The advance of Lord Roberts was made, as his wont is, with two widespread wings, and a central body to connect them.  Such a movement leaves the enemy in doubt as to which flank will really be attacked, while if he denudes his centre in order to strengthen both flanks there is the chance of a frontal advance which might cut him in two.  French with two cavalry brigades formed the left advance, Pole-Carew the centre, and Buller the right, the whole operations extending over thirty miles of infamous country.  It is probable that Lord Roberts had reckoned that the Boer right was likely to be their strongest position, since if it were turned it would cut off their retreat upon Lydenburg, so his own main attack was directed upon their left.  This was carried out by General Buller on August 26th and 27th.

On the first day the movement upon Buller’s part consisted in a very deliberate reconnaissance of and closing in upon the enemy’s position, his troops bivouacking upon the ground which they had won.  On the second, finding that all further progress was barred by the strong ridge of Bergendal, he prepared his attack carefully with artillery and then let loose his infantry upon it.  It was a gallant feat of arms upon either side.  The Boer position was held by a detachment of the Johannesburg Police, who may have been bullies in peace, but were certainly heroes in war.  The fire of sixty guns was concentrated for a couple of hours upon a position only a few hundred yards in diameter.  In this infernal fire, which left the rocks yellow with lyddite, the survivors still waited grimly for the advance of the infantry.  No finer defence was made in the war.  The attack was carried out across an open glacis by the 2nd Rifle Brigade and by the Inniskilling Fusiliers, the men of Pieter’s Hill.  Through a deadly fire the gallant infantry swept over the position, though Metcalfe, the brave colonel of the Rifles, with eight other officers, and seventy men were killed or wounded.  Lysley, Steward, and Campbell were all killed in leading their companies, but they could not have met their deaths upon an occasion more honourable to their battalion.  Great credit must also be given to A and B companies of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, who were actually the first over the Boer position.  The cessation of the artillery fire was admirably timed.  It was sustained up to the last possible instant.  ‘As it was,’ said the captain of the leading company, ’a 94-pound shell burst about thirty yards in front of the right of our lot.  The smell of the lyddite was awful.’  A pom-pom and twenty prisoners, including the commander of the police, were the trophies of the day.  An outwork of the Boer position had been carried, and the rumour of defeat and disaster had already spread through their ranks.  Braver men than the burghers have never lived, but they had reached the limits of human endurance, and a long experience of defeat in the field had weakened their nerve and lessened their morale.  They were