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As we all know, research never ends and it's time to update Mostert with something new I chanced upon. This snippet came in the form of a newspaper article in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner of 26 April 1900. Quoting from a "war correspondent" with the Standard and Digger News (the Boer mouthpiece) the article, under the banner "ATTACK ON PIETERS HEIGHTS", mentions Mostert and reads as follows:

'The same correspondent in regards to the attack on Pieters Hill on February 27th writes:-

The combatants state that our few but effective cannon availed little against the enemy's monstrous guns, although our Maxim-Nordenfeldt, posted behind the Krugersdorp trenches littered the stony plain with countless dead and crimson puddles. The slaughter was awful. For hours the khaki hordes were kept at bay, until our arms and eyes ached with killing. The hills were converted into volcanoes of hissing fire and smoke, and at every assault of the morning the English were driven staggering backwards over the rocks, until the sun saw the battlefield of four days previous strewn afresh with corpses.

But each scattered battalion was replaced by another, as if there were no end to the khaki legions, and as phalanx after phalanx swarmed, scrambled and clambered towards the hills, like continuous monster waves of endless humanity, well - it was like mopping up the advancing tide of an endless river. The sheer weight of those upon them made timid burghers brave against their will.

Our wounded lay glaring upon the wide circle of their enemies with death and defiance struggling for mastery; but the enemy were ever drawing new recruits and convoys until they outnumbered ours by a hundred to one, and the canon from every side that covered their approach flung forth death and the peculiarly nauseating effects of lyddite with such maddening fury that it was fatal to pop out one's head and aim.

Our brave West Rand men fought like heroes; still, there stinging shafts could not maim all that came within their rifles' reach and after a time the position grew untenable. The Mauser, powerful weapon that it is, played tellingly upon successive walls of humanity. It could batter down the first and the second and the third, but our strength waned and our numbers gradually weakened, and the depleted commando, from which a section had already reluctantly retired, was in the hands of the enemy.

The Johannesburgers, under Du Preez and Mostert, who were to reinforce the Krugersdorpers, were equally exposed to that terrible attack, and I grieve to say that a goodly number are now in the enemy's custody.

When the English bayonets got near our schanzes the final valiant stand was made, and the soldiery and burghers rushed at each other until they met face to face in mortal grip. So hot was it in those flaming rocks that Boer and Britain broke off fighting now and then, to quench their thirsts with hurried gasps ere flying again at each others throats; and so wild was the confusion, so dense the smoke, so thick the dead and dying, that hardly one could tell which were friends and which were foes.

The correspondent states that the British got as far as Pieters Station, but retired the next day."

Whoever he was, the correspondent certainly had a turn of phrase...





Regards

Rory