At 7.30 the infantry were ordered to advance, which they did in open order, extended to ten paces.

The Dublin Fusiliers formed the first line, the Rifles the second, and the Irish Fusiliers the third.
The first thousand yards of the advance were over open grassland, where the range was long, and the yellow brown of the khaki blended with the withered veld.

There were few casualties until the wood was reached, which lay halfway up the long slope of the hill.

It was a plantation of larches, some hundreds of yards across and nearly as many deep.

On the left side of this wood--that is, the left side to the advancing troops--there stretched a long nullah or hollow, which ran perpendicularly to the hill, and served rather as a conductor of bullets than as a cover.