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On April 17 the enemy shelled the Tower with 8-inch howitzers generally a sign that he meant to attack sooner or later. The Tower contained a formidable concrete machine-gun emplacement, facing of course our way, but by General Rees' orders it was blown up by the Engineers.
The Zouaves had now reached wet land, where a staff officer met Colonel Craig and piloted him through a field of brush and wild grass, and under the parapets of an emplacement for big guns, on which men were nonchalantly working, to the beginning of a newly laid road of logs. The noise of musketry and the smoke had become prodigious.
The approach to it was commanded by Bell's Kopje and Thornhill's Kopje, but a Battalion of Rifles under Metcalfe wriggled in between them at midnight on December 11, without alarming the enemy, and almost reached the crest of the eminence which was thereafter known as Surprise Hill, before the Boers opened fire. The assaulters encircled the emplacement, but could not find the gun.
Most of us are unfeignedly glad to feel the warmth of the sun again. That working-party, filling sandbags just behind the machine-gun emplacement, are actually singing. Spring gets into the blood, even in this stricken land. The Boche over the way resents our efforts at harmony. Sing us a song, a song of Bonnie Scotland! Any old song will do.
The days were spent on road-work or on big communication saps, and at night, more often than not, there were sapping fatigues in the front firing line, squadron supports, heavy pieces of artillery to haul to their emplacement, and the like.
At the close of a gloomy October day, six unshaven, mud-encrusted machine gunners, the surviving members of two teams, were gathered at the C Company gun emplacement. D Company's gun had been destroyed by a shell, and so we had joined forces here in front of the wrecked dugout, and were waiting for night when we could bury our dead comrades. A fine drenching rain was falling.
But every time my eyes sank from the bronze, to look at some other point in the landscape to identify the emplacement of such and such a battery or the gully that had concealed the advance of such and such a troop, my glance perpetually returned to that word "VICTORY," sculptured by itself upon the stone.
So the first-fruits of the raid was Captain Ayling, of the Emma Gees. He had stationed himself in a concrete emplacement in the front line, the better to "observe" the fire of his guns when it should be required.
Two battery positions came into view, and near one of them I saw tracks and could distinguish movements by a few tiny dots. It became evident that, barring accident, we should reach the French zone. When slightly behind the trenches a confused chatter from below told us that machine-guns were trained on the machine. By way of retaliation, I leaned over and shot at what looked like an emplacement.
«Ce vallon offre des remarques intéressantes pour l'histoire naturelle, sa position, sa forme, et son nivellement ne laissent aucun doute que cet emplacement n'ait été le séjour des eaux; en examinant les bords du lit de la Reuss, on reconnoît que le terrain de ce vallon est par couches horizontales de pierres argileuses; le pied des montagnes qui entourent le vallon sur la droite est de pierre calcaire grise,
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