reinforce Colonel Ian Hamilton's command and to
push on, as help was urgently required. The Adjutant, Captain H.S.L.
Ravenshaw, was sent back to camp to order rations and water to be sent
out. Wagon Hill was reached at 4.45 p.m., and it was then ascertained
that the 5th Lancers and 19th Hussars had already been merged into the
firing line, and that a party of forty or fifty Boers were still in
possession of the hill some 100 yards in front of the ridge held by the
Imperial Light Horse, and directly in front of where the three companies
were then halted under cover, that these Boers had been holding on all
day there and inflicting great loss, and that our troops had been unable
to dislodge them. Colonel Park was asked if he could turn them out by
rushing them with the bayonet. He answered, "We will try." After the
three companies had been formed up in column with bayonets fixed and
magazines charged, Colonel Park gave the order to advance at fifty paces
interval in quick time, and when the top of the ridge was reached to
charge the position occupied by the Boers.

The charge took place in a blinding hail-storm, a time well chosen, as
the hail was beating into the faces of the Boers. The men, before
reaching the place where they formed up for the charge, were wet
through, and had put on their warm coats which they had carried strapped
on to their belts.

When the storm was at its height, Colonel Park gave the order to charge.
Lieutenant Field, who commanded the leading company, rushed forward up
the slope, shouting, "Company, double charge!" He was immediately
followed at a distance of about ten yards by Masterson's company, which
was immediately followed by Lafone's. As they got to the top of the
crest they came in view of the sangar of rocks held by the I.L.H. At the
corner of this they had to change direction half right, and the moment
they reached it came under fire from the Boers. There was necessarily
some crowding at this corner, owing to the change of direction, and the
fact that the companies in their eagerness had followed so soon the one
behind the other. There was, however, no halting, no dwelling here. On
they went to reach their goal, 130 yards away, over perfectly flat open
ground, fired into at short range from right, left, and front.
Three-parts of the way across Park directed the rear company more to the
right, the position the Boers occupied being in a semicircle.

[Illustration: Lieut.-Colonel C.W. P