The Boer Commando Was Driven Back And A Number Were
Killed.
It was probably news of this affair, and not anything which
had occurred at Mafeking, which caused those rumours of gloom at
Pretoria very shortly after the outbreak of hostilities.
An agency
telegraphed that women were weeping in the streets of the Boer
capital. We had not then realised how soon and how often we should
see the same sight in Pall Mall.
The adventurous armoured train pressed on as far as Lobatsi, where
it found the bridges destroyed; so it returned to its original
position, having another brush with the Boer commandos, and again,
in some marvellous way, escaping its obvious fate. From then until
the new year the line was kept open by an admirable system of
patrolling to within a hundred miles or so of Mafeking. An
aggressive spirit and a power of dashing initiative were shown in
the British operations at this side of the scene of war such as
have too often been absent elsewhere. At Sekwani, on November 24th,
a considerable success was gained by a surprise planned and carried
out by Colonel Holdsworth. The Boer laager was approached and
attacked in the early morning by a force of one hundred and twenty
frontiersmen, and so effective was their fire that the Boers
estimated their numbers at several thousand. Thirty Boers were
killed or wounded, and the rest scattered.
While the railway line was held in this way there had been some
skirmishing also on the northern frontier of the Transvaal.
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