For a long time the guns stood deserted thus, while the battle raged to right and left of them. Then, as General Hildyard’s infantry, including the Devons, the Queen’s, and the Scots Fusiliers, made their dashing advance upon the Boer positions, a trio of staff officers who were with Generals Buller and Clery volunteered to save the guns if possible. These three were Captains Schofield and Congreve, and Lieutenant Roberts.
Other volunteers were soon forthcoming when it was known that the attempt was to be made, and corporals, linesmen, and some drivers of ammunition waggons, with two or three spare teams, galloped out after their leaders. The guns were reached, but at once Boer shells and bullets began to drop thickly around. Captain Congreve was almost the first to be hit, being wounded in the leg. Then young Roberts was struck, at the same time that a shell burst under his horse, inflicting severe wounds upon him. “He was looking over his shoulder at Schofield,” says an eye-witness, “laughing and working his stick with a circular motion, like a jockey, to encourage his horse,” when his first bullet found him, and he fell mortally wounded. In the meantime the gallant gunners and drivers were limbering up with all speed, and thanks to Captain Schofield’s exertions, two of the guns were hauled back in safety.
Later on, Captain Reed of the 7th Battery, Royal Field Artillery, made another and partially successful effort to rescue some of the remaining ten guns, receiving a bad wound in his thigh in the attempt; but almost all of them had to be abandoned. For their gallantry, however, Captains Schofield, Congreve, and Reed, with Lieutenant Roberts, were all recommended for the V.C., the three first-named alone surviving to receive the decoration. Poor Lieutenant Roberts, as will be remembered, died at Chievely, two days later.
THE GUNS WERE REACHED, BUT AT ONCE BOER SHELLS AND BULLETS BEGAN TO DROP THICKLY AROUND.—[Page 242.]
As to the bravery of the men who helped them to save the guns, both Captain Schofield and Captain Reed have borne eloquent tribute. “Bosh!” said Reed, when he was complimented on his exploit; “it was all the drivers.” And if you ask Captain Schofield, you will find he will make much the same answer. While the rain of bullets poured on them the drivers limbered up in a calm, business-like fashion, as if there wasn’t a Boer within a dozen miles of them.
“Just to show you what cool chaps those drivers were,” says Captain Schofield, “when I was hooking on one of the guns, one of them said, ‘Elevate the muzzle a little more, sir.’ That’s a precaution for galloping in rough country, but I shouldn’t have thought of it—not just then, at any rate. Pretty cool, wasn’t it?”
They were gallant men those drivers without doubt, as gallant as Colonel Long’s gunners, who fell one by one by their guns until only two were left, two who continued the unequal battle alone, and when the ordinary ammunition was exhausted fired their last shot, the emergency rounds of case; after which they stood at attention and waited for the end that came swiftly. All could not be decorated, however, though all deserved equal honour, and so Corporal G. E. Nurse, of the Royal Field Artillery, was elected to receive the V.C. as the most fitting representative.
The next heroes on the list are two brave men of the Protectorate Regiment, Sergeant H. R. Martineau and Trooper (now Lieutenant) H. E. Ramsden. During a sortie from besieged Mafeking Sergeant Martineau’s attention was called to Corporal Le Camp, who had been struck down by a Boer bullet. The latter was lying in the open less than a dozen yards from the enemy’s trenches and bleeding profusely from his wound. Not far away were some bushes which offered ample shelter, so making a dash for the corporal, the sergeant carried and dragged him thither as best he could. Then, kneeling by the wounded man’s side, he carefully bandaged the gaping shot-hole and stanched the flow of blood.
Despite the shelter of the bushes, Martineau did not escape being hit. He was shot in the side as he stooped over the corporal, and he was struck yet twice more when, at the order to retire, he picked up Le Camp and carried him after his comrades, who were falling back upon the town. That plucky rescue cost the sergeant an arm, but it won him—though small compensation, perhaps—a V.C.