These Trenches, Very Elaborate In Character, Had Been Dug
Some Hundreds Of Yards From The Foot Of The Hills, So That There
Was Hardly Any Guide To Our Artillery Fire.
Yet it is to the
artillery fire that all the losses of the Boers that day were due.
The cleverness of Cronje's disposition of his trenches some hundred
yards ahead of the kopjes is accentuated by the fascination which
any rising object has for a gunner.
Prince Kraft tells the story of
how at Sadowa he unlimbered his guns two hundred yards in front of
the church of Chlum, and how the Austrian reply fire almost
invariably pitched upon the steeple. So our own gunners, even at a
two thousand-yard mark, found it difficult to avoid overshooting
the invisible line, and hitting the obvious mark behind.
As the day wore on reinforcements of infantry came up from the
force which had been left to guard the camp. The Gordons arrived
with the first and second battalions of the Coldstream Guards, and
all the artillery was moved nearer to the enemy's position. At the
same time, as there were some indications of an attack upon our
right flank, the Grenadier Guards with five companies of the
Yorkshire Light Infantry were moved up in that direction, while the
three remaining companies of Barter's Yorkshiremen secured a drift
over which the enemy might cross the Modder. This threatening
movement upon our right flank, which would have put the Highlanders
into an impossible position had it succeeded, was most gallantly
held back all morning, before the arrival of the Guards and the
Yorkshires, by the mounted infantry and the 12th Lancers,
skirmishing on foot.
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