A Remarkable Defence.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XIX, 28 September 1900, Page 7

A Remarkable Defence.

In a letter (extracts from which appeared on page 7 last Tuesday) to «s Trooper ‘ Toby ’ Spencer refers to a fight near Wepener at a place he calls * Jamieson’s Drift.’ This should, doubtless, be ‘Jammersberg- Drift,’ where the real defence of Wepener took place. Of that heroic stand it has been written by Colonel Coope, of the Colonial Division:—‘They made at Jammersberg Drift a stand unique in the annals of war. They held a front, or rather a circle, of 10 miles against a force of 8,000 Boers, armed with 13 pieces of artillery, the British being only 1400 men, having 7 guns. This was all they could put into the fio-hting line, and left very few to supply the fighters with food, some of them being two miles from their camps. This position, moreover, was an open one, until hasty entrenchments were thrown up in the presence of the enemy. To do this every man was for 17 consecutive days, without an hour’s respite, confined to n narrow trench commanded by the superior guns of the enemy, four days wet to the skin, and lying in pools of water under a tropical rain. The more famous sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking will live in history, but they did not need that every man of the garrison should be on watch under fire for 17 consecutive days. The effect on the campaign on this holding out can hardly be ohrer estimated. Had the Colonials at Jammersberg Drift surrendered, the position (when properly manned is almost impregnable) would have been occupied by 8000 Boers with 20 guns, and tho Jammersberg Mountains, the key of the position, would have been taken into the enciente. " This the Colonials were toe weak to occupy. According to the laws of war, modern as well as ancient, before Lord Roberts could then have advanced on Pretoria, he must either have taken or masked the Jammersberg post. To do the former, 80,000 British troops would not have sufficed under the new conditions on which the Boers would have entered it.’ Such are the glowing terms in which a disinterested officer wrote of the prowess of Colonial troops.