A Railway Accident Is A Nervous Thing, And So Is An
Ambuscade, But The Combination Of The Two Must Be Appalling.
Yet
there were brave hearts which rose to the occasion.
Haldane and
Frankland rallied the troops, and Churchill the engine-driver. The
engine was disentangled and sent on with its cab full of wounded.
Churchill, who had escaped upon it, came gallantly back to share
the fate of his comrades. The dazed shaken soldiers continued a
futile resistance for some time, but there was neither help nor
escape and nothing for them but surrender. The most Spartan
military critic cannot blame them. A few slipped away besides those
who escaped upon the engine. Our losses were two killed, twenty
wounded, and about eighty taken. It is remarkable that of the three
leaders both Haldane and Churchill succeeded in escaping from
Pretoria.
A double tide of armed men was now pouring into Southern Natal.
From below, trainload after trainload of British regulars were
coming up to the danger point, feted and cheered at every station.
Lonely farmhouses near the line hung out their Union Jacks, and the
folk on the stoep heard the roar of the choruses as the great
trains swung upon their way. From above the Boers were flooding
down, as Churchill saw them, dour, resolute, riding silently
through the rain, or chanting hymns round their camp fires - brave
honest farmers, but standing unconsciously for mediaevalism and
corruption, even as our rough-tongued Tommies stood for
civilisation, progress, and equal rights for all men.
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