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Updated: September 26, 2025
In the meanwhile, I serve on as many War Committees in Wellingsford as is physically possible for Sergeant Marigold to get me into. I address recruiting meetings. I have taken earnest young Territorial artillery officers in courses of gunnery. You know they work with my own beloved old fifteen pounders, brought up to date with new breeches, recoils, shields, and limbers.
Down the road they would come, on the dead gallop, drivers standing in their stirrups, waving their whips and shouting at the horses, while the limbers bounded crazily over the shell-torn road, the men holding on for dear life and the shells bursting with a continuous roar all about them.
There were shell-holes in the road, some of which had been filled with the first material handy, but some had to be avoided. We saw no dead bodies, nor even dead horses, although smashed gun-carriages and limbers and broken wagons were everywhere.
Howrigan kept on till he was among the guns sabering the cannoneers, capturing the two pieces in the road with their limbers and ammunition. In a few minutes Custer and Chapman were in possession of the ridge and the entire line of the enemy was in full retreat. Back about 500 yards the enemy attempted to make a stand and the Seventh Michigan was ordered to charge.
Next day guns and limbers passed in a steady stream going south a sure indication that all efforts were being concentrated in widening the breach already made. That evening the Battalion returned to the huts at Couin much depressed at the prospect of taking up again the drab monotony of trench life after hopes aroused in the last few days.
Our waggon is with the guns, unhooked, and we and the team are with the limbers in rear. There is no shelter, for the ground is level. Boer guns on a kopje have got our range, and at one time seemed much interested in our team, for four shells fell in a circle round us, from thirty to forty yards off. It was very unpleasant to sit waiting for the bull's-eye.
The colonel's eyes gleamed. "Got any ammunition left after filling up the limbers?" he asked quickly. "Yes, sir about fifty rounds." "Right; give it 'em, and then pull out at once." The officer saluted and hurried off. The colonel lighted a cigarette and stood under a tree. "One of the most difficult things to decide upon in war," he soliloquised, "is to know the exact moment at which to retire."
It was a most picturesque wadi covered with olive trees, and what was more important with any amount of stones suitable for road-making just at hand. On the Latron-Beit Sira road stones were scarce and had to be man-handled in limbers or baskets often quite a distance, but here were stones of every size within a few yards of the road.
The dust of roads and fields, raised by horses, waggons, and limbers, had settled on them, showing up their wrinkles and getting into eyes, noses, and moustaches. Their clothes, patched as chance allowed during a halt under some hedge, were enamels of many-coloured pieces.
Then a shell blew a gun-team into fragments, plastering the men's faces with bloody shreds of flesh; and the boyish lieutenant, spitting out filth, coolly ordered up the limbers, and brought his section around into the road with a beautiful display of driving and horsemanship that drew raucous cheers from the Zouaves, where they lay, half stifled, firing at the gray line of battle gathering along the edges of the woods.
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