Helpmakaar, which had always been a single-day post, was now turned into
a three days' post, companies remaining in the fort for three days
before being relieved.

On the 11th three companies of the Regiment were sent out under Captain
Lafone to blow up a farm building under Bulwana, about one and half
miles distant from Devon Post. After a long delay, owing to the blasting
materials having been forgotten, the operation was successfully carried
out, and the party returned with only some slight annoyance from the
enemy's pompom and a few shots from a high-velocity gun stationed on
Bulwana.

The Boer artillery on Bulwana and Gun Hill was well served, and their
shooting was excellent. One morning they opened with a 40-pounder
howitzer, known under the name of "Weary Willy," on to the main work at
Devon Post, at a portion of the work occupied by "Walker's Hotchkiss Gun
Detachment." About twelve consecutive shots pitched within a five yards'
radius, and one crashed into and nearly breached the parapet, which was
here about six feet thick and built of large stones.

The men worked on the 11th from dark till 1 a.m., when the works were
practically completed and sufficiently strengthened to answer all
purposes, although building was being carried on till the last day of
the siege, and the men were still building at the actual moment when the
relief cavalry were marching across the plain into Ladysmith.

The willingness and the cheery manner in which the men of the battalion
worked at these defences are worthy of record. On pitch-dark nights in
pouring rain the men, wet to the skin, covered with mud and filth,
without a smoke, groping about in the dark to find a likely stone,