Lord Roberts’ plan of battle was as follows: The Cavalry Division, with Royal Horse Artillery and some other mounted troops, had orders to move round the enemy’s left by a night march and seize the line of low hills about two miles east of Poplar Grove. The 6th Division, with Martyr’s Horse and a howitzer battery, to follow the cavalry.
The bulk of the army in its advance would press the enemy in front, whilst French, heading him off from his line of retreat eastwards, and Kelly-Kenny blocking him similarly to the south, would combine to secure the capture of the whole force. The Modder was practically impassable at Poplar Grove Drift, owing to the heavy floods; but in order to ensure against any chance of the Boers escaping over the river, the 9th Division, with three naval 12-pounders, and covered on the outer flank by Henry’s Mounted Infantry, received orders to march on the northern bank'; the Highland Brigade on the right, that is to say, next to the river, and Smith-Dorrien’s Brigade on the left. The strength of the British Army amounted to 30,000 men, with 116 guns, whilst the enemy was estimated to have 14,000 men, with 40 guns. Actually, the Boer forces numbered perhaps one-third of the total credited to them.
Landon very naturally elected to accompany Lord Roberts* Headquarters, which were with Colonel Le Gallais, whose men led the advance of the main body, supported by the brigade of Guards. My own task was to cross the Koodoosrand Drift and attach myself to the fortunes of the 9th Division. Accordingly I made for Smith-Dorrien’s brigade, after a short halt at the Divisional Headquarters in order to gain a general notion of where the troops were going and what they were going to do. So far as I could gather, there was no expectation of taking any very active part; the duty assigned to the division being solely to prevent the enemy from escaping northwards over the river. However, I felt pretty certain that if a chance of doing any good work offered itself Smith-Dorrien would grasp it without fail and I was not disappointed. When I joined the brigade, the head of it furnished by the Shropshire Light Infantry was on a low rocky kopje, about a mile north of the river, whilst the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, echeloned slightly in rear of the Shropshires right, prolonged the line towards the Highland Brigade in the bush along the bank of the river. The Gordon Highlanders were in support of the Shropshires, and the Canadians supported the Corn-walls. Among the rocks at the top of the kopje I found the General with his Staff, Colonel Spens, and sundry other officers.
In the far distance we could hear, away on the enemy’s left, the sound of firing, but from where we were no signs of the army could be seen, since the kopjes upon the south bank of the river effectually hid Lord Roberts’ lines of approach. To our left Henry’s Mounted Infantry were skirmishing, and at the time unable to gain much ground. Boers could be distinguished moving about within their main position upon the south side of the river, and also a few upon the Leeuw Kop, about 3000 yards to our right front. At 9 a.m. Boer wagons began to move off eastwards, and it became evident that the enemy was about to retreat. In vain we strained our eyes and ears in the hope of finding that French had reached his positions beyond Poplar Grove.
At 9.20 the three naval 12-pounder guns came into action about 1200 yards to our right rear, and opened fire upon the enemy’s convoy, and upon some bodies of horsemen that had appeared in the distance. The fire was apparently ineffectual, but the range, being probably 7000 yards, was too great for the results to be properly observed. However, as not a single wagon in the convoy was checked in its career, it is certain that this target at all events was never struck by a shell. About 10 a.m. a Boer 9-pounder Krupp, on the summit of the Leeuw Kop, commenced replying to the naval guns, and had much the best of it. Owing to the height of the position occupied by the enemy, about 1800 feet above the plain, it was apparently impossible for our men to train their guns at the requisite elevation, and at 10.5 the guns changed position forward and to the right. But it was no good. Still the little gun on the hill kept dropping its shells all amongst the battery’ marvellous to relate, without effect whilst the nearest approach to an effective reply struck the hill at least fifty yards below the target. So the contest went merrily on; the Boer convoy, by this time nearly two miles long, having by 11.10 made such progress, in spite of the fire directed upon it, that its tail had left Poplar Grove.
At 11.45 Smith-Dorrien received a report from Henry that the enemy in front of him on the Blauberg’about 3000 yards north of the Leeuw Kop was giving way before his attack, and then in a moment the General decided that his time to move had come. There was no sign of French, and he saw that by pressing forward rapidly he might at least cut off the retreat of the gun on the Leeuw Kop, and not impossibly inflict some damage upon the tail of the Boer main body. The Shropshires were sent forward, Colonel Spens being ordered to incline slightly to his left towards the Blauberg, where the presence of Henry's Mounted Infantry in contact with the enemy would keep down the fire, and then, having passed through the opening, two companies were to swing round and scale the Leeuw Kop from its right rear, whilst the rest of the battalion, having gradually brought up its left shoulder, was to head for a single poplar tree on the river bank a short distance east of Poplar Grove farm.
Just at this moment came an order from Sir Henry Colville requiring a reinforcement to the Highland Brigade, which, it was said, was engaged in a "heavy rear-guard action.’ Smith-Dorrien complied by detaching the Canadians in the required direction, and at the same time explained that he had decided upon a movement which would, he thought, assist the Highland Brigade more effectually than if he were to reinforce them more heavily. The Gordons and Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry followed in support of the Shropshires, and later on, when the conversion to the right had been completed, the Gordons came into first line on the right of the Shropshires, amongst whom bullets were flicking up the dust pretty frequently, but with only trifling effect. Meanwhile, the two companies of the Shropshires had successfully scaled the hill and captured the gun; the Boers not awaiting the onslaught but retiring in haste down the south-east slope, and thence away along the river bank. Had the General had even one company of mounted infantry at his disposal this party must almost certainly have been cut off. However, we at all events got the gun, and this in those days and for long after represented an unusual class of success. The operations above described take but a few words to relate, but took a great deal of time to accomplish.
It was nearly 4 p.m. when, the Shropshires having completed the eastern circuit of a great "pan’ which had for a long time divided them from the Gordons on the west of it, the brigade was fairly on its way for Poplar Grove, and the Boers really in flight beyond the left flank. The distance from Poplar Grove was then about three miles, and, as nothing more seemed likely to happen, I rode forward alone, and on reaching the drift found it quite impassable, unless at the expense of a ducking. This I did not care to incur, as I deemed it extremely probable that our transport would not be up that night, and, as I had not a blanket, I did not care to sleep, unnecessarily, with damp extremities. Accordingly I left Jess at General Colville’s headquarters, which had already been established at a farm near the drift, and crossed over to the other side in an engineer punt. Landon, I soon heard, had gone back to Osfontein, and Young with him. It was too late now for me to reach camp before dark, so I determined to make the best of things. I recrossed the river, and arranged for the mare to remain where she was for the night; there was lots of ‘forage‘ at the farm, so for once she got a good feed of excellent stuff. For my part, I had some tea that General Colville kindly gave me, and then returned to the headquarter side of the river. At a ruined ‘store’ close handy were the headquarters of the 7th Division, and to the bounty of that most hospitable man, General Tucker, I am indebted for an excellent dinner. The night I spent under a comer of the house, with my feet towards an ‘international fire,’ which I had assisted the foreign attaches to make for the benefit of us all. Some went inside the house, but there were too many traces of a recent surgical occupation, and I preferred the open air. Early in the morning Mr. Hands, of the Daily Mail, drove up, and from him I obtained a good breakfast. Porridge and beefsteak the latter the usual ‘trek-ox,’ but the former excellent. Then came Landon, Young, and the impedimenta, and very soon we were settled in a delightful camp in the orchard close to the farmhouse. The results of the Poplar Grove fight were disappointing. The enemy evacuated his positions with the loss of one gun. Our cavalry sustained some fifty or more casualties. The enemy was not captured or punished in any serious fashion, and Messrs. Kruger and Steyn got away amongst the rest. The failure was due in the first place to some mistake, by which the Cavalry Division was late in marching off, and, secondly, to its having subsequently permitted itself to be drawn, en bloc, into a skirmish with the Boer outposts to the south, instead of pushing on to the position that it had been ordered to seize. Had General French reached his intended destination, the Boer army must have shared the fate of Cronje; and with the capture of Kruger and Steyn the war would probably have been brought to a close almost immediately. For the Boer army, as an army, no, avenue of escape lay open except that which the none arrival of General French permitted it to utilize.
Fully carried out, Lord Roberts’ scheme could scarcely have failed in achieving complete success. Actually it miscarried.
The morning after the fight I rode out to have a look at the Boer camp under the south-east slope of the Leeuw Kop, and there found an excellent set of iron tent-pegs, which I appropriated. The Royal Engineers were busy clearing a road by which to bring down the captured gun. This made me wonder why we should require a road to bring down a gun which the enemy had taken up without any similar assistance? But then, I reflected, we are not Boers. On the way back, I had lunch with the Shropshires, in accordance with a promise given the previous day. The regiment had received supplies from Kimberley, and for the time revelled in luxury. I had something very good that came out of a tin box, and washed it down with whisky and water. I have an idea that some officers were drinking claret, but this may be my imagination. At all events, I had a very excellent lunch, in spite of which I found myself full of pains and aches in the evening. My troubles may have resulted from sleeping on the ground without a blanket on the previous night, or perhaps from the after-effects of a bad fall I had on Tuesday, when Jess put her foot in a hole and rolled over me. However, 1 was fairly right again by Friday morning, and quite fit when the army continued its advance on Saturday morning.
