memoir · by a contemporary

Through shot and flame

J. D. Kestell (1854–1941), 1903

Named on the page for Battle of Spion Kop.

machine-read Machine-read (OCR) from a scanned book at the Internet Archive: expect misread words and names. The scan itself is at the library.

draft Matched to the battle automatically; not yet reviewed.

Passages that name the battle; the whole book is at Internet Archive.

23–24 January 1900

Battle of Spion Kop

BESIEGERS AND BESIEGED 35
I used to sit of an evening beneath the camel thorn-tree, under which Commandant de Villiers had pitched his tent, and gaze into the far west. There lay Spion Kop, tinted pink by the last rays of the setting sun. Far beyond rose the Drakensberg mountains with their rugged, dizzy crags, scored and scarred, already veiled in the shadows of night. What a thrill quivered through me when I presently looked up from that dark mass and saw the glittering gold, which had been laid for a moment on the clouds ; or when, after the sun had set, turning, I beheld in the east the wonderful maze of colour in the sky. The soft pink merged into almost black purple, and this again, as if in need of support, rested on the blue black rock foundation of the earth.

THE FIRST OF OUR DARK DAYS
As I have already mentioned, General A. P. Cronje had marched up along the Tugela with a number of Free Staters some time before. He had kept to the north side, and was stationed not very far from Potgieter's Drift. He now went towards the cluster of hills of which Spion Kop is the highest peak.

THE FIRST OF OUR DARK DAYS 57
Early on the following morning, 17th January, the cannon — great naval guns — began to roar from Swart Kop, and the eight days' battle of Spion Kop had commenced.

THE FIRST OF OUR DARK DAYS 63
The great battle of Spion Kop had been fought. The English had made a second attempt to relieve the besieged at Ladysmith and had a second time been beaten back.

Public domain. Text from Internet Archive.