About 5 p.m. an enemy patrol crept up to the river where our troops were bathing and watering their animals, and opened fire on them. Confusion ensued on the river-bank. Unarmed bathers beat a precipitous retreat; mules and horses broke away in all directions. One of our men, stark naked, rushing back to our trench line for his arms, was amusingly confronted by the General and the Colonel of our battalion, who stopped him to inquire the cause of the disturbance. The poor fellow felt much abashed, and, no doubt, wished the ground would open up and swallow him. The firing soon ceased, and the excitement it had caused gradually quietened down. But peace was doomed to be short-lived, for at 8 a.m. at a suddenly given signal, tremendous fire swept the camp and startled everyone to frightful wakefulness. Bugle calls of the enemy rang out immediately after the first burst of firing, and thenceforward a deafening, close-grappling, vicious battle held forth. Time after time the enemy came on at our trench line, always to be held up and driven back. In all they made about twenty charges in frontal attack, and were once almost into our line. The engagement raged without pause for about four hours. The frontal attack, which could be rapidly reinforced from the road from the south, was the heaviest, but both flanks, at the same time, underwent considerable pressure, though from a farther range. German bugles sounded the advance from time to time, whenever there was a lull in the firing, as if the moment’s pause had been to take in breath for a fresh effort; and when one bugle sounded, the call would be caught up and repeated all around us in the darkness of the bush. The enemy fire, fortunately for us, was bad, for it was mostly too high, also many bullets were obstructed in their flight through the dense forest. Otherwise, our casualties must have been extremely heavy, for many of the column were without any trench cover, and lay exposed on the open ground. As it was our casualty return, eventually, was only three killed and seventeen wounded, and a number of horses destroyed, while, next day, the enemy were reported to have had fully one hundred casualties. Next day—the memorable 21st of March, 1916—in the early morning, our column was reinforced from the eastern command with two battalions of South African Infantry, armoured cars, and some field guns. Orders had been received to attack Kahe. Our right was to be on the main road, when we advanced into battle. It transpired that General Van Deventer’s mounted brigade had passed through Moschi last night, and was to advance on the right flank and attack west and south of Kahe Station, while, at the same time, the eastern column was to operate along the line of the Himo River on the left flank. [Sidenote: HARD FIGHTING AT KAHE]