For Seven Hours They Lay Helpless Under The
Shell-Fire, But Their Constancy Was Rewarded By The Arrival Of
Colonel
Brookfield with 300 Yeomanry and four guns of the 17th
R.F.A., followed in the evening by a larger
Force from the south.
The Boers fled, but left some of their number behind them; while
of the British, Major Hobbs and four men were killed and nineteen
wounded. This defence of three hundred half-armed men against seven
hundred Boer riflemen, with three guns firing shell and shrapnel,
was a very good performance. The same body of burghers immediately
afterwards attacked a post held by Colonel Evans with two companies
of the Shropshires and fifty Canadians. They were again beaten back
with loss, the Canadians under Inglis especially distinguishing
themselves by their desperate resistance in an exposed position.
All these attacks, irritating and destructive as they were, were
not able to hinder the general progress of the war. After the
battle of Diamond Hill the captured position was occupied by the
mounted infantry, while the rest of the forces returned to their
camps round Pretoria, there to await the much-needed remounts. At
other parts of the seat of war the British cordon was being drawn
more tightly round the Boer forces. Buller had come as far as
Standerton, and Ian Hamilton, in the last week of June, had
occupied Heidelberg. A week afterwards the two forces were able to
join hands, and so to completely cut off the Free State from the
Transvaal armies.
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