Fictional piece depicting an incident in the Second Boer War, 1900.

British soldiers are engaged in a fire-fight at close range with Boers on high ground above them. One of the Boers gets close enough to a British soldier to touch him before falling hit. The Boer asks for water which the soldier gives him; but as the soldier turns away the Boer shoots him. The Boer then takes a despatch from the soldier's pocket and tries to get back up the slope to his own men, who by this time have mostly run away. Another British soldier chases after him, wrestles the despatch from him, and finally shoots him. The whole action is very quick and frenetic.

Notes

Summary: the identification of this film was made by James Barker, late of the Department of Information Retrieval, Imperial War Museum, in work for the television series 'Flashback'. According to this research this film was taken on a hillside not far from Bradford in the north of England. De Lange (see references) gives the alternative title THE DESPATCH RIDER and indicates an original length of 74 ft.

Technical: this item is currently held on a single reel with films IWM 1081a-f, the can is marked as IWM 1081