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Updated: May 12, 2025
They went down the long slope and across the valley with perfect intervals and line, much better than they go in the hollows of the old Fox Hills. In the advance the Gordons and Manchesters gradually changed direction half right and crept up towards that plateau on the right of the ridge, so as to take the enemy in flank.
Our infantry are already nearly as patient and cunning as he; nothing but being shot at will ever teach men the art of using cover, but they get plenty of that nowadays. Another lesson is the use of very, very thin firing-lines of good shots, with the supports snugly concealed: the other day fourteen men of the Manchesters repulsed 200 Boers.
Other curious flags were seen about the same place to-day. Lieutenant Fisher of the Manchesters, who though wounded soon after sunrise refused to quit his post, and with half a company held one shoulder of Waggon Hill until the last attack had spluttered out, sent a careful report to his colonel before the ambulance men took him to their field hospital.
At eight o'clock I saw a new force of Boers coming down a gully in a great mountain behind Pepworth Hill. But for my glass, I should have taken them for a black stream marked with white rocks. But they were horses and men, and the white rocks were horses too. Heavy firing began far away on our right. At nine the Manchesters were called off to reinforce.
Among his infantry were the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Dublin Fusiliers, and the King's Royal Rifles, fresh from the ascent of Talana Hill, the Gordons, the Manchesters, and the Devons who had been blooded at Elandslaagte, the Leicesters, the Liverpools, the 2nd battalion of the King's Royal Rifles, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, and the Gloucesters, who had been so roughly treated at Rietfontein.
At intervals of about half an hour detachments were marched in and formed up at one end of the shed, where they left their bundles and heavy kit, and whence they were marched in single file up the gangway of the ship. With the exception of the Manchesters, all the troops were in khaki, and were easily distinguishable from the dark-coloured mass of civilians.
He had quite a grip of the battle and seemed to hope I might let the Manchesters try and stick it out through the night, as he thought the Turks were too much done to do much more. But it was not good enough. To fall back was agony; not to do it would have been folly. Hunter-Weston felt the same.
It is seldom, for instance, that the balloonist gets a definite view towards Colenso, which to us is the point of greatest interest. I found that the second balloon was only used as a blind to the enemy, like a paper kite flown over birds to keep them quiet. Going up to the Manchesters' position on the top of Cæsar's Camp, I had a view of the whole country almost as good as any balloon's.
Shells burst over his head, and bullets must have been thick round him. Once or twice he fell, as though slipping on the rocks, for the rain had begun again. But he always reappeared, till at last shrapnel exploded right in his face, and he sank together like a dropped rag. Just after that the Manchesters and Gordons began to force their way along the top of the ridge on the Boers' left.
No digging was practicable between 7.30 A.M. and 4.30 P.M. The men rose before four in the morning for the day's work. Progress was necessarily slow, partly owing to constant silting, partly to the common weakness of the authorities for varying the sites and types of the trenches. Materials were often wanting. Nevertheless the Manchesters won unqualified praise.
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