SOUTH AFRICA.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15268, 3 May 1915, Page 8

SOUTH AFRICA.

BRILLIANT BRITISH OPERATION. HEAVY FIGHTING. ENTSMY DISPERSED AND • PURSUED. (Received May 3rd, 12.10 a.m.) CAPE TOWN, May 2. It is officially stated that Colonel MacKenzie's flying column, by a brilliant feat, pushed 120 mile s from Bethany, over the most difficult arid country, with scarcely any transport facilities, and surprised the enemy entraining at Gibeon station. A -small party destroyed the line north of Gibeon; and captured a whole train and a quantity of live stock. The Ninth Brigade heavily engaged the enomy at night, but withdrew, after suffering heavy casualties, including seventy prisoners. Two brigades attacked at dawn, and dispersed and pursued the enemy, who were eight hundred strong, for twenty miles. They recovered all the prisoners, and captured several guns and Maxims, and two hundred prisoners. But for difficult rocky ground, they would have surrounded the enemy. Three Union officers and twenty men were killed, and eight officers and 45 men wounded. Bethany is a town in Gorman SouthWest Africa, about 100 miles east of Luderitz Bay, and twelve miles north of the railway from that bay to Keetmannshoof, which was occupied by the Union troops a few days ago. Bethany is a Rhenish mission station, founded in 1842. Gibeon is a town on the railway from Keetmannshoop to Windhoek, the seat of the German administration of South-West Africa. By the railway Gibeon is 100 miles north of Keetmannshoop, and about 120 miles northeast across . a great desert from Bethany.