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Updated: May 12, 2025
It was therefore decided to attack Spion Kop by night, rush the Boer trenches with the bayonet, entrench as far as possible before dawn, hold on during the day, drag guns up at night, and thus dominate the Boer lines.
Colenso, Spion Kop, Vaal Krantz, and the third day at Pieters were not inspiring memories, and though everyone was cheered by the good news of the entanglement of Cronje's army on the western side, yet it was felt that the attempt to be made on the morrow would be the last effort the Natal Field Army would be asked or allowed to make.
The reader will, perhaps, remember the description in a former letter of the Boer position before Potgieter's and Trichardt's Drift as a horizontal note of interrogation, of which Spion Kop formed the centre angle /\. The fighting of the previous week had been directed towards the straight line, and on the angle. The new operation was aimed at the curve.
I puzzled over this for some time, in fact until an officer pointed out that our camp was in full view of the Boer outposts on Spion Kop, while the infantry camps were hidden by a turn of the hill. Evidently a complex and deeply laid scheme was in progress.
Simmonds positively jumped when he heard his name. He wheeled round, raised his cap, and broke into stuttering excuse. "I beg your lordship's pardon I hadn't the least notion " These two had not met since they discussed Boer trenches and British generals during a momentary halt on the Tugela slope of Spion Kop. Medenham remembered the fact, and forgave a good deal on account of it.
Ellen was married to Robert, elder brother of the late Knight of Kerry, and her grand-daughter is married to Colonel Thorneycroft of Spion Kop fame. Ellen's sister, Julia, married Sir Peter FitzGerald, Knight of Kerry. The two therefore married brothers, and if there had been any more they might have done the same.
Once more there came a weary pause while Ladysmith, sick with hope deferred, waited gloomily upon half-rations of horse-flesh for the next movement from the South. Neither General Buller nor his troops appeared to be dismayed by the failure of their plans, or by the heavy losses which were entailed by the movement which culminated at Spion Kop.
At sunrise he was joined by Buller, who viewed the situation in a spirit of philosophic detachment. He had never cordially approved of the Spion Kop adventure, and was not surprised to hear that it had failed.
At sunset on January 23, the curtain fell upon the first act of the Tragedy of Spion Kop. On the night of the January 23 Spion Kop was held as an observation post by a party of seventy burghers. When Buller first appeared at Potgieter's Drift, it was on the right of the Boer line, but now it was only the right of the centre under Schalk Burger.
'We have put what we think is the best fighting man in command regardless of seniority. We shall support him as he may request. We can do no more. I will only relate one other incident a miserable one. The day before the attack on Spion Kop I had chanced to ride across the pontoon bridge.
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