Lord Kitchener, as I heard later on, arrived there shortly after noon on the following day.
We left Wonderheuve early in the morning, and advanced along Rietspruit until we reached the farm of Vaalbank, where we remained until the evening of the next day, June the 13th.

That night I saw clearly that it was necessary for us to cross the line if we wanted to keep ourselves and our prisoners out of the clutches of Lord Kitchener; he had failed to find us at Kroonstad, and would be certain to look for us in the country to the west of the line.
I also felt myself bound to wreck this line, for it was the only railway which Lord Roberts could now utilize for forwarding the enormous quantities of stores which his vast forces required.[56] I resolved therefore to cross it at Leeuwspruit, north of Rhenoster River bridge (which the English had recently repaired), and then, in the morning, to attack the English garrisons which had again occupied Roodewal and Rhenoster River bridge.
I had given orders that all the cattle along the railway line should be removed; General Louis Botha had made the same regulation in regard to the country round Pretoria and Johannesburg.

If only our orders had been carried out a little more strictly, and if only the most elementary rules of strategy had been observed in our efforts to break the English lines of communication, Lord Roberts and his thousands of troops in Pretoria would have found themselves in the same plight as the Samaritans in Samaria--they would have perished of hunger.

It was not their Commander-in-Chief's skill that saved them, not his habit of taking into account all possible eventualities--no, they had to thank the disobedience of our burghers for the fact that they were not all starved to death in Pretoria.
I arranged with General Froneman that he should cross the line at the point I had already selected, that is to say, north of Rhenoster River bridge, and that in the morning he should attack, from the eastern side, the English who were posted at Leeuwspruit Bridge.

I, in the meanwhile, would make my way with a Krupp to the west side of the line, and having found a place of concealment near Roodepoort, would be ready to fall upon the English as soon as I heard that the other party had opened fire on them from the east.
But my plan was to come to nothing.