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Updated: May 15, 2025
Many, indeed, had already begun to make their way along the southern face of the hill, either to join their comrades on the hill between Pieter's and Hart's, or to escape up the valleys between them, and so make their way to Bulwana, where a large force was still encamped. "We may as well help," Chris said; "the general can but blow us up."
Three shells burst near where I stood, on the extreme western shoulder of Observation Hill, just missing the howitzer, and one went far beyond the longest range yet reached by any of the enemy's Creusots. For a long time I watched Boer movements, and saw their waggons hurrying back in some confusion from the Helpmakaar road across Conrad Pieter's farm towards Elandslaagte.
Potgieter's Drift, Spion Kop, Pieter's Hill these are names that will live in the memory of every British soldier with Sir Redvers Buller. Of all fights Spion Kop was perhaps the most terrible, as it was the most disastrous. It was called Spion Kop, or Spying Mountain, because it was from this eminence the old Boer trekkers spied out the land in the days gone by.
Barton's brigade, which was to carry Pieter's Hill the enemy's left crossed first, and inclining to the right kept along the river a mile and a half to its appointed place, followed successively by Kitchener's and Norcott's brigades, which thus, when the line was formed, constituted respectively the centre and left of the British front of assault.
From their commanding position on Bulwaan the Boers can overlook Pieter's Station to the earthworks that girdle Grobelaar's Kloof, and part of the road by which our troops must advance from Colenso if they advance at all.
Ask the soldier who has come back wounded from Pieter's Hill and how many of them are there? what he thought of it. He can give you but a confused picture of the fight. He has no idea of the plan in the general's mind. But ask him of his experiences. His wound was nothing; he will not dwell upon that.
During my absence the English broke through at Pieter's Heights, where Willem was made prisoner and Lüttig, Malherbe and Stuart de Villiers were killed. Meanwhile Frits had gone, with some other Pretoria men, to the Orange Free State, where the enemy had surrounded General Cronje. Since the beginning of the siege our burghers always thought the town would fall soon.
The next morning I was in a fast train to Natal, accompanied by my faithful adjutant, Rokzak. My other adjutant, Du Preez, had meantime been ordered to take a reinforcement of 150 men to Pieter's Heights, and was soon engaged in a desperate struggle in the locality situated between the Krugersdorpers' and the Middleburgers' positions.
And then he continued, 'I never think of Pieter's Hill but I think of Armstrong. You did not know Armstrong. He used to be in the orderly room every week a bad lad was poor old Armstrong. But when we were in India he gave himself to Christ. He was never in the orderly room after that. One day his major met him. "Armstrong," said he, "what's the matter? we never see you in the orderly room now."
The fact that this battle, which was called the Battle of Pieter's Hill, and the surrender of General Cronje and his forces to Lord Roberts, both took place on the anniversary of the battle of Majuba Hill, made the whole of Buller's column feel that the ill memory of that disaster had been effaced.
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