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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
.Article – Online Historic Information | Military
.Page 208
sar’s Camp with about 1,000 Transvaal men under the command of Shalk Burger, while the 400
Orange Free State men under Commandant C. J. de Villiers would take the extreme west, Wagon
Point. In the centre 600 men of the Vryheid and Winburg commandos and the German Corps would
complete the assault. It was this last group that, in part, decided to stay away. In the first rush the
British were pushed back and confused fighting took place in the darkness. The British commander,
Colonel Ian Hamilton, was woken by the noise at his headquarters close to the Manchester Regiment’s
positions at Caesar’s Camp and used the telephone to contact Lieutenant-general Sir George White
and call for reinforcements. Hamilton himself then set off for Wagon Hill with Major Miller-Walnutt
and two companies of Gordon Highlanders, cutting himself off from his headquarters and its
telephone in the process. He met the expected reinforcements, sent the Gordons back east to the
Manchesters and took the Imperial Light Horse west to Wagon Hill. As it grew light the artillery
came into action, shelling the southern and eastern edges of the Platrand.
Hamilton was at the new, vacant 4.7-inch gun pit when the Orange Free Staters attacked again. In
the confusion two British and two Boers exchanged fire at close quarters around Hamilton; all four
were killed, but the colonel survived unscathed. As the afternoon drew on, in a fierce thunderstorm,
the men of the Devonshire Regiment clambered up the hill. Hamilton showed their commander,
Lieutenant-colonel C. W. Park, the place where, in a little nek at the west of Wagon Hill, the Boers
were holding out. The Devons charged forward into almost certain death. Many fell, but the Boers
fled. As night fell the remaining Boers could be heard making their way down the hillside. Holding
the Platrand had cost the British 424 casualties, 175 of which were fatal. Boer losses are not known
exactly, but are said to have been similar.
See also:
Boer Forces, Discipline; Ladysmith, Siege of; Tugela Heights, Battle of.
Reference:
Carver, Michael, The NAM Book of the Boer War (London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1999); Chisholm,
Ruari, Ladysmith (London, Osprey Publishing, 1979); Marix Evans, Martin, The Boer War:
South Africa 1899–1902 (Oxford, Osprey Publishing, 1999); Park, C. W., Letters from
Ladysmith (Diary of the Siege no. 3, Ladysmith, Ladysmith Historical Society, 1972).
Plumer, Brigadier-General H. C. O.,
1857–1932
Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer joined the 65th Foot (York and Lancaster Regiment) in 1876. He
served in the Sudan in 1884 and in South Africa in Mashonaland in 1896 when the Shona rising was
put down. He was sent out to South Africa with Lieutenant-colonel Robert Baden-Powell before the
outbreak of war in October 1899 to raise troops in Rhodesia, and it was with these men that he took
part in the relief of Mafeking in May
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