Whether These Might Or Might Not Have Been Successfully
Held Has Been Much Disputed By Military Men, The Balance Of Opinion
Being That Bulwana, At Least, Which Has A Water-Supply Of Its Own,
Might Have Been Retained.
This question, however, was already
academic, as the outer hills were in the hands of the enemy.
As it
was, the inner line - Caesar's Camp, Wagon Hill, Rifleman's Post,
and round to Helpmakaar Hill - made a perimeter of fourteen miles,
and the difficulty of retaining so extensive a line goes far to
exonerate General White, not only for abandoning the outer hills,
but also for retaining his cavalry in the town.
After the battle of Ladysmith and the retreat of the British, the
Boers in their deliberate but effective fashion set about the
investment of the town, while the British commander accepted the
same as inevitable, content if he could stem and hold back from the
colony the threatened flood of invasion. On Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday the commandoes gradually closed in upon the
south and east, harassed by some cavalry operations and
reconnaissances upon our part, the effect of which was much
exaggerated by the press. On Thursday, November 2nd, the last train
escaped under a brisk fire, the passengers upon the wrong side of
the seats. At 2 P.M. on the same day the telegraph line was cut,
and the lonely town settled herself somberly down to the task of
holding off the exultant Boers until the day - supposed to be
imminent - when the relieving army should appear from among the
labyrinth of mountains which lay to the south of them. Some there
were who, knowing both the enemy and the mountains, felt a cold
chill within their hearts as they asked themselves how an army was
to come through, but the greater number, from General to private,
trusted implicitly in the valour of their comrades and in the luck
of the British Army.
One example of that historical luck was ever before their eyes in
the shape of those invaluable naval guns which had arrived so
dramatically at the very crisis of the fight, in time to check the
monster on Pepworth Hill and to cover the retreat of the army. But
for them the besieged must have lain impotent under the muzzles of
the huge Creusots. But in spite of the naive claims put forward by
the Boers to some special Providence - a process which a friendly
German critic described as 'commandeering the Almighty' - it is
certain that in a very peculiar degree, in the early months of this
war there came again and again a happy chance, or a merciful
interposition, which saved the British from disaster. Now in this
first week of November, when every hill, north and south and east
and west, flashed and smoked, and the great 96-pound shells groaned
and screamed over the town, it was to the long thin 4.7's and to
the hearty bearded men who worked them, that soldiers and townsfolk
looked for help.
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