Eye-Witnesses Have Left
It Upon Record That The Sight Of Major Blewitt Strolling Up And
Down Among His Guns, And Turning Over With His Toe The Last Fallen
Section Of Iron, Was One Of The Most Vivid And Stirring Impressions
Which They Carried From The Fight.
Here also it was that the
gallant Sergeant Bosley, his arm and his leg stricken off by a Boer
shell, cried to his comrades to roll his body off the trail and go
on working the gun.
At the same time as - or rather earlier than - the onslaught upon
Caesar's Camp a similar attack had been made with secrecy and
determination upon the western end of the position called Waggon
Hill. The barefooted Boers burst suddenly with a roll of rifle-fire
into the little garrison of Imperial Light Horse and Sappers who
held the position. Mathias of the former, Digby-Jones and Dennis of
the latter, showed that 'two in the morning' courage which Napoleon
rated as the highest of military virtues. They and their men were
surprised but not disconcerted, and stood desperately to a slogging
match at the closest quarters. Seventeen Sappers were down out of
thirty, and more than half the little body of irregulars. This end
of the position was feebly fortified, and it is surprising that so
experienced and sound a soldier as Ian Hamilton should have left it
so. The defence had no marked advantage as compared with the
attack, neither trench, sangar, nor wire entanglement, and in
numbers they were immensely inferior.
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