FIGHT AT BRAKSPRUIT.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 386, 10 April 1902, Page 2

FIGHT AT BRAKSPRUIT.

BRAVERY OF THE BRITISH. BOERS CLIMB TREES. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright • London, April 9. The Standard says that the Klerksdorp reverse had a revisal at Brakspruit on the thirty-first, the most decisive cheek of De la Rey’s career.

Colonel Walter Kitchener sent seventeen hundred well mounted men under Cookson to reconnoitre in the direction of Hart. They were soon in touch with five hundred Boers escorting a convoy. The pursuit was soon relinquished on news that two thousand Boers ahead of the convoy were returning. Cookson halted at Brakspruit. A shell from a Boer gun on a ridge four thousand yards distant dropped into the camp. Masses of the enemy appeared on the flanks, leading to a general engagement. Twenty-five Canadians and forty-five mounteds were posted a mile and a half on Cookson’s right, 50yds beyond a belt of trees. Two companies of artillery and rifles held a farmhouse on the left flank, 1000yds away, while the remainder of their force stretched along Brakspruit. Covering a farmhouse next them was Keir’s Twenty-eighth Mounteds, Second Kitchener’s Fighting Scouts, the bulk of Cookson's Second Canadians, and Damant’s Force.

De la Rey sought to rush the farmhouse which was the key of the position, the heavier guns aiming at the camp, the pom-poms concentrating on a spruit. Five hundred Boers occupied a ridge. Riding in lines of extended order they galloped within five hundred yards of the farm-house. A volley caused them to halt. The volleys were returned by a cross fire. Volleys of shells from the camp caused them to retreat to the ridge. Meanwhile six hundred Boers under cover of a belt of trees charged seventy British and demanded their surrender. Carruthers was shot by the foremost at fifteen paces. His companions were shelterless, and lay in the grass and fired steadily straight at the Boers, who bolted back to the trees, some climbing and firing. Others, spreading in line, kept at bay for two hours. Then they rushed and captured fifteen survivors.

Carruthers was alone, and was not seriously hurt. He declined to go to the hospital. Some wished to shoot him, but others declared that he was too brave a man to die thus. Several were wounded twice and thrice. Gradually the British were surrounded. The defence was spirited, but the enemy at four o’clock were beaten off. The Boer casualties totalled two hundred and seventy-five.