There were several V.C.’s gained in and around Ladysmith during the memorable siege of that town which well deserve mention. Listen to the story of how Privates Scott and Pitts of the Manchester Regiment won the coveted decoration. In one of the Boer assaults early in 1900 the Manchesters were given the task of holding Cæsar’s Camp, a position in the long ridge of hills to the north-east of the town. Here they erected circular stone sangars, in each of which a few men were posted with a plentiful supply of ammunition. When the attack was delivered, Cæsar’s Camp and Waggon Hill in the vicinity received the brunt of it. Before the Boer fire the Manchester Regiment in particular suffered great loss, many of their sangars being captured and occupied by the enemy; but there was one spot in the defences that the Boers failed to carry. In the little sangar where they had been stationed Privates Scott and Pitts swore an oath that they would never give up while breath was left in their bodies, and for fifteen long hours their deadly rifle fire kept the Boers at bay. In the end, as we know, the enemy were compelled to withdraw baffled, whereupon the two plucky privates who had “held the fort” so manfully returned to camp smoke-blackened and--in Scott’s case--wounded, to receive the due reward of their heroism. Yet another brave man of Ladysmith fame was Private J. Barry of the Royal Irish. In the night attack on Monument Hill in January 1901, he was helping to work a Maxim when the Boers surrounded the little party. His comrades having been all shot down, Private Barry was called on to surrender, but this word was not in his vocabulary. He neither intended surrendering nor yielding his gun to the enemy, so hurling a defiance at the latter, he proceeded to smash the breech of the Maxim and render it useless. A few quick blows were sufficient for the purpose, and the work was done ere the infuriated Boers raised their rifles and shot him dead. A distinguished fellow-soldier of Barry’s was Colour-Sergeant (now Captain) Masterson, the hero of Waggon Hill. In the furious hand-to-hand fight on the hill he was a conspicuous figure, only being overborne at last by sheer force of numbers, and falling with ten wounds in his body and limbs. None of his injuries were mortal, however, and he survived to receive the V.C. and a commission. Captain Masterson’s name and rank, by the way, vividly recall to one’s mind the exploit of a Royal Irish Fusilier of earlier days, Sergeant Masterton, the hero of Barossa. Masterton was known as “the Eagle Taker,” for the dashing capture of a French Eagle standard after a charge up a hill much in the fashion of the Fusiliers at Waggon Hill, and he too was rewarded by promotion.