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Updated: September 12, 2025
The casualties consisted of one man of the 32nd Pioneers severely wounded, and three Kashmir Sappers slightly. The action commenced at 10.30 A.M. and lasted one hour. The position was of unusual natural strength, and the disposition of the sangars showed considerable tactical ability, being placed on the edge of high cliffs on the left bank of the river.
The Levies, however, were not keeping close enough to the hillside, and were gradually pushing Peterson's company off to the left, where they would have been exposed to the fire of the big sangar plus the flanking fire from the sangars up the spur on the left bank of the river.
The road which wound down behind the fort into the bed of the nullah and zigzagged up again on the far side had been broken away, the cliffs were unscaleable, and the stone sangars on the brow proof against shell and bullet. Shere Ali's force was disposed behind these stone breastworks right across the valley on both sides of the river.
But one man helped another, the stronger pulling up the weaker, until they halted for a moment breathless at the top. 'Charge! and away they went. The bayonets were covered with blood after that awful charge, and then, their work for the moment accomplished, they lay down, for the bullets were whistling around them. In the dense darkness they began to build sangars as best they could.
I had hardly noticed this when there was a puff of smoke and a report, and I saw to my disgust that on the edge of my nice grassy slope were a few clusters of innocent-looking rocks, which I now saw to be sangars, evidently occupied. Just at this moment a man ran across the slope and began waving his coat to someone below, and more men showed themselves among the rocks.
To stamp the Boers as cowards in general is to rob the British Army of much of its honour and so discredit their work in South Africa. The best answer to and the most persuasive argument against this assertion is to be found in the construction of the multitudinous forts, trenches, sangars, blockhouses, etc., by the British in South Africa. What is their significance?
There, short already of sixty of their comrades, they assembled and began a cautious advance upon the lines of trenches and sangars which seamed the brown slope above them. For a time they were able to keep some cover, and the casualties were comparatively few.
The defenders were driven out and bayoneted, the sangars seized, and the Chilti force enfolded while reinforcements clambered in support. "In three hours the position, which for eighteen days had resisted every attack and held the British force immobile, was in our hands. The way is clear in front of us. Manders is recommended for the Victoria Cross.
He crept out of the tower after nightfall with his water-skins, crawled down between the sangars and I can tell you the hill-side was thick with them to the brink of the Swat river below there, filled his skins, and returned with them." "That man, too, earned the Victoria Cross," said Shere Ali. "Yes," said the Doctor, "no doubt, no doubt."
As he and his comrades went back to join their main body, Boer sharpshooters opened fire on them treacherously from the rocks and sangars of Rifleman's Ridge.
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