TOPIC:

I have reread the account of the Wagon Hill battle in the book 'Through Shot and Flame', which was written by J D Kestel, who was described on the inside cover as a "minister of religion, writer, scholar, patriot and one of the principal architects of the Afrikaner cultural edifice". He was the son of Charles Kestall, who came from Devonshire to settle in the Cape Colony, later moving to Natal, where John Daniel Kestell was born in Pietermaritzburg in 1854.

In one of the many curious coincidences in the Boer War, Kestall was to meet with men from Devon on the Wagon Hill battlefield in an action that was seen by the British as one of the decisive feats of courage that sealed a victory, whereas to Kestell it served no purpose since the Boers had already set on conceding defeat and withdrawing from the battle.

This is an extract from page 52 of Kestell's book:


With the benefit of hindsight, it may well be asked if the 24 men of the Devonshire Regiment who died on that day did so in vain? The stalemate reached on Wagon Hill on the afternoon of 6 January 1900 would in any case have resolved itself when the Boers retreated after darkness fell, just as they did at Caesar's Camp.

Brett