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Updated: June 12, 2025
The details of the plan were well conceived. The battle would begin by a demonstration against the Brakfontein position, which the Boers had fortified by four tiers of trenches, with bombproof casemates, barbed wire entanglements, and a line of redoubts, so that it was obviously too strong to be carried frontally.
Straight as Matabele spears it comes down, sending pedestrians who have grown indifferent to shell-fire to huddle under cover, adding to the wretchedness of life in trench or bombproof as nothing else can.
And so, with another challenge from a picket, posted between the Barala village and the south trenches, where many of the loyal natives are doing duty, Saxham finds himself on the perilous tongue of land that lies behind Maxim Kopje South, and where the Staff Bombproof is situated.
Their ear-drums were numbed from the shock. And the noise that filled the valley seemed like a thousand thunderbolts merged into one. Tom rushed from the bombproof, dropping the electric button. He caught sight of his gun, resting undisturbed on the improvised carriage. "Hurray!" he cried in delight. "She stood the charge all right.
After zigging through a bombproof half-furlong of roof, he was dropping into a large twilit cave. The blue-black ceiling twinkled with stars. The walls were pierced at floor level by a dozen archways with busy niche stores and glowing advertisements crowded between them. From the archways some three dozen slidewalks curved out, tangenting off each other in a bewildering multiple cloverleaf.
Because of the inundation directly in front, they are rather shallow, and at this point were built against the railroad embankment with earth, boards, and here and there a steel rail from the track. Some of them were covered, too, but not with bombproof material. The tops were merely shelters from the rain and biting wind. The men lay or sat in them it was impossible to stand.
Once more they retired to the bombproof, and again the great gun was fired. Once more the ground shook, and they were nearly deafened by the shock. Then, as they looked toward the distant hillside, they saw a shower of earth and great rocks rise up. It was like a sand geyser. Then, when this settled back again, there was left a gaping hole in the side of the mountain.
The trenches were hasty affairs, narrow and shoulder-deep, very like trenches for gas or water pipes, and reasonably safe except when a shell burst directly overhead. One had struck that morning just on the inner rim of the trench, blown out one of those crater-like holes, and discharged all its shrapnel backward across the trench and into one of the heavy timbers supporting a bombproof roof.
Saxham thought of the strip of veld between there and the Hospital, even more fraught with peril than the patch he had just traversed, or the distance yet to be covered between the Sisters' bombproof and the Women's Laager, where Death, with the red sickle in his fleshless hand, stalked openly from dawn to nightfall. "From the Convent, carrying it across after dark.
The slender little hands were busy with the slate and pencil as Saxham looked at them. "Those that came and helped us had been sent on from the Convent bombproof, where they'd been to look for her" Sister Tobias glanced sorrowfully at the owner of those little busy hands "with an Ambulance chair and a story of more trouble. But Our Lady had had pity on the child.
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