Big Bang at the Bridge (8 of 10)

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BIG BANG AT THE BRIDGE!

Today we believe the plan had been to withdraw from Colesberg and draw the British forces toward the river crossing at Norval’s Pont Bridge. Why De Villiers chose to alter the plan is not known but suffices to say his actions were not the choice of his fellow Generaals. Falling back before the full force of the Imperial troops, De Villiers blew up the Oorlogspoort Railway bridge and then, unaccountably, the one at Norval’s Pont in a ploy to slow down the British and cover his retreat. After the war, in an interview with a British War Correspondent, De Wet spoke bitterly about losing the bridge at Norval’s Pont.

He explained he had arranged for schanzes and sangars and all manner of defensive fortifications to be constructed on the koppies above the Waschbank. Anticipating the full force of the Relief Column to be coming after De Villiers, De Wet believed that the blowing of the bridge had cheated him of his greatest victory: an opportunity to annihilate the main British force as it was impelled to be “funnelled” into a helpless formation as it crossed the bridge and defenceless under the massed mausers that had been zeroed in at every point of the road as it led from the bridge.

Step up from the tarred road and you will find the old wagon road in question just a few metres to the left side as you face the river. Look up to the koppie and you will have a fair idea of what a “Tommy’s eye view” of De Wet’s ambush would have been. Now take a short drive round  to the Gariep Village’s land-fill rubbish dump where, instead of driving into the tip, stop and walk off to the left where a blocked off track forks away around the koppie and you will be able to make out, even today, how extensive De Wet’s schanze constructions had been. Stand behind them and look down to the old road and his brilliance becomes instantly clear. Any thinned out military column, as it would have been if the bridge had not been blown up, travelling along the road would, indeed, have had no cover and no chance of escaping the blizzard of mauser bullets that would have rained upon them. C’est la Guerre! The Battle of Norval’s Pont Bridge was the battle that never was. We can only speculate how many times De Wet must have rued that fateful day and how he must have looked to that koppie when he visited the village again just weeks after the end of the war.

De Wet seemed to have a special regard for Norval’s Pont and selected it for his first proposed guerrilla actions. But again his wishes were denied him. President Steyn argued that by heading South with his men while the British were moving on Kroonstad he feared the Transvaalers might say that the Free Staters “now that their country was in the enemy’s hands were going to leave them in the lurch”.

Next time:  The Hillman Brothers go to war…against a “Coolie Barber”!

Article courtesy of Rod Mann, Owner of the 'Pont, 2005 - 2010