Wessels; Mr.E.R.

Grobler commanded at Colesberg, and Mr.J.H.Olivier at Stormberg.
I spent my first few days at Magersfontein in organizing the Free State burghers.

When this task had been accomplished, General De la Rey and I asked General Cronje's permission to take fifteen hundred men, and carry on operations in the direction of Hopetown and De Aar with the intention of breaking Lord Methuen's railway communications.

But Cronje would hear nothing of the scheme.

Say what we would, there was no moving him.
He absolutely refused to allow fifteen hundred of his men to leave their positions at Magersfontein, unless the Government found it impossible to procure that number of burghers from elsewhere.