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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
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bring his column back to Ladysmith from Dundee unhindered, but the rest of the British also had
to return, for General Prinsloo’s Orange Free State men were threatening Ladysmith from the west
and north.
See also:
Ladysmith, Siege of; Talana, Battle of; Yule, Brigadier-general James; Documents: The Battle of
Elandslaagte, extract from Steevens, G. W., From Capetown to Ladysmith,Edinburgh, William
Blackwood and Sons, 1900.
Reference:
Baker, Anthony, Battles and Battlefields of the Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902 (Milton Keynes, The
Military Press, 1999); Marix Evans, Martin, The Boer War: South Africa 1899–1902 (Oxford,
Osprey Publishing, 1999); Rudgren, Pat, Battle of
Elandslaagte,www.battlefields.co.za/history/anglo-boer_war
Elands Poort, Action at,
17 September 1901
The attempts of the Boer commandos to enter Cape Colony as the guerrilla war drew on were
countered by British patrols along the Orange River and in the Stormberg mountains. Assistant
Commandant-general Jan Smuts’s attempt was made in cold, wet weather and culminated in an action
against C Squadron 17th Lancers in which twenty-nine British died and forty-one were wounded,
against a Boer loss of one dead and six wounded. Smuts’s men were able to rearm, remount and
reclothe themselves at the Lancers’ expense and, dressed in British uniform, they rode on into the
Cape.
Smuts crossed the Orange River into the Cape on 3 September and narrowly escaped being shot
at Moordenaarspoort, Murderer’s Gorge. For ten days his men sought a way through the British
patrols and finally got out through what is now known as Smuts Pass, west of Dordrecht, heading in
the direction of Tarkastad. On 17 September they were entering a valley leading to the Elands River
when they were warned of the presence of an English patrol, the 17th Lancers, whom they engaged
and overcame.
The Boers were, by this time, in rags. Few had shirts or shoes, make-shift canvas capes served
as coats and rawhide sandals as footwear. Deneys Reitz was invited by one of the wounded British
officers, Lord Vivian, to inspect the contents of his tent. Reitz was wearing a grain bag with a hole cut
for his head and an old pair of elastic-sided boots given to him a few days before by a farmer’s wife.
Reitz wrote: “I was not slow to take the hint, with the result that having started that morning with a
grain-bag for my chief garment, a foundered horse, an old rifle, and two cartridges, I now appeared in
a handsome cavalry tunic, riding-breeches, &c., with a sporting Lee-Metford, full bandoliers and a
superb mount, a little grey Arab, which his groom said had been the property of [the late] Lieutenant
Sheridan”. There had already been confusion over clothing on this mission. Some of Smuts’s men had
been mistaken for British troops because of their acquired garments, and this kind of incident led the
British to threaten to execute Boers masquerading as Brit-
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