The Boer position was held by a detachment of the Johannesburg Police, who may have been bullies in peace, but were certainly heroes in war.

The fire of sixty guns was concentrated for a couple of hours upon a position only a few hundred yards in diameter.
In this infernal fire, which left the rocks yellow with lyddite, the survivors still waited grimly for the advance of the infantry.

No finer defence was made in the war.

The attack was carried out across an open glacis by the 2nd Rifle Brigade and by the Inniskilling Fusiliers, the men of Pieter's Hill.

Through a deadly fire the gallant infantry swept over the position, though Metcalfe, the brave colonel of the Rifles, with eight other officers, and seventy men were killed or wounded.
Lysley, Steward, and Campbell were all killed in leading their companies, but they could not have met their deaths upon an occasion more honourable to their battalion.