Nelspruit - The Bergendal monument, a short distance from the national road outside Belfast, rises into the air like a rocket waiting to be launched. It marks the joining of the former Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State with the British colonies of Natal and the Cape Province to form the Union of South Africa.
Nearby is a more humble stone pyramid, which is at the centre of the story I was told. My cousin and his wife, with whom I was staying in White River, told me that no visit was complete without meeting one of its “characters”, William “Huffy” Pott.
So there we sat in Huffy’s home, perched on a hill. The rocky outcrop, Legogote, a well-known landmark in that part of Mpumalanga, stood brooding in the background.
Huffy’s efforts to bring the Anglo-Boer War Battle of Bergendal to life led to him being invited as an honoured guest by the Inniskilling Fusiliers – among the regiments who fought there – to a regimental reunion in Ireland.
His hand on the booklet he published on that battle, Huffy began to fill in the background. Years ago, he and a syndicate bought land near the battlefield. Suddenly, as he stood in the veld, admiring his acquisition, there was a shimmering in the air. Put it down to heat haze, but Huffy said he heard a voice, not with his ears but with his soul, saying: “You will never belong on this farm until you know our history.”
Perplexed, he reminded himself that he was an accountant, not an historian. Still, he forged ahead with his quest. In an old Voortrekker cemetery, on the farm Wonderfontein, he found a plaque to a member of the Van Wyk family, who had been murdered by Swazi cattle thieves.
Trying to to track down the person who had placed the plaque, Huffy contacted the local telephone exchange.
“It was still in the days of shared party lines,” he said, “and the operator on the local exchange told me to leave it with her.”
She came up trumps and he was soon drinking coffee with Danie van der Berg, a descendant of the Van Wyks.
At first suspicious of this Englishman, the old man brought out a box containing a family Bible with a wooden cover, with a letter written by Sir Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien, who survived the Battle of Isandlwana and duly returned to this country during the Anglo-Boer War as a major-general.
The letter in question was written to Kommandant Kwaaiman Prinsloo of the Carolina Kommando, and General Joachim Fourie, in Leliefontein. “Smith-Dorrien wrote to them specifically because they had led the Boers at the Battle of Spioenkop,” said Huffy.
From what he could make out, the letter had been circulated among members of the kommando and came into the hands of Danie van der Berg, who presumably had an ancestor fighting with this Boer outfit.
Prinsloo and Fourie later died in the charge which overran the Canadian field guns at the Battle of Leliefontein, on November 7, 1900. Those were the days of chivalry, and Smith-Dorrien and his officers attended a memorial service for the two Boer leaders.
After the war, Smith-Dorrien erected the small pyramid monument to the fallen. It stands not far from the modern monument.
Huffy said the seven-day Battle of Bergendal, from August 21 to 27, reached its climax when, on the final day, the British firepower was focused on Bergendal koppie, held by 74 members of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republike Politie (ZARPS).
Records say that at the height of the attack, which lasted three hours, 40 guns were dropping more than 19 shells a minute on this outcrop – one of the heaviest bombardments of a small area that the world had known to date.
Then 1 500 British soldiers, made up four regiments, advanced on the hillock. Despite this, the ZARPS, who had dug into trenches behind rocks, held on to their position until they were overwhelmed. Amazingly, they lost only 12 men that day. As for the British, their 2nd Rifle Brigade, who bore the brunt of the attack, lost 22, and more than 100 were injured.
“This was the only battle in which all four Long Toms (on the Boer side) were used. It was also the last set battle of the war. General Louis Botha had managed to persuade the by then disheartened Boers to stage one last conventional battle at Bergendal.” - Sunday Tribune
l Huffy Pott can be contacted on 013 751 3604.