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Page 11
During the action a well-directed shell from one of Christie's ancient
howitzers, which were now located on Helpmakaar Hill, pitched with good
effect into the middle of a large group of Boers who were entrenching
themselves on a small rise of ground underneath Gun Hill.
Helpmakaar, which had always been a single-day post, was now turned into
a three days' post, companies remaining in the fort for three days
before being relieved.
On the 11th three companies of the Regiment were sent out under Captain
Lafone to blow up a farm building under Bulwana, about one and half
miles distant from Devon Post. After a long delay, owing to the blasting
materials having been forgotten, the operation was successfully carried
out, and the party returned with only some slight annoyance from the
enemy's pompom and a few shots from a high-velocity gun stationed on
Bulwana.
The Boer artillery on Bulwana and Gun Hill was well served, and their
shooting was excellent. One morning they opened with a 40-pounder
howitzer, known under the name of "Weary Willy," on to the main work at
Devon Post, at a portion of the work occupied by "Walker's Hotchkiss Gun
Detachment." About twelve consecutive shots pitched within a five yards'
radius, and one crashed into and nearly breached the parapet, which was
here about six feet thick and built of large stones.
The men worked on the 11th from dark till 1 a.m., when the works were
practically completed and sufficiently strengthened to answer all
purposes, although building was being carried on till the last day of
the siege, and the men were still building at the actual moment when the
relief cavalry were marching across the plain into Ladysmith.
The willingness and the cheery manner in which the men of the battalion
worked at these defences are worthy of record. On pitch-dark nights in
pouring rain the men, wet to the skin, covered with mud and filth,
without a smoke, groping about in the dark to find a likely stone,
carried on the work in silence; and when the word was passed along to
knock off work, they "turned in" without a grumble into a wet bivouac.
There was no complaining, and the men were never required by their
officers to bring along the stones faster. The only noise that broke the
stillness of the night was the incessant "click, click, click" of the
picks at work loosening the stones, and the men, in spite of the
conditions under which the work was being carried on, joked among
themselves in an undertone.
Work was nightly carried on from dark till midnight and sometimes till 2
a.m., and the men turned out again to stand to arms at 3.30 a.m.
By the middle of November the works at Devon Post were from 4-1/2 to 10
feet high, from 8 to 10 feet thick at the top (the whole built roughly
of stone), with the superior slope nearly flat, exterior slope about
1/1, interior slope nearly upright. The front work had a thickness at
the bottom of about 18 feet, owing to the work being constructed on the
slope of the hill.
[Illustration: In the trenches, Ladysmith]
Things passed quietly with intermittent shell fire till the afternoon of
the 14th, when General Brocklehurst took out the Cavalry Brigade and two
batteries of artillery, with the intention of turning the Boers off
Rifleman's Ridge. This they failed to do, and returned to their lines
about 5 p.m. well peppered by the Boer big guns, one shell from the big
gun on Pepworth pitching into the centre of the road just short of a
battery of artillery which was coming back into Ladysmith, near the
defences on the north-west front held by a detachment of the Dublin
Fusiliers--an accurate shot, and the distance measured on the map 10,500
yards. Shortly afterwards the Naval Brigade in their turn did some good
shooting, pitching a shell on to the muzzle of the big gun on Pepworth,
and a few moments after this shot, another on to his parapet. Boers were
afterwards seen carrying litters away from the work. This big gun never
fired again during the siege, but the Boers patched him up and he lived
to do good work for them against General Buller in his advance north to
Lydenburg, and the Boers finally blew him up in front of the battalion
near Waterval, in the Lydenburg district, when engaged with a column
under General Walter Kitchener.
For the next few days nothing of consequence occurred beyond the usual
shell fire, varied at intervals from day to night time. It rained in
torrents most of the time, and the men were continually wet through.
They however kept very fit, and there were very few in hospital.
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