At The
Moment Before This Outflame Some Doubt As To Their Whereabouts
Seems To Have Flashed Across The Mind Of Their Leaders.
The order
to extend had just been given, but the men had not had time to act
upon it.
The storm of lead burst upon the head and right flank of
the column, which broke to pieces under the murderous volley.
Wauchope was shot, struggled up, and fell once more for ever.
Rumour has placed words of reproach upon his dying lips, but his
nature, both gentle and soldierly, forbids the supposition. 'What a
pity!' was the only utterance which a brother Highlander ascribes
to him. Men went down in swathes, and a howl of rage and agony,
heard afar over the veld, swelled up from the frantic and
struggling crowd. By the hundred they dropped - some dead, some
wounded, some knocked down by the rush and sway of the broken
ranks. It was a horrible business. At such a range and in such a
formation a single Mauser bullet may well pass through many men. A
few dashed forwards, and were found dead at the very edges of the
trench. The few survivors of companies A, B, and C of the Black
Watch appear to have never actually retired, but to have clung on
to the immediate front of the Boer trenches, while the remains of
the other five companies tried to turn the Boer flank. Of the
former body only six got away unhurt in the evening after lying all
day within two hundred yards of the enemy.
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