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In spite of these dodges and good shooting, however, the Boers could make no headway against the Manchesters, who were by this time extended across the stony plateau under fire from Boer guns posted among trees on the far side of Bester's Valley. Neither side in fact could move either to advance or retire without exposing itself on open ground.
Early in the morning we had gone out with four companies of the Manchesters in an armoured train with an ordinary train behind it, a battery of Natal Field Artillery, and the Imperial Light Horse under Colonel Scott Chisholme, to reconnoitre with a view to repairing the line.
Their practice at a range of five miles was exceedingly accurate. At the same time their riflemen became more venturesome, and on Tuesday, November 7th, they made a half-hearted attack upon the Manchesters' position on the south, which was driven back without difficulty. On the 9th, however, their attempt was of a more serious and sustained character.
For a few days we lived our ordinary trench life, and helped to instruct a company of the 13th Manchesters; but on September 21st the bombardment from the sea to the Vosges opened in our sector, with short fierce bursts of fire on the enemy villages and roads.
In the meantime I was to take shelter in the farm. I had barely put my bicycle under cover in the courtyard when the Germans opened fire, not at our guns but at a couple of companies of the Manchesters who were endeavouring to take cover just north of the farm. In the farm I found King and his platoon of Cyclists.
When I went into Fricourt on the third day of battle, after the last Germans, who had clung on to its ruins, had been cleared out by the Yorkshires and Lincolns of the 21st Division, that division which had been so humiliated at Loos and now was wonderful in courage, and when the Manchesters and Gordons of the 30th Division had captured Montauban and repulsed fierce counter-attacks.
How slow it seemed, but steadily, steadily on along the ridge they went. Now all the great orchestra of battle was playing from behind us on the right our artillery were firing at the hill in advance of the Manchesters and Gordons in one minute that I timed with my watch I counted sixteen discharges. How the shells shrieked and whirled over us!
Halting when they reached the crest, and furious at the treachery that had been practised with such success upon them, they turned again, and rushed down the hill, scattering the Boers, who still clung to their shelters, with their fire. It was just six o'clock when the Devons carried the last defence of the Boers and then with the Manchesters swept down into the camp.
We had spirited sham fights with another battalion of the Manchesters for the possession of "Tower 16," a solitary landmark on the caravan track to Cairo, after the manner of the pre-War era. The Sentry blossomed as the first English paper of the country. Two thousand copies used to be sold at Suez alone.
I had met one of them near the telegraph office, and visited his quarters. Rye makes remarkably good strong coffee, with a pleasant burnt taste in it. The camp had filled up a bit, the Manchesters, Staffords and 2nd Field Battery, of Rundle's division, having come in. We also played with flour and fat over our fire, and made some chupatties.
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