Footprints of Lion by Beverley Harper

Author:Beverley Harper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2009-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Lord Roberts was ecstatic but little did he realise the war was about to change. While Bobs confidently consolidated his position in Bloemfontein before pressing on to Johannesburg and Pretoria, his adversaries – Kruger and Steyn – were holding a council of war in Kroonstad. Many Boers had become demoralised, worn down by the seemingly endless stream of fresh and better equipped troops being thrown against them. The British lion had mobilised significant colonies, bringing regular soldiers, idealistic volunteers, even noncombatants, from places as far away as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India and the small island of Ceylon. Kruger realised that the many Uitlanders who fought alongside his Afrikaner volk were just that: outsiders. Although Germany and Holland maintained close links with Pretoria, their open intervention in the war was unlikely. Another solution had to be found.

It came from The Lion of the West, General Koos de la Rey, and veteran leader Christiaan de Wet. Together they advocated tactics which would capitalise on their komandos’ better mobility to exploit the enemy’s ever-extending lines of communication and supply: no wagons, waverers or camp followers, only those committed to the cause, each responsible for his own horse and provisions – hit-and-run flying columns. The proposal was adopted.

Serious problems were becoming evident in Bloemfontein itself. Water rationing had been introduced but many resorted to drinking from the Modder, a river heavily polluted by countless carcasses from earlier confrontations and the excrement of man and beast alike. The army-run hospital found itself unable to cope with four-anda-half-thousand who succumbed to enteric fever – typhoid, as it was better known, would kill over a thousand in just four weeks.

To compound the problem, de Wet struck at Bloemfontein’s waterworks, destroying the pumping station at Sannah’s Post twenty miles to the east. While there he had a stroke of unexpected good fortune, ambushing Brigadier-General Broadwood’s 2nd Cavalry column. An urgent SOS was sent to Lord Roberts, who, fearing an attack on Bloemfontein itself, did nothing. De Wet took over four hundred prisoners, capturing seven artillery pieces and a hundred and seventeen wagons. One of them contained mailbags, the contents of which were carefully checked before being burnt. The letter from Tanith to Duncan was of no interest to anyone.

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