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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
.Article – Online Historic Information | Military
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The Battle of Elandslaagte
G. W. Steevens was a journalist who had made his reputation reporting Britain’s
foreign wars. He was based in Ladysmith in 1899 and the following report was published
in his bookFrom Capetown to Ladysmith the following year. By that time Steevens, at
thirty years of age, had died of enteric (typhoid) fever during the siege of Ladysmith.
FRENCH’S RECONNAISSANCE – AN ARTILLERY DUEL – BEGINNING OF THE
ATTACK – RIDGE AFTER RIDGE – A CROWDED HALF-HOUR.
Ladysmith, Oct. 22.
From a billow of the rolling veldt we looked back, and black columns were coming up behind us.
Along the road from Ladysmith moved cavalry and guns. Along the railway line to right of it
crept trains – one, two, three of them – packed with khaki, bristling with the rifles of infantry. We
knew then that we should fight before nightfall.
Major-General French, who commanded, had been out from before daybreak with the Imperial
Light Horse and the battery of the Natal Volunteer Artillery reconnoitring towards Elandslaagte. The
armoured train – slate-colour plated engine, a slate-colour plated loopholed cattle-truck before and
behind, an open truck with a Maxim at the tail of all – puffed along on his right. Elandslaagte is a
little village and railway station seventeen miles north-east of Ladysmith, where two days before the
Boers had blown up a culvert and captured a train. That cut our direct communication with the force
at Dundee. Moreover, it was known that the Free State commandoes were massing to the north-west
of Ladysmith and the Transvaalers to attack Dundee again. On all grounds it was desirable to smash
the Elandslaagte lot while they were still weak and alone.
The reconnaissance stole forward until it came in sight of the little blue-roofed village and the
little red tree-girt station. It was occupied. The Natal battery unlimbered and opened fire. A round or
two – and then suddenly came a flash from a kopje two thousand yards beyond the station on the right.
The Boer guns! And the next thing was the hissing shriek of a shell – and plump it dropped, just under
one of the Natal limbers. By luck it did not burst; but if the Boer ammunition contractor was suspect,
it was plain that the Boer artillerist could lay a gun. Plump: plump: they came right into the battery;
down went a horse, over went an ammunition-waggon. At that range the Volunteers’ little old 7pounders were peashooters; you might as well have spat at the enemy. The guns limbered up and
were off. Next came the vicious phutt! of a bursting shell not fifty yards from the
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