Brigadier Fitzroy Hart, to whom the assault was entrusted, is in some ways as singular and picturesque a type as has been evolved in the war.  A dandy soldier, always the picture of neatness from the top of his helmet to the heels of his well-polished brown boots, he brings to military matters the same precision which he affects in dress.  Pedantic in his accuracy, he actually at the battle of Colenso drilled the Irish Brigade for half an hour before leading them into action, and threw out markers under a deadly fire in order that his change from close to extended formation might be academically correct.  The heavy loss of the Brigade at this action was to some extent ascribed to him and affected his popularity; but as his men came to know him better, his romantic bravery, his whimsical soldierly humour, their dislike changed into admiration.  His personal disregard for danger was notorious and reprehensible.  ‘Where is General Hart?’ asked some one in action.  ’I have not seen him, but I know where you will find him.  Go ahead of the skirmish line and you will see him standing on a rock,’ was the answer.  He bore a charmed life.  It was a danger to be near him.  ’Whom are you going to?’ ‘General Hart,’ said the aide-de-camp.  ‘Then good-bye!’ cried his fellows.  A grim humour ran through his nature.  It is gravely recorded and widely believed that he lined up a regiment on a hill-top in order to teach them not to shrink from fire.  Amid the laughter of his Irishmen, he walked through the open files of his firing line holding a laggard by the ear.  This was the man who had put such a spirit into the Irish Brigade that amid that army of valiant men there were none who held such a record.  ’Their rushes were the quickest, their rushes were the longest, and they stayed the shortest time under cover,’ said a shrewd military observer.  To Hart and his brigade was given the task of clearing the way to Ladysmith.

The regiments which he took with him on his perilous enterprise were the 1st Inniskilling Fusiliers, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, the 1st Connaught Rangers, and the Imperial Light Infantry, the whole forming the famous 5th Brigade.  They were already in the extreme British advance, and now, as they moved forwards, the Durham Light Infantry and the 1st Rifle Brigade from Lyttelton’s Brigade came up to take their place.  The hill to be taken lay on the right, and the soldiers were compelled to pass in single file under a heavy fire for more than a mile until they reached the spot which seemed best for their enterprise.  There, short already of sixty of their comrades, they assembled and began a cautious advance upon the lines of trenches and sangars which seamed the brown slope above them.