Later on, Hamilton, one of the most beloved of our Generals, gallops forward, and on the hill they have won, as evening is closing, says a few words to the Gordons.  “Men of the Gordons, officers of the Gordons, I want to tell you how proud I am of you; of my father’s old regiment, and of the regiment I was born in.  You have done splendidly.  To-morrow all Scotland will be ringing with the news.”  This charge will, no doubt, take rank as one of the most brilliant things of the war.

Next morning at dawn, escorting the cow-guns, I came to where the Boers had held out so long among the scattered rocks.  The Gordons were burying some of the Boer dead.  There were several quite youngsters among them.  One was a boy of not more than fourteen, I should think, like an English schoolboy.  One of the Gordons there told me he saw him, during the advance, kneeling behind a stone and firing.  He was shot through the forehead.  There is something pathetic and infinitely disagreeable in finding these mere children opposed to one.

These infantry advances are the things that specially show up the courage of our troops.  Each man, walking deliberately and by himself, is being individually shot at for the space of ten minutes or more, the bullets whistling past him or striking the ground near him.  To walk steadily on through a fire of this sort, which gets momentarily hotter and better aimed as he diminishes the distance between himself and the enemy, in expectation every instant of knowing “what it feels like,” is the highest test of courage that a soldier in these days can give.  Nothing the mounted troops are, as a rule, called upon to perform comes near it.  Knowing exactly from experience what lay in front of them, these Gordons were as cool as cucumbers.  As they lay among the stones with us before beginning the advance, I spoke to several, answering their questions and pointing them out the lie of the ground and the Boer position.  You could not have detected the least trace of anxiety or concern in any of them.  The front rank, when the order to advance was given, stepped down with a swing of the kilt and a swagger that only a Highland regiment has.  “Steady on the left;” they took their dressing as they reached the flat.  Some one sang out, “When under fire wear a cheerful face;” and the men laughingly passed the word along, “When under fire wear a cheerful face.”

LETTER XVIII

PRETORIA

PRETORIA, June 6, 1900.

It is generally considered rather a coup in war, I believe, to take the enemy’s capital, isn’t it? like taking a queen at chess.  We keep on taking capitals, but I can’t say it seems to make much difference.  The Boers set no store by them apparently; neither Bloemfontein nor Pretoria have been seriously defended, and they go on fighting after their loss just as if nothing had happened.