At the same time as Brigadier-General Manie Botha had left Okaputa, Brigadier-General Lukin, with the 6th Mounted S.A.M.R.  Brigade, had left Omarasa.  We had therefore a perfect network of highly mobile forces advancing on the German position somewhere north.  Away on the right, from Windhuk and Okahandja through the Waterberg, was Brigadier-General Albert’s column.  On his left was Brigadier-General Myburgh.  Nearer the railway was Brigadier-General Manie Botha.  Next came the Commander-in-Chief with Headquarters Staff and Bodyguard; and, further, General Lukin.  For the time being Brigadier-General Brits, on the extreme left, had disappeared.

[Illustration:  The Last Phase.  Difficulties with General Botha’s car through the thick sand] [Illustration:  The Last Phase.  The Germans had a hobby of blowing up bridges.  Here is a fine specimen]

[Illustration:  General Frank’s house, Windhuk.  Photo of the two first men there taken under the flag hauled down by us] [Illustration:  Windhuk.  The first British station-master and one of his staff]

Brigadier-General Manie Botha now advanced right into the bush, supported by Brigadier-General Lukin, who occupied Eisenberg Nek, on the right flank.  Brigadier-General Myburgh, trekking by forced marches, in the course of his flanking movement on the right cut the line between Otavi and Grootfontein, and, swerving north, encountered the enemy at Asis and Gaub.  This column, having captured seventy Germans, marched straight on to Tsumeb, the extreme northerly limit of the railway, forty miles north of Otavi.  Here the enemy was attacked so resolutely that they surrendered with all arms and four field guns, and the Union prisoners of war were released.  And great was their rejoicing, too.  Other columns marching north had now reached Rietfontein and Grootfontein.

It so arose now that General Myburgh, having got for a brief space out of touch with the Commander-in-Chief, was not aware that the Germans had opened, on July 5, negotiations with General Botha.  General Myburgh was at once communicated with.  As a fact, at the time he entered Tsumeb, a conference was on hand farther south.

Why did the German forces in the Protectorate surrender without making the big stand they threatened?  If any proof be needed that they did intend to make a stand it is necessary only to glance at the plan of their final dispositions.  And that is just where General Botha and his forces had done their work.  There is not the least doubt, not the very least, that von Franke might have made a stand.  It would have been nothing more than a quixotically honourable waste of life ending in one only possible way.

He was surrounded before he knew it.