WITH THE HIGHLAND BRIGADE AT MAGERSFONTEIN
(_December 11, 1899_)
I’ve heard them lilting at the ewe-milking,
Lasses a’ lilting before dawn o’ day;
But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning,
The flowers o’ the forest are a’ wede away.
_Highland Funeral March._
Confronting the British troops lay a circle of hills which might or
might not be tenanted by the enemy. Lord Methuen followed the
established military course of shelling these hills from a long range,
preparatory to an advance. Unfortunately it served no purpose, for the
enemy retired temporarily, only to return when the bombardment was over,
knowing that after the artillery had concluded their futile expenditure
of shells, the British infantry would, in the course of things, advance.
It was on Sunday, December 10, that the Highland Brigade set off early
in the afternoon under a deluge of rain. When they came within a few
miles of the Boers they halted, and darkness began to fall.
At this point Lord Methuen communicated to the Brigade commanders his
plan for carrying the enemy’s position. The attack would be launched by
the Highlanders at break of dawn.
At midnight, under a lowering sky, and in the black darkness of an
African night, the Highland Brigade set out upon its tragic march. The
men were drenched to the skin, carried no food, and were formed in
quarter column. On the right the Black Watch, then the Seaforths, the
Argyll and Sutherlands next, and in reserve the Highland Light Infantry.
The Gordons, who had only arrived before the march began, remained in
camp. It is important to follow out the plan of attack as indicated by
Lord Methuen in his despatch.
“The night march was ordered for 12.30 A.M., the bearings and distance
having been ascertained at great personal risk by Major Benson, Royal
Artillery, my Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General. The distance is two and
a half miles, and daybreak was due at 3.25 A.M. I may remark that two
rifles went off by accident before the march commenced, and it is pretty
clear flashes from a lantern gave the enemy timely notice of the march.
Before moving off, Major-General Wauchope explained all he intended to
do, and the particular part each battalion of his brigade was to play in
the scheme, namely, that he intended to march direct on the south-west
spur of the kopje, and on arrival near the objective before daybreak the
Black Watch were to move to the east of the kopje, where he believed the
enemy to be posted under shelter, whilst the Seaforth Highlanders were
to march straight to the south-east point of the kopje, with the Argyll
and Sutherland Highlanders prolonging the line to the left, the Highland
Infantry to be in reserve until the action was developed. The Brigade
was to march in mass of quarter column, the four battalions keeping
touch, and if necessary ropes were to be used for the left guides. These
ropes were taken, but, I believe, used by only two battalions. The three
battalions were to extend just before daybreak—two companies in firing
line, two companies in support, and four companies in reserve—all at
five paces interval between them.”
It is not our business to criticise the scheme of attack, but only to
deplore the fact that so many brave men should lose their lives in such
an abortive attempt. It would have been impossible to reach the Boer
lines in anything but disorder had the Highland Brigade not advanced in
close column: the blunder appears to have been that they maintained
close formation too long. Long before, in the year 1746, the
Highlanders, who might be expected to have an intimate knowledge of the
country through which they were passing, set out upon a similar night
attack, only to find themselves hopelessly lost—and that not so very far
from Inverness. At Magersfontein the distance was a short one, but the
difficulty of ascertaining how far the Boer trenches were from the
foremost columns led to chaos. No one has described the situation more
graphically than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in _The Great Boer War_. “With
many a trip and stumble,” he writes, “the ill-fated detachment wandered
on, uncertain where they were going and uncertain what it was they were
meant to do. Not only among the rank and file, but among the principal
officers there was the same absolute ignorance. Brigadier Wauchope knew,
no doubt, but his voice was soon to be stilled in death. The others were
aware, of course, that they were advancing either to turn the enemy’s
trenches or to attack them, but they may well have argued from their own
formation that they could not be near the riflemen yet. Why they should
be still advancing in that dense clump we do not now know, nor can we
surmise what thoughts were passing through the mind of the gallant and
experienced chieftain who walked beside them.... Out there, close beside
him, stretched the long trench, fringed with its line of fierce,
staring, eager faces, and its bristle of gun-barrels. They knew he was
coming. They were ready. They were waiting. But still, with the dull
murmur of many feet, the dense column, nearly four thousand strong,
wandered onwards through the rain and the darkness, death and mutilation
crouching upon their path.”
The end came quickly enough. Within a few hundred yards the Boer rifles
opened fire upon the massed columns of the Highlanders. They fell in
solid ranks and companies. The destruction inside a few moments has been
rightly enough compared to the fall of corn before the reaper. Out of
the darkness there was one single lurid blaze of light, a prolonged roar
of musketry, and the Highland Brigade was decimated as it stood.
Just as the fire opened, the order had been given for the men to deploy,
but the extension never took place. Wauchope was one of the first to
fall. As his biographer has finely said: “General Wauchope fought and
fell as a man and as a soldier, carrying out his orders loyally to the
end. He died where he would have wished to die—at the head of his
gallant Highlanders, with his face to the foe.”
It was impossible for the Highland Brigade to advance in any order:
their officers were killed, their ranks were broken, they were
confronted by barbed wire and strong entrenchments, and yet it came
hardly on them that they should have to retreat. F. G. Tait, the famous
Scottish golfer, who was destined to fall at the Modder River, remarked
in a letter home: “General Wauchope and our Colonel, and Captain Bruce
and young Edmonds were all killed, with the lot of men that I
accompanied. General Wauchope is in no way responsible for the fearful
loss of life amongst the Highland Brigade: he got his orders, and had to
carry them out, and he was killed in front of his brigade. I feel
certain that if we had been led up in line we should have rushed the
position with probably a quarter of the loss that we actually suffered.
As it was, we arrived rather late, and in mass of quarter column.... You
might imagine the effect of a tremendously hot rifle fire into that
compact body.”[11]
According to F. G. Tait the first orders that emerged from the chaos and
noise and the groans of the wounded were those of, ‘Lie down, fix
bayonets, and prepare to charge.’ This, unhappily, led very little
farther. Tait writes as follows: “We got along a hundred yards or so
when we got into the dreadful flanking as well as frontal firing, and
lost very heavily. I could now see that the enemy were in trenches about
200-250 yards off. We managed to get 50 yards nearer, losing heavily all
the time, and there we lay down (what was left of the lot with me) and
began firing. I was about 15 or 20 yards in front, and had just got up
to get back in line when I got a bullet through my left thigh. I was
able to turn over on my stomach and fire at the Boers. A quarter of an
hour later it was quite light, and then we began to get it properly. The
men on each side of me were hit straight away, and in a few minutes very
few were left unhit. It was quite impossible for any ambulance or doctor
to advance, so all our wounded lay within 200 yards or so of the Boer
trenches all day in a broiling sun, being shot at whenever they moved
until seven o’clock at night, most of them without a drop of water.”
And yet out of this dismal event, despite their terrible position, the
Highland Brigade did not lose their prestige. Trapped, bewildered,
unable either to advance or retreat, they held their ground and died
without fear. Many, indeed, perceiving that no officers were left to
lead them, advanced on their own initiative through the hail of fire,
and were discovered in the morning suspended on the barbed wire before
the Boer trenches. A section of the Black Watch, it is recorded, refused
to retire, and entrenching themselves as far as they could, carried on
the combat throughout the long terrible day, until when night fell there
was not one single survivor left. All through that desperate day the
Highlanders lay exposed to the Boer fire, refusing to surrender, without
food or water, wounded and unwounded together, awaiting the support from
the artillery and the reserves, which was so difficult to give. It has
been recorded of the Argyll and Sutherlands that their claim to the
pledge, “We die, but we do not surrender,” was most nobly earned that
day. At Magersfontein the regiment that had provided the ‘thin red line’
at Balaclava remained steady under the terrific fire, and it was owing
in a large degree to the 93rd and to the Coldstream Guards that their
unfortunate comrades, who had led the advance and suffered more
terribly, were enabled to hold out during the day.
To return to the actual conflict. It is stated that within a few moments
of the opening of the Boer fire at least 600 men were out of action.
Less courageous or disciplined soldiers would have broken and scattered
wildly to the rear, and none could have called them cowards; but the
Highland Brigade, assembling as far as was possible within their own
units, had by the break of day made some attempt at following up the
belated attack. Unfortunately the Boers were so securely entrenched that
it was a very one-sided affair. The rising sun brought the Horse
Artillery up at the gallop, and under cover of their fire the Highland
Brigade were enabled to get some respite from the deadly Boer
marksmanship. As day advanced reinforcements were hurried up, the
Gordons coming with the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Coldstreams, and
the gallant Yorkshire Light Infantry to protect the flank. In the
afternoon the Highland Brigade—who had tasted neither food nor water for
twenty-four hours—made a pitiful effort to charge the Boer position. The
fire that was opened upon them was, at so short a range, almost
annihilating. It was inevitable that they must remain out of action
until they could fall back and reassemble. The Gordons, who came fresh
into action, did what was possible to distract the Boer fire from their
unhappy comrades, and when the evening came the merciful darkness
enabled the wreckage of the Highland Brigade to creep back to the rear.
The bitterest day in the story of the Highland regiments was, at last,
at an end. The disaster at Magersfontein brought with it a loss of
nearly 1000 men; out of the Highland Brigade 57 officers had fallen, and
in the Black Watch alone 19 officers and over 300 men. Never in the
annals of that regiment had there been such a loss since the action at
Ticonderoga in 1757.
In his report of the action, Lord Methuen sums it up as follows: “The
attack failed. The inclement weather was against success. The men in the
Highland Brigade were ready enough to rally, but the paucity of officers
and non-commissioned officers rendered this no easy matter. I attach no
blame to this splendid brigade. Nothing could exceed the conduct of the
troops from the time of the failure of the attack at daybreak. There was
not the slightest confusion, though the fight was carried on under as
hard conditions as one can imagine, for the men had been on the move
from midnight, and were suffering terribly from thirst.”
The next morning the Boers awaited a British attack, which never came.
It was evident from the disaster that had overtaken the Highland Brigade
that it would be almost impossible to storm the Boer position by a
frontal assault. Lord Methuen, feeling that he could not carry out a
flanking movement without reinforcements, decided he would rest his
troops, and postpone for the present the advance on Kimberley.
Footnote 11:
_F. G. Tait._ By J. L. Low.