scheme of the English prolonged the war for at least three months.

Let us turn now to another, and a more successful device of the enemy.

From the first weeks of the winter, 1901—the reader must remember that our winter commences in May—the English began to make night attacks upon us; at last they had found out a way of inflicting severe losses upon us, and these night attacks grew more and more frequent during the last period of the war. But they would never have thought of them at all, if they had not been instructed in them by the National Scouts—our own flesh and blood!

These tactics were not always successful. It sometimes happened that the English got "cornered"; sometimes they had to "right about turn" and run for their lives. The latter was the case at Witkopjes, five miles to the south of Heilbron, and again, near Makenwaansstad. But on only too many occasions they managed to surprise troops of burghers on their camping places, and, having captured those who could not run away, they left the dead and wounded on the ground.

We soon discovered that these night attacks were the most difficult of the enemy's tactics with which we had to deal.

Sometimes the burghers, surprised by a sudden visit from the English at such an unconventional hour, found it necessary to run away at once as fast as their legs would carry them, so that they often arrived at the nearest camp without their hats. Indeed a series of these attacks produced such a panic among our men that I have known a Boer lose not only his hat, but also his head.

I come now, in the regular course of my narrative, to an engagement between my burghers and an English force which had marched from Bethlehem to Reitz, a distance of thirty miles. This force was guided by a son of one of the Free State Members of Parliament, and, marching all night, reached Reitz just as the day began to dawn. This was a smart piece of business; and though the guide to whom its success was due was my enemy, I fully appreciated the skill which he then displayed.

The English captured ten or twelve burghers at Reitz, whither they had perhaps gone in search of the President.

I was ten miles to the west, on the farm of Blijdschap, and did not receive reports of what had happened until towards noon.

What was I to do? I could not call up men from Heilbron, Bethlehem, Vrede, or Harrismith: it would have been at least twenty-four hours before they could have arrived. All I could do was to summon Veldtcornet Vlok with some of the Parijs commandos and Veldtcornet Louwrens, and Matthijs De Beer, and the men. With these and my staff we would not number more than sixty or seventy all told.

I at once gave orders to these veldtcornets to meet me at a certain place, and they were there by the appointed hour.

My intention was to deliver a flank attack upon the English while they retreated during the night; for, as they only numbered five hundred men, I felt sure that they would not care to remain thirty miles away from their column, but would fall back upon Bethlehem.

In the afternoon I marched to within a short distance of Reitz, in order to discover the enemy's plans; then, immediately after sunset, I sent a few burghers quite close to the town, with orders to meet me again at a certain point about two thousand paces to the south, and to inform me whither the enemy were going to march. The scouts returned at ten o'clock that night, and reported that the enemy was on the march towards Harrismith. In order to reach this town they would have to start by the Bethlehem road, from which the Harrismith road forks, at about eight thousand paces from the town.

Our horses stood ready up-saddled; I had only to give the order to mount.

I meant to cross the Bethlehem road and go to a deep hollow which I knew of near the Harrismith road; then, when the English appeared against the horizon, we would fire at them.

But my scouts had blundered. The English were not going to Harrismith after all. For as we came to the Bethlehem road, we nearly stumbled over them. They were riding quietly along only a short distance from us. As we were galloping they knew of our proximity before we were aware of theirs, and when we were less than two hundred paces from them they opened fire.

"Charge, burghers!"

They all heard me, but they did not all obey. About fifty of the most valiant of them galloped straight at the enemy. The rest fled.

After a short but fierce engagement we were forced to retire, as six of our men had been hit. Fortunately, their wounds were but slight, the most severe being that of my son Isaac, who had been shot through the leg below the knee.

We rode away a short distance, and saw looming through the darkness a company of horsemen approaching us from Reitz. I thought at first that they were some of my own burghers—the ones who had taken to their heels—but it turned out to be General Wessel Wessels, who was nearer than I knew with his staff, in all some twenty men. I, however, could muster seventy, and we decided to cut off the retreat of the enemy. But they had, in the meantime, been riding on so fast that we did not reach them until it had grown quite light. An engagement, short and fierce as the last, ensued, but as the enemy was from six to seven times as strong as we were, and had a gun and a Maxim-Nordenfeldt with them, we could not stand against them, and had to let them go on their road.

We were fortunate in suffering no loss there, and while the English marched on to Bethlehem we rode off in the opposite direction.

We had now a short period of repose. The English were so busy building blockhouses that they had no time to fight us. Our poor horses were in a miserable condition, for so little rain had fallen that the grass was very dry and sapless. But at least we could now give them the rest which they sorely needed.

CHAPTER XXXII

My Commando of Seven Hundred Men

Towards the end of September Commandant F.E. Mentz had an engagement with Colonel Byng's column near Heilbron. A portion of this officer's force had held a ridge where there were some Kaffir kraals for cover; and Commandant Mentz had with fifty burghers stormed this ridge, shooting down from thirty to forty of the enemy, and taking twenty-five prisoners. We lost two killed and three wounded. The Frankfort burghers under Commandant Ross had also not been idle, for they had attacked a division of Colonel Rimington's troops with the result that sixteen killed and wounded fell into their hands—among these were seven of the National Scouts.

Thus fighting was taking place all over the country. I do not give any report of the various engagements, as I was not present at them, and, as I have already said, I only wish to record my own experiences. But it will be easily seen, even from the scanty information I can give of these skirmishes, that our small commandos had a splendid record of success.

It is my intention to ask all my Vice-Commanders-in-Chief to narrate their experiences. And when the whole story is told I am convinced that the world will be astonished at what we were able to accomplish.

But however well these small commandos had fought, I myself believed that the time had now come to make a great stroke. With this object in view I gave orders that a number of the burghers should come to Blijdschap, in the district of Bethlehem, under the command of the following officers:—General Michal Prinsloo with Commandants Olivier, and Rautenbach of the Bethlehem Commando; Commandant David Van Coller, who was in command of the Heilbron burghers in the place of Commandant Steenekamp, who had resigned; Commandant Hermanus Botha of Vrede; Commandant Roen of Ladybrand; and Commandant Jan Cilliers of Kroonstad.

By the beginning of November I had a force of seven hundred burghers under me at Blijdschap.[101]

Although the spring was now far advanced, the veldt was in a very backward condition. I therefore ordered the various subdivisions of my commando to go and camp on the different farms in the neighbourhood. I spread the horses over a large area, as they would thus find better pasture and so the sooner recover their strength.

When November was drawing to a close I had an engagement with the English to the south of Lindley. I had with me at that time General Hattingh, General Wessel Wessels, and General Michal Prinsloo.

An English force had encamped two days previously on the farm of Jagersrust, which lies some ten miles to the south-east of Heilbron, and about the same distance from Blijdschap. I had wished to make an attack on them the night they arrived, but they were too near to Heilbron for me to venture on it.

The previous week three columns which came from Winburg and Kroonstad had been operating near the Liebenbergsvlei, and driving a large laager of women before them towards the north-east of the Liebenbergsvlei. But they had now left the laager alone and returned to Kroonstad. The women had arrived at Blijdschap at noon on November 28th on their way back to Lindley.

The morning following, two hours after sunrise, I received a report from General Hattingh, who with Commandant Cilliers and a hundred men was stationed close to Blijdschap. The General reported that the English from Jagersrust were hotly pursuing the women's laager. And it soon appeared that the women were being driven to the west of Blijdschap.

When General Hattingh heard that the English were hard by, he was some twenty minutes' ride from Blijdschap, but he mounted his horse at once and rode there as quickly as he could. On his arrival he immediately gave orders to up-saddle, and, having sent me a second report, he started in pursuit of the enemy.

As soon as I had received General Hattingh's reports, I followed him with General Wessels and a force of only a hundred men. I was at least five miles from General Hattingh, and the English were twelve miles ahead. General Michal Prinsloo was unfortunately a considerable distance away; and thus it was that I could not at once get together my whole force of six hundred burghers.

But General Michal Prinsloo had spent the time in attacking the English force on their left front. Shortly after he had engaged the enemy I came up behind them and delivered an attack on their right. But the veldt was very uneven and high hills and intervening hollows made any co-operation between us impossible, for one force could not tell where the other force was.

Meanwhile General Hattingh had attacked the enemy in the rear and thus compelled them to withdraw their vanguard, which was then not far from the women's laager and had nearly succeeded in capturing it. But now that the whole force of the enemy was opposed to General Hattingh, he was forced to give way and leave his positions. We lost two killed and three wounded. Among the dead was the valiant F.C. Klopper of Kroonstad.

When I, with General Wessels and Commandant Hermanus Botha hurried up, Commandant Hattingh was just on the point of retreating.

The English I saw numbered about a thousand mounted men and they had three guns with them. I determined to make a flank attack, and accordingly marched round to their right, at the same time sending orders to General Prinsloo to get in the rear, or if he preferred in front of the enemy, so that we might make a united attack upon them as they marched in the direction of Lindley.

It now began to rain and a little later a very heavy thunderstorm burst on our heads. This forced the English to halt on the farm of Victoriespruit.

The rain continued to fall in torrents and hindered General Prinsloo carrying out my orders.

And now the sun went down.

As our horses were quite exhausted by the hot pursuit after the English, and the burghers wet through to the skin, I decided to postpone the attack to the following day. I was also influenced in my decision by the consideration that as the English were so far from any point from which reinforcements could come, it was quite safe to let them alone until the morning. Nobody could have foreseen that they would escape that night.

We slept about five miles from them to the north-east, whilst General Prinsloo and his men were not very far away to the south-east.

That night we placed the ordinary outposts, but no "brandwachten."

When on the next morning I sent my scouts out to discover the movements of the enemy, what was my surprise when they reported that they had fled. They had gone, my scouts informed me, towards Heilbron, which was about eighteen miles off, and they had left behind them five laden waggons and one cart; and where they had crossed Karoospruit they had, very naturally, lightened their waggons, and flour, seed, oats, tarpaulins, and tents marked the point where they had crossed the spruit. The enemy were already so far ahead when I received this report that it was quite out of the question to catch them before they reached Heilbron; so all idea of pursuing them had to be abandoned.

So far as I was able to find out, this column was under the command of Colonel Rimington.

As I was unable now to get in touch with the enemy, I set off with my commando to what was once the town of Lindley. Alas! it could not any more be called a town. Every house was burnt down; not even the church and parsonage were spared.

We found the veldt in very good condition; the early spring rains and the downpours of the previous day had quite revived the grass. And so I decided to remain at Lindley as long as possible, to give our horses a chance of recovering their condition. It was impossible to provide them with forage, for the amount the English had left behind was entirely insufficient as a supply for the large number of horses we had with us.

For ten or twelve days we remained at Lindley, and so the horses had a short breathing time, but not long enough to give the poor animals time fully to regain their strength. In addition to being overworked, some of our horses were suffering from a skin disease which we were quite unable to cure. This disease had never before been known in the Republics.

When I was at Lindley I sent Commandant Johannes Meijer, one of my staff, with forty men, to Cape Colony. With him went that brave soldier, Captain Willem Pretorius, of whom I have made mention previously. If Commandant Meijer had had sufficient time to collect a commando in the Colony, I am sure that he would have proved that the younger generation of Free-Staters, to whom he and Willem Pretorius belonged, possess qualities which were entirely unsuspected before the war began.

On the 8th of December three columns of the enemy appeared from Kroonstad.

It had been my plan to remain at Lindley and wait my chance of dealing with Colonel Baker, for he had under him a certain National Scout, who constantly made raids from Winburg with a band of four or five hundred Kaffirs. A few months previously a division of Commandant Hasebroek's commando had been attacked at Doornberg by this man's Kaffirs, and four burghers had been murdered in a horrible manner. More cases of this nature had taken place, and I only mention this one in passing. I am not in a position to give all the instances, but many of them were sworn to in affidavits, of which copies were sent to Lord Kitchener. The original affidavits fell into the hands of the English; but fresh ones shall be drawn up on my return to South Africa, so that I may be able to prove the statements I have made. The narration of these brutalities I prefer to leave to persons more conversant With the facts than myself. I have only alluded to the subject so as to make it clear why I like to keep my eye on Colonel Baker's column.

I must now continue my story where I left it.

I took up my position to the north-west of Lindley, in front of the columns which approached from Kroonstad. But after a few skirmishes with them, I returned to the east till darkness came on. When night had fallen I went round to the south, behind Kaffirskop, expecting to receive the news that Colonel Baker was coming up from Winburg, for he generally carried on his operations in conjunction with the forces at Kroonstad.

On the following day the enemy marched to Liebenbergsvlei, between Bethlehem and Reitz. Thence they took the road between Lindley and Reitz to Kroonstad.

Piet de Wet, of the National Scouts, was with these columns.

After we had remained two days at Kaffirskop, we crossed the Valsch River. The news then came that a column with a convoy was on the march from Harrismith to Bethlehem.

I felt that it was my duty to attack this column, but, although I advanced with all haste, I was not in time to catch the enemy before they reached Bethlehem. When I saw this, I decided to wait, at a distance of some fifteen miles to the north-east of Bethlehem, for I expected that the column would return to Harrismith.

The troops remained in Bethlehem till the morning of the 18th of December; they then marched out towards Harrismith.

I at once divided my commando into two parts, each consisting of two hundred and fifty men. One of these divisions I posted behind the eastern end of the Langberg, about forty miles from Bethlehem; the other on the banks of the Tijgerkloofspruit, at the point where the road to Harrismith crosses the stream.

I gave strict orders to both divisions that as soon as I opened fire on the English with the Maxim-Nordenfeldt, they were to charge down on them from both sides at the same time.

The enemy, I may mention, were about six or seven hundred men strong, and had two guns.

I myself, with the Maxim-Nordenfeldt, was now on a high round hill, on the eastern side of Tijgerkloof. I was very careful to be out of sight of the English, so that they might get quite close to the burghers before the gun disclosed my presence.

I succeeded in hiding my burghers so successfully that the English did not observe them until they were within about twelve hundred paces of my men in Tijgerkloof.

Some of the enemy's scouts rode on ahead, and when I judged that they must almost immediately see the burghers, I ordered Captain Muller, who was standing behind a rise, to come out of cover and open fire; then I jumped on my horse, and down the hill I went, at full gallop, to my burghers.

I had scarcely covered half the distance, when Captain Muller opened fire on the enemy.

As the sound fell on my ears, it seemed to me that nothing now could save them!

What was now my bitter disappointment when I saw that only one-third of my burghers were charging. The others were keeping under cover, and do what I would I could not drive them out.

Everything went wrong.

When the burghers who were charging the English discovered that the greater part of their comrades had remained, they turned round and retreated. But before this had happened they had attacked the English at four different points.

It had been a short but a very hot engagement.

There was no possibility of inducing my men to charge, and so I thought it wisest to retreat, swallowing my disappointment as best I could.

The burghers re-assembled to the south of the Langberg; and we found that our loss was two killed and nine wounded, of whom two subsequently died.

We could not ascertain the English losses, but we saw their ambulances very busy. We heard afterwards that they had suffered much more severely than we had done.

CHAPTER XXXIII

A Success at Tweefontein

The column had marched to Harrismith.

It was time that I accomplished something further, and I determined that the next blow I struck should be a heavy one. I therefore retired to the north-east of Bethlehem, and concealed my men in the veldt round Tijgerkloof (which was suited to the purpose) whilst I made my plans.

Colonel Firman's brigade was camped between Bethlehem and Harrismith, at Elands River bridge, where he was building the line of blockhouses between the two towns. This camp was so well entrenched that there was no possibility of storming it, and I knew that so long as Colonel Firman thought I was still in the neighbourhood he would not dare to come out and give me an opportunity of attacking him.

I saw that a ruse was necessary to entice him out of his fortress. With this object in view I sent for Commandant Jan Jacobsz, with his fifty men from Witzeshoek. When he joined me I confided my secret to him, and ordered him to go back with his fifty men, and to let Colonel Firman see him doing so. He also had instructions to let some of his veldtcornets ride to the Kaffir kraals, which were close to the English camp, in order to tell these Kaffirs that he had had orders to come to me with fifty men, but that when he arrived I had commanded him to return to his district, because I was going to march with my commando to Winburg.

The following day Colonel Firman's scouts were, as might have been expected, informed by the Kaffirs of what they had heard from the burghers under Commandant Jacobsz; and the day after—that is, the 22nd of December—Colonel Firman's column, about six to seven hundred men strong, marched from Elands River to Tweefontein, half-way between Elands River and Tijgerkloof. On the farm of Tweefontein there was a mountain called Groenkop—which has since, for a reason which will soon be apparent to the reader, received the name of "Christmas Kop."