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Updated: June 19, 2025
During the whole of Sunday our gunners played havoc with the enemy, the shooting of the Naval Brigade being of such a nature that even thus early in the fight the big gun of the bluejackets, with its 42-pound lyddite shell, struck terror into the hearts of the enemy. But the Boers were not idle.
"Now we shall see some shooting, Bobby!" Presently the Gunner major arrives, accompanied by an orderly, who pays out wire as he goes. The major adjusts his periscope, while the orderly thrusts a metal peg into the ground and fits a telephone receiver to his head. "Number one gun!" chants the major, peering into his periscope; "three-five-one-nothing lyddite fourth charge!"
For at the base of the mountain are natural forts and grottoes, against which lyddite shells would spend their force in vain. All we could do was to keep the foe in their haunts by directing such a fire against them that they could not venture even to peep out. In doing this the commandoes could requisition loot, as some would say what they required.
Failing to find him, she joined the forces of Commandant Ben Viljoen and faced bullets, bombs, and lyddite at Spion Kop, Pont Drift, and Pieter's Hills. During the retreat to Van Tonder's Nek the young woman learned that her husband lay seriously wounded in the Johannesburg hospital, and she deserted the army temporarily to nurse him.
The other side had some howitzers, which began to spit about lyddite indiscriminately. They also had some quick-firing guns of a small calibre, which, however, did not carry particularly far. But they were a great nuisance, as they would go for isolated burghers without being at all economical with their ammunition.
At last the Dutchmen fled. One, a huge fellow in a brown jersey, tarried to spring on the parapet and empty his magazine once more into the approaching ranks, and while he did so a 50 lb. lyddite shell burst, as it seemed, in the midst of him, and the last defender of Inniskilling Hill vanished.
Karl got rid of a fourteen-pound sigh, which sounded like the bursting of a lyddite shell. Then he slipped his hand under his pillow and drew forth a flask of "Dop." "Drink to her," he said. "To whom?" I asked, falling in with the humour of the man. "To the girl I love," he muttered like a schoolboy. "Which one, Karl?" I asked, and I laughed as I spoke.
Colonel Derringer's first shot caught a boot an' shoe drummer fr'm Chicago square in th' back amid consid'rable applause. Major Lyddite tied th' scoor be nailin' a scrubwoman on th' top iv a ladder.
To make the surrender a complete success, all sorts of rumours were freely circulated. The burghers were told that all who did not surrender would be shot as rebels when captured, that the pass, higher up the mountains, was guarded by twenty-five lyddite guns, so that every exit was cut off by the enemy.
They went forward in skirmishing order, supported by five field batteries and the howitzer battery, all of which kept up an incessant fire of lyddite, shell, and shot against the Boer position, their fire being guided by an engineer officer in a balloon, who was able from a lofty altitude to signal where the Boers were clustering most thickly.
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