PIETER'S HILL TAKEN.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXVI, Issue 1381, 6 March 1900, Page 3

PIETER'S HILL TAKEN.

DESPERATE FIGHTING

After six days' hard fighting the British established themselves on the lower spurs of Pieter's Hill. The Iniskillings, Dublins, and Connaughts made desperate efforts to capture the heights. Facing a murderous fire, they were simply mown down.

The Inniskillings were almost annihilated. The colonel, both majors, and two senior captains were shot. The Connaughts lost five officers wounded.

It : was found" impossible to silence the Boers' effective shell fire. Their entrenchments completely dominated the British position.

Three days of fruitless and incessant fighting followed, which compelled General Buller to attack the hill from a point more to the eastward.

General Barton, with battalions of the 6th Brigade of the Dublins, scaled a precipice cliff, capturing the position, and turning the Boers' left flank.

General Warren then assualted the main position, presumably Onderbroek Mountain, the South Lancashires magnificently storming and scattering ,the Boers in all directions.

The capture of Pieter's Hill was preceded by a terrific conflict. The Boers were bayoneted. It was the most desperate incident of the campaign.

The Somersets and Duvhams repulsed a determined attack made by the enemy on Fort Wylie on Sunday night. The barbed wire entanglements bewildered the Boers who lost 40 men.

Mr Winston Churchill, in his account of General Buller's advance, estimates that there were 10,000 Boers and seven guns at Pieter's Hill.