"A fire so thick and fearful that no man can imagine how any one passed under or through it.

Many crippled lay flat for hours, not daring to rise for succour.

If any one asked a comrade for a drink of water, he saw the bottle, or the hand passing it, pierced by a Dum-Dum or a one-pounder shell.

If he raised his head to writhe in his pain, he felt his helmet shot away."[13] [Footnote 13: Julian Ralph, "Toward Pretoria," p.
153.] The impression produced by the scene is most forcibly betrayed by the exaggerated phrase of the veteran commander in his first telegram--"One of the hardest and most trying {p.160} fights in the annals of the British Army." Yet, as far as result was concerned, it was an immense expenditure of ammunition and little loss of life.

The frontal attack was so clearly impossible that it was at once abandoned, and the men lay down.