At Trichardt's Drift two pontoon bridges were built, and the whole of Warren's division crossed.
On the 19th this General essays an out-flanking movement in the direction of Acton Homes; but this manoeuvre at the base of escarpments occupied by the enemy is found to be too dangerous; the division falls back upon Trichardt's Drift with its convoys and the 420 bullock-waggons intended for the Ladysmith garrison.
A frontal attack, facing east, is decided upon for January 20. The infantry is engaged 800 yards from the Boer trenches. It is three o'clock; an assault is about to be made on the position. But a counter-order arrives, the reason for which has never yet been explained.
On the 21st, 22nd and 23rd the English try to gain a few hundred yards. Clery and Warren confess themselves powerless, and turn the attack towards the south-east.
On the night of the 23rd General Woodgate receives orders to seize Spion Kop. General Woodgate, commanding the 9th Brigade, took part in the Abyssinian campaigns of 1868, the Ashanti campaign of 1873, and the Zulu campaign of 1879. Later he was in command of the English forces in West Africa, during the rising of 1898.
He took with him eight companies of the 2nd Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers, six companies of the 2nd Battalion Royal Lancashire Regiment, two companies of the 1st Battalion South Lancashire Regiment, 194 men of Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry, and a half-company Royal Engineers. To these were added two battalions from General Lyttelton's Brigade.
At 3.30 in the morning, after mounting the hill in silence, Lieutenant Audrey, in command of the advance-guard, took two of the Boer trenches with the bayonet. They were held by Boers of the Vryheid commando, who were few in number, and had been completely surprised.
But the Heidelberg and Carolina commandos, under Schalk Burger, came to the rescue. Urged forward by a German commando and by Ricciardi's Italians, they crossed an open space under a hail of bullets and lyddite shells, and established themselves on one of the three spurs formed by the kopje at this point.
The struggle was very fierce. Between nine and eleven the English charged three times with the bayonet and were repulsed. Under the deadly fire of the Mausers and the Maxim-Nordenfeldts they were obliged to fall back gradually, before any serviceable reinforcements had reached them.
Woodgate, mortally wounded, was replaced by Colonel Thorneycroft; the latter received neither orders nor instructions, though it would have been easy to have established optical telegraph communication, as the heliograph was working between Mount Alice and Bester Farm (Redvers Buller and White).[#]