gings out of the sand, having spent the night sitting on the
rocks.
About December 18th, after the failure of General Buller's first
attempt to relieve us, there was a general interchange of posts
amongst the troops of our section, and the detachment received orders
to proceed to the Newcastle Road examining guard. We were all heartily
sick of the spruit, and glad of the change. It was about this time
that our rations began to be diminished, and we had completely run out
of all extras. The post of the examining guard was on the road just
inside the ridge which formed our general line of defence, but by
night we moved out as a piquet about half a mile on to the veld into a
spruit which ran under the Harrismith line, whence we patrolled out to
Brooke's Farm, and the surrounding country. I think this was the worst
post we had throughout the siege, as we came in for a long spell of
wet weather, and night after night had to lie out on the open veld
from 8 p.m. till 4 a.m., wet to the skin and miserably cold. The
duties on this post came very hard on our men, as we had to find a
double and single sentry by day, so that they never got a night in
bed, and only about one day in three off duty.
On Christmas Eve the men came into possession of a fine pig, so that
we all had pork for our Christmas dinner, a great change from eternal
'trek ox,' but unfortunately nothing stronger to drink than tea. I'm
sure it was the first Christmas any of us had spent in such an
uncongenial way.
On January 6th the enemy made their desperate attack on Waggon Hill
and Caesar's Camp. They seem to have completely surprised our
outposts, as they succeeded in crawling up the hill in the dark, and
the fighting commenced at 3 a.m. The cannonade all day was something
tremendous, 'Long Tom' firing 125 rounds. They kept us pretty busy on
our side of the defences as well, but never developed any serious
attack. Whilst on this post we were subjected to a continuous and
daily course of sniping, the enemy getting on the kopjes behind
Brooke's Farm, and firing all day at a range of 2800 yards. At this
range the bullets used to whiz over the hill and drop amongst us,
although we were only a few yards behind the crest. Higginson and I
used to spend hours lying on the crest with rifles and glasses trying
to spot them, but never succeeded in doing so, as they used to take up
their position before dawn and never move all day.
It was about this time that our me
|