But Now In An Instant This Single Light Was Shut Off And The
True Nature Of Their Situation Was Revealed To Them.
Buller had
indeed moved.
. .But backwards. He had been defeated at Colenso,
and the siege was not ending but beginning. With heavier hearts but
undiminished resolution the army and the townsfolk settled down to
the long, dour struggle. The exultant enemy replaced their
shattered guns and drew their lines closer still round the stricken
town.
A record of the siege onwards until the break of the New Year
centres upon the sordid details of the sick returns and of the
price of food. Fifty on one day, seventy on the next, passed under
the hands of the overworked and devoted doctors. Fifteen hundred,
and later two thousand, of the garrison were down. The air was
poisoned by foul sewage and dark with obscene flies. They speckled
the scanty food. Eggs were already a shilling each, cigarettes
sixpence, whisky five pounds a bottle: a city more free from
gluttony and drunkenness has never been seen.
Shell-fire has shown itself in this war to be an excellent ordeal
for those who desire martial excitement with a minimum of danger.
But now and again some black chance guides a bomb - one in five
thousand perhaps - to a most tragic issue. Such a deadly missile
falling among Boers near Kimberley is said to have slain nine and
wounded seventeen. In Ladysmith too there are days to be marked in
red when the gunner shot better than he knew. One shell on December
17th killed six men (Natal Carabineers), wounded three, and
destroyed fourteen horses. The grisly fact has been recorded that
five separate human legs lay upon the ground. On December 22nd
another tragic shot killed five and wounded twelve of the Devons.
On the same day four officers of the 5th Lancers (including the
Colonel) and one sergeant were wounded - a most disastrous day. A
little later it was again the turn of the Devons, who lost one
officer killed and ten wounded. Christmas set in amid misery,
hunger, and disease, the more piteous for the grim attempts to
amuse the children and live up to the joyous season, when the
present of Santa Claus was too often a 96-pound shell. On the top
of all other troubles it was now known that the heavy ammunition
was running short and must be husbanded for emergencies. There was
no surcease, however, in the constant hail which fell upon the
town. Two or three hundred shells were a not unusual daily
allowance. The monotonous bombardment with which the New Year had
commenced was soon to be varied by a most gallant and
spirit-stirring clash of arms. On January 6th the Boers delivered
their great assault upon Ladysmith - an onfall so gallantly made and
gallantly met that it deserves to rank among the classic fights of
British military history. It is a tale which neither side need be
ashamed to tell. Honour to the sturdy infantry who held their grip
so long, and honour also to the rough men of the veld, who, led by
untrained civilians, stretched us to the utmost capacity of our
endurance.
It may be that the Boers wished once for all to have done at all
costs with the constant menace to their rear, or it may be that the
deliberate preparations of Buller for his second advance had
alarmed them, and that they realised that they must act quickly if
they were to act at all. At any rate, early in the New Year a most
determined attack was decided upon. The storming party consisted of
some hundreds of picked volunteers from the Heidelberg (Transvaal)
and Harrismith (Free State) contingents, led by de Villiers. They
were supported by several thousand riflemen, who might secure their
success or cover their retreat. Eighteen heavy guns had been
trained upon the long ridge, one end of which has been called
Caesar's Camp and the other Waggon Hill. This hill, three miles
long, lay to the south of the town, and the Boers had early
recognised it as being the most vulnerable point, for it was
against it that their attack of November 9th had been directed.
Now, after two months, they were about to renew the attempt with
greater resolution against less robust opponents. At twelve o'clock
our scouts heard the sounds of the chanting of hymns in the Boer
camps. At two in the morning crowds of barefooted men were
clustering round the base of the ridge, and threading their way,
rifle in hand, among the mimosa-bushes and scattered boulders which
cover the slope of the hill. Some working parties were moving guns
into position, and the noise of their labour helped to drown the
sound of the Boer advance. Both at Caesar's Camp, the east end of
the ridge, and at Waggon Hill, the west end (the points being, I
repeat, three miles apart), the attack came as a complete surprise.
The outposts were shot or driven in, and the stormers were on the
ridge almost as soon as their presence was detected. The line of
rocks blazed with the flash of their guns.
Caesar's Camp was garrisoned by one sturdy regiment, the
Manchesters, aided by a Colt automatic gun. The defence had been
arranged in the form of small sangars, each held by from ten to
twenty men. Some few of these were rushed in the darkness, but the
Lancashire men pulled themselves together and held on strenuously
to those which remained. The crash of musketry woke the sleeping
town, and the streets resounded with the shouting of the officers
and the rattling of arms as the men mustered in the darkness and
hurried to the points of danger.
Three companies of the Gordons had been left near Caesar's Camp,
and these, under Captain Carnegie, threw themselves into the
struggle. Four other companies of Gordons came up in support from
the town, losing upon the way their splendid colonel,
Dick-Cunyngham, who was killed by a chance shot at three thousand
yards, on this his first appearance since he had recovered from his
wounds at Elandslaagte.
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