United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But even this brought progress, and, when we had taken the outlying blockhouses, one by one, and there remained only the citadel, a flimsy fortress, mainly, I should judge, the work of the Servian kings, all that remained to accomplish was the bombardment of its walls, which became a sort of spectacle, to which we went day after day to watch the effect of the fire, as we should have done with a game of skittles.
The Reds had staged that awful four-day battle, told next in this story, and the American medical and hospital men were sadly busy with thirty bleeding and dead comrades who had fallen in defending Toulgas. "C" was far out at Ust Padenga earnestly building blockhouses.
Sometimes there were two lines of fences, the upper one erected on the top of the earth thrown up from the trench consisting of three or four strands only. There was thus a regular network of wires in the vicinity of the blockhouses the English seemed to think that a Boer might be netted like a fish.
The armoured train was indeed a very important factor in the British military tactics, and one we had to take fully into account. The railway between these two stations was also guarded by blockhouses. Every morning the British soldiers carefully inspected their particular section of the railway before trains were despatched in any direction.
He remembered the council of the great Indian force in the deep woods, and the terrible face of Queen Esther was again before him. "These people ought to be in blockhouses, every one uv 'em," he said. "It ain't no time to be plowin' land." Yet peace seemed to brood still over the valley. It was a fine river, beautiful with changing colors.
Not even a soldier of the guard was to be seen; and when they cast their eyes upwards to the windows of the blockhouses, they were found to be tenantless as the area through which they passed. A gleam of fierce satisfaction pervaded the swarthy countenances of the Indians; and the features of Ponteac, in particular, expressed the deepest exultation.
During the long periods between the light we kept up an ever vigilant patrol. The Bolos came again at a time when the night was blackest, but they could not surprise us, and they lost a great many men, trying to wade through waist deep snow, across barbed wire, with machine guns working from behind blockhouses two hundred yards apart.
Here, as on the right, Lévis had ordered his troops to fall back for a time; but when the fire of the English cannon ceased, they advanced again, and their artillery, though consisting of only three pieces, played its part with good effect. Hazen's rangers and MacDonald's volunteers attacked and took the two adjacent blockhouses, but could not hold them.
Colonel Firman's brigade was camped between Bethlehem and Harrismith, at Elands River bridge, where he was building the line of blockhouses between the two towns. This camp was so well entrenched that there was no possibility of storming it, and I knew that so long as Colonel Firman thought I was still in the neighbourhood he would not dare to come out and give me an opportunity of attacking him.
In his report to the Company he tells us: "The fort is on the high hill, or kekoor, on a peninsula in the gulf. On the left side of the kekoor close on the peninsula is built an immense barracks with two projecting blockhouses or towers. All the building is made from mast timber from the top to the foundation, under which is a cellar.
Word Of The Day