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Updated: June 28, 2025
In these pits two old-fashioned howitzers, throwing shells with sixty pounds of black powder for bursting charge, are mounted. Captain Christie, R.A., takes command of them and waits his chance, which does not come for a long time, the cannonade being at first confined to a duel between Captain Lambton's pet, "Lady Anne," and "Puffing Billy" of Bulwaan.
The Manchesters were not so fortunate, having three men wounded, but none seriously. While I write, smoking concerts are being held in the camps of Imperial Light Horse and Natal Volunteers, from whose strong lungs the notes of "God Save the Queen" roll in a volume that can be heard a mile off. Perhaps some faint echoes of it may stir the air about sleeping Boers on Bulwaan. November 28.
I watch the distant cannonade with a keen personal interest, for when there is fighting along the Tugela the South African Light Horse are surely in it. Before daybreak this morning Colonel Knox, in command of Mounted Infantry, Carabiniers, Border Mounted Rifles, and a detachment of Colonel Dartnell's Frontier Field Force went out to make a reconnaissance round one shoulder of Bulwaan.
On the following day, an hour after dawn, the shelling became hot about headquarters, then, however, changed its direction nearer to Captain Vallentin's house, in which Colonel Rhodes was generally found about breakfast, lunch, and dinner-time as a member of the 7th Brigade mess. Later the Police Station, or some building near it, seemed to have a curious fascination for the gunners of Bulwaan.
This morning fallacious prophecies were further shattered by a shell from works placed far back on the table top of Bulwaan. It did not demolish anything else, but it makes us very chary now about predicting what the Boers can or cannot do.
Yesterday numbers of Boers were seen retiring from Pieter's Station across the ridges towards Bester's Valley, but no sign of a general retreat yet beyond the report of scouts, who say that several guns have been seen going back at a gallop behind Bulwaan, followed by nearly two hundred waggons. Last night we heard rifle-firing on the ridges south of Cæsar's Camp and Waggon Hill.
From their commanding position on Bulwaan the Boers can overlook Pieter's Station to the earthworks that girdle Grobelaar's Kloof, and part of the road by which our troops must advance from Colenso if they advance at all.
This afternoon the Gordons had a Gymkhana, and got through it merrily to the entertainment of many friends before a discordant note was heard from Boer batteries. The bombardment did not begin until half-past six, and lasted only until dusk, the final shot being fired by our naval gun into some new works on Bulwaan. November 26.
Here the Devons are posted at the heel of the shoe, which juts into a scrubby flat pointing towards the neck between Lombard's Kop and Bulwaan. These hills are respectively four and five miles distant from our outworks. Bulwaan stands across the opening afar off like a huge, bevelled, flat-topped bar placed, as it might be, for a horse-shoe magnet to attract it.
Counting eight hundred bullets and jagged bits of iron within the bursting area of one shrapnel shell from Bulwaan, a civilian expressed wonder that anybody should be left alive in Ladysmith after forty days of bombardment.
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