FOOTNOTES:
[1] This account is true of a type, but I should not let it stand if I thought it would make the reader forget that, besides these, there are any number of men in the army who lead lives in every way straight and honourable.
LETTER XIX
THE MARCH SOUTH
BETHLEHEM, July 14, 1900.
Whenever in this campaign we have dealt the enemy what looked like a crushing blow, he has always hit back instantly at us. When Methuen reached the limit of his advance at the Modder River victory, the Boers were round immediately threatening us from behind. When we took Bloemfontein they at once swarmed round to the east and south, and dealt us two nasty blows at Sanna's Post and Reddersberg; and no sooner had we taken Pretoria than the same activity was displayed again.
They threatened us now from two points. Louis Botha had collected a large force, and was watching us from the hills east of the town, while the everlasting De Wet, far south, was breaking up the railway and burning our letters. The first thing we did, and we did it the very day after entering the capital, was to march against Botha. Ian Hamilton has paid our little corps the compliment of taking it on as his bodyguard. He is a general that inspires every one under him with great confidence. It is curious, by the way, how very soon troops get to know the worth of a leader; just as a pack of hounds knows by instinct when it is properly handled. Outsiders may argue about this or that general, and analyse his tactics, and never very likely get much nearer the truth (for there is a monstrous lot of luck one way or the other in all manoeuvres, and the ones often succeed that didn't ought to, and vice versa); but once you are under a man, you don't need to argue; you know. We all know that Ian Hamilton, with his pleasant well-bred manner, and the mutilated hand dangling as he rides, is the best man we have had over us yet, and we would all do great things to show our devotion.
The Diamond Hill action was one of those great big affairs which it would be impossible to explain without a plan of the country and a lot of little flags. Our attack from extreme left to right was spread over a frontage of, I daresay, twenty miles. The idea was for the mounted troops to turn the enemy's flanks and let in the infantry in front. Ian Hamilton had to deal with the Boer left flank, French with the right. Of course we saw and heard nothing of French, who might as well have been fighting in another planet, so far as we knew. Our difficulty here, as on some former occasions, was to find the limit of their flanks. The more we stretch out, the more they stretch out. They have the advantage of being all mounted, while the bulk of our force is infantry, massed inertly in the middle; and also from the lofty position they occupy they can command a bird's-eye view of the wide valley across which we are advancing, and perceive the disposition of our forces, and in what strength we are threatening the various points of defence, while their forces are quite concealed from us. This is so much in their favour that, on our flank at least, it is we, and not they, who are threatened with being outflanked.
Their position could scarcely have been stronger if nature had designed it for the purpose. A low range of hills gives admittance on the west side to a long wide valley, and on the east side of this a steep rocky range rises boldly up, showing in the sky a level outline like a rampart fringed with wall-like slabs of rock or detached masses, giving excellent cover from shrapnel. But besides this higher and last line of defence, there are some lower hills and slopes which project from the main rampart and command the valley, while they are in turn commanded by the heights. It is a two-step position, in fact. You carry the lower step first, and immediately come under the fire of the upper. The General told me next day that he thought it as strong as anything he had seen on the Natal side, and Winston Churchill set the matter at rest by pronouncing it stronger in point of formation than Spion Kop.