Sir George White had now reunited his force, and found himself in
command of a formidable little army some twelve thousand in number. His
cavalry included the 5th Lancers, the 5th Dragoons, part of the 18th and
the whole of the 19th Hussars, the Natal Carabineers, the Border Rifles,
some mounted infantry, and the Imperial Light Horse. Among his infantry
were the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Dublin Fusiliers, and the King's
Royal Rifles, fresh from the ascent of Talana Hill, the Gordons, the
Manchesters, and the Devons who had been blooded at Elandslaagte,
the Leicesters, the Liverpools, the 2nd battalion of the King's Royal
Rifles, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, and the Gloucesters, who had been so
roughly treated at Rietfontein. He had six batteries of excellent field
artillery--the 13th, 21st, 42nd, 53rd, 67th, 69th, and No. 10 Mountain
Battery of screw guns. No general could have asked for a more compact
and workmanlike little force.
It had been recognised by the British General from the beginning that
his tactics must be defensive, since he was largely outnumbered and
since also any considerable mishap to his force would expose the
whole colony of Natal to destruction. The actions of Elandslaagte and
Rietfontein were forced upon him in order to disengage his compromised
detachment, but now there was no longer any reason why he should
assume the offensive. He knew that away out on the Atlantic a trail of
transports which already extended from the Channel to Cape de Verde
were hourly drawing nearer to him with the army corps from England. In a
fortnight or less the first of them would be at Durban. It was his game,
therefore, to keep his army intact, and to let those throbbing engines
and whirling propellers do the work of the empire. Had he entrenched
himself up to his nose and waited, it would have paid him best in the
end.
But so tame and inglorious a policy is impossible to a fighting soldier.
He could not with his splendid force permit himself to be shut in
without an action. What policy demands honour may forbid. On October
27th there were already Boers and rumours of Boers on every side of
him. Joubert with his main body was moving across from Dundee. The
Freestaters were to the north and west. Their combined numbers were
uncertain, but at least it was already proved that they were far more
numerous and also more formidable than had been anticipated. We had had
a taste of their artillery also, and the pleasant delusion that it would
be a mere useless encumbrance to a Boer force had vanished for ever.
It was a grave thing to leave the town in order to give battle, for
the mobile enemy might swing round and seize it behind us. Nevertheless
White determined to make the venture.
On the 29th the enemy were visibly converging upon the town. From a high
hill within rifleshot of the houses a watcher could see no fewer than
six Boer camps to the east and north. French, with his cavalry, pushed
out feelers, and coasted along the edge of the advancing host. His
report warned White that if he would strike before all the scattered
bands were united he must do so at once. The wounded were sent down to
Pietermaritzburg, and it would bear explanation why the non-combatants
did not accompany them. On the evening of the same day Joubert in person
was said to be only six miles off, and a party of his men cut the water
supply of the town. The Klip, however, a fair-sized river, runs through
Ladysmith, so that there was no danger of thirst. The British had
inflated and sent up a balloon, to the amazement of the back-veld Boers;
its report confirmed the fact that the enemy was in force in front of
and around them.
On the night of the 29th General White detached two of his best
regiments, the Irish Fusiliers and the Gloucesters, with No. 10 Mountain
Battery, to advance under cover of the darkness and to seize and hold
a long ridge called Nicholson's Nek, which lay about six miles to the
north of Ladysmith. Having determined to give battle on the next day,
his object was to protect his left wing against those Freestaters who
were still moving from the north and west, and also to keep a pass
open by which his cavalry might pursue the Boer fugitives in case of a
British victory. This small detached column numbered about a thousand
men--whose fate will be afterwards narrated.
At five o'clock on the morning of the 30th the Boers, who had already
developed a perfect genius for hauling heavy cannon up the most
difficult heights, opened fire from one of the hills which lie to the
north of the town. Before the shot was fired, the forces of the British
had already streamed out of Ladysmith to test the strength of the
invaders.
White's army was divided into three columns. On the extreme left, quite
isolated from the others, was the small Nicholson's Nek detachment under
the command of Colonel Carleton of the Fusiliers (one of three gallant
brothers each of whom commands a British regiment). With him was Major
Adye of the staff. On the right British flank Colonel Grimwood commanded
a brigade composed of the 1st and 2nd battalions of the King's Royal
Rifles, the Leicesters, the Liverpools, and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
In the centre Colonel Ian Hamilton commanded the Devons, the Gordons,
the Manchesters, and the 2nd battalion of the Rifle Brigade, which
marched direct into the battle from the train which had brought them
from Durban. Six batteries of artillery were massed in the centre under
Colonel Downing. French with the cavalry and mounted infantry was on the
extreme right, but found little opportunity for the use of the mounted
arm that day.
The Boer position, so far as it could be seen, was a formidable one.
Their centre lay upon one of the spurs of Signal Hill, about three miles
from the town. Here they had two forty-pounders and three other lighter
guns, but their artillery strength developed both in numbers and in
weight of metal as the day wore on. Of their dispositions little could
be seen. An observer looking westward might discern with his glass
sprays of mounted riflemen galloping here and there over the downs,
and possibly small groups where the gunners stood by their guns, or the
leaders gazed down at that town which they were destined to have in view
for such a weary while. On the dun-coloured plains before the town, the
long thin lines, with an occasional shifting sparkle of steel, showed
where Hamilton's and Grimwood's infantry were advancing. In the clear
cold air of an African morning every detail could be seen, down to the
distant smoke of a train toiling up the heavy grades which lead from
Frere over the Colenso Bridge to Ladysmith.
The scrambling, inconsequential, unsatisfactory action which ensued is
as difficult to describe as it must have been to direct. The Boer
front covered some seven or eight miles, with kopjes, like chains of
fortresses, between. They formed a huge semicircle of which our advance
was the chord, and they were able from this position to pour in
a converging artillery fire which grew steadily hotter as the day
advanced. In the early part of the day our forty-two guns, working
furiously, though with a want of accuracy which may be due to those
errors of refraction which are said to be common in the limpid air of
the veld, preserved their superiority. There appears to have been a want
of concentration about our fire, and at some periods of the action
each particular battery was firing at some different point of the Boer
half-circle. Sometimes for an hour on end the Boer reply would die
away altogether, only to break out with augmented violence, and with
an accuracy which increased our respect for their training. Huge
shells--the largest that ever burst upon a battlefield--hurled from
distances which were unattainable by our fifteen-pounders, enveloped our
batteries in smoke and flame. One enormous Creusot gun on Pepworth Hill
threw a 96-pound shell a distance of four miles, and several 40-pound
howitzers outweighted our field guns. And on the same day on which we
were so roughly taught how large the guns were which labour and good
will could haul on to the field of battle, we learned also that our
enemy--to the disgrace of our Board of Ordnance be it recorded--was more
in touch with modern invention than we were, and could show us not only
the largest, but also the smallest, shell which had yet been used. Would
that it had been our officials instead of our gunners who heard the
devilish little one-pound shells of the Vickers-Maxim automatic gun,
exploding with a continuous string of crackings and bangings, like a
huge cracker, in their faces and about their ears!
Up to seven o'clock our infantry had shown no disposition to press the
attack, for with so huge a position in front of them, and so many hills
which were held by the enemy, it was difficult to know what line of
advance should be taken, or whether the attack should not be converted
into a mere reconnaissance. Shortly after that hour, however, the Boers
decided the question by themselves developing a vigorous movement upon
Grimwood and the right flank. With field guns, Maxims, and rifle fire,
they closed rapidly in upon him. The centre column was drafted off,
regiment by regiment, to reinforce the right. The Gordons, Devons,
Manchesters, and three batteries were sent over to Grimwood's relief,
and the 5th Lancers, acting as infantry, assisted him to hold on.
At nine o'clock there was a lull, but it was evident that fresh
commandoes and fresh guns were continually streaming into the firing
line. The engagement opened again with redoubled violence, and
Grimwood's three advanced battalions fell back, abandoning the ridge
which they had held for five hours. The reason for this withdrawal was
not that they could not continue to hold their position, but it was
that a message had just reached Sir George White from Colonel Knox,
commanding in Ladysmith, to the effect that it looked as if the enemy
was about to rush the town from the other side. Crossing the open in
some disorder, they lost heavily, and would have done so more had not
the 13th Field Battery, followed after an interval by the 53rd, dashed
forward, firing shrapnel at short ranges, in order to cover the retreat
of the infantry. Amid the bursting of the huge 96-pound shells, and the
snapping of the vicious little automatic one-pounders, with a cross-fire
of rifles as well, Abdy's and Dawkins' gallant batteries swung round
their muzzles, and hit back right and left, flashing and blazing, amid
their litter of dead horses and men. So severe was the fire that the
guns were obscured by the dust knocked up by the little shells of the
automatic gun. Then, when their work was done and the retiring infantry
had straggled over the ridge, the covering guns whirled and bounded
after them. So many horses had fallen that two pieces were left until
the teams could be brought back for them, which was successfully done
through the gallantry of Captain Thwaites. The action of these batteries
was one of the few gleams of light in a not too brilliant day's work.
With splendid coolness and courage they helped each other by alternate
retirements after the retreating infantry had passed them. The 21st
Battery (Blewitt's) also distinguished itself by its staunchness in
covering the retirement of the cavalry, while the 42nd (Goulburn's)
suffered the heaviest losses of any. On the whole, such honours as fell
to our lot were mainly with the gunners.
White must have been now uneasy for his position, and it had become
apparent that his only course was to fall back and concentrate upon the
town. His left flank was up in the air, and the sound of distant firing,
wafted over five miles of broken country, was the only message which
arrived from them. His right had been pushed back, and, most dangerous
of all, his centre had ceased to exist, for only the 2nd Rifle Brigade
remained there. What would happen if the enemy burst rudely through
and pushed straight for the town? It was the more possible, as the
Boer artillery had now proved itself to be far heavier than ours. That
terrible 96-pounder, serenely safe and out of range, was plumping its
great projectiles into the masses of retiring troops. The men had had
little sleep and little food, and this unanswerable fire was an ordeal
for a force which is retreating. A retirement may very rapidly become
a rout under such circumstances. It was with some misgivings that the
officers saw their men quicken their pace and glance back over their
shoulders at the whine and screech of the shell. They were still some
miles from home, and the plain was open. What could be done to give them
some relief?
And at that very moment there came the opportune and unexpected answer.
That plume of engine smoke which the watcher had observed in the
morning had drawn nearer and nearer, as the heavy train came puffing and
creaking up the steep inclines. Then, almost before it had drawn up at
the Ladysmith siding, there had sprung from it a crowd of merry bearded
fellows, with ready hands and strange sea cries, pulling and hauling,
with rope and purchase to get out the long slim guns which they had
lashed on the trucks. Singular carriages were there, specially invented
by Captain Percy Scott, and labouring and straining, they worked
furiously to get the 12-pounder quick-firers into action. Then at last
it was done, and the long tubes swept upwards to the angle at which they
might hope to reach that monster on the hill at the horizon. Two of them
craned their long inquisitive necks up and exchanged repartees with the
big Creusot. And so it was that the weary and dispirited British troops
heard a crash which was louder and sharper than that of their field
guns, and saw far away upon the distant hill a great spurt of smoke
and flame to show where the shell had struck. Another and another and
another--and then they were troubled no more. Captain Hedworth Lambton
and his men had saved the situation. The masterful gun had met its own
master and sank into silence, while the somewhat bedraggled field force
came trailing back into Ladysmith, leaving three hundred of their number
behind them. It was a high price to pay, but other misfortunes were
in store for us which made the retirement of the morning seem
insignificant.
In the meantime we may follow the unhappy fortunes of the small column
which had, as already described, been sent out by Sir George White in
order, if possible, to prevent the junction of the two Boer armies, and
at the same time to threaten the right wing of the main force, which was
advancing from the direction of Dundee, Sir George White throughout the
campaign consistently displayed one quality which is a charming one in
an individual, but may be dangerous in a commander. He was a confirmed
optimist. Perhaps his heart might have failed him in the dark days to
come had he not been so. But whether one considers the non-destruction
of the Newcastle Railway, the acquiescence in the occupation of Dundee,
the retention of the non combatants in Ladysmith until it was too late
to get rid of their useless mouths, or the failure to make any serious
preparations for the defence of the town until his troops were beaten
back into it, we see always the same evidence of a man who habitually
hopes that all will go well, and is in consequence remiss in making
preparations for their going ill. But unhappily in every one of these
instances they did go ill, though the slowness of the Boers enabled
us, both at Dundee and at Ladysmith, to escape what might have been
disaster.
Sir George White has so nobly and frankly taken upon himself the blame
of Nicholson's Nek that an impartial historian must rather regard his
self-condemnation as having been excessive. The immediate causes of the
failure were undoubtedly the results of pure ill-fortune, and depended
on things outside his control. But it is evident that the strategic plan
which would justify the presence of this column at Nicholson's Nek
was based upon the supposition that the main army won their action at
Lombard's Kop. In that case White might swing round his right and pin
the Boers between himself and Nicholson's Nek. In any case he could then
re-unite with his isolated wing. But if he should lose his battle--what
then? What was to become of this detachment five miles up in the air?
How was it to be extricated? The gallant Irishman seems to have waved
aside the very idea of defeat. An assurance was, it is reported, given
to the leaders of the column that by eleven o'clock next morning they
would be relieved. So they would if White had won his action. But--
The force chosen to operate independently consisted of four and a half
companies of the Gloucester regiment, six companies of the Royal Irish
Fusiliers, and No. 10 Mountain Battery of six seven-pounder screw-guns.
They were both old soldier regiments from India, and the Fusiliers had
shown only ten days before at Talana Hill the stuff of which they were
made. Colonel Carleton, of the Fusiliers, to whose exertions much of the
success of the retreat from Dundee was due, commanded the column, with
Major Adye as staff officer. On the night of Sunday, October 29th,
they tramped out of Ladysmith, a thousand men, none better in the army.
Little they thought, as they exchanged a jest or two with the outlying
pickets, that they were seeing the last of their own armed countrymen
for many a weary month.
The road was irregular and the night was moonless. On either side the
black loom of the hills bulked vaguely through the darkness. The column
tramped stolidly along, the Fusiliers in front, the guns and Gloucesters
behind. Several times a short halt was called to make sure of the
bearings. At last, in the black cold hours which come between midnight
and morning, the column swung to the left out of the road. In front
of them, hardly visible, stretched a long black kopje. It was the very
Nicholson's Nek which they had come to occupy. Carleton and Adye must
have heaved a sigh of relief as they realised that they had actually
struck it. The force was but two hundred yards from the position, and
all had gone without a hitch. And yet in those two hundred yards there
came an incident which decided the fate both of their enterprise and of
themselves.
Out of the darkness there blundered and rattled five horsemen, their
horses galloping, the loose stones flying around them. In the dim light
they were gone as soon as seen. Whence coming, whither going, no one
knows, nor is it certain whether it was design or ignorance or panic
which sent them riding so wildly through the darkness. Somebody fired.
A sergeant of the Fusiliers took the bullet through his hand. Some
one else shouted to fix bayonets. The mules which carried the spare
ammunition kicked and reared. There was no question of treachery, for
they were led by our own men, but to hold two frightened mules, one with
either hand, is a feat for a Hercules. They lashed and tossed and bucked
themselves loose, and an instant afterwards were flying helter skelter
through the column. Nearly all the mules caught the panic. In vain the
men held on to their heads. In the mad rush they were galloped over and
knocked down by the torrent of frightened creatures. In the gloom of
that early hour the men must have thought that they were charged by
cavalry. The column was dashed out of all military order as effectively
as if a regiment of dragoons had ridden over them. When the cyclone had
passed, and the men had with many a muttered curse gathered themselves
into their ranks once more, they realised how grave was the misfortune
which had befallen them. There, where those mad hoofs still rattled
in the distance, were their spare cartridges, their shells, and their
cannon. A mountain gun is not drawn upon wheels, but is carried in
adjustable parts upon mule-back. A wheel had gone south, a trail east, a
chase west. Some of the cartridges were strewn upon the road. Most were
on their way back to Ladysmith. There was nothing for it but to face
this new situation and to determine what should be done.
It has been often and naturally asked, why did not Colonel Carleton make
his way back at once upon the loss of his guns and ammunition, while
it was still dark? One or two considerations are evident. In the first
place, it is natural to a good soldier to endeavour to retrieve a
situation rather than to abandon his enterprise. His prudence, did he
not do so, might become the subject of public commendation, but might
also provoke some private comment. A soldier's training is to take
chances, and to do the best he can with the material at his disposal.
Again, Colonel Carleton and Major Adye knew the general plan of the
battle which would be raging within a very few hours, and they quite
understood that by withdrawing they would expose General White's left
flank to attack from the forces (consisting, as we know now, of the
Orange Freestaters and of the Johannesburg Police) who were coming from
the north and west. He hoped to be relieved by eleven, and he believed
that, come what might, he could hold out until then. These are the
most obvious of the considerations which induced Colonel Carleton to
determine to carry out so far as he could the programme which had been
laid down for him and his command. He marched up the hill and occupied
the position.
His heart, however, must have sunk when he examined it. It was very
large--too large to be effectively occupied by the force which he
commanded. The length was about a mile and the breadth four hundred
yards. Shaped roughly like the sole of a boot, it was only the heel end
which he could hope to hold. Other hills all round offered cover for
Boer riflemen. Nothing daunted, however, he set his men to work at once
building sangars with the loose stones. With the full dawn and the first
snapping of Boer Mausers from the hills around they had thrown up some
sort of rude defences which they might hope to hold until help should
come.
But how could help come when there was no means by which they could let
White know the plight in which they found themselves? They had brought
a heliograph with them, but it was on the back of one of those accursed
mules. The Boers were thick around them, and they could not send a
messenger. An attempt was made to convert a polished biscuit tin into a
heliograph, but with poor success. A Kaffir was dispatched with promises
of a heavy bribe, but he passed out of history. And there in the clear
cold morning air the balloon hung to the south of them where the first
distant thunder of White's guns was beginning to sound. If only they
could attract the attention of that balloon! Vainly they wagged flags at
it. Serene and unresponsive it brooded over the distant battle.
And now the Boers were thickening round them on every side. Christian
de Wet, a name soon to be a household word, marshaled the Boer attack,
which was soon strengthened by the arrival of Van Dam and his Police. At
five o'clock the fire began, at six it was warm, at seven warmer still.
Two companies of the Gloucesters lined a sangar on the tread of
the sole, to prevent any one getting too near to the heel. A fresh
detachment of Boers, firing from a range of nearly one thousand yards,
took this defence in the rear. Bullets fell among the men, and smacked
up against the stone breastwork. The two companies were withdrawn, and
lost heavily in the open as they crossed it. An incessant rattle and
crackle of rifle fire came from all round, drawing very slowly but
steadily nearer. Now and then the whisk of a dark figure from one
boulder to another was all that ever was seen of the attackers. The
British fired slowly and steadily, for every cartridge counted, but the
cover of the Boers was so cleverly taken that it was seldom that there
was much to aim at. 'All you could ever see,' says one who was present,
'were the barrels of the rifles.' There was time for thought in
that long morning, and to some of the men it may have occurred what
preparation for such fighting had they ever had in the mechanical
exercises of the parade ground, or the shooting of an annual bagful of
cartridges at exposed targets at a measured range. It is the warfare of
Nicholson's Nek, not that of Laffan's Plain, which has to be learned in
the future.
During those weary hours lying on the bullet-swept hill and listening
to the eternal hissing in the air and clicking on the rocks, the British
soldiers could see the fight which raged to the south of them. It was
not a cheering sight, and Carleton and Adye with their gallant comrades
must have felt their hearts grow heavier as they watched. The Boers'
shells bursting among the British batteries, the British shells bursting
short of their opponents. The Long Toms laid at an angle of forty-five
plumped their huge shells into the British guns at a range where the
latter would not dream of unlimbering. And then gradually the rifle fire
died away also, crackling more faintly as White withdrew to Ladysmith.
At eleven o'clock Carleton's column recognised that it had been left to
its fate. As early as nine a heliogram had been sent to them to retire
as the opportunity served, but to leave the hill was certainly to court
annihilation.
The men had then been under fire for six hours, and with their losses
mounting and their cartridges dwindling, all hope had faded from their
minds. But still for another hour, and yet another, and yet another,
they held doggedly on. Nine and a half hours they clung to that pile
of stones. The Fusiliers were still exhausted from the effect of their
march from Glencoe and their incessant work since. Many fell asleep
behind the boulders. Some sat doggedly with their useless rifles
and empty pouches beside them. Some picked cartridges off their dead
comrades. What were they fighting for? It was hopeless, and they knew
it. But always there was the honour of the flag, the glory of the
regiment, the hatred of a proud and brave man to acknowledge defeat. And
yet it had to come. There were some in that force who were ready for
the reputation of the British army, and for the sake of an example
of military virtue, to die stolidly where they stood, or to lead the
'Faugh-a-ballagh' boys, or the gallant 28th, in one last death-charge
with empty rifles against the unseen enemy. They may have been right,
these stalwarts. Leonidas and his three hundred did more for the Spartan
cause by their memory than by their living valour. Man passes like the
brown leaves, but the tradition of a nation lives on like the oak that
sheds them--and the passing of the leaves is nothing if the bole be the
sounder for it. But a counsel of perfection is easy at a study table.
There are other things to be said--the responsibility of officers for
the lives of their men, the hope that they may yet be of service to
their country. All was weighed, all was thought of, and so at last the
white flag went up. The officer who hoisted it could see no one unhurt
save himself, for all in his sangar were hit, and the others were
so placed that he was under the impression that they had withdrawn
altogether. Whether this hoisting of the flag necessarily compromised
the whole force is a difficult question, but the Boers instantly left
their cover, and the men in the sangars behind, some of whom had not
been so seriously engaged, were ordered by their officers to desist from
firing. In an instant the victorious Boers were among them.
It was not, as I have been told by those who were there, a sight which
one would wish to have seen or care now to dwell upon. Haggard officers
cracked their sword-blades and cursed the day that they had been born.
Privates sobbed with their stained faces buried in their hands. Of all
tests of discipline that ever they had stood, the hardest to many was
to conform to all that the cursed flapping handkerchief meant to them.
'Father, father, we had rather have died,' cried the Fusiliers to
their priest. Gallant hearts, ill paid, ill thanked, how poorly do
the successful of the world compare with their unselfish loyalty and
devotion!
But the sting of contumely or insult was not added to their misfortunes.
There is a fellowship of brave men which rises above the feuds of
nations, and may at last go far, we hope, to heal them. From every rock
there rose a Boer--strange, grotesque figures many of them--walnut-brown
and shaggy-bearded, and swarmed on to the hill. No term of triumph or
reproach came from their lips. 'You will not say now that the young Boer
cannot shoot,' was the harshest word which the least restrained of them
made use of. Between one and two hundred dead and wounded were scattered
over the hill. Those who were within reach of human help received all
that could be given. Captain Rice, of the Fusiliers, was carried wounded
down the hill on the back of one giant, and he has narrated how the man
refused the gold piece which was offered him. Some asked the soldiers
for their embroidered waist-belts as souvenirs of the day. They will
for generations remain as the most precious ornaments of some colonial
farmhouse. Then the victors gathered together and sang psalms, not
jubilant but sad and quavering. The prisoners, in a downcast column,
weary, spent, and unkempt, filed off to the Boer laager at Waschbank,
there to take train for Pretoria. And at Ladysmith a bugler of
Fusiliers, his arm bound, the marks of battle on his dress and person,
burst in upon the camp with the news that two veteran regiments had
covered the flank of White's retreating army, but at the cost of their
own annihilation.