Colonel Codrington Of The Coldstreams Was Wounded
Early, Fought Through The Action, And Came Back In The Evening On A
Maxim Gun.
Lord Winchester of the same battalion was killed, after
injudiciously but heroically exposing himself all day.
The Black
Watch alone had lost nineteen officers and over three hundred men
killed and wounded, a catastrophe which can only be matched in all
the bloody and glorious annals of that splendid regiment by their
slaughter at Ticonderoga in 1757, when no fewer than five hundred
fell before Montcalm's muskets. Never has Scotland had a more
grievous day than this of Magersfontein. She has always given her
best blood with lavish generosity for the Empire, but it may be
doubted if any single battle has ever put so many families of high
and low into mourning from the Tweed to the Caithness shore. There
is a legend that when sorrow comes upon Scotland the old Edinburgh
Castle is lit by ghostly lights and gleams white at every window in
the mirk of midnight. If ever the watcher could have seen so
sinister a sight, it should have been on this, the fatal night of
December 11, 1899. As to the Boer loss it is impossible to
determine it. Their official returns stated it to be seventy killed
and two hundred and fifty wounded, but the reports of prisoners and
deserters placed it at a very much higher figure. One unit, the
Scandinavian corps, was placed in an advanced position at
Spytfontein, and was overwhelmed by the Seaforths, who killed,
wounded, or took the eighty men of whom it was composed. The
stories of prisoners and of deserters all speak of losses very much
higher than those which have been officially acknowledged.
In his comments upon the battle next day Lord Methuen was said to
have given offence to the Highland Brigade, and the report was
allowed to go uncontradicted until it became generally accepted. It
arose, however, from a complete misunderstanding of the purport of
Lord Methuen's remarks, in which he praised them, as he well might,
for their bravery, and condoled with them over the wreck of their
splendid regiments. The way in which officers and men hung on under
conditions to which no troops have ever been exposed was worthy of
the highest traditions of the British army. From the death of
Wauchope in the early morning, until the assumption of the command
of the brigade by Hughes-Hallett in the late afternoon, no one
seems to have taken the direction. 'My lieutenant was wounded and
my captain was killed,' says a private. 'The General was dead, but
we stayed where we were, for there was no order to retire.' That
was the story of the whole brigade, until the flanking movement of
the Boers compelled them to fall back.
The most striking lesson of the engagement is the extreme
bloodiness of modern warfare under some conditions, and its
bloodlessness under others. Here, out of a total of something under
a thousand casualties seven hundred were incurred in about five
minutes, and the whole day of shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire
only furnished the odd three hundred.
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