Chapter 20

ROBERTS'S ADVANCE ON BLOEMFONTEIN

The surrender of Cronje had taken place on February 27th, obliterating
for ever the triumphant memories which the Boers had for twenty years
associated with that date. A halt was necessary to provide food for
the hungry troops, and above all to enable the cavalry horses to pick
up. The supply of forage had been most inadequate, and the beasts had
not yet learned to find a living from the dry withered herbage of the
veldt.[Footnote: A battery which turned out its horses to graze found
that the puzzled creatures simply galloped about the plain, and could
only be reassembled by blowing the call which they associated with
feeding, when they rushed back and waited in lines for their nosebags
to be put on.] In addition to this, they had been worked most
desperately during the fortnight which had elapsed. Lord Roberts
waited therefore at Osfontein, which is a farmhouse close to
Paardeberg, until his cavalry were fit for an advance. On March 6th he
began his march for Bloemfontein.

The force which had been hovering to the south and east of him during
the Paardeberg operations had meanwhile been reinforced from Colesberg
and from Ladysmith until it had attained considerable
proportions. This army, under the leadership of De Wet, had taken up a
strong position a few miles to the east, covering a considerable range
of kopjes. On March 3rd a reconnaissance was made of it, in which
some of our guns were engaged; but it was not until three days later
that the army advanced with the intention of turning or forcing it. In
the meantime reinforcements had been arriving in the British camp,
derived partly from the regiments which had been employed at other
points during these operations, and partly from newcomers from the
outer Empire. The Guards came up from Klip Drift, the City Imperial
Volunteers, the Australian Mounted Infantry, the Burmese Mounted
Infantry and a detachment of light horse from Ceylon helped to form
this strange invading army which was drawn from five continents and
yet had no alien in its ranks.

The position which the enemy had taken up at Poplars Grove (so called
from a group of poplars round a farmhouse in the centre of their
position) extended across the Modder River and was buttressed on
either side by well-marked hills, with intermittent kopjes between.
With guns, trenches, rifle pits, and barbed wire a bull-headed general
might have found it another Magersfontein. But it is only just to Lord
Roberts's predecessors in command to say that it is easy to do things
with three cavalry brigades which it is dilficult to do with two
regiments. The ultimate blame does not rest with the man who failed
with the two regiments, but with those who gave him