Admirably Led By Park, Their
Gallant Colonel, The Devons Swept The Boers Before Them, And The
Rifles, Gordons, And Light Horse Joined In The Wild Charge Which
Finally Cleared The Ridge.
But the end was not yet.
The Boer had taken a risk over this
venture, and now he had to pay the stakes. Down the hill he passed,
crouching, darting, but the spruits behind him were turned into
swirling streams, and as he hesitated for an instant upon the brink
the relentless sleet of bullets came from behind. Many were swept
away down the gorges and into the Klip River, never again to be
accounted for in the lists of their field-cornet. The majority
splashed through, found their horses in their shelter, and galloped
off across the great Bulwana Plain, as fairly beaten in as fair a
fight as ever brave men were yet.
The cheers of victory as the Devons swept the ridge had heartened
the weary men upon Caesar's Camp to a similar effort. Manchesters,
Gordons, and Rifles, aided by the fire of two batteries, cleared
the long-debated position. Wet, cold, weary, and without food for
twenty-six hours, the bedraggled Tommies stood yelling and waving,
amid the litter of dead and of dying.
It was a near thing. Had the ridge fallen the town must have
followed, and history perhaps have been changed. In the old
stiff-rank Majuba days we should have been swept in an hour from
the position. But the wily man behind the rock was now to find an
equally wily man in front of him. The soldier had at last learned
something of the craft of the hunter. He clung to his shelter, he
dwelled on his aim, he ignored his dressings, he laid aside the
eighteenth-century traditions of his pigtailed ancestor, and he hit
the Boers harder than they had been hit yet. No return may ever
come to us of their losses on that occasion; 80 dead bodies were
returned to them from the ridge alone, while the slopes, the
dongas, and the river each had its own separate tale. No possible
estimate can make it less than three hundred killed and wounded,
while many place it at a much higher figure. Our own casualties
were very serious and the proportion of dead to wounded unusually
high, owing to the fact that the greater part of the wounds were
necessarily of the head. In killed we lost 13 officers, 135 men. In
wounded 28 officers, 244 men - a total of 420, Lord Ava, the
honoured Son of an honoured father, the fiery Dick-Cunyngham,
stalwart Miller-Wallnutt, the brave boy sappers Digby-Jones and
Dennis, Adams and Packman of the Light Horse, the chivalrous
Lafone - we had to mourn quality as well as numbers. The grim test
of the casualty returns shows that it was to the Imperial Light
Horse (ten officers down, and the regiment commanded by a junior
captain), the Manchesters, the Gordons, the Devons, and the 2nd
Rifle Brigade that the honours of the day are due.
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