In The Rear Of The Guns Was A Larger Body Of Buffs, 130 In
Number, Under Major Eales.
When the guns were taken this handful
attempted a counter-attack, but Eales soon saw that it was a
hopeless effort, and he lost thirty of his men before he could
extricate himself.
Had these men been with the others on the gun
ridge they might have restored the fight, but they had not reached
it when the position was taken, and to persevere in the attempt to
retake it would have led to certain disaster. The only just
criticism to which the regiment is open is that, having just come
off blockhouse duty, they were much out of condition, which caused
the men to straggle and the movements to be unduly slow.
It was fortunate that the command of the column devolved upon so
experienced and cool-headed a soldier as Wools-Sampson. To attempt
a counter-attack for the purpose of recapturing the guns would, in
case of disaster, have risked the camp and the convoy. The latter
was the prize which the Boers had particularly in view, and to
expose it would be to play their game. Very wisely, therefore,
Wools-Sampson held the attacking Boers off with his guns and his
riflemen, while every spare pair of hands was set to work
entrenching the position and making it impregnable against attack.
Outposts were stationed upon all those surrounding points which
might command the camp, and a summons to surrender from the Boer
leader was treated with contempt. All day a long-range fire,
occasionally very severe, rained upon the camp. Colonel Benson was
brought in by the ambulance, and used his dying breath in exhorting
his subordinate to hold out. 'No more night marches' are said to
have been the last words spoken by this gallant soldier as he
passed away in the early morning after the action. On October 31st
the force remained on the defensive, but early on November 1st the
gleaming of two heliographs, one to the north-east and one to the
south-west, told that two British columns, those of De Lisle and of
Barter, were hastening to the rescue. But the Boers had passed as
the storm does, and nothing but their swathe of destruction was
left to show where they had been. They had taken away the guns
during the night, and were already beyond the reach of pursuit.
Such was the action at Brakenlaagte, which cost the British sixty
men killed and 170 wounded, together with two guns. Colonel Benson,
Colonel Guinness, Captain Eyre Lloyd of the Guards, Major Murray
and Captain Lindsay of the Scottish Horse, with seven other
officers were among the dead, while sixteen officers were wounded.
The net result of the action was that the British rear-guard had
been annihilated, but that the main body and the convoy, which was
the chief object of the attack, was saved. The Boer loss was
considerable, being about one hundred and fifty. In spite of the
Boer success nothing could suit the British better than hard
fighting of the sort, since whatever the immediate result of it
might be, it must necessarily cause a wastage among the enemy which
could never be replaced. The gallantry of the Boer charge was only
equalled by that of the resistance offered round the guns, and it
is an action to which both sides can look back without shame or
regret. It was feared that the captured guns would soon be used to
break the blockhouse line, but nothing of the kind was attempted,
and within a few weeks they were both recovered by British columns.
In order to make a consecutive and intelligible narrative, I will
continue with an account of the operations in this south-eastern
portion of the Transvaal from the action of Brakenlaagte down to
the end of the year 1901. These were placed in the early part of
November, under the supreme command of General Bruce Hamilton, and
that energetic commander set in motion a number of small columns,
which effected numerous captures. He was much helped in his work by
the new lines of blockhouses, one of which extended from Standerton
to Ermelo, while another connected Brugspruit with Greylingstad.
The huge country was thus cut into manageable districts, and the
fruits were soon seen by the large returns of prisoners which came
from this part of the seat of war.
Upon December 3rd Bruce Hamilton, who had the valuable assistance
of Wools-Sampson to direct his intelligence, struck swiftly out
from Ermelo and fell upon a Boer laager in the early morning,
capturing ninety-six prisoners. On the 10th he overwhelmed the
Bethel commando by a similar march, killing seven and capturing
131. Williams and Wing commanded separate columns in this
operation, and their energy may be judged from the fact that they
covered fifty-one miles during the twenty-four hours. On the 12th
Hamilton's columns were on the war-path once more, and another
commando was wiped out. Sixteen killed and seventy prisoners were
the fruits of this expedition. For the second time in a week the
columns had done their fifty miles a day, and it was no surprise to
hear from their commander that they were in need of a rest. Nearly
four hundred prisoners had been taken from the most warlike portion
of the Transvaal in ten days by one energetic commander, with a
list of twenty-five casualties to ourselves. The thanks of the
Secretary of War were specially sent to him for his brilliant work.
From then until the end of the year 1901, numbers of smaller
captures continued to be reported from the same region, where
Plumer, Spens, Mackenzie, Rawlinson, and others were working. On
the other hand there was one small setback which occurred to a body
of two hundred Mounted Infantry under Major Bridgford, who had been
detached from Spens's column to search some farmhouses at a place
called Holland, to the south of Ermelo.
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