A hundred and forty of the men were
down, many of them suffering from the horrible wounds which shell
inflicts.
The place was a shambles. Then the flag went up and the
Boers at last became visible. Outnumbered, outgeneralled, and
without guns, there is no shadow of stain upon the good name of the
one militia regiment which was ever seriously engaged during the
war. Their position was hopeless from the first, and they came out
of it with death, mutilation, and honour.
Two miles south of the Rhenoster kopje stands Roodeval station, in
which, on that June morning, there stood a train containing the
mails for the army, a supply of great-coats, and a truck full of
enormous shells. A number of details of various sorts, a hundred or
more, had alighted from the train, twenty of them Post-office
volunteers, some of the Pioneer Railway corps, a few Shropshires,
and other waifs and strays. To them in the early morning came the
gentleman with the tinted glasses, his hands still red with the
blood of the Derbies. 'I have fourteen hundred men and four guns.
Surrender!' said the messenger. But it is not in nature for a
postman to give up his postbag without a struggle. 'Never!' cried
the valiant postmen. But shell after shell battered the
corrugated-iron buildings about their ears, and it was not possible
for them to answer the guns which were smashing the life out of
them.
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