Botha and his irreconcilables were at this time occupying a formidable position, with a frontage of fifteen miles, near Pienaar's Poort, where the Delagoa line runs through a gap in the hills, fifteen miles east of Pretoria; and this position Lord Roberts found it essential to attack with 17,000 men and seventy guns on Monday, June 11th, that is just a week after the neighbouring capital had surrendered. The fighting extended over three days; French attacking on our left, Hamilton on our right, and Pole Carew in the centre keenly watching the development of these flanking movements. In the course of this stubborn contest the invisible Boers did for one brief while become visible, as they galloped into the open in hope of capturing the Q Battery, which had already won for itself renown by redeeming Sanna's Post from complete disaster. Then it was Hamilton ordered the memorable cavalry charge of the 12th Lancers, which saved the guns, and scattered the Boers, but cost us the life of its gallant and God-fearing Colonel Lord Airlie, who before the war greatly helped me in my work at Aldershot. The death of such a man made the battle of Diamond Hill a mournfully memorable one; for Lord Airlie combined in his own martial character the hardness of the diamond with its lustrous pureness; and his last words just before the fatal bullet pierced his heart, were said to be a characteristic rebuke of an excited and perhaps profane sergeant: "Pray, moderate your language!" Wholesome advice, none too often given, and much too seldom heeded! [Sidenote: _News from a far Country._] As the inevitable result of this further fighting, the men who had fondly hoped to be shortly on their way to Hyde Park Corner, suffered just then from a severe attack of heart-sickness, which was none other than a passing spasm of home-sickness! "Home, sweet home" sighed they, "and we never knew how sweet till now"! Meanwhile, however, we were wonderfully well supplied with home news, for within a single fortnight no less than 360 sacks of letters and various postal packets reached the Guards' Brigade, in spite of whole mails being captured by the Boers, and hosts of individual letters or parcels having gone hopelessly astray. Official reports declare that a weekly average of nearly 750,000 postal items were sent from England to the army in South Africa throughout the whole period covered by the war, so that it is quite clear we were not forgotten by loved ones far away, and the knowledge of that fact afforded solace, if not actual healing, even for those whose heart-sickness was most acute. [Sidenote: _Further fighting._]