No
General Could Have Done More To Put Heart Into His Men.
And now, as the long weary scorching hungry day came to an end, the
Boers began at last to flinch from their trenches.
The shrapnel was
finding them out and this force upon their flank filled them with
vague alarm and with fears for their precious guns. And so as night
fell they stole across the river, the cannon were withdrawn, the
trenches evacuated, and next morning, when the weary British and
their anxious General turned themselves to their grim task once
more, they found a deserted village, a line of empty houses, and a
litter of empty Mauser cartridge-cases to show where their
tenacious enemy had stood.
Lord Methuen, in congratulating the troops upon their achievement,
spoke of 'the hardest-won victory in our annals of war,' and some
such phrase was used in his official despatch. It is hypercritical,
no doubt, to look too closely at a term used by a wounded man with
the flush of battle still upon him, but still a student of military
history must smile at such a comparison between this action and
such others as Albuera or Inkerman, where the numbers of British
engaged were not dissimilar. A fight in which five hundred men are
killed and wounded cannot be classed in the same category as those
stern and desperate encounters where more of the victors were
carried than walked from the field of battle. And yet there were
some special features which will differentiate the fight at Modder
River from any of the hundred actions which adorn the standards of
our regiments.
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