Symons’ camp was pitched about a mile west of Dundee which lay between it and Talana and Lennox Hills, which commanded the town from the east.  Some hours before sunrise on October 20 a British picket on Talana was attacked.  The incident was reported to Head Quarters, where it was not deemed to be of much importance and the routine duties of the morning were not interrupted.  The artillery horses had been taken down as usual to water, and some companies had even fallen in for skirmishing drill, when the curtain of the morning mist upon the higher ground was raised to the first scene in the Natal drama.  The eastward hills, looming up darkly into the brightening sky, were seen to be occupied in force by the enemy under L. Meyer, and soon his shells were falling among the tents.

The troops in camp, though taken by surprise, pulled themselves together with admirable promptitude.  The Boer guns were soon silenced, the figures of men silhouetted along the sky line vanished, and the infantry was ordered out to clear the hill.  It was a formidable and dangerous task, but it was facilitated by some of the features of the ground.  There was a dry river bed in which the troops could be formed up for attack, and, half a mile beyond, a farmhouse and a plantation afforded some cover; while a donga on the left at right angles to the river bed apparently offered a covered way up the hill to the crest.  In the plantation occurred the first calamity of the war.  Symons, who had come up impatiently from the lower ground to hurry up the assault, which he thought was being unnecessarily delayed, was mortally wounded.  Three days later he paid with his life for his adherence to a forward policy in tactics as well as in strategy; and the command devolved upon Yule.

The donga on the left was found to be useless, as it led nowhere; and the advance was made directly from the plantation towards a wall running along the foot of the hill.  Here a long halt was made in order to reorganize the attack, and when the word was given the men pressed forward and threw-themselves upon the rough front of the acclivity after a rush across an open slope.  The crest was attained and carried without much difficulty; for all but a few stalwarts had quitted it when they saw the British bayonets pricking upwards towards their hold.

It seemed now that the victory was won, but an unfortunate mistake postponed it.  The two field batteries on the plain, which had ceased fire before the final infantry rush, changed position and came under a heavy fire from the Boers who were still in possession of a section of the Talana ridge.  The light was bad and the guns re-opened upon the crest line in the belief that the whole of it was still occupied by the enemy.  The practice was excellent, and in a brief space both sides were driven off the hill by the shrapnel.  A subsequent attempt to take it was successful.  The result of the battle, which lasted from sunrise until 2 p.m., might have been reversed but for the inaction of the main Boer force posted on Lennox Hill under L. Meyer, and of another force on Impati under Erasmus, who, though he could hear the noise of battle pealing through the mist which lay upon the hill, abstained from intervening.