Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
Colonel Edwardes, I don't wish to keep you any longer, owing to the circumstance that 'Long Tom' of Bulwaan may interfere in this conference, but once more I thank you one and all." Lusty cheers were then given for Sir George White, General Hunter, General Brocklehurst, and Colonel Edwardes.
The damage, whatever it may have been, inflicted on "Long Tom," or his crew, having been made good under cover of a white flag, which the Boers seem to think they are at liberty to use whenever it suits them, Rietfontein called to Bulwaan, and Blaauwbank in the west echoed the dull boom that came from the distant flat-topped hill in the east.
This was a day of heavy calamity for one regiment, and marked by more serious casualties than any other since the siege began. At six o'clock this morning a shell from Bulwaan struck the camp of the ill-fated Gloucesters on Junction Hill just as the men were at breakfast. It killed six and wounded nine, of whom three are very seriously hurt.
It was we who provoked "Puffing Billy" to his first angry roar by a trial shot from one of our big naval guns into the Bulwaan battery. "Long Tom" presently joined in the chorus, and it took our two 4.7 quick-firers all their time to keep down that cross-fire.
The Boers, grown bold with the success of their first raid, try another this time with the object of cutting out horses that graze loose on the plain towards Bulwaan. But they have to do now with Natal Carbineers, many of whom, like themselves, are veldt farmers, familiar with every trick of rounding up horses or oxen.
Possibly there may have been in this firing more method than we imagine, the idea being to mislead us by a pretended engagement with some force on the other side of Bulwaan. Another rational theory is that the gunners were simply expending a little ammunition in practice at range-finding for their guidance in future eventualities.
"Lady Anne," one of the big twin sisters of the naval armament to which we owe so much, had not fired for just a month until she astonished the gunners on Bulwaan by planting a shell in their works to-day. They ran in all directions, not knowing where to hide, and at the second shot bolted back across the hill. Their tents have disappeared from Bulwaan now.
At half-past two on the morning of 9th February, night was rent by the sudden glare of a search-light from Bulwaan, and soon came the scream of shells hurtling over the town. It was the Boer pæan of victory, and it sent the people hurrying to their underground refuges, to which the unco' guid had given the name of "funk-holes," but did no damage. Its purport was half-divined by the defenders.
They were falling in rapid succession from one end of Bulwaan on Helpmakaar Hill, where the Devons, thanks to having taken wise precautions in making bomb-proof shelters, suffered little, though "Puffing Billy" turned occasionally to hurl a 94-pounder in that direction when tired of raking Cæsar's Camp and Maiden's Castle, where the Manchesters had not only their flank exposed to this fire, but were smitten in front by a heavy gun the Boers had mounted on Flat-Top Mountain, some three miles off, and by smaller shells that came from automatic guns hidden among scrub on the nearer slopes across Bester's Farm.
The Volunteers do their work neatly, coolly, quickly, to the chagrin of Boers who wait in kloofs beyond Klip River for a chance of carrying off some valuable horses. In their disappointment the Bulwaan battery tries to get some consolation by shelling the camp of the Carbineers.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking