HIS LAST DIARY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 65, 17 March 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

HIS LAST DIARY.

DULL DAYS IN LADYSMITH,

November 13. —Laid three soys. to one with the "Graphic" yesterday against to-day being the most eventful of the siege. He dragged me out of bed in aching cold at four to see. the events.

At daybreak Observation Hill and ! King's Post were being- shelled and ! shelling1 back. Half battalions of the | Ist, 60th, and Rifle Brigade take day i and day about on Observation Hill 1 and King's Post, which is the continuation of Cave Redoubts. To-day the 60th were on Leicester Post. When shells came over them they merely laughed. One ring shell burst, fizzing inside a schanss, with a steamy, curly tail, and splinters that wailed a quarter of a mile on to the road below us; the men only raced to pick up the pieces. When this siege 3s over this force ought to be the "best fighting men in the world. We are learning lessons every day from the Boer. We are | getting to know his game, and learning to play it ourselves. Our infantry are already nearly as patient and cunning as lie; nothing i but being- shot at will ever teach men the art of using cover, but they get plenty of that nowadays. Another lesson is the use of very, very thin firing-lines of good shots, with the supports snugly concealed; the other day fourteen men of the .Manchester's repulsed 200 Boers. The gunners have momentarily thrown up their first commandant and cheerfully split up batteries. They also lie beneath the sehanzes and let the enemy bombard the dumb gun.s if he Avill— till the moment comes to fire; that moment you need never be afraid that j the U.A. will be anywhere but WITH THE GUNS. The enemy's shell and long-range j rifle fire dropped at half-past six. The j guns had breached a new epaulemeut on Thorn hill's Kop—to the left of Surprise Hill and a few hundred yards nearer—and perhaps knocked over a Boer or two—perhaps not. None of our people hurt and a good appetite i for breakfast. " I

In the afternoon one of onr guns on Caesar's Camp smashed a pompom. Fiddling Jimmy has been waved away, it seems. The llanehesters are cosy behind the best built schanzes in the environs of Ladysmith. Above the wall they have a. double course of sandbags —the lower placed endwise across the stone, the upper lengthwise, which forms a series of loopholes at the height of a man's shoulder.

The subaltern in command sits on the highest rock inside; the men sit. and lie about him, sleeping, smoking, reading, sewing, knitting. It might almost be a Dorcas meeting.

1 won the bet. November 14. —The liveliest day's bombardment yet.

A party of officers who live in the main street were waiting- for breakfast. The new president, in the next room, was just swearing at the servants for being late, when a shell

came in at the foot of the outside Avail, and burst under the breakfast room. The whole place was dust and thunder, and the half-acrid, half-fat, allsickly smell of melinite. Half the floor was chips; one plank was hurled up and stuck in the ceiling. All the crockery was smashed and the clock thrown down; the pictures on the wall continued to survey the scene

THROUGH UNBROKEN CLASSES

Much the same thing" happened later in the day to the smoking-room of tlie Royal Hotel. It :il.so was inhabited the minute before, would have been inhabited the minute after, but just then was quite empty. We had a cheerful lunch, as there were guns returning- from a reconnaissance, and they have adopted a thoughtless habit of coming home past our house. Briefly, from six till two you would have .said that the earth was being shivered to matchwood and fine powder. But, alas! man accustoms himself so quickly to all things, that a bombardment to u)s, unless stones actually tinkle on the roof, is now as an egg1 without salt.

The said reconnaissance I did not attend, knowing" exactly what it would be. I mounted a hill, to getwarm and to make sure, and it was exactly what I knew it would be. Our guns fired at the Boer guns till (hey were silent; and then the Boer dismounted men fired at our dismounted men; then we came home. We had one wounded, but they say they discovered the Boer strength on Bluebank, outside Uange Post, to be 500 or GOO. I doubt if it is as much; but, in any case, I think ■ TWO MEN AND A BOY could have found out all that the three batteries and three regiments did. With a. little dash, they coxild have taken the Boer guns on Bluebank; but dash there was not even a little of. November 15. —I wake at 12.25 this morning, apparently dreaming of shell-fire. "Fool," says I to myself, and turn over, when—Swish-h! pop-p!—by the piper, it is shell-fire. Thud—thudthud—ten or a dozen,, I should say, counting the ones that woke me. What in the name of gunpowder is it all about? But there is nd'rifle-fire that I can hear, and no more shells now; I sleep again. In the morning they asked the Director of Military Intelligence what the shelling was; he replied, "What shelling?" Nobody knows Avhat 'it was, and nobody knows yet. They had a pretty fable that the Boers, in a false alarm, fired on each other; if they did it was very lucky for them that the shells all hit Ladysmith. My own notion is that they only did it to annoy—in which they failed. They were reported in the morning- as usual searching for bodies with white flags; but I think that is their way of reconnoitring. Exhausted with this effort, the Boers —heigho!—did. nothing all day: Level downpour all the afternoon,, and Ladysmith a lake of mud.

November IC—Five civilians and two natives hit by a. shrapnel at the railway station ; a railway guard and a native died. Languid shelling- during-

morning'

November 17.—During' [morning— languid shelling-. Afternoon, raining Lad^smith wallowing deeper than ever.

And that—heigh-h-ho!— -makes a week of it. Believe us, in Heaven's name, good countrymen, or we die ol: dulness.