A striking account of the defence of Wepener, from the
pen of an officer with the Colonial Division, is given it Tuesday's Globe. Of the seventeen days and nights spen. under fire, the most exciting quarter of an hour was thal occupied in a charge across a mile and a half of open plait swept by Maxim and rifle fire. The writer led, his met following most gallantly, and "an excited American, con stantly by my side and sometimes ahead of me, sboutint in the joy of battle." Another splendid feat of arms was the bringing in on a stretcher of Captain Goldsworthy from the C.M.R. to the Kaffrarian lines, by four of his men, under a hail of bullets. In another passage the writer says :—" My men have been ten days in the trenches without leaving them, wet to the skin oftener than not, and day and night exposed to shrapnel, not able to raise a band above without getting a bullet through them, and yet not a grumble is heard. As I sit scrawling this in pencil, with my bad against the damp earth, the jest goes round, and peals of laughter follow the sallies of your light-hearted countrymen from the Emerald Isle." The writer's only disappointment was that, after all the privation and hardship, the Boers "have slipped through our fingers again."
Previous page
