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Updated: May 12, 2025
The Londoner was a good soldier. The Liverpools and Manchesters were hard and tough in attack and defense. The South Country battalions of Devons and Dorsets, Sussex and Somersets, were not behindhand in ways of death. The Scots had not lost their fire and passion, but were terrible in their onslaught.
"I was enjoying it until I was put under," writes Lance-Corporal Leslie, R.E. "I must get back and have another go at them," says Private J. Roe, of the Manchesters. And so on, letter after letter expressing impatience to get into the firing line. The artillery is what harasses the men most. They soon developed a contempt for German rifle fire, and it became a very persistent joke in the trenches.
At one spot I just missed a shell-trap. A few minutes after I had left, some of the Manchesters, together with a body of the D. Cyclists who were stationed three miles or so out of St Waast, were attacked by a body of Jaegers, who appeared on a hill opposite. Foolishly they disclosed their position by opening rifle fire.
The Second Corps was composed of Royal Irish Rifles, Wiltshires, South Lancashires, Worcesters, Gordons, Royal Scots, Royal Irish, Middlesex, Royal Fusiliers, Northumberland Fusiliers, Royal Scots Fusiliers, Lincolns, Yorkshire Light Infantry, West Kent, West Riding, Scottish Borderers, Manchesters, Cornwalls, East Surreys, and Suffolks.
There had been a race for the nearest gun between an officer of the Manchesters and a drummer sergeant of the Gordons. The officer won, and sprang in triumph on to the piece. Men of all regiments swarmed round yelling and cheering, when upon their astonished ears there sounded the 'Cease fire' and then the 'Retire. It was incredible, and yet it pealed out again, unmistakable in its urgency.
The first sign of mortality on the Boer side I encountered was a hairy little black pig lying on his side bleeding proverbially then a tall Boer lying headlong down the rocks. On the top what confusion! Tommy, drunk with delight of battle. Prisoners, wounded, Gordons, Manchesters, Devons all mixed inexplicably. A Boer gun still in position was a centre for gathering.
Tommy, on the other hand, could swagger along the sky-line unmolested. No doubt the Boers thought that exposed Cæsar's Camp lay within their hands. But they were very wrong. Snug behind their schanzes, the Manchesters cared as much for shells as for butterflies. Most of them were posted on the inner edge of the flat top with a quarter of a mile of naked veldt to fire across.
The tents of another large camp showed among the bushes on Lombard's Nek, where the Helpmakaar road passes between Lombard's Kop and Bulwan, and many waggon laagers were in sight beyond. At the foot of the flat-topped Middle Hill on the south-west, the Boers have placed two more guns to trouble the Manchesters further. But our defences along the whole ridge are now very strong.
Beside one Boer was found one of the old Martini rifles taken from the 52nd at Majuba. On the top of Cæsar's Camp our dead were laid out for burial Manchesters, Gordons, and Rifle Brigade together. The Boers turned an automatic Maxim on the burying party, thinking they were digging earthworks.
The attack was to be made on their front and their left flank along the hog-back of the big kopje. The Devons on our left formed for the front attack; the Manchesters went on the right, the Gordons edged out to the extreme rightward base, with the long, long boulder-freckled face above them.
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