A LETTER FROM BELEAGUERED LADYSMITH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6727, 23 February 1900, Page 4

A LETTER FROM BELEAGUERED LADYSMITH.

Mr J. P. Fitzgerald, a New South Wales gentleman, has received a letter from his brother, Adjutant P. Fitzgerald, of the Imperial Light Horse, and now locked up in Ladysmith. In this course of an interesting, description of events between Oct. 22 and Dec. 6, the writer remarks.— " A lino from the grave, not a long one, as this is to be smuggled through the Boer lines by a daring Kaffir boy belonging to Maude, the * Graphic ' artist, so in case the boy gets collared, as has happened often enough, to the detriment of the newspapers, this letter must not afford too much "information to Joubert and Co. For more than five weeks we have been besieged without news of any sort from outside. Ladysmith is a little tinpot town, our camps all round, a graveyard and a small river the prominent features. It is like being at ithe bottom of an egg cup, we in the hollow, the Boers with their artillery firing on the rim — the hills around. A ceaseless bombardment goes on night and day, shells bursting in all quarters. Escapes are providential ; but we live in caves and holes dug in tlie ground all day, and trugfc to luck by night. It is a shameful position, but , we cant-a ttack, and trust to be relieved sometime or other. Christmas dinner on cat and dog may be our fate ; but I hope not. We made one sortie. My corps was sent at a hill to bag the guns, got badly slated, couldn't go on under such a fire, and had to retire.; two officers killed and fourteen men— a mimic Balaclava, and one I don't want again in my experience ; three hundred men against thousands. What a life mine has been since I left India'; and I often sigh for the town of Cairo, far from war's alarms; but we'll hammer these old Boers before long, and end the war in a summary manner. This is an awful country for fighting in — a succession of stony high hills, which give the defender a two to one chance. It is sad to think of the numbsr of poor chaps -already gone." , ■ ■