The Fire Of
Sixty Guns Was Concentrated For A Couple Of Hours Upon A Position
Only A Few Hundred Yards In Diameter.
In this infernal fire, which
left the rocks yellow with lyddite, the survivors still waited
grimly for the advance of the infantry.
No finer defence was made
in the war. The attack was carried out across an open glacis by the
2nd Rifle Brigade and by the Inniskilling Fusiliers, the men of
Pieter's Hill. Through a deadly fire the gallant infantry swept
over the position, though Metcalfe, the brave colonel of the
Rifles, with eight other officers, and seventy men were killed or
wounded. Lysley, Steward, and Campbell were all killed in leading
their companies, but they could not have met their deaths upon an
occasion more honourable to their battalion. Great credit must also
be given to A and B companies of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, who
were actually the first over the Boer position. The cessation of
the artillery fire was admirably timed. It was sustained up to the
last possible instant. 'As it was,' said the captain of the leading
company, 'a 94-pound shell burst about thirty yards in front of the
right of our lot. The smell of the lyddite was awful.' A pom-pom
and twenty prisoners, including the commander of the police, were
the trophies of the day. An outwork of the Boer position had been
carried, and the rumour of defeat and disaster had already spread
through their ranks. Braver men than the burghers have never lived,
but they had reached the limits of human endurance, and a long
experience of defeat in the field had weakened their nerve and
lessened their morale. They were no longer men of the same fibre as
those who had crept up to the trenches of Spion Kop, or faced the
lean warriors of Ladysmith on that grim January morning at Caesar's
Camp. Dutch tenacity would not allow them to surrender, and yet
they realised how hopeless was the fight in which they were
engaged. Nearly fifteen thousand of their best men were prisoners,
ten thousand at the least had returned to their farms and taken the
oath. Another ten had been killed, wounded, or incapacitated. Most
of the European mercenaries had left; they held only the ultimate
corner of their own country, they had lost their grip upon the
railway line, and their supply of stores and of ammunition was
dwindling. To such a pass had eleven months of war reduced that
formidable army who had so confidently advanced to the conquest of
South Africa.
While Buller had established himself firmly upon the left of the
Boer position, Pole-Carew had moved forward to the north of the
railway line, and French had advanced as far as Swart Kopjes upon
the Boer right. These operations on August 26th and 27th were met
with some resistance, and entailed a loss of forty or fifty killed
and wounded; but it soon became evident that the punishment which
they had received at Bergendal had taken the fight out of the
Boers, and that this formidable position was to be abandoned as the
others had been. On the 28th the burghers were retreating, and
Machadodorp, where Kruger had sat so long in his railway carriage,
protesting that he would eventually move west and not east, was
occupied by Buller. French, moving on a more northerly route,
entered Watervalonder with his cavalry upon the same date, driving
a small Boer force before him. Amid rain and mist the British
columns were pushing rapidly forwards, but still the burghers held
together, and still their artillery was uncaptured. The retirement
was swift, but it was not yet a rout.
On the 30th the British cavalry were within touch of Nooitgedacht,
and saw a glad sight in a long trail of ragged men who were
hurrying in their direction along the railway line. They were the
British prisoners, eighteen hundred in number, half of whom had
been brought from Waterval when Pretoria was captured, while the
other half represented the men who had been sent from the south by
De Wet, or from the west by De la Rey. Much allowance must be made
for the treatment of prisoners by a belligerent who is himself
short of food, but nothing can excuse the harshness which the Boers
showed to the Colonials who fell into their power, or the callous
neglect of the sick prisoners at Waterval. It is a humiliating but
an interesting fact that from first to last no fewer than seven
thousand of our men passed into their power, all of whom were now
recovered save some sixty officers, who had been carried off by
them in their flight.
On September 1st Lord Roberts showed his sense of the decisive
nature of these recent operations by publishing the proclamation
which had been issued as early as July 4th, by which the Transvaal
became a portion of the British Empire. On the same day General
Buller, who had ceased to advance to the east and retraced his
steps as far as Helvetia, began his northerly movement in the
direction of Lydenburg, which is nearly fifty miles to the north of
the railway line. On that date his force made a march of fourteen
miles, which brought them over the Crocodile River to Badfontein.
Here, on September 2nd, Buller found that the indomitable Botha was
still turning back upon him, for he was faced by so heavy a shell
fire, coming from so formidable a position, that he had to be
content to wait in front of it until some other column should
outflank it. The days of unnecessary frontal attacks were for ever
over, and his force, though ready for anything which might be asked
of it, had gone through a good deal in the recent operations. Since
August 21st they had been under fire almost every day, and their
losses, though never great on any one occasion, amounted in the
aggregate during that time to 365.
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