General French Was In
Command Of The Left Wing, Which Included Kelly-Kenny's Division,
The First Cavalry Brigade, And Alderson's Mounted Infantry.
His
orders had been to keep in touch with the centre, and to avoid
pushing his attack home.
In endeavouring to carry out these
instructions French moved his men more and more to the right, until
he had really squeezed in between the Boers and Lord Roberts's
central column, and so masked the latter. The essence of the whole
operation was that the frontal attack should not be delivered until
Tucker had worked round to the rear of the position. It is for
military critics to decide whether it was that the flankers were
too slow or the frontal assailants were too fast, but it is certain
that Kelly-Kenny's Division attacked before the cavalry and the 7th
Division were in their place. Kelly-Kenny was informed that the
position in front of him had been abandoned, and four regiments,
the Buffs, the Essex, the Welsh, and the Yorkshires, were advanced
against it. They were passing over the open when the crash of the
Mauser fire burst out in front of them, and the bullets hissed and
thudded among the ranks. The ordeal was a very severe one. The
Yorkshires were swung round wide upon the right, but the rest of
the brigade, the Welsh Regiment leading, made a frontal attack upon
the ridge. It was done coolly and deliberately, the men taking
advantage of every possible cover. Boers could be seen leaving
their position in small bodies as the crackling, swaying line of
the British surged ever higher upon the hillside. At last, with a
cheer, the Welshmen with their Kent and Essex comrades swept over
the crest into the ranks of that cosmopolitan crew of sturdy
adventurers who are known as the Johannesburg Police. For once the
loss of the defence was greater than that of the attack. These
mercenaries had not the instinct which teaches the Boer the right
instant for flight, and they held their position too long to get
away. The British had left four hundred men on the track of that
gallant advance, but the vast majority of them were wounded - too
often by those explosive or expansive missiles which make war more
hideous. Of the Boers we actually buried over a hundred on the
ridge, and their total casualties must have been considerably in
excess of ours.
The action was strategically well conceived; all that Lord Roberts
could do for complete success had been done; but tactically it was
a poor affair, considering his enormous preponderance in men and
guns. There was no glory in it, save for the four regiments who set
their faces against that sleet of lead. The artillery did not do
well, and were browbeaten by guns which they should have smothered
under their fire. The cavalry cannot be said to have done well
either. And yet, when all is said, the action is an important one,
for the enemy were badly shaken by the result. The Johannesburg
Police, who had been among their corps d'elite, had been badly
mauled, and the burghers were impressed by one more example of the
impossibility of standing in anything approaching to open country
against disciplined troops, Roberts had not captured the guns, but
the road had been cleared for him to Bloemfontein and, what is more
singular, to Pretoria; for though hundreds of miles intervene
between the field of Driefontein and the Transvaal capital, he
never again met a force which was willing to look his infantry in
the eyes in a pitched battle. Surprises and skirmishes were many,
but it was the last time, save only at Doornkop, that a chosen
position was ever held for an effective rifle fire - to say nothing
of the push of bayonet.
And now the army flowed swiftly onwards to the capital. The
indefatigable 6th Division, which had done march after march, one
more brilliant than another, since they had crossed the Riet River,
reached Asvogel Kop on the evening of Sunday, March 11th, the day
after the battle. On Monday the army was still pressing onwards,
disregarding all else and striking straight for the heart as
Blucher struck at Paris in 1814. At midday they halted at the farm
of Gregorowski, he who had tried the Reform prisoners after the
Raid. The cavalry pushed on down Kaal Spruit, and in the evening
crossed the Southern railway line which connects Bloemfontein with
the colony, cutting it at a point some five miles from the town. In
spite of some not very strenuous opposition from a Boer force a
hill was seized by a squadron of Greys with some mounted infantry
and Rimington's Guides, aided by U battery R.H.A., and was held by
them all that night.
On the same evening Major Hunter-Weston, an officer who had already
performed at least one brilliant feat in the war, was sent with
Lieutenant Charles and a handful of Mounted Sappers and Hussars to
cut the line to the north. After a difficult journey on a very dark
night he reached his object and succeeded in finding and blowing up
a culvert. There is a Victoria Cross gallantry which leads to
nothing save personal decoration, and there is another and far
higher gallantry of calculation, which springs from a cool brain as
well as a hot heart, and it is from the men who possess this rare
quality that great warriors arise. Such feats as the cutting of
this railway or the subsequent saving of the Bethulie Bridge by
Grant and Popham are of more service to the country than any degree
of mere valour untempered by judgment. Among other results the
cutting of the line secured for us twenty-eight locomotives, two
hundred and fifty trucks, and one thousand tons of coal, all of
which were standing ready to leave Bloemfontein station. The
gallant little band were nearly cut off on their return, but fought
their way through with the loss of two horses, and so got back in
triumph.
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