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Updated: June 18, 2025
At night I heard the guns go out eastward along the Helpmakaar road to take up a position on our right. At three I was up in the morning darkness, and riding slowly northward with the brigade that was to form our centre, up the familiar Newcastle road. We had not far to go. The Boers save us a lot of exertion.
The lady's name is Mrs. Louis Nicodemus, now of Maritzburg. For the Zulu's ancestry I promised no provision. Sunday, November 5, 1899. The armistice lasted all day, except that the enemy threw two shells at a waggon going up the Helpmakaar road and knocked it to pieces, and, I hear, killed a man or two I don't know why. The townspeople were very busy building shelters for the bombardment.
They will cross the Tugela, I should say, between the point where the Mooi runs into it and its junction with the Buffalo, and go up through Colsie, and then either through Helpmakaar or Lazarath." "Well, I hope we shall catch them long before they get to the Tugela."
One was a fine sergeant of the Liverpools, who held the base of the Helpmakaar road where it leaves the town eastward. Sergeant Macdonald was his name, a man full of zeal, and always tempted into danger by curiosity, as most people are. Instead of keeping under shelter of the sangar when the guns on Bulwan were shelling the position, he must needs go outside "to have a look."
Its menace to the Boer centre near Glencoe, through which passed the railway to the north, attracted commandos away from the enemy's left flank at Helpmakaar and facilitated the turning movement.
Accordingly just after ten certain troops of the Imperial Light Horse, under Colonel Edwards, the Natal Carbineers, and Border Mounted Rifles, all under the command of Colonel Royston, suddenly received orders to march on foot along the Helpmakaar road. About 600 went, though only 200 of them actually took part in the final enterprise.
In the course of the day two attacks had been made upon other points of the British position, the one on Observation Hill on the north, the other on the Helpmakaar position on the east.
These creatures are stealthy in their habits, lurking among woods, firing smokeless powder with very little flash; consequently they are very difficult guns to locate. Their favourite diet appeared to be balloons; or, failing them, the Devons in the Helpmakaar Road or the Manchesters in Cæsar's Camp.
When we were talking to-day to the cavalry, one of the officers mentioned that we had still telegraphic communication with Ladysmith, for although the wires by the railway are cut, it is possible to communicate through Helpmakaar. The Boers seem to have forgotten that, for it is quite out of the direct line, and nearly double as far round.
On the hills the soldiers are still at work completing their shelter-trenches and walls. But perhaps they are more exposed than all the others except the Devons, who lie along a low ridge beside the Helpmakaar road, open to shell from two points, and perhaps to rifle-fire also. The Irish Fusiliers, under Major Churchill, have a very ingenious series of walls and covers.
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