coolly carted away all their wounded! Louis Botha says they might have
asked permission first. I should have turned a Maxim on them!"

We went down to the laager, found the line in order, and wired the news
of the victory to Pretoria. I had not been able to get into
communication the day before because the chief had taken a hand in the
fighting instead of attending to the instrument.

Believing that Warren would make another attempt, this time more to our
right, we shifted the office a few miles in that direction and pitched
our tent next to a farmhouse, which was being utilised as a hospital.




GLORIOUS WAR


Late that evening I heard someone outside the tent asking where the
hospital was. It was my father. We had no idea of meeting each other
here, as I had parted from him in Johannesburg before the war began,
when he had no intention of going to Natal. He himself had been under
the impression that I was still at Ladysmith.

He told me he had come to see my young cousin, Johannes, who had been
wounded on Spion Kop the day before. We walked over to the hospital. The
wounded lad, a frail boy of fifteen, looked terribly exhausted lying
there on the floor, his left arm completely shattered.

"We were two together," he said, "myself and another boy. We crept