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Updated: June 12, 2025
Mr. was hit; no, not badly; only his wrist, but there's not many of the officers left; only two now who were at Talana.
Of course I could have thrown it up at the end of the war. But I would a great deal rather be on horseback than on foot, and I own I have no inclination to fight my way across those hills. Talana was a pretty serious business, but it was child's play to what this will be." "Very well," Chris said; "I did not think that any of you would care for it, although I could not answer for you.
There are twelve beds in this tent, and many regiments are represented among the patients; there is an Imperial Light Horse man, who has been in most of the big fights, a mercurial Argyll and Sutherland Highlander, with a witty and voluble tongue; men of the Wilts, Berks, and Yorks regiments, and in the next bed a trooper of the 18th Hussars, who was captured at Talana Hill in the first fight of the war, had spent seven months at Waterval in the barbed-wire cage which we saw, and two since at the front.
They waxed sentimental over the bravery of the Irish soldiers in the South African war, among which the achievements of the Inniskillings at Pieter's Hill and the Connaught Rangers at Colenso were only surpassed by the Dublin Fusiliers at Talana Hill, out of a thousand of whom only three hundred survived.
But the bullet is brutally indiscriminating, and before it the brain of a hero or the quarters of a horse stand exactly the same chance to the vertical square inch. After Talana Hill was lost to view we began to search for Majuba, and saw it just as night closed in a great dark mountain with memories as sad and gloomy as its appearance.
The whole Boer force was now in full retreat along the line by which it had advanced so silently the night before, and Yule ordered the two field batteries up to the nek between Talana and Lennox to pound the retreating burghers as they slowly trekked towards the Buffalo River; but again an unfortunate misapprehension intervened.
"It is a big gun on the top of that high hill they call Talana. We saw the flash of light, and directly after heard the report, and a rushing sound. I suppose it was a shot overhead; if it had been a shell we should have heard it burst and seen the flash. It must have been fired at the camp."
Through these, and over a broken rocky surface, the attacking column must fight its way, step by step, till the final hills were reached and could be rushed as Talana had been by their countrymen the day before. The plan above outlined was the one adopted by General French; seven companies of infantry being allotted to the front attack, a regiment and five companies to that upon the flank.
Erasmus at Dundee stood idly in the background while Symons and Yule were on the slopes of Talana Hill, and Cronje was deaf to his remonstrances against a mere passive defence on the Modder River and the presence of women and children in the laager.
The enemy were on both sides of the latter when first seen by the British. To the north of the Nek to the Boer right is Talana Hill, where the decisive fighting occurred, and which had to be carried by direct assault, lasting, with the intervals of cover, for nearly six hours. As described by an eye-witness, it is about eight hundred feet high from the level of the donga.
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