n began to show the effects of
exposure and constant sentry-go, and several of them went down with
fever and rheumatism; but we were extremely lucky throughout the
siege, having only one casualty: Private Ward, 'G' company, a
reservist, who died of enteric at Intombi Camp.

I forgot to mention that on January 6th our section had to be entirely
denuded of supports and reserves in order that they might be sent to
Waggon Hill, so that if the enemy had attacked us seriously we should
have had a hard job to keep them back.

On January 25th the detachment was ordered to garrison Liverpool
Castle, a fort overlooking the Newcastle Road, but we had not been
there twelve hours before we were ordered to Tunnel Hill. This latter
post consisted of a large main fort capable of holding two hundred
men, and two small works about a quarter of a mile on each flank, in
all of which we had to find a guard. Our fighting strength was at this
time reduced to twenty-seven men, so that they did guard and patrol
alternate nights. We had to send out five of the latter during the
night about half a mile to the front and a mile laterally along the
valley. The confinement in this fort was rather trying, and the
eternal manning of the trenches at 4 a.m. very monotonous. After about
three weeks on this post I was suddenly seized with a 'go' of fever,
and was sent down to a room in one of the houses. When I rejoined the
detachment, after a fortnight on the sick list, they had moved to the
railway station as guard over the bridge across the Klip River. Here
we had to endure rather a severe dose of 'Long Tom'--this gun never
missed a day without dropping shells into and round the station, it
was one of its favourite spots, and all the tin buildings about bore
evidence of its attentions. One shell, pitching in the parcels office,
blew the roof off and the floor in, having first penetrated
half-a-dozen walls to get there. We had trenches on our side of the
river, which we manned, as usual, at 4 a.m. We also had to man them in
the afternoon about 5 o'clock, when the train from Intombi Camp was
due. This used to be rather a comic proceeding: a 'key' was made in
the line about half a mile outside the station, where the train was
brought to a standstill, then either Higginson or myself had to walk
out and inspect the train to see there were no Boers inside it. We
often used to wonder what would have been our lot if the train had
been full of them. On our rep