The Way In Which Officers And Men Hung On Under
Conditions To Which No Troops Have Ever Been Exposed Was Worthy Of
The Highest Traditions Of The British Army.
From the death of
Wauchope in the early morning, until the assumption of the command
of the brigade by Hughes-Hallett in the late afternoon, no one
seems to have taken the direction.
'My lieutenant was wounded and
my captain was killed,' says a private. 'The General was dead, but
we stayed where we were, for there was no order to retire.' That
was the story of the whole brigade, until the flanking movement of
the Boers compelled them to fall back.
The most striking lesson of the engagement is the extreme
bloodiness of modern warfare under some conditions, and its
bloodlessness under others. Here, out of a total of something under
a thousand casualties seven hundred were incurred in about five
minutes, and the whole day of shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire
only furnished the odd three hundred. So also at Ladysmith the
British forces (White's column) were under heavy fire from 5.30 to
11.30, and the loss again was something under three hundred. With
conservative generalship the losses of the battles of the future
will be much less than those of the past, and as a consequence the
battles themselves will last much longer, and it will be the most
enduring rather than the most fiery which will win. The supply of
food and water to the combatants will become of extreme importance
to keep them up during the prolonged trials of endurance, which
will last for weeks rather than days.
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