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The Transvaal, 1899

There was the South African sun and empty sky and not a sound to be heard. Neither was there wind. The khaki colored grass rose stiff and straight save here and there where flattened by a dead or cowering body. No motion, no wind, no sound. Just the heat and the fire ants crawling up a mans pants leg as they lay in their sweat and bit their lips least the smallest motion gave them away to those eyes up on the Kop.

To say there was no sound at all was not quite true. As one listened, the quick anxious breath of frightened men and subdued groans of the wounded whispered from the concealing grass. There was the phit and smack of Mauser bullets kicking up dust and the dull whack of Boer Pom-Poms fired in hopes of flushing British soldiers from cover. There was also the low thunder of the British Naval Guns firing five miles in the distance and the whistle of shells as they sailed overhead. Still, to those lads stretched out with their faces pressed in the dirt - not daring to crawl more then a few yards at a time and accustomed to bugles, hoof beats and the clamor of battle, it was if they fought dumb and deaf.

Private Nigel Jenkins was one of those lads. It was curious to say but at present his only identifiable foe was the field canteen grinding relentlessly into his hip. His last crawl had brought he and his mates some four yards before a hail of Boer rifle fire caused them to freeze in place like schoolboys playing Statues. He dared not shift his weight least it stir the grass around him. That's all it took; a button catching the sun or the most stealthy attempt to brush off the flies. Do any of that and Johnny Boer would have you in his sights.

It was a wonder. He knew all around him were eight thousand soldiering lads; Innskillings, Dublin Fusiliers, Gordon Highlanders and his own mates of the Coldstream Guard. Up that bloody hill, he'd been told, there were a like number of those damned Boer Farmers - those pig headed Dutchmen whos rebellion had dragged him from his cush station in Egypt and whom he seemed to have been chasing from hill to hill forever! Yet for all that, he'd never once seen a man he'd shot at.

Even now, friend or foe, for all he could see he might as well be alone on the field. The new smokeless powder, bolt action rifles that could shoot a mile or more; in this damned war it was all fire, blast and pound then go count the dead. Men were nothing but ghosts and casualties on the tally sheets.

It had been different in

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