Sergeant Minifie of the 7^th New Zealand Mounted Rifles was stationed with the pom-pom and had run out of ammunition but heard that a new case of ammunition was coming up. He rallied his men and managed to hold on for about another fifteen minutes. The pom-pom fired twenty or more rounds and then jammed. The Boers came close to capturing the gun but Minifie and his men managed to run it down the hill where it ended up in a small ravine. The further advance of the Boers up the kloof and onto the high ground of the farm Mooifontein was stopped by the 3^rd New South Wales Mounted Rifles. Colonel C.F. Cox “fought like a tiger” and had formed a line across the head of the kloof with four of his picquets.

Captain A.R.G. Begbie of the R.G.A. was killed and Bombadier J. Ryan died of his wounds in the hospital at Harrismith. Colonel Cox apparently had three men wounded but there is no record of this in the casualty roll. No medals were awarded for this action but Kitchener’s chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Ian Hamilton wrote to Lord Roberts on 27^th February to say that “the New Zealanders, who are about our best men…did not belie their reputation on this occasion.”

De Wet had tried to get all his men to charge the line and may have resorted to his sjambok to persuade the slackers to move forward. There was now a gap in the line and many of the fighting men were able to get through with some of the cattle and horses. They rushed along the flat ground on the right bank of the Holspruit and up a valley which took them to safety and onto the high ground. De Wet and Steyn were with them and the two men in charge of de Wet’s little wagon also managed to get through the gap.

They headed for the Bothasberg and spent the night on the farm Bavaria. Some accounts, including de Wet, say that they returned to the battlefield sometime after the battle. Most of the crowd of civilians who had followed de Wet had been unable to break through the cordon and turned back to the south.

A young boy named Olivier and a wounded member of President Steyn’s bodyguard by the name of van der Merwe died at Bavaria and lie buried at Bavaria.

Another young boy, D.P. Celliers, was shot at Langverwacht and taken to a farmhouse across the British line. There he died and his grave is in a field with a modern granite headstone, placed there by Willem Naudé of Vrede. That farmhouse no longer exists.

23 New Zealanders were killed and 44 more were wounded, most of them from Canterbury and Otago in the South Island. They were buried in a mass grave on Langverwacht farm and in 1903 a monument was erected on the burial site. Boer casualties were also considerable. De Wet admitted to 11 dead and 12 wounded but the Boer practice of carrying away their dead could mean that several more were killed. Begbie’s grave is on a farm to the west of Langverwacht.