Photo by Middlebrook, Durban.
4.7 Emplaced on Hlangwane.
Tuesday, 27th February.—A wire was handed to me in the night to join the 10th Brigade with the Yorks and Lancasters, and off we went at 6 a.m. in good spirits but in a thick drizzle of rain, passing along the eastern slope of Hlangwane and winding up a fearful road to the front. The Yorks and Lancasters at this point suddenly turned off, and feeling that something was going wrong I halted my guns and rode on to the Headquarters Staff, about half a mile on, finding the Infantry attack just about to commence, the men all looking very weary, and no wonder. I spoke to Ogilvy, who was there with his guns, and afterwards to General Buller, who was standing quite close surveying the general attack of our Infantry on the centre and right 3,000 yards ahead of us. The guns were giving the Boers lyddite and shrapnel, and the fighting line were cheering as kopje after kopje was taken. It was evident to my unpractised eye that we had the Boers on the run at last. I told the Commander-in-Chief that my guns had arrived, when he replied, "Why, you should be in Colenso," and turned to his Staff, saying that some mistake had been made. I therefore showed my written orders, and after reading them, the General said, "It is not your fault, but march to Colenso as quickly as possible"; and he detached Lord Tullibardine to show us the way; I had seen a good deal of him at Springfield. "The Pontoon bridge is up," he added; "you must use the Boer pont and so ferry across the Tugela." So off we went, and got to Colenso at 2 p.m. after a very hot march.
The ground at the railway crossing which we had to cross was being heavily and accurately shelled, so leaving my gun train for a time in a spot safe from the bursting shrapnel I rode on to prepare the pont for our crossing the river. We got the first gun over to the Colenso side of the river after hard work, the rotten bank giving way and the gun being half submerged in the water; then the somewhat unhandy soldiers in charge of the pont capsized a team of gun oxen when half-way across the river by rocking the pont, and, nearly drowning the poor oxen, swam ashore themselves and left them to their fate. It was now 5 p.m. and as there were no men to do anything it was an impossible position, with the pont sunk in the middle of the flooded river; so that at dusk, after telling some soldiers who had come up from General Coke's Brigade in response to my request what to do to right the pont, I drew up my remaining gun and wagons on the south bank, and put the gun which was already across the river out of action under a guard below the river bank in case of any Boer swoop on it.
Wednesday, 28th February.—A red-letter day. Before daylight I set my men to work to bale out the pont and to get my second gun across the river with 100 rounds of ammunition, and also off-loaded and got over a spare wagon and 250 rounds more. All this was a terrible hard job; two empty military wagons trying to get across the drift at this spot were carried away before my eyes and only picked up a quarter of a mile down stream. At 11 a.m. I was able at last to march on to join General Coke's Brigade in Colenso, and to get my guns into position. I was very exhausted and was feeling rather ill, but I was able to dine with the General under a tarpaulin and had much talk over old times in the Mauritius in 1898. It was a very wet evening, and my men who were bivouacking with no tents had a bad time of it. The sudden cessation of firing most of the day seemed to foreshadow some change at the front, and we found afterwards to our joy that a detachment of the Imperial Light Horse under Lord Dundonald had ridden into Ladysmith at 6 p.m. unmolested by the Boers who were reported to be in full retreat.[3]
Thursday, 1st March.—Everything seems to feel dull and unprofitable; all the country round is deserted and Colenso is almost unbearable from the odour of dead horses. At about 11 a.m. the pickets reported Boers in force coming down Grobler's Kloof, but the party turned out to be our own men; some of the garrison Cavalry, in fact, riding in from Ladysmith, who told us that the Boers were in full retreat. In the afternoon I rode round Colenso. What a scene of desolation and dirt; huts and houses unroofed and everything smashed to pieces! Long lines of abandoned trenches, and the perpendicular shelters which the Boers had blasted out behind all the kopjes against shell fire plainly showed how well they knew how to protect themselves. The trenches, about a mile long, in the plain to the right of Colenso are very deep and are sandbagged; parts of them are full of straw; many shelters are erected in them; and holes are burrowed out and strewn with chips of cartridges and pieces of shell, bottles, and every imaginable article. Being somewhat curious as to the effect of our shelling which had gone on from the 10th December to the 12th January at this line of trenches, I rode along them and came to the conclusion that not one of our shells had actually hit these splendid defences, although no doubt our fire annoyed and delayed the workers in them. I picked up many curios here.
Friday, 2nd March.—Not a Boer to be seen within miles. Very hot and odoriferous here, and I feel queer and tired out although fortunately able to lie down all day. In the middle of the night had a sudden and alarming attack of colic and was in great agony. I really thought I was done for, but my men gave me hot tea and mustard and water which did me good.
Saturday, 3rd March.—Woke up feeling weak and ill, but as luckily there was no work on hand I was able to lay still under an ammunition wagon and was much revived with some champagne which my best bluejacket named House got for me from my friend Major Brazier Creagh of the Hospital train. The doctor from the Middlesex lines who came to see me in the evening told me he had been into Ladysmith and had found the garrison looking very feeble; the Cavalry were hardly able to crawl and could not therefore pursue the Boers; the rations had been reduced to one and a half biscuits per day per man in addition to sausages and soup called Chevril, made from horseflesh. It seems that Ladysmith could have held out for another month, but the garrison had, after our failure at Spion Kop, given up all hope of our relieving them. Poor chaps! they have had an awful time of it. We learn that the Boers had left a huge unfinished dam of sandbags across the Klip River so as to flood out our shelter near the banks of the town; another week would have seen this really marvellous work completed; but luckily, as it was, our friends had to decamp in a hurry, leaving tents, wagons and ammunition strewn all over the neighbourhood; I wish I could add guns, but none were found, and I fear that the retreat took place for one reason only, viz., Kruger's fear of being cut off by Lord Roberts at Laing's Nek. Except for this I doubt whether we should ever have moved the Boers out of the Colenso position with our 30,000 men; indeed, I hear that the German Attaché said it was a wonder, and that his people would not have attempted it under ten times the number. As it is, we are all glad that General Buller has succeeded.