'Bring me a tin whistle and I'll blow ye
any tune ye like,' he cried, mindful of the Dargai piper.
Another
with his arm hanging by a tendon puffed morosely at his short black
pipe. Every now and then, in face of the impossible, the fiery
Celtic valour flamed furiously upwards. 'Fix bayonets, men, and let
us make a name for ourselves,' cried a colour sergeant, and he
never spoke again. For five hours, under the tropical sun, the
grimy parched men held on to the ground they had occupied. British
shells pitched short and fell among them. A regiment in support
fired at them, not knowing that any of the line were so far
advanced. Shot at from the front, the flank, and the rear, the 5th
Brigade held grimly on.
But fortunately their orders to retire were at hand, and it is
certain that had they not reached them the regiments would have
been uselessly destroyed where they lay. It seems to have been
Buller himself, who showed extraordinary and ubiquitous personal
energy during the day, that ordered them to fall back. As they
retreated there was an entire absence of haste and panic, but
officers and men were hopelessly jumbled up, and General
Hart - whose judgment may occasionally be questioned, but whose cool
courage was beyond praise - had hard work to reform the splendid
brigade which six hours before had tramped out of Chieveley Camp.
Between five and six hundred of them had fallen - a loss which
approximates to that of the Highland Brigade at Magersfontein. The
Dublins and the Connaughts were the heaviest sufferers.
So much for the mishap of the 5th Brigade. It is superfluous to
point out that the same old omissions were responsible for the same
old results. Why were the men in quarter column when advancing
against an unseen foe? Why had no scouts gone forward to be certain
of the position of the ford? Where were the clouds of skirmishers
which should precede such an advance? The recent examples in the
field and the teachings of the text-books were equally set at
naught, as they had been, and were to be, so often in this
campaign. There may be a science of war in the lecture-rooms at
Camberley, but very little of it found its way to the veld. The
slogging valour of the private, the careless dash of the regimental
officer - these were our military assets - but seldom the care and
foresight of our commanders. It is a thankless task to make such
comments, but the one great lesson of the war has been that the
army is too vital a thing to fall into the hands of a caste, and
that it is a national duty for every man to speak fearlessly and
freely what he believes to be the truth.
Passing from the misadventure of the 5th Brigade we come as we move
from left to right upon the 4th, or Lyttelton's Brigade, which was
instructed not to attack itself but to support the attack on either
side of it.
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