On The 21st The Dorsets, Middlesex, And Somersets
Had Borne The Heat Of The Day.
On the 22nd it was the Royal
Lancasters, followed by the South Lancashires, who took up the
running.
It would take the patience and also the space of a
Kinglake in this scrambling broken fight to trace the doings of
those groups of men who strove and struggled through the rifle
fire. All day a steady advance was maintained over the low kopjes,
until by evening we were faced by the more serious line of the
Pieter's Hills. The operations had been carried out with a monotony
of gallantry. Always the same extended advance, always the same
rattle of Mausers and clatter of pom-poms from a ridge, always the
same victorious soldiers on the barren crest, with a few crippled
Boers before them and many crippled comrades behind. They were
expensive triumphs, and yet every one brought them nearer to their
goal. And now, like an advancing tide, they lapped along the base
of Pieter's Hill. Could they gather volume enough to carry
themselves over? The issue of the long-drawn battle and the fate of
Ladysmith hung upon the question.
Brigadier Fitzroy Hart, to whom the assault was entrusted, is in
some ways as singular and picturesque a type as has been evolved in
the war. A dandy soldier, always the picture of neatness from the
top of his helmet to the heels of his well-polished brown boots, he
brings to military matters the same precision which he affects in
dress.
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