Nov. 25, 1899.] Trying to Silence an Unseen Gun.
In consequence of the heavy loss which he had sustained in storming the kopjes at Belmont without full artillery preparation, Lord Methuen brought up his field batteries and two naval guns, and opened the battle by a prolonged bombardment of the Boer position. Already, about 6 a.m., the enemy had fired the first shot at a party of Rimington's Scouts who ventured within range. The field-guns began their work at a range of 2,500 yards, and then closed in to 1,500. The naval guns opened at 5,000 yards and closed to 2,800. The Boers vigorously replied with their guns, but as these were scattered and not massed together, as they furthermore fired smokeless powder, and were in some cases posted just behind the crest of the ridge, they were almost impossible to locate. Indeed, in this battle, as in the Belmont action, the enemy's invisibility was nerve-shaking. There were no masses of men to be seen and made into targets; no gleaming array of guns invited a deluge of projectiles. But for the crackling roar and the quick, heavy banging of the "Pom-Pom" and the field-guns, but for the flashes of fire from the rifles, the line of kopjes might have been the haunt of only the little "dikkopf" and the great South African vulture.
The feature of the artillery fight was a duel between the "Pom-Pom" and the 18th Field Battery. "The Boer gun," says Mr. Julian Ralph, the brilliant correspondent of the Daily Mail, "was never seen, and the man who served it never once saw us. His piece was hidden beyond the ridge on the further slope, and a comrade gave him his range and direction. For a long time this gunner devoted his attention to one of the field batteries. Next he attacked the black mass made by their horses and limbers. Later he paid his respects to the naval gun and its crew. He never achieved perfect excellence, for he did no damage to any British gun; he killed but two horses in the field, and he wounded but five of our men altogether. And yet he got his range so quickly and well, and he was so persistent and so wholly invisible, that our men set their teeth in grim determination to destroy him. They had for a target nothing but the thin smoke which rose over his gun, but into that little floating cloud they planted shot and shell, until at the end of the day they had given out 210 rounds, if I remember the extraordinary figure correctly. All the other Boer guns were silenced before this one was, and at twenty minutes to ten this was silenced and every gun of the enemy was speechless."
NO. 1 BASE HOSPITAL, WYNBERG.
Where our wounded officers are nursed.
Says an officer in command of one section (two guns) of the 18th Field Battery:—"I had a warm time of it, from a quick-firing gun, firing one-inch common shell, but luckily all the rounds (about 100) fell just about 100 yards beyond my guns. We didn't get a scratch. In the meantime I plugged away at the right hand line of kopjes, but couldn't for the life of me see where their cursed little gun was."
[Photo by Fyne, Capetown.
[Nov. 25, 1899.