The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-26
SENSATIONS IN BATTLE.
OBSERVATIONS OF 4 CORRES-
 PONDENT IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Courage Not Rare Quniity-con- sciousness of Danger and PrepaI alton
 for Death arc Seldom Noticed in Ac- tunl Warfare.
 Julian Rolph. the war corresp ondent cf the London Express, describes the sensations of being under fire' ill ,he following interesting letter:
 | At Kimberley they tell a story Gf soldier and civilian who were walking beyond the houses os the town toward some hills where .he Boers wara picket ca It was raining very hard, and the peting of the drops upon the umbrella which sheltered both drowned the lesser noises. The men and umbrella made a conspicuous target, and the Boers be- gan shooting before the two men got within range.
 | The soldier saw where the Mauser i balls struck the earth and each sent up i its little fountain-like jet of the red dust of the veldt. He quickened his pace, in order to reach the place of shell ter to which both were bound: and pres ently the<lit jets of sand began to spout up in front of his and his compan ions feet. In another two minutes bull lets were flying over their heads and striking the ground both before and be- hind him. The civilian was unaware of this. He heard only the rain, and the sand jets escaped his observation. i Uvo11 don't caarr varV rn1ph frai0 If bullets" the soldier remarked.
 T shouldn't like to be hit by one" said the civilian.
 Were you ever under fire before?"
 q never was under fire" the civilian replied; but what do you mean by be- fore? Are we in any danger of being shot at?"
 Are wet" the soldier exclaimed; "why, man alive, don't you know that you are under fire now? Don't you see the bullets kicking up the dirt all around us? Don't you hear them sing ing !"
 The civilian stopped still, looked at his companion, watched the ground, saw bullet bed itself at his feet-and then turned and ran back to Kimberley with the speed of deer. though he was middle-aged and portly.
 I can appreciate that story, because the first time I was under fire in the Boer war did not find it out till after ward It was at Lord Methuen's first battle-Belmont. The British had cleared one kopje and then gone around it to dislodge the Boers from another position. My son, Lester and I climbed to the top of kopie which faced one on which the Boers had a field gun. We were silhouetted black and white against the sky, but our position seemed secure, as the two forces were engaged in fierce fight far below and before us
 We did not then know that it was the custom of the Boers to detail "crack" shots to work as sharpshoOters, and to pick out individuals as their targets while the comrades were engaging the British with volleys As we looked on, we heard occasional faint sounds in the air, just before us, and each of us saw little spurts of dirt rise and disappear as one secs the mist of whales spout at a great distance at sea.
 The Boers retreated, the British swept | w catch up to the troops. It was not until we were in the next battle, and had a closer acquaintance with the sounds and habits of flying Mauser bullets, that we realized to a certainty that at Belmont we had been potted at for ten or fifteen minutes, but had been, happi- ly, just out of the danger zone.
 At the battle of Dreifontein, just be- fore BioemfOntein, another case in point was the experience of my son and H.. A, Gwynne, of Reuter's-in many inn portant respects the greatest of living war correspondents These two ad- vanced toward the invisible enemy, hid- den among bushes and rocks on kopje, until there came upon them such cloudburst of bullets that it did not seem as If a miller moth could have flown over the veldt without being hit. Both men fell on their faces, and. out of dare-deviltry. MT. GWynne lifted one hand above his head, to see if it would be hit. He pulled it back before it had been haised six inches, for a bullet grazed along the back of it even as he began to raise it.
 | It is these experiences, common as rain to all who were in that war, which inure men to danger, cause them to be- little it and utterly destroy that sort of romance of war which we imbibe from the books of men who imagine what war must be without having expe- rienced it's various phases.
 When Captain Lowther, of the Scots Guards, and three or four of his men were being sniped at while on outpost duty, the dreamer about war would have had the captains cheek blanch while through his brain would roll a panorama of the scene of his past life and of the faces of those he loved at home He would try to steel his nerves, he would set or lock- his jaw, he