The Boer War by Martin Marix Evans

Author:Martin Marix Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: South-Africa
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1998-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

A challenge when they reached the top was followed by a fusillade before the little picquet of Boers fled, leaving one of their number dead to a bayonet thrust.

Now the task was to entrench, but the true shape of the supposed summit was unknown and in the dark impossible to determine. Moreover, the ground was rocky in the extreme and digging out of the question. They therefore raised what breastworks they could from the loose stone on the surface and waited for dawn. When it came fog prevented a proper evaluation of their position at first, but a brief lifting of the murk showed they were too far south and east, so they moved forward to the edge of the hill-top and attempted to build again. Louis Botha, made aware by the fleeing burghers that the hill was occupied, made provision for the artillery to be ready to open fire with daylight.

Deneys Reitz and his companions of the Pretoria commando had been sent from Ladysmith to reinforce the men on the Tugela line. In the night they heard the sound of rifle fire and with the morning were summoned to help.

Heavy shells were lobbing over as we went, but we had not far to go and in less than fifteen minutes had reached the bottom of Spion Kop. Here stood hundreds of saddled horses in long rows, and we looked up at an arresting sight.

The Boer counter-attack had started shortly before. Eight or nine hundred riflemen were climbing up the steep side of the hill in face of a close-range fire from the English troops…Many of our men dropped, but already the foremost were within a few yards of the rocky edge which marked the crest, and soldiers were rising from behind their cover to meet the final rush. For a moment or two there was confused hand-to-hand fighting, then the combatants surged over the rim and on to the plateau beyond where we could no longer see them.

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