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Updated: May 24, 2025
Then back they turned and met Hunter sauntering up the valley, and we gave them the time of day with our cow-guns, and told them how glad we were to see them. "Fancy meeting you, of all people in the world!" And so they chucked it. It was a complete checkmate. The surrender occupied the next three days; our total bag 4100, I am told. I wish you could have been there.
The two great "cow-guns," so called from the long teams of oxen that drag them, were hauled up the slope. The enemy got an inkling of our intention now, and his shells began to fall more adjacent. Then our fire began. It was difficult to see clearly.
So with wings beating and body steadily advancing, like some great kite or bird of prey, we have flapped our way northward. Even here no stand was made. The town is strongly defended with several new forts, armed, we were told, with 10-inch guns, with a range of about twelve miles, which we supposed would put the noses of our poor cow-guns completely out of joint.
You have done splendidly. To-morrow all Scotland will be ringing with the news." This charge will, no doubt, take rank as one of the most brilliant things of the war. Next morning at dawn, escorting the cow-guns, I came to where the Boers had held out so long among the scattered rocks. The Gordons were burying some of the Boer dead. There were several quite youngsters among them.
We have a shell-proof shelter in a ravine close by, handy in case of visits from De Wet; and the two great cow-guns, like guardian angels, doze on the top of the hill behind the hospital. Under the shadow of their wing I always feel perfectly safe. From patients who come in daily from various parts of the country and various columns we get a general impression of how things are going.
The Boer position was only about two miles from our ridge; a long shallow hollow of bare ground, without bush or rock, or any sort of cover on it, except a few anthills, separating us from them. Our field-batteries opened, and then the great five-inch cow-guns roared out. After a shot or two all our guns got the range, a mere stone's throw for the great five-inchers.
Think of your trailing cow-guns unsupported through a hostile country!" cried Charteris. "But it was a regular case of night or Blücher, old boy, and I knew what a brick you were." "A brick! I feel like one," laughed Gerrard. He and Charteris looked at one another and laughed again.
So it was with a feeling of the most gleeful satisfaction that we heard next morning, having followed the Boers up some two or three miles without seeing anything of them, the deep, heavy baying of a big gun in the distance, which we all recognised as the voice of one of the 5-inch cow-guns that had gone with Bruce-Hamilton. It fired a few shots and then ceased.
We have had no fresh meat for a long time back, but one manages with an occasional change of bully beef or a commandeered chicken. The camp is a big one, for infantry reinforcements have come in, and two cow-guns. August 20. There was no hour appointed for reveillé overnight, but we were wakened by the pickets at 2.30 A.M. At once harnessed up, and marched off without breakfast.
In confined spots like chalk-pits, they knock a four-point-seven silly. But you should read the directions before'and. In the intervals of the slow but well-directed fire of my cow-guns, Jules, who had found a sheep-pond in the dark a little lower down, gave what you might call a cinematograph reproduction o' sporadic musketry.
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