About Eight O'clock, With The Clearing Of The Mist, General
Woodgate Saw How Matters Stood.
The ridge, one end of which he
held, extended away, rising and falling for some miles.
Had he the
whole of the end plateau, and had he guns, he might hope to command
the rest of the position. But he held only half the plateau, and at
the further end of it the Boers were strongly entrenched. The Spion
Kop mountain was really the salient or sharp angle of the Boer
position, so that the British were exposed to a cross fire both
from the left and right. Beyond were other eminences which
sheltered strings of riflemen and several guns. The plateau which
the British held was very much narrower than was usually
represented in the press. In many places the possible front was not
much more than a hundred yards wide, and the troops were compelled
to bunch together, as there was not room for a single company to
take an extended formation. The cover upon this plateau was scanty,
far too scanty for the force upon it, and the shell
fire - especially the fire of the pom-poms - soon became very
murderous. To mass the troops under the cover of the edge of the
plateau might naturally suggest itself, but with great tactical
skill the Boer advanced line from Commandant Prinsloo's Heidelberg
and Carolina commandos kept so aggressive an attitude that the
British could not weaken the lines opposed to them. Their
skirmishers were creeping round too in such a way that the fire was
really coming from three separate points, left, centre, and. right,
and every corner of the position was searched by their bullets.
Early in the action the gallant Woodgate and many of his Lancashire
men were shot down. The others spread out and held on, firing
occasionally at the whisk of a rifle-barrel or the glimpse of a
broad-brimmed hat.
From morning to midday, the shell, Maxim, and rifle fire swept
across the kop in a continual driving shower. The British guns in
the plain below failed to localise the position of the enemy's, and
they were able to vent their concentrated spite upon the exposed
infantry. No blame attaches to the gunners for this, as a hill
intervened to screen the Boer artillery, which consisted of five
big guns and two pom-poms.
Upon the fall of Woodgate, Thorneycroft, who bore the reputation of
a determined fighter, was placed at the suggestion of Buller in
charge of the defence of the hill, and he was reinforced after noon
by Coke's brigade, the Middlesex, the Dorsets, and the Somersets,
together with the Imperial Light Infantry. The addition of this
force to the defenders of the plateau tended to increase the
casualty returns rather than the strength of the defence. Three
thousand more rifles could do nothing to check the fire of the
invisible cannon, and it was this which was the main source of the
losses, while on the other hand the plateau had become so cumbered
with troops that a shell could hardly fail to do damage.
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