Chapter 5

TALANA HILL

It was on the morning of October 12th, amid cold and mist, that the
Boer camps at Sandspruit and Volksrust broke up, and the burghers rode
to the war. Some twelve thousand of them, all mounted, with two
batteries of eight Krupp guns each, were the invading force from the
north, which hoped later to be joined by the Freestaters and by a
contingent of Germans and Transvaalers who were to cross the Free
State border. It was an hour before dawn that the guns started, and
the riflemen followed close behind the last limber, so that the first
light of day fell upon the black sinuous line winding down between the
hills. A spectator upon the occasion says of them : 'Their faces were
a study. For the most part the expression worn was one of
determination and bulldog pertinacity. No sign of fear there, nor of
wavering. Whatever else may be laid to the charge of the Boer, it may
never truthfully be said that he is a coward or a man unworthy of the
Briton's steel.' The words were written early in the campaign, and the
whole empire will endorse them to-day. Could we have such men as
willing fellow-citizens, they are worth more than all the gold mines
of their country.

This main Transvaal body consisted of the commando of Pretoria, which
comprised 1,800 men, and those of Heidelberg, Middelburg, Krugersdorp,
Standerton, Wakkerstroom, and Ermelo, with the State Artillery, an
excellent and highly organised body who were provided with the best
guns that have ever been brought on to a battlefield. Besides their
sixteen Krupps, they dragged with them two heavy six-inch Creusot
guns, which were destined to have a very important effect in the
earlier part of the campaign. In addition to these native forces there
were a certain number of European auxiliaries. The greater part of the
German corps were with the Free State forces, but a few hundred came
down from the north. There was a Hollander corps of about two hundred
and fifty and an Irish -- or perhaps more properly an
Irish-American-corps of the same number, who rode under the green flag
and the harp.

The men might, by all accounts, be divided into two very different
types. There were the town Boers, smartened and perhaps a little
enervated by prosperity and civilisation, men of business and
professional men, more alert and quicker than their rustic
comrades. These men spoke English rather than Dutch, and indeed there
were many men of English descent among them. But the others, the most
formidable both in their numbers and in their primitive qualities,
were the back-veldt Boers, the sunburned, tangle-haired, full-bearded
farmers, the men of the Bible and the rifle, imbued with the
traditions of their own guerrilla warfare. These were perhaps