At The
Moment Before This Outflame Some Doubt As To Their Whereabouts
Seems To Have Flashed Across The Mind Of Their Leaders.
The order
to extend had just been given, but the men had not had time to act
upon it.
The storm of lead burst upon the head and right flank of
the column, which broke to pieces under the murderous volley.
Wauchope was shot, struggled up, and fell once more for ever.
Rumour has placed words of reproach upon his dying lips, but his
nature, both gentle and soldierly, forbids the supposition. 'What a
pity!' was the only utterance which a brother Highlander ascribes
to him. Men went down in swathes, and a howl of rage and agony,
heard afar over the veld, swelled up from the frantic and
struggling crowd. By the hundred they dropped - some dead, some
wounded, some knocked down by the rush and sway of the broken
ranks. It was a horrible business. At such a range and in such a
formation a single Mauser bullet may well pass through many men. A
few dashed forwards, and were found dead at the very edges of the
trench. The few survivors of companies A, B, and C of the Black
Watch appear to have never actually retired, but to have clung on
to the immediate front of the Boer trenches, while the remains of
the other five companies tried to turn the Boer flank. Of the
former body only six got away unhurt in the evening after lying all
day within two hundred yards of the enemy. The rest of the brigade
broke and, disentangling themselves with difficulty from the dead
and the dying, fled back out of that accursed place. Some, the most
unfortunate of all, became caught in the darkness in the wire
defences, and were found in the morning hung up 'like crows,' as
one spectator describes it, and riddled with bullets.
Who shall blame the Highlanders for retiring when they did? Viewed,
not by desperate and surprised men, but in all calmness and sanity,
it may well seem to have been the very best thing which they could
do. Dashed into chaos, separated from their officers, with no one
who knew what was to be done, the first necessity was to gain
shelter from this deadly fire, which had already stretched six
hundred of their number upon the ground. The danger was that men so
shaken would be stricken with panic, scatter in the darkness over
the face of the country, and cease to exist as a military unit. But
the Highlanders were true to their character and their traditions.
There was shouting in the darkness, hoarse voices calling for the
Seaforths, for the Argylls, for Company C, for Company H, and
everywhere in the gloom there came the answer of the clansmen.
Within half an hour with the break of day the Highland regiments
had re-formed, and, shattered and weakened, but undaunted, prepared
to renew the contest.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 91 of 435
Words from 47020 to 47519
of 225456
