The river curves and winds, its course marked by
the tops of the willows that grow along its banks. The land on both
sides stretches bare and almost level, but there are a few rises and
knolls from which our artillery smashes down its fire on the Boer
laager. At one point you can make out a ragged congregation of waggons,
broken and shattered, some of them burning or smouldering. That is where
the laager is, but not a soul can one see move. The place looks an utter
solitude, bare and lifeless in the glare of the sun. There is no reply
to our busy guns. The little shrapnel clouds, stabbed with fire, burst
now here now there, sometimes three or four together, over the spot, and
the blue haze floats away, mingling with the darker, thicker vapour from
the less frequent lyddite. "What are they shooting at?" a stranger would
say; "there is nobody there." Isn't there? Only 4000 crafty, vigilant
Boers, crowding in their holes and cuddling their Mausers. Ask the
Highlanders.
You will have heard all about that by this time. The desperate attempt
last Sunday to take the position by storm. It was another of those
fiendish "frontal attacks." Have we been through Belmont and Graspan and
Modder River and Magersfontein for nothing? Or must we teach every
general in turn who comes to take charge of us what the army has learnt
long ago, that a frontal attack against Mausers is leading up to your
enemy's strong suit.
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