midday
Then all up the dim hillside I could make out the Boers halting and riding back . One rifle across there flashed . We held them ! ... We had begun the fight of Pieters Nek which ended before midday with the surrender of Simon Botha and over seven hundred men . It was the crown of all my soldiering . § 4 I came back to England at last when I was twenty-six . After the peace of Vereeniging I worked under the Repatriation Commission which controlled the distribution of returning prisoners and concentrated population to their homes ; for the most part I was distributing stock and grain , and presently manoeuvring a sort of ploughing flying column that the dearth of horses and oxen made necessary , work that was certainly as hard as if far less exciting than war .