LADYSMITH INVESTED
The exodus of the townsfolk--Communications threatened--Slim Piet
Joubert--Espionage in the town--Neglected precautions--A truce that
paid--British positions described--Big guns face to face--Boers
hold the railways--French's reconnaissance--The General's
flitting--A gauntlet of fire--An interrupted telegram--Death of
Lieutenant Egerton--"My cricketing days are over"--Under the
enemy's guns--"A shell in my room"--Colonials in action--The
sacrifice of valuable lives.
October closed without further hostilities, and its last day was
uneventful in a military sense, though full of forebodings in the
town, because all knew that the Boers were taking advantage of a
brief armistice to bring up reinforcements. On this last day of the
month civilians eager to get away from Ladysmith crowded every
train. Writing on November 1st, Mr. Pearse said:--
All Saints' Day is observed with some strictness by Boers who do not
show similar veneration for other festivals in the Church Calendar.
There have at any rate been no hostilities to-day, but from Captain
Lambton's Battery on Junction Hill, where the naval 4.7-inch
quick-firing gun is being mounted, we have by the aid of the signalman's
powerful telescope watched a significant Boer movement going on for
hours. We can see them among the scrubby trees between Lombard's Kop and
Umbulwaana (or Bulwaan as it is more generally called), and hurrying off
behind that hill along the road that leads southwards. That road cuts
the railway not more than six or seven miles out, and their movement
threatens our line of communications that way, unless we can manage to
check it by judicious use of cavalry and mounted troops. The flight of
townsfolk southward continues. They do not even trouble about luggage
now, but lock their doors and clear off. Half the houses are empty, and
many shops closed.
It was early shown that the enemy had not undertaken the war in a
half-hearted manner. He let no possible opportunity escape to
better his position; and in the choice of means he was not inclined
to risk his reputation for "slimness." On this point Mr. Pearse has
a good deal to say in his next letter:--
_November 2._--For two whole days after the battle of Lombard's Kop
there was absolute cessation of hostilities, and this lull the Boers
turned to account in a manner very characteristic. There can be hardly
any doubt that we might have taken advantage of it also to safeguard our
line of communications by posting a force where it might have checkmated
one of the enemy's obvious moves. Anything would have been better than
the inaction, which simply allowed the Boers to mature their own plans
and put them into execution without risk of interference from us. That
might almost have been foreseen when General Joubert on 31st October hit
upon a characteristic plan for finding out what was the exact state of
affairs in Ladysmith, and we, with a delightful naïveté, suspecting no
guile, seem to have played into his hands. It will be remembered that
the most painful incident of "Black" or "Mournful Monday" was the
surrender of all but a company or two of the Gloucesters and Royal Irish
Fusiliers, which with a mountain battery had been detached to turn the
enemy's flanks, with consequences so humiliating and disastrous to us.
Under pretence of treating the wounded from this column with great
consideration, Joubert sent them into camp here, taking their parole as
a guarantee that they would not carry arms again during this campaign.
With the ambulance waggon was an escort of twenty Boers, all wearing the
Red Cross badge of neutrality. Their instructions were to demand an
exchange of wounded, and on the plea of being responsible for the proper
care of their own men, they claimed to be admitted within our lines.
Such a preposterous request would not have been listened to for a moment
by some generals, but Sir George White, being anxious apparently to
propitiate an enemy whose guns commanded the town, full as it was of
helpless women and children, yielded that point, and so the ambulance
with its swaggering Boer escort came into town neither blindfolded nor
under any military restrictions whatever. Among this mounted escort
Ladysmith people recognised several well-known burghers, who were
certainly not doctors or otherwise specially qualified for attendance on
wounded men. They were free to move about the town, to talk with Boer
prisoners, and to drink at public bars with suspected Boer
sympathisers--all this while they probably picked up many interesting
items as to the number of troops in Ladysmith, the position of ordnance
stores and magazines, and the general state of our defences, which were
chaotic at that moment. One among the visitors was particularly curious
about the names of officers who dined habitually at the Royal Hotel
mess, and very anxious to have such celebrities as Colonel Frank Rhodes,
Dr. Jameson, and Sir John Willoughby pointed out to him. Does anybody in
his senses believe that such careful inquiries were made without an
object, or that the Red Cross badge was regarded as a sacred symbol
sealing the lips of a Boer as to all he had seen and heard in Ladysmith?
When Joubert's artillery began shelling the town their fire was directed
on important stores, the locality of which could only have been
indicated to them by secret agents, and on places where officers are
known to assemble at certain hours. These may all have been merely
strange coincidences, but, at any rate, they are noteworthy as showing
that in some way, whether by accident or cunning design, General
Joubert's gunners were able to profit by the truce that was agreed upon
without any exact stipulation on either side as to its duration. The
tacit understanding seems to have been that both forces should have time
to collect their wounded and bury their dead.
It is certain that the Boers took a little more time than was necessary
for this purpose, and turned it to good use for themselves by
strengthening the earthworks behind which "Long Tom" is mounted, while
we in turn were enabled to get a second naval gun of heavy calibre into
position before the bombardment began again. The necessity for doing
this was probably chief among reasons which kept our artillery silent
during the last two days, though it seemed to mere spectators that a
chance was thus being given for the enemy to mount batteries on heights
that commanded nearly every part of our camp.
To make this perfectly clear without the aid of a map showing contours
of all ridges and hollows is very difficult, and one can only attempt to
give in words a rough idea of the general position. If the reader will
bear in mind what a horse's hoof inverted looks like, he may get a
mental picture of Ladysmith and its surroundings--the heels of the
horse-shoe pointing eastward, where, five miles off, is the long, flat
top of steep Bulwaan, like the huge bar of a gigantic horse-shoe magnet.
The horse's frog approximately represents a ridge behind which, and
facing Bulwaan, but separated from it by broad stretches of meadow, with
the Klip River winding a serpentine course through them, between high
banks, is Ladysmith town. Between the frog and the horse-shoe lie our
various camps, mostly in radiating hollows, open either to the east or
west, but sheltered from cross fires by rough kopjes of porphyritic
boulders that have turned brown on the surface by exposure to sunshine.
Bushy tangles of wild, white jasmine spring from among these boulders
with denser growth of thriving shrubs bearing waxen flowers that blaze
in brilliant scarlet and orange, and the coarse grass that begins to
show on every patch of earth between the rocks is dotted with clusters
like dwarf petunias, or purple bells of trailing convolvulus. A rich
storehouse this for the botanist, whose contemplative studies, however,
might be rudely disturbed by the shriek and boom of shells bursting
about him, for, as I have said, the enemy's guns command most of these
ridges, though they cannot always search the hollows in which our camps
are as much as possible hidden.
The horse-shoe, in its irregular curve, is dotted here and there with
outposts, whose duty it is to keep the enemy's sharpshooters from
getting within rifle range of our artillery positions encrusting the
ridges at several points like nails of the horse-shoe. Without locating
them exactly, one may say that the Naval batteries are on rough
eminences of the northern heel, facing Rietfontein Hill, where the
Creusot gun, known as "Long Tom," is mounted behind earthworks at a
range of 6800 yards, which is well within compass of the _Powerful's_
12-pounders and at least 3000 yards less than the extreme distance at
which shells from her 4.7-inch quick-firing guns would be effective.
Positions for field batteries are prepared at other points round the
wide sweep, but only to be occupied as occasion may arise, and therefore
one does not care at present to locate them more precisely. The enemy,
having heavy artillery of various calibre mounted on Bulwaan, is able to
enfilade certain posts held by our infantry pickets on the heels of the
horse-shoe, but there are folds among the rocky kopjes where men can lie
comparatively screened from shells, which at that distance give timely
notice of their coming, as sound travels rather faster than the
projectiles do at the end of their flight.
We have outposts on Intombi or Maiden's Castle, which forms the
horse-shoe's southern heel, others stretching westward thence to a gap
in the toe of the shoe, through which a wood runs nearly due west until
it branches off to the Drakensberg Passes in one direction and
Maritzburg in the other, and pickets on the north-western and northern
heights, with a detached post at Observation Hill, an elongated kopje
outside the general defences, overlooking a wide valley of mimosa scrub
towards Rietfontein, which is the enemy's main stronghold, commanding
as it does the railways to Van Reenan's Pass in the west, and to
Newcastle in the north. Except for a distance of two miles from
Ladysmith, therefore, both these railways are in the hands of the Boers,
who can use them as uninterrupted lines of communication with the Orange
Free State and the Transvaal respectively. That they were being so used
to some purpose we had reason for believing, during the two peaceful
days following the one which from its associations has come to be known
among soldiers as "Mournful Monday." Standing on the naval battery, one
could watch Boers hard at work preparing positions near Lombard's Kop,
and along the crest of Bulwaan, for artillery that was probably then
being brought by railway from Laing's Nek, and at the same time columns
of Boer horsemen were moving behind Bulwaan southwards, evidently intent
upon cutting our own lines of communication. That they would be allowed
to accomplish it without a timely effort on our part to prevent them
seemed inconceivable.
For most of us it was a shock to realise that ten or twelve thousand
British soldiers could be shut up by an army of Boer farmers before any
attempt at a counter-stroke had been made. The mobility of our enemies,
however, gives them a wonderful advantage in such movements over a force
that consists mainly of slow-moving infantry, and unless opportunity is
taken to attack them promptly, when they may be beaten in detail, their
power for mischief is very far-reaching. Possibly Sir George White was
quite right to put his trust in defensive tactics, knowing that he could
hold Ladysmith against all attempts of the Boers to capture it
notwithstanding their numerical superiority, but it is none the less
vexatious and unpleasant to find ourselves beleaguered and bombarded.
Whether the enemy had power to invest Ladysmith effectually, and keep a
strong force across our lines of communication would only be ascertained
by a reconnaissance. Directly and without any warning except to officers
commanding detachments, a force assembled at the earliest hour this
morning (Nov. 2). There was so little fuss that soldiers lying in tents
on bivouac slept undisturbed by the clanking of bits as horses were
saddled, or the rumble of wheels when a battery moved to their places in
the column. Artillery, 5th Lancers, 18th Hussars, Natal Carbineers,
Border Mounted and Natal Mounted Rifles get together silently, the
volunteers vieing with regulars in this proof of discipline, which
indeed comes natural to men many of whom know by sporting experience on
the veldt that silence is a virtue. General French takes command of this
mobile little force, and at two o'clock it moves out through the
darkness for a reconnaissance along the Colenso Road, where it comes in
touch with the enemy soon after daybreak. A brisk skirmish against Boer
riflemen, who as usual have been quick to occupy commanding kopjes;
showers of shrapnel hurled among them from our field battery; a few
shells tearing up the dust in clouds in their distant camp; and two of
our own Lancers hit, makes up the story of this affair, which serves to
show conclusively that communication by road in that direction is
barred, if not effectually cut. General French therefore brought his
column back, reaching Ladysmith in time to take train for Durban,
handing over the cavalry command before he left to General Brocklehurst.
That train was the last to get through, and even then had to run the
gauntlet of rifle and artillery fire from Boers who were on both sides
of the line. An hour later the railway was cut by the Boers, whose light
guns completely commanded a defile through which the line passes; and at
two o'clock telegraphic communication stopped short in the middle of an
important despatch, while private and press messages innumerable await
their turn. The thread of that interrupted telegram will probably not be
taken up for many days, and we realise that our isolation is complete.
Communications might have been kept open for days longer by an energetic
use of artillery and mounted troops, but now it is too late to reopen
them without incurring risk of serious losses. We must be content to
wait the development of events in other quarters, for the Boers are all
round us now, and, blink the fact as we may, it must be admitted that
Ladysmith is under siege.
While General French was making his reconnaissance our naval 12-pounders
opened fire on "Long Tom" a few minutes after six o'clock, as a flash
and puff of white smoke from his muzzle told that the bombardment was
about to begin. For an hour and a half the artillery duel went on
briskly, Captain Lambton's naval battery answering shot for shot, or
rather anticipating each, as the shells from our guns travel with
greater velocity, and get home three seconds before "Long Tom's" can
take effect.
Unfortunately one of the enemy's shells fell close to Lieutenant
Egerton, instructor in gunnery of H.M.S. _Powerful_, who was mortally
wounded. "My cricketing days are over now," he said, with a plucky
attempt to make light of his agony as the bluejackets lifted him gently
on to a stretcher. The Naval Brigade also had one bluejacket wounded,
but not seriously. There was only one other casualty, though shells fell
frequently into the camps of Gordon Highlanders and Imperial Light Horse
in rear of our main battery, the former having one man hit by a splinter
as he lay in his tent. The two regiments were thereupon ordered to shift
their quarters, which they did with great promptitude, having no
particular fancy to play the part of targets for ninety-four-pound
shells.
_November 3._--Misfortunes press upon each other quickly. This morning
Lieut. Egerton, R.N., a young sailor, not less distinguished for skill
in his profession than for personal gallantry, died. His requiem rang
out from the naval battery in its duel with the enemy's heaviest
artillery. Soon other Boer guns joined in from Lombard's Kop and the
slopes of Bulwaan, throwing shells about the town as if resolved to
compass its ruin.
To-day, indeed, for the first time, we have had brought home to us the
dangers and discomforts, if not the horrors, of what a bombardment may
be in an unfortified town under the fire of modern artillery. We cannot
accuse the Boers of having deliberately thrown shells into the houses of
peaceful inhabitants, or over buildings on which the Geneva Cross was
flying. These are, unfortunately, just in the line of "Long Tom's" fire
from Rietfontein Hill, and the shells may have been aimed at our naval
battery, but, if so, they went very high, or their trajectory at that
range would not have carried them half a mile beyond the mark.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL HOTEL, LADYSMITH
Showing ruins of Mr. Pearse's bedroom, wrecked by a shell from "Long
Tom," Nov. 3, 1899]
Several fell near the hospital, others went 500 yards farther in the
direction of Sir George White's headquarters, and one came crashing into
my bedroom at the Royal Hotel, not ten yards from where many officers
were then lunching. The hotel is a prominent building, that can be seen
from "Long Tom's" battery, and many people, giving Boer gunners credit
for astonishing accuracy, suggested that the shot must have been aimed
to strike where it did, in the hope of bagging Colonel Frank Rhodes and
Doctor Jameson, whose ordinary hour for meals was known to every spy
frequenting the place, and might easily have been communicated by
them to the artillerist Mattey, who was recognised among a group
drinking at the bar on Tuesday evening. Of slight materials do the
Ladysmith townsmen weave romances, but one can hardly be surprised,
seeing how long they have lived in strained relations with neighbours
whose Boer sympathies were well known. But whether intended for the
Royal Hotel or not, the shell came very near to causing several
vacancies in the senior ranks of this force. Passing through the ceiling
and partition wall of a colleague's bedroom, it burst in mine with such
force that it blew out the whole end-wall, hurling bricks across a
narrow court, all about the dining-room windows, which were smashed by
the explosion; but of those sitting close inside only one was slightly
scratched by broken glass. Clouds of dust, mingled with fumes of powder,
poured in through the open casement, so that those in farther corners
were for some moments in much anxiety as to the fate of their friends.
When they found that no harm had been done there was an assumption of
mirth all round, but nobody cared to stay much longer in that room. At
the moment of explosion I had risen from the table to resume work in my
chamber, which presented to my astonished eyes anything but the
characteristics of a quiet study then. Papers scattered in every
direction were buried with clothes and kit under a wreckage of building
materials. One fragment of iron shell had gone clean through a bag and
all its contents to bury itself beneath the floor in earth. Another had
crushed my precious Kodak flat, and there was scarcely a thing exposed
in the place that had not been torn by the blast of powder or cut by
splinters. The diminished population of Ladysmith began to gather about
that spot when they found that no other shells fell there. "What a lucky
escape for you!" they all said, and I devoutly agreed with them.
That was "Long Tom's" last attempt at bombarding Ladysmith to-day. He
had been frequently silenced, and once apparently disabled in his heavy
duel with "Lady Anne," as Captain Lambton names the naval quick-firing
gun, and a final lucky shot either put him out of action for the day or
injured so many Boer gunners that their comrades did not care to "face
the music" again. While all this bombardment was going on, the telegraph
staff and post-office clerks, having no work to do, amused themselves by
playing cricket on the raceground within sight of the Boers on Bulwaan,
and well within range of guns mounted near the crest of that hill,
whence a hot fire was for some time directed towards the town. And they
played their match to a finish, though one shell burst very close to
them.
Meanwhile General Brocklehurst having succeeded General French in the
cavalry command, took out another flying column composed of 5th Dragoon
Guards, Imperial Light Horse, Border Mounted Rifles, and one field
battery, to keep the enemy in play and prevent them from mounting other
guns. He attacked the ridges about Lancer's Nek and all his troops
behaved brilliantly. The Border Mounted Rifles in squadrons, wave behind
wave, charged a kopje as if they meant to ride full tilt to its crest,
but halting at its base to dismount they scaled its rugged slopes and
drove the Boers back to another ridge, exchanging shots at short range
with effect on both sides. The Imperial Light Horse had meanwhile got
into a tight place, and the 5th Dragoon Guards, dashing forward to their
assistance were badly galled by fire from Boers concealed among rocks in
front and flank. Out of this difficulty they had to run the gauntlet for
their lives, but not so hurriedly that they could not stop to help
comrades in distress, and many deeds of heroism under fire made the
spectators of this episode forget that some one had blundered. The Boers
got no more guns into position to-day, but we had only gained a brief
respite, and at the sacrifice of some valuable lives. Major Taunton of
the Border Mounted Rifles and Captain Knapp and Lieutenant Brabant of
the Imperial Light Horse were killed, and many of lower rank wounded.