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It was here, between the wall and the summit, that Colonel
Gunning, of the Rifles, and many other brave men met their end,
some by our own bullets and some by those of the enemy; but the
Boers thinned away in front of them, and the anxious onlookers from
the plain below saw the waving helmets on the crest, and learned at
last that all was well.
But it was, it must be confessed, a Pyrrhic victory. We had our
hill, but what else had we? The guns which had been silenced by our
fire had been removed from the kopje. The commando which seized the
hill was that of Lucas Meyer, and it is computed that he had with
him about 4000 men. This figure includes those under the command of
Erasmus, who made halfhearted demonstrations against the British
flank. If the shirkers be eliminated, it is probable that there
were not more than a thousand actual combatants upon the hill. Of
this number about fifty were killed and a hundred wounded. The
British loss at Talana Hill itself was 41 killed and 180 wounded,
but among the killed were many whom the army could ill spare.


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