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Updated: May 12, 2025
Buller still advocated an attack on the enemy's right, while Warren wished to persevere with his advance by the Fairview Road; but he pointed out that Spion Kop, which his reading of the "secret instructions" had led him to regard as out of bounds, must first be taken. No definite action seems to have been decided on, and Warren was left to act within certain limits on his own responsibility.
The soldiers sprawled upon the straw littering the floor, striving to snatch a brief rest before going on duty, sleepily raised themselves to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. The sentry told them excitedly the charge upon which I had been arrested, at which the men turned to blink wonderingly upon the "Englandische Spion!"
Giles and Jesse Hayman would no longer defend the coast but go to South Africa quite soon; Jolly and Val would be following in April; as to June well, you never knew what she would really do. The retirement from Spion Kop and the absence of any good news from the seat of war imparted an air of reality to all this, clinched in startling fashion by Timothy.
Some were as incoherent as drunkards. Some lay in an overpowering drowsiness. The most were doggedly patient and long-suffering, with a mighty longing for water obliterating every other emotion. Before evening fell a most gallant and successful attempt had been made by the third battalion of the King's Royal Rifles from Lyttelton's Brigade to relieve the pressure upon their comrades on Spion Kop.
In that sparsely inhabited country of vast distances it was a most difficult task to bring the revolt to a decisive ending. This Sir Charles Warren, with his special local knowledge and interest, was able to do, and the success is doubly welcome as bringing additional honour to a man who, whatever view one may take of his action at Spion Kop, has grown grey in the service of the Empire.
Sir Redvers Buller then took the extreme step of appointing Major Thorneycroft already only a local lieutenant-colonel local Brigadier-General commanding on the summit of Spion Kop.
There is, of course, no possible doubt that Spion Kop is the key of the whole position, and the reader has only to think of the horizontal note of interrogation, and remember that the mountain at the angle divides, commands, and enfilades the enemy's lines, to appreciate this fact.
There is no sound of fighting this side of the Tugela, only a few shells falling on Spion Kop, where Boer tents can be seen once more whitening the steep. We need no heliograph signal to tell us the meaning of all this.
The general scheme was to seize the hills which formed the left of the enemy's position and roll him up from left to right. It was known that the Boers were massed mainly in their central camp behind Spion Kop, and that, as no demonstration was intended against the position in front of Trichardt's Drift, their whole force would be occupying the curve and guarding its right flank.
'How many? 'About four hundred and fifty. 'Out of a thousand? 'Well, out of about nine hundred. This war has fallen heavily on some regiments. Scarcely any has suffered more severely, none has won greater distinction, than the Dublin Fusiliers everywhere at the front Dundee, Lombard's Kop, Colenso, Chieveley, Colenso again, and even here at Spion Kop.
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