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Updated: September 19, 2025
This Sandbag Battery, which for the moment the Royal Picts still held, was the object of ceaseless contention that day. Although at best but an empty prize, useful to neither side, because its parapet was too high to be fired over, the battery was lost and won, captured and recaptured, constantly during the battle.
Rest Relief from trench service. Mostly one works constantly when "resting." Ruddy Same as bloody, but not quite so bad. Sandbag A bag which is filled with mud and used for building the parapet. Sentry go Time on guard in the front trench, or at rest at headquarters. Shell hole A pit made by the explosion of a shell. Souvenir Any kind of junk picked up for keepsakes.
Next to the brigade messhouse were two groups of low buildings, called the Sikh Squares, and on the flat roofs of these buildings sandbag parapets were raised. Next to this, at the extreme western point, stood the house of Mr. Gubbins, the commissioner, a strong building, defended with stockades, and having at the angle a battery, called Gubbins' Battery.
The Guards fought like giants, outnumbered but never outmatched, wielding their weapons with murderous prowess, and, when iron missiles failed them, hurling rocks Titan-like at their foes. Even when won this Sandbag Battery was a perilous prize: tempting the English leaders to adventure too far to the front and to leave a great gap in the general line of defence unoccupied and undefended.
The Warreners lay wistfully watching the battery, whose shots frequently struck the house, and two or three times knocked down a portion of the sandbag parapet the damage being at once repaired with bags lying in readiness, but always under a storm of musketry, which opened in the hopes of hitting the men engaged upon the work; these were, however, accustomed to it, and built up the sandbags without showing a limb to the enemy's shot.
Outside the outer forts the ground was bare and flat, so that not a rabbit could scuttle across without being seen and shot. Sandbag entrenchments and earthworks, not made recently, because grass had clothed them, afforded splendid cover for the French batteries.
One of my comrades was shot in the leg while digging a refuse pit. The wound was a bad one and he suffered much pain, but the humiliation was even harder to bear. What could he tell them at home? "Do you think I'm a go'n' to s'y I was a-carryin' a sandbag full of old jam tins back to the refuse pit w'en Fritzie gave me this 'ere one in the leg? Not so bloomin' likely!
The guardian of the dam laid his pipe on the timber, rose to his feet, and stretched his arms high above his head in a huge, satisfying yawn. At that instant McCrae sprang like a lynx on a fawn. The sandbag whistled as it cut down between the upstretched arms, and the watchman dropped as if hit by lightning. "That was an awful crack, Sandy," said Casey reprovingly.
One leg and the other foot were carried off, as he lay upon the sandbag parapet watching the effect of our fire. 'There's an end of my cricket, said the gallant sportsman, and he was carried to the rear with a cigar between his clenched teeth. On November 3rd a strong cavalry reconnaissance was pushed down the Colenso road to ascertain the force which the enemy had in that direction.
"Some of us went out to strengthen a place in the parapet that was only one sandbag thick, where a man had been hit during the day. We made it four bags thick right up to the top. All the while you were doing it, you dreaded to find yourself in the white glare of a searchlight, and you had a feeling that something would hit you suddenly from behind.
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