1. Section in the nickel casing, leaving the extremity of the leaden
bullet exposed; the lead, getting very hot, emerges partly from the
casing, flattens at the slightest resistance, and expands.
2. Four longitudinal sections in the nickel casing allow the bullet to
flatten at the moment of contact, and to exude lead through the
apertures.
These two first patterns, the ones most in use, are made for Lee-Metford
and Mauser rifles.
The English also use hollow-nosed bullets, the extremity of which is cut
or rubbed off.
The Boers, for their part, have manufactured solid projectiles, which
show the lead through a straight section, and have the four longitudinal
slits.
A few expansive Lee-Metford cartridges, hollow, and filled with
fulminate, certainly existed, but I do not believe that they were ever
in general use.
I need not insist upon the terrible injuries inflicted by all these
projectiles. I have seen the whole of the back of a man's hand carried
away by a bullet entering the palm, where it had only made a hole of the
normal dimension.
During this war, in an arid country without any towns, Tommy has
suffered terribly. Accustomed to the comfort of English barracks and to
abundant meals, he was ill-prepared to spend his nights on the hard
ground in cold and rain, with stones that bruised his ribs for his only
bed, and half a biscuit for his dinner.
Now that we have inspected the English army, let us see what it has
accomplished since our arrival.
First of all in Natal. In January, Ladysmith was still invested. The
garrison of nearly 10,000 men and the inhabitants were decimated more by
disease than by the occasional shells the Boers threw into the town
every day as a matter of duty. Provisions had become scarce. An
officer's ration was two biscuits and 240 grammes of horseflesh a day.
A dozen eggs cost L2 8s.; a dozen tomatoes, 18s.; a tin of preserved
meat, L3; a tin of condensed milk, 10s.; a pot of jam, L1 11s.; a
quarter of a pound of English tobacco, L3; a case containing a dozen
bottles of whisky, L140, nearly L12 a bottle.
Nevertheless, a newspaper published by the besieged, the _Lyre_, is
still facetious. It publishes the following notes:
'_Telegram from London_.--A shell thrown by _Long Tom_ fell in the War
Office. General Brackenbury received it with resignation.... A good
many reputations have been damaged. The 2nd Army Corps has been
discovered in the War Office portfolios.'
Meanwhile, Buller was still trying to cross the Tugela and relieve
Ladysmith. Without any definite plan, perplexed and irresolute, he runs
up and down the bank of the river like a cat afraid of the water.
At last he 'permits' Warren to attack Spion Kop. It is strange indeed
to find Warren's 15,000 men (the 5th Division) and Buller's 25,000
setting out without a map, without information, and without a guide.
On January 16 Lieutenant Flood luckily discovered a ford, by which two
battalions crossed the river; but then the Engineers were obliged to
await the arrival of Lieutenant Mazzari's sailors to make a ferry.
At Trichardt's Drift two pontoon bridges were built, and the whole of
Warren's division crossed.
On the 19th this General essays an out-flanking movement in the
direction of Acton Homes; but this manoeuvre at the base of escarpments
occupied by the enemy is found to be too dangerous; the division falls
back upon Trichardt's Drift with its convoys and the 420 bullock-waggons
intended for the Ladysmith garrison.
A frontal attack, facing east, is decided upon for January 20. The
infantry is engaged 800 yards from the Boer trenches. It is three
o'clock; an assault is about to be made on the position. But a
counter-order arrives, the reason for which has never yet been
explained.
On the 21st, 22nd and 23rd the English try to gain a few hundred yards.
Clery and Warren confess themselves powerless, and turn the attack
towards the south-east.
On the night of the 23rd General Woodgate receives orders to seize Spion
Kop. General Woodgate, commanding the 9th Brigade, took part in the
Abyssinian campaigns of 1868, the Ashanti campaign of 1873, and the Zulu
campaign of 1879. Later he was in command of the English forces in West
Africa, during the rising of 1898.
He took with him eight companies of the 2nd Battalion Lancashire
Fusiliers, six companies of the 2nd Battalion Royal Lancashire Regiment,
two companies of the 1st Battalion South Lancashire Regiment, 194 men of
Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry, and a half-company Royal Engineers. To
these were added two battalions from General Lyttelton's Brigade.
At 3.30 in the morning, after mounting the hill in silence, Lieutenant
Audrey, in command of the advance-guard, took two of the Boer trenches
with the bayonet. They were held by Boers of the Vryheid commando, who
were few in number, and had been completely surprised.
But the Heidelberg and Carolina commandos, under Schalk Burger, came to
the rescue. Urged forward by a German commando and by Ricciardi's
Italians, they crossed an open space under a hail of bullets and lyddite
shells, and established themselves on one of the three spurs formed by
the kopje at this point.
The struggle was very fierce. Between nine and eleven the English
charged three times with the bayonet and were repulsed. Under the
deadly fire of the Mausers and the Maxim-Nordenfeldts they were obliged
to fall back gradually, before any serviceable reinforcements had
reached them.
Woodgate, mortally wounded, was replaced by Colonel Thorneycroft; the
latter received neither orders nor instructions, though it would have
been easy to have established optical telegraph communication, as the
heliograph was working between Mount Alice and Bester Farm (Redvers
Buller and White).[#]
[#] A heliograph _was_ working on the height, but 'the signallers and
their apparatus were destroyed by the heavy fire' (_vide_ Sir Charles
Warren's report).--TRANSLATOR.
His position had become most critical; a council of war was hastily
called, on the decision of which the height was evacuated under cover of
night.
On January 25 Sir Redvers Buller, who had hastened to Warren's camp, was
informed of this catastrophe, which upset all his combinations. A
general retreat was determined on, and the troops recrossed the Tugela.
After this bloody check, General Buller's report of the movement is
delicious:
'The fact that we were able to withdraw our ox-waggons and mule
transports over a river 85 yards broad and with a rapid current, without
any interference from the enemy, is, I think, a proof that they have
learnt to respect the fighting powers of our soldiers.'
The 'lesson' he had given the Boers had cost him 307 killed, thirty-one
of whom were officers; 175 wounded, of whom forty-nine were officers;
and 347 prisoners and missing, among them seven officers.
The Boers had 168 men killed. And, as Ricciardi has pointed out, but
for the incomprehensible opposition of General Joubert, this retreat
across the Tugela would have been, not a proof that the enemy had learnt
to respect the fighting powers of the English, but a terrific rout. For
General Louis Botha, surrounded by a dozen guns, was watching the
English passing over their pontoons from the heights he had defended the
night before. They were well within range, and the gunners were at
their posts. It wanted but an order, the pontoons would have been
destroyed, and Warren's division, hemmed in by the river, would have
been massacred to a man. Why was this order not given?
In March, even before the death of the Generalissimo, a terrible word
had been whispered--treason! At any rate, his inaction was highly
culpable, for if the struggle seems hopeless now, there was a time when
he might have turned it into victory, and made it another Majuba Hill
campaign.
We know that Joubert's ignorance was almost incredible, that he could
not even use a map, and that he stubbornly refused to learn. His
attitude at the time of Warren's retreat and in certain other
circumstances no doubt gave colour to the rumours of poisoning which
followed the General's sudden death in March. It is conceivable that
some Burgher, carried away by patriotic zeal, did not hesitate to commit
a crime that the supreme command might pass into more faithful or bolder
hands....
Later on, when I was a prisoner in the English camp, I said one day in
jest to a young sub-lieutenant:
'You lost one of your best generals in March.'
'Who do you mean?'
'Joubert.'
Seeing his air of surprise and annoyance, a superior officer who was
present said, with a smile:
'You are right!'
On February 1 the positions of the belligerents had undergone no very
notable modification since the beginning of the war. We will
recapitulate them for the last time, for English reinforcements were
arriving from every side. Lord Roberts had assumed the supreme command,
the besieged towns were shortly to be delivered, and the war was to
enter upon an active phase.
In the north, in Rhodesia, General Carrington was at Marondellas, and
Colonel Plumer at Safili Camp, near Buluwayo.
At Mafeking, Colonel Baden-Powell is made a Lieutenant-General. 'The
Wolf who never sleeps,' as his men call him, is still besieged by
Snyman.
Colonel Kekewich at Kimberley is surrounded by the troops of Du Toit,
Kolby, Delarey, and Ferreira.
General Cronje, to the south of Kimberley, is well informed as to Lord
Roberts' preparations, but he pays no heed to them, and meets all
Villebois' far-seeing counsels with the stock phrase: 'I was a general
when you were still a child.'
Schoeman is near Colesberg, facing General French.
Olivier, to the north of Burghersdorp, confronts Gatacre.
Botha and Schalk Burgher, on the north bank of the Tugela, hold in check
Buller and Warren on the south bank, near Colenso.
Finally, Joubert, Prinsloo, and Lucas Meyer are round Ladysmith, where
General White is still imprisoned.
On February 5 Buller, after deploying his troops as if for a frontal
attack in the direction of Potgieter, at last crossed the Tugela at the
foot of Dorn Kop. If perseverance deserves a reward, he has certainly
earned one.
But the period of sieges draws to a close. The war is entering on
another phase. Lord Roberts has completed his concentration, his orders
are given, the invasion begins.