The Remainder Of The 23rd Was Spent At Belmont Camp, And Next
Morning An Advance Was Made To Enslin, Some Ten Miles Further On.
Here Lay The Plain Of Enslin, Bounded By A Formidable Line Of
Kopjes As Dangerous As Those Of Belmont.
Lancers and Rimington's
Scouts, the feeble but very capable cavalry of the Army, came in
with the report that the hills were strongly held.
Some more hard
slogging was in front of the relievers of Kimberley.
The advance had been on the line of the Cape Town to Kimberley
Railway, and the damage done to it by the Boers had been repaired
to the extent of permitting an armoured train with a naval gun to
accompany the troops. It was six o' clock upon the morning of
Saturday the 25th that this gun came into action against the
kopjes, closely followed by the guns of the field artillery. One of
the lessons of the war has been to disillusion us as to the effect
of shrapnel fire. Positions which had been made theoretically
untenable have again and again been found to be most inconveniently
tenanted. Among the troops actually engaged the confidence in the
effect of shrapnel fire has steadily declined with their
experience. Some other method of artillery fire than the curving
bullet from an exploding shrapnel shell must be devised for dealing
with men who lie close among boulders and behind cover.
These remarks upon shrapnel might be included in the account of
half the battles of the war, but they are particularly apposite to
the action at Enslin. Here a single large kopje formed the key to
the position, and a considerable time was expended upon preparing
it for the British assault, by directing upon it a fire which swept
the face of it and searched, as was hoped, every corner in which a
rifleman might lurk. One of the two batteries engaged fired no
fewer than five hundred rounds. Then the infantry advance was
ordered, the Guards being held in reserve on account of their
exertions at Belmont. The Northumberlands, Northamptons, North
Lancashires, and Yorkshires worked round upon the right, and, aided
by the artillery fire, cleared the trenches in their front. The
honours of the assault, however, must be awarded to the sailors and
marines of the Naval Brigade, who underwent such an ordeal as men
have seldom faced and yet come out as victors. To them fell the
task of carrying that formidable hill which had been so scourged by
our artillery. With a grand rush they swept up the slope, but were
met by a horrible fire. Every rock spurted flame, and the front
ranks withered away before the storm of the Mauser. An eye-witness
has recorded that the brigade was hardly visible amid the sand
knocked up by the bullets. For an instant they fell back into
cover, and then, having taken their breath, up they went again,
with a deep-chested sailor roar. There were but four hundred in
all, two hundred seamen and two hundred marines, and the losses in
that rapid rush were terrible.
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