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Updated: June 8, 2025
So we watched until nightfall, when some companies of the Queen's, from General Hildyard's Brigade, arrived, and took over the charge of our hill from us, and we descended to get our horses, and perhaps some food, finding, by good luck, all we wanted, and lay down on the ground to sleep, quite contented with ourselves and the general progress of the army.
Two battalions of Hildyard's Brigade, the West Yorkshires and the Devons, moved towards the drift in the usual open formation, occupied the houses, and began to entrench themselves in the fields. Six batteries came into action from the wooded heights commanding the passage. The pontoons advanced.
Lyttleton and Hildyard's brigades occupied the peak, and Barton, with the Fusilier battalions, remained to the left of its base. As the mounted infantry had, before opening fire, taken shelter behind bushes and rocks, there were only two or three casualties, and they were much disappointed that the affair had been so trifling.
Buller appears to have been unaware how far the Boer trenches extended towards the west, and to have assumed that only the kopjes immediately opposite Colenso were occupied. Hildyard's Brigade was ordered to march in the direction of the "iron bridge," to cross at that point, and then to "seize the kopjes north of the iron bridge."
It was only in the centre that even partial success was gained. Hildyard's men had reached but not captured Colenso bridge.
The remainder of yesterday may have been spent in reconnaissance, bridge building for an army that has crossed a river needs to have behind it as many bridges as possible in bringing up all the forces destined for the battle, perhaps including Hildyard's brigade, and in making complete arrangements for the attack which was probably delivered this morning.
Nightfall found the position unchanged, save that another pontoon bridge had been constructed during the day. Over this Hildyard's Brigade marched to relieve Lyttelton's, who came back for a rest under the cover of the Swartz Kop guns. Their losses in the two days had been under two hundred and fifty, a trifle if any aim were to be gained, but excessive for a mere demonstration.
One division of the artillery was to follow Lyttleton's brigade. The six naval guns were to advance on his right. The sixth brigade were to aid General Hart, and three batteries of Royal Artillery to move east of the railway, under cover of the sixth brigade, to a point from which they could prepare the way for Hildyard's brigade to cross the bridge.
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