THE BOER WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 293, 11 December 1899, Page 3

THE BOER WAR.

30EU ACCOUNT OF THE FIGHTING

AROUND LADYSMITH,

Pretoria, A'ia Lorenzo Marques, Octojjer 3i, —An engagement took place yesterday. The battle was fought on the !on°" hills encircling Ladysmith north»ast and Avest. General Joubert was in supreme command of the Boer 'orces. The central section Avas commanded by General Erasmus, the right iving by General Schalk Burger, Comjnandants Weil and Dach, and General kukas Meyer, and the left wing by Commandants Van Dam and Erasmus, ! together with the Free Staters under General Croinje. Sir George White commanded the Ladysmith military. During the whole of Saturday the British sent up military balloons from. Ladysmith to discover the Boer positions. On Sunday afternoon dynamite operations were conducted by the British; it is supposed in connection Avith new forts. On Sunday night troops left Ladyjmith under cover of darkness. Regiments of infantry, consisting of the Gloucestershires, Irish Fusiliers, and Dublin Fusiliers, with a mountain battery of mules, moved in the direction of ihe Transvaal right Aving to take up a position on a high hill foi-Avard of the Free State position. . On the Avay, it is stated, two ponies ran in among the mountain battery mules, throwing the whole column into disorder, some of the 1 jmiles running aAvay with one gun. The column got on the hill described at 1 a.m.., and employed their time tui--sil daylight throwing up earthworks • and fortifications. The centre of the Boers' position consisted of a very long table-hill, on ivliich artillery Avas placed. At daylight from the Boer position could plainly be observed full British artillery batteries in a long- line leaving Ladysmith to the eastward. They passedl Lombard's Kop. When ihe last battery Avas still moving.forward,- the Boer artilletry promptly }pened on them with theCreusot guns, the second shell fell in their midst, lolloAved by shot after shot. This Jrew' the fire of all the British concealed batteries on the Boer artillery positions, and from G to 2 the lull Avas a veritable inferno, hissing and AvhistJing1 Avith fragments of shell and shrapael. At first the British guns all failed to reach the hill, Avhile the sliot from Ihe Creusot told heavily. British guns reached the Boer position from further distances. The big gun's fire was so hot that it was. only every noAv' and then that a shot could be fired the gunners being- subjected to a shoAver of 3hellAvhenever they shoAved their heads. This gun put shell after shell into the British camp at Ladysmith, which had no gun of equal calibre. One artilleryman Avounded by a shell got himself bandaged, Avhile another fought oblirious of fragments of shell in his back. • Dr. Hohls Avas killed whilst bandaging a Avounded artillerist. Meanwhile Schalk Burger got his Howitzer further forward into play, and at the extreme end of the Aving- Lukas Meyer's battery, under Captain Pretoi'ius, got in some of its deadly Avork.