The Cheers Of Victory As The Devons Swept The Ridge Had Heartened
The Weary Men Upon Caesar's Camp To A Similar Effort.
Manchesters,
Gordons, and Rifles, aided by the fire of two batteries, cleared
the long-debated position.
Wet, cold, weary, and without food for
twenty-six hours, the bedraggled Tommies stood yelling and waving,
amid the litter of dead and of dying.
It was a near thing. Had the ridge fallen the town must have
followed, and history perhaps have been changed. In the old
stiff-rank Majuba days we should have been swept in an hour from
the position. But the wily man behind the rock was now to find an
equally wily man in front of him. The soldier had at last learned
something of the craft of the hunter. He clung to his shelter, he
dwelled on his aim, he ignored his dressings, he laid aside the
eighteenth-century traditions of his pigtailed ancestor, and he hit
the Boers harder than they had been hit yet. No return may ever
come to us of their losses on that occasion; 80 dead bodies were
returned to them from the ridge alone, while the slopes, the
dongas, and the river each had its own separate tale. No possible
estimate can make it less than three hundred killed and wounded,
while many place it at a much higher figure. Our own casualties
were very serious and the proportion of dead to wounded unusually
high, owing to the fact that the greater part of the wounds were
necessarily of the head.
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