Another account said:--"The battalion, consisting of the Duke of Cambridge's Own and three companies of Irish Yeomanry--under 500 in all--reached Kroonstad on Friday morning, May 22, after a long forced march. A few hours after their arrival they received an urgent message from General Colvile requiring them to join him without delay at Lindley, and they started at 8 P.M. that same evening with one day's rations, reaching Lindley, fifty miles distant, on the Sunday morning. When the advanced guard reached the town they found it apparently deserted, the only signs of British occupation being empty beef and biscuit tins; and were informed that General Colvile had left at daybreak. Almost immediately they were fired at from behind walls and houses, and finding the place untenable retreated about a mile outside the town, where Colonel Spragge took up a good position on some kopjes, with a stream of water and good shelter for the horses and waggons. This place they defended, fighting by day and fortifying by night, till Thursday, at 2 P.M., on slender rations, though surrounded by greatly superior numbers. On Thursday morning the Boers were largely reinforced, and also brought up cannon--three Krupps and a 'pom-pom,'--when the shell-fire telling dreadfully at short range, Colonel Spragge felt it would be madness to hold out longer, and surrendered after losing more than seventy-eight in killed and wounded out of his small force--when all was over some of the unwounded were so exhausted that they could hardly march into Lindley, where their gallant enemies as well as the non-combatants gave them the highest credit for the stand they had made in an almost hopeless position. Next day Lord Methuen arrived after a splendid forced march, and the wounded were set free." In regard to the loss of the Duke of Cambridge's Yeomanry, there was a good deal of criticism, and accounts dealing with the _raison d'être_ of the disaster vary. Mr. Winston Churchill, in support of Sir H. Colvile, declared that it was sent out with the absurdly inadequate escort by the fiat of a higher authority, with the full knowledge that Heilbron was surrounded by a force of Boers estimated at from 4000 to 5000 men. It was also despatched without warning, being sent, or at any rate received at Heilbron, so that it was impossible to operate from the latter place to assist its passage, especially as it was actually captured almost immediately after leaving Kroonstad, and fourteen miles from Heilbron.