It’s 24th January 1900 and the battle of Spion Kop has been under way for ten hours. More than 1000 British soldiers are casualties and the entire senior officer corps on the summit of the mountain are dead.

General Redvers Buller who’d put two thirds of his Natal Army in the hands of the newly arrived General Warren now realised that things had gone from bad to worse on the top of Spion Kop. This was supposed to be a two pronged attack with Warren on controlling 2/3rds of the force and strangely, the commander Buller with 1/3rd followed by a push straight to Ladysmith.

But it didn’t quite work out that way.