Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VII

At sundown on October 19th, Lukas Meyer left his bivouac with about 3,500 men and seven guns. De Jager's Drift was crossed about 9 p.m.; then, pressing through the Sunday's[90] river south-west of Maybole farm, Meyer's force emerged on to the bleak expanse of veld stretching east of Dundee. The Boer scouts, moving parallel to and north of the Landman's Drift road, drew with great caution towards Talana. Oct. 20th, 2.30 a.m., seizes Talana. At 2.30 a.m. a party of burghers came upon a British piquet of the Dublin Fusiliers mounted infantry, commanded by Lieut. C. T. W. Grimshaw, at the junction of the road with the track to Vant's Drift. Shots were exchanged, the piquet disappeared, and the Boer advance guard was upon the flat summit of Talana an hour before dawn, with Dundee sleeping five hundred feet below. Close on the heels of the scouts pressed the Utrecht and Wakkerstroom commandos, under Commandants Hatting and Joshua Joubert, of about 900 and 600 men respectively, with some 300 Krugersdorpers under Potgieter in addition, and a few men of the Ermelo commando. The rest of the main body, consisting of the Vryheid commando (600 men, under Van Staaden), the Middelburg commando (some 900 men, under Trichardt), portion of the Swazi Police, portion of the Piet Retief commando (170 men, under Englebrecht), and odd men of the Bethel and other absent commandos, made their way rapidly across the Dundee road, and took up position on the heights south of it. Of the artillery, two field-pieces (Creusot 75 m/m) were hauled into a depression nearly at the rear edge of the top of Talana, a "pom-pom" (37·5 m/m Vickers-Maxim) pushed forward to the advanced crest of the same eminence, and the remainder, consisting of two Krupps (75 m/m) and two more pom-poms, sent across under charge of the Vryheid men to their position to the south.