On August 5 firing had been heard in the direction of Elands River, so next day Baden-Powell marched with his own and Mahon’s mounted troops about half-way to Brakfontein.  Here he heard guns firing in a westerly direction, but as the sound seemed to grow fainter and fainter, he assumed, without, however, waiting for the reports of his scouts, that Carrington had succeeded in withdrawing Hore towards Mafeking.

After Carrington’s retreat to Zeerust on August 5 and Baden-Powell’s to Rustenburg on the 6th, Lord Roberts had given up all hope of saving this garrison.  But on the 13th a runner from Colonel Hore had arrived at Crocodile Pools, announcing that he had not surrendered.  On hearing this the Field Marshal ordered Kitchener to take part of his force to relieve him.  Kitchener started on the 16th. from Quaggafontein with Little’s, Broadwood’s, and Smith-Dorrien’s brigades.  After Carrington had come up and gone away again on August 5, the garrison, though apparently left to their fate, would hear nothing of surrender, but made up their minds to fight as long as they had ammunition and strength to use it.  Luckily they were well provided with food, and the Boers, as usual in their sieges, were content to sit round and fire at them without seriously attempting to rush the place as they should have done.  The garrison also kept up their spirits by sudden raids at night on adventurous Boers or guns that came too near.  Thus, as at Wepener, it became a game of patience for the garrison, dissimilar only in this, that at Elands River there was no promise of support to buoy up the garrison with hope.

However, on August 16, after eleven days’ siege, De la Rey moved away on the news of the approaching relief columns, and Lord Kitchener rode in to set free the garrison.

This siege, like that of Wepener, was especially a Colonial triumph; there the garrison had been chiefly Cape Colonials, here the majority were Australians of Carrington’s first Brigade, the rest being Rhodesians, and it would be difficult to praise overmuch the determination and fine spirit shown by these Colonials in their first opportunity of distinguishing themselves as a corps.  Every soldier who saw the place afterwards expressed surprise that they could have held out so long, and it is therefore the more creditable to them to have done so when every hope of relief seemed entirely cut off; while, at a time when surrenders and retreats were not sufficiently rare, the example shown by these splendid men was even more important than the position they held.

THE GREAT WAR

+Source.+—­The Times History of the War and Encyclopaedia, Vol.  I, p. 161; Vol.  II, p. 31; Vol.  III, p. 126

     The aggressive policy of Germany led to the outbreak in 1914 of the
     greatest war in history; for nearly every country in the world
     ultimately became involved in the struggle.