He was among the first to fall, riddled with bullets, and although his officers perished with him almost to a man, the men beat a hasty retreat, in face of the enemy’s destructive fire.  The affair accounted in all for eleven officers and 150 men.  No doubt the gallant Watson was largely to blame.  But the facts seemed to show that the enemy were in some way apprised of his intentions.  Against such a chance as this, strategy and generalship are helpless.  Certainly French would be the last man in the world to deny any responsibility, had he been to blame for that one mishap in a memorable campaign.

One fact was now clear beyond dispute.  The enemy’s right had been strongly reinforced and was too alert to allow of much hope of successful action against it.  Nothing daunted, French therefore directed his energies to the left.  A few days later (January 11) he accomplished the tour de force of the campaign.  In the plain to the west of Colesberg there arose an isolated kopje, some six hundred feet in height, called Coles Kop.  This hill, which rises almost sheer from the plain, taxes the wind of the unencumbered climber to the utmost.  Being higher than the surrounding kopjes, it commands both Colesberg and the enemy’s laager.  The Boers had left it ungarrisoned, thinking it useless either to themselves or to the enemy.  They made a very great mistake.  For the mere hint that a thing is impossible fires French to attempt it.

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One day Schoeman woke up to find shrapnel assailing him apparently from nowhere.  It was coming from a 15-pounder which Major E.E.A.  Butcher, R.F.A., had coaxed up to the top of Coles Kop in three and a half hours by dint of much scientific haulage and more sinew.  The Boers themselves never equalled this extraordinary feat.

To hoist the guns on to the hilltop was the least part of the undertaking.  Guns without ammunition are useless.  To get shells on to the kopje without disaster was an infinitely more difficult undertaking.  He solved it by installing a hill lift.  The veldt is not a very promising engineering shop; but Butcher was not easily beaten.  Using steel rails for standards and anything worthy the name for cable, he soon had the framework erected.  To the uprights were fixed snatchblocks over which he passed his carrying wires.  On this mountain lift he was able to send weights up to 30 lbs., thanks to an ingenious system of pulleys.  Nor was the lift altogether rustic, for a drum and ratchet made it double-acting, so that as one load went up another was automatically let down.  It is only fair to say that the Boers themselves were masters of the art of haulage.  How they managed to get their guns to the top of kopjes remained for long a mystery to our men.  Butcher, however, quickly taught his men to beat the enemy at their own game, although nothing else quite so dramatic as the Coles Kop incident is on record.