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Updated: June 19, 2025
Soon after seven o'clock a lyddite shell bursts there. Its red glare is followed by flame that does not come from lyddite. Above this darts a black dense cloud speckled with solid fragments that shoot into the air like bombs. Before we have time to think that a magazine has been blown up a double report, merging into a low rumble, reaches our ears.
Brave fellows, 'tis suspicted they mistook th' explosion of lyddite f'r a Pathrick's Day procession an' wint acrost to take a look at it." "Murdher, but 'tis dhreadful to r-read about. We have to change all our conciptions iv warfare. Wanst th' field was r-red, now 'tis a br-right lyddite green. Wanst a man wint out an' died f'r his counthry, now they sind him out an' lyddite dyes him.
All the trees were torn up or smashed by shells, great blocks of rock had been splintered and were stained yellow by the lyddite; mutilated bodies were lying everywhere Briton and Boer side by side; for during the short time "Vaalkrantz" had been in their possession the English had not had an opportunity of burying the bodies of friends or foe. I think I may quote a few paragraphs of what Dr.
This continued day and night for a whole week. It seemed as if General Buller were determined to annihilate all the Boers with his lyddite shells, so as to enable the soldiers to walk at their leisure to the release of Ladysmith. Certainly we suffered considerably from lyddite fumes.
It was quickly shrouded in a pall of drifting smoke, and dimly through this the observing officers directing the fire of their guns could see clouds of leaves and twigs whirling and leaping under the lashing shrapnel, could see branches and smashed tree-trunks and great clods of earth and stone flying upward and outward from the blast of the lyddite shells.
No further attention was paid to these tales, for lyddite was a terrible thing that could move kopjes. It was but a matter of hours until the Column would be with us, unless, indeed, it paused for rest. The next day, we felt, would end the Siege of Kimberley, and bring again into vogue good dinners, buttered bread, and something to drink.
They have guns that fire dinnymite an' guns that fire th' hateful, sickly green lyddite that makes th' inimy look like fiat money, an' guns that fire canned beef f'r th' inimy an' distimper powdher for th' inimy's horses. An' they have some guns that shoot straight." "Well, thin," Mr. Hennessy grumbled, "it's a wondher to me that with all thim things they ain't more people kilt.
Saturday was heralded in by the music of the Column's cannon, which verily had charms to soothe our savage breasts. It was lyddite melody; the lyddite shells were singing. It was a siege article of faith, a siege truism, that the Boers could not long stand up to a British bombardment; and it was an accepted dogma that lyddite was the article utilised to knock them down.
There is hardly any food, the remaining bags of biscuits are yellow from the lyddite fumes, so is everything, damp and yellow. The stench of the decomposed horses and oxen is awful. The water of the rivers is putrid with carrion. A party of men caught three stray sheep early on the morning of the 10th.
The burghers whom I sent in the direction of Roodekraal had a fight with the enemy at Tijgerfontein. A heavy bombardment took place; and my men told me afterwards that the baboons, of which there were a large number in these mountains, sprang from cliff to cliff screaming with fright poor creatures as the rocks were split on every side by the lyddite shells.
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