But Unhappily In
Every One Of These Instances They Did Go Ill, Though The Slowness
Of The Boers Enabled Us, Both At Dundee And At Ladysmith, To Escape
What Might Have Been Disaster.
Sir George White has so nobly and frankly taken upon himself the
blame of Nicholson's Nek that an impartial historian must rather
regard his self-condemnation as having been excessive.
The
immediate causes of the failure were undoubtedly the results of
pure ill-fortune, and depended on things outside his control. But
it is evident that the strategic plan which would justify the
presence of this column at Nicholson's Nek was based upon the
supposition that the main army won their action at Lombard's Kop.
In that case White might swing round his right and pin the Boers
between himself and Nicholson's Nek. In any case he could then
re-unite with his isolated wing. But if he should lose his
battle - what then? What was to become of this detachment five miles
up in the air? How was it to be extricated? The gallant Irishman
seems to have waved aside the very idea of defeat. An assurance
was, it is reported, given to the leaders of the column that by
eleven o'clock next morning they would be relieved. So they would
if White had won his action. But -
The force chosen to operate independently consisted of four and a
half companies of the Gloucester regiment, six companies of the
Royal Irish Fusiliers, and No. 10 Mountain Battery of six
seven-pounder screw-guns. They were both old soldier regiments from
India, and the Fusiliers had shown only ten days before at Talana
Hill the stuff of which they were made. Colonel Carleton, of the
Fusiliers, to whose exertions much of the success of the retreat
from Dundee was due, commanded the column, with Major Adye as staff
officer. On the night of Sunday, October 29th, they tramped out of
Ladysmith, a thousand men, none better in the army. Little they
thought, as they exchanged a jest or two with the outlying pickets,
that they were seeing the last of their own armed countrymen for
many a weary month.
The road was irregular and the night was moonless. On either side
the black loom of the hills bulked vaguely through the darkness.
The column tramped stolidly along, the Fusiliers in front, the guns
and Gloucesters behind. Several times a short halt was called to
make sure of the bearings. At last, in the black cold hours which
come between midnight and morning, the column swung to the left out
of the road. In front of them, hardly visible, stretched a long
black kopje. It was the very Nicholson's Nek which they had come to
occupy. Carleton and Adye must have heaved a sigh of relief as they
realised that they had actually struck it. The force was but two
hundred yards from the position, and all had gone without a hitch.
And yet in those two hundred yards there came an incident which
decided the fate both of their enterprise and of themselves.
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