This end of the position was feebly fortified, and it is surprising that so experienced and sound a soldier as Ian Hamilton should have left it so.  The defence had no marked advantage as compared with the attack, neither trench, sangar, nor wire entanglement, and in numbers they were immensely inferior.  Two companies of the 60th Rifles and a small body of the ubiquitous Gordons happened to be upon the hill and threw themselves into the fray, but they were unable to turn the tide.  Of thirty-three Gordons under Lieutenant MacNaughten thirty were wounded. [Footnote:  The Gordons and the Sappers were there that morning to re-escort one of Lambton’s 4.7 guns, which was to be mounted there.  Ten seamen were with the gun, and lost three of their number in the defence.] As our men retired under the shelter of the northern slope they were reinforced by another hundred and fifty Gordons under the stalwart Miller-Wallnutt, a man cast in the mould of a Berserk Viking.  To their aid also came two hundred of the Imperial Light Horse, burning to assist their comrades.  Another half-battalion of Rifles came with them.  At each end of the long ridge the situation at the dawn of day was almost identical.  In each the stormers had seized one side, but were brought to a stand by the defenders upon the other, while the British guns fired over the heads of their own infantry to rake the further slope.

It was on the Waggon Hill side, however, that the Boer exertions were most continuous and strenuous and our own resistance most desperate.  There fought the gallant de Villiers, while Ian Hamilton rallied the defenders and led them in repeated rushes against the enemy’s line.  Continually reinforced from below, the Boers fought with extraordinary resolution.  Never will any one who witnessed that Homeric contest question the valour of our foes.  It was a murderous business on both sides.  Edwardes of the Light Horse was struck down.  In a gun-emplacement a strange encounter took place at point-blank range between a group of Boers and of Britons.  De Villiers of the Free State shot Miller-Wallnut dead, Ian Hamilton fired at de Villiers with his revolver and missed him.  Young Albrecht of the Light Horse shot de Villiers.  A Boer named de Jaeger shot Albrecht.  Digby-Jones of the Sappers shot de Jaeger.  Only a few minutes later the gallant lad, who had already won fame enough for a veteran, was himself mortally wounded, and Dennis, his comrade in arms and in glory, fell by his side.

There has been no better fighting in our time than that upon Waggon Hill on that January morning, and no better fighters than the Imperial Light Horsemen who formed the centre of the defence.  Here, as at Elandslaagte, they proved themselves worthy to stand in line with the crack regiments of the British army.