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Updated: May 15, 2025
We had ridden up Pieter's Hill and scrambled down on its other side before we learned that the night before Dundonald had raised the siege. We learned this from long trains of artillery and regiments of infantry which already were moving forward over the great plain which lies between Pieter's and Bulwana.
We smiled again and spurred the horses forward. We abused the press-censor roundly we were extremely indignant with him. It was so like him to lose himself the day Ladysmith was relieved. "Confound him," we muttered, and grinned guiltily. We felt as we used to feel when we were playing truant from school. We were nearing Pieter's Station now, and were half-way to Ladysmith.
They waxed sentimental over the bravery of the Irish soldiers in the South African war, among which the achievements of the Inniskillings at Pieter's Hill and the Connaught Rangers at Colenso were only surpassed by the Dublin Fusiliers at Talana Hill, out of a thousand of whom only three hundred survived.
"They have evidently gone down there," Sankey said, "because that spur just this side must hide them from the Boers on Pieter's Hill." The column were lost sight of for upwards of an hour, and then they appeared on the opposite crest, five hundred feet above the line; then they were lost sight of again as they passed beyond the crest. "That is a splendid move!" Chris exclaimed.
During that fortnight over 2000 officers and men of General Buller's force paid the price of their dauntless courage; and in all the glorious story no page is brighter than that which puts on undying record the devoted gallantry of the Inniskillings, who were, to all practical intents, wiped out in attacking Pieter's Hill, the last bar across the road to Ladysmith, on the 23rd.
The withdrawal of the compromised army after Spion Kop, the change of the line of attack at Pieter's Hill, and the flanking marches in this campaign of Northern Natal, were all very workmanlike achievements.
Barton led the way across the bridge, then turning to the right, crept down the left bank of the river for two miles, and mounted the slopes of Pieter's Hill, when he became aware of the great strength of the Boer position.
Yesterday numbers of Boers were seen retiring from Pieter's Station across the ridges towards Bester's Valley, but no sign of a general retreat yet beyond the report of scouts, who say that several guns have been seen going back at a gallop behind Bulwaan, followed by nearly two hundred waggons. Last night we heard rifle-firing on the ridges south of Cæsar's Camp and Waggon Hill.
The defenders of Hart's Hill, and the position between that and Pieter's, opened a heavy fire as soon as the British infantry showed themselves; but their morale was so shaken by the terrific bombardment to which they had been subjected, by the loss of Pieter's Hill, and by the rifle fire now opened by its captors, that their fire was singularly ineffective.
Joubert, however, had already raised the Siege and was retreating towards Elandslaagte. Next morning Barton on Pieter's Hill vainly appealed for permission to press forward, but Buller would only put the two mounted Brigades under Dundonald and Burn-Murdoch on to the enemy's trail.
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