The Scrambling, Inconsequential, Unsatisfactory Action Which Ensued
Is As Difficult To Describe As It Must Have Been To Direct.
The
Boer front covered some seven or eight miles, with kopjes, like
chains of fortresses, between.
They formed a huge semicircle of
which our advance was the chord, and they were able from this
position to pour in a converging artillery fire which grew steadily
hotter as the day advanced. In the early part of the day our
forty-two guns, working furiously, though with a want of accuracy
which may be due to those errors of refraction which are said to be
common in the limpid air of the veld, preserved their superiority.
There appears to have been a want of concentration about our fire,
and at some periods of the action each particular battery was
firing at some different point of the Boer half-circle. Sometimes
for an hour on end the Boer reply would die away altogether, only
to break out with augmented violence, and with an accuracy which
increased our respect for their training. Huge shells - the largest
that ever burst upon a battlefield - hurled from distances which
were unattainable by our fifteen-pounders, enveloped our batteries
in smoke and flame. One enormous Creusot gun on Pepworth Hill threw
a 96-pound shell a distance of four miles, and several 40-pound
howitzers outweighted our field guns. And on the same day on which
we were so roughly taught how large the guns were which labour and
good will could haul on to the field of battle, we learned also
that our enemy - to the disgrace of our Board of Ordnance be it
recorded - was more in touch with modern invention than we were, and
could show us not only the largest, but also the smallest, shell
which had yet been used.
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