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Wonderful thread.
Can someone tell me - Which Boer officers decided to concentrate their forces in a small area and hold the line at all costs? It was a tragic error and goes entirely against those quintessential Boer tactics outlined by Schikkerling:
"The Boer ... fights principally in scattered and extended order, concentrating only when very necessary... He... never grows sentimental over a position. With him retreat is no less a strategem than assault."
[Edit] Though looking at the map again, I was mistaken - the Boer forces did not concentrate any more than they did on the Tugela line - the Boer line extends well over 10 miles. As Amery points out (Times History Ch 13 p 459) "Thus the culminating battle of Bergendal was reduced simply to a duel of Buller's artillery and a couple of his battalions against seventy-four men."
So not a flawed Boer strategy...

Can we link the two photos and identify one fallen Boer as "Sergeant John Pretorius, mortally wounded in the head, the sturdy, handsome man..."?

This does look like a very plausible positive identification Rob.