Ten days after the Boer ultimatum had been delivered to the British agent at Pretoria, French was in Ladysmith. He arrived there, to be pedantically accurate, on October 20, 1899, at 5 a.m. At 11 a.m. he was in the saddle, leading a column out to recapture the railway station at Elandslaagte, which, with a newly-arrived train of troops, the Boers had seized overnight. No sooner had his men begun to locate the enemy, than French was recalled to Ladysmith. Reluctantly the men turned back to reinforce Sir George White's small garrison, for what he feared might prove a night attack. Soon afterwards, however, news of General Symons' victory at Talana came in to cheer the men after their fruitless sortie.
At once Sir George White saw his opportunity. It was the Boers, and not the British, who now stood in peril of a sudden attack. There was little sleep for French's men that night. At 4 a.m. next morning they were again on the march for Elandslaagte.
About eight o'clock on one of those perfect mist-steeped summer mornings that presage a day of burning heat, French's force came in sight of the Boer laagers. As the mist cleared the enemy could be spied in large numbers about the station and the colliery buildings and over the yellow veldt. French ordered the Natal Battery to turn its little seven-pounder on the station. One of the first shots told; and the Boers came tumbling out of their shelter, leaving the trainload of British soldiers, captured the previous night, free to join their comrades. Soon afterwards the station was in the hands of the British, as the result of a dashing cavalry charge.
But the Boers were only temporarily dislodged. Their long range guns very soon shelled the station from the neighbouring kopjes with deadly effect. French was compelled to withdraw. The stupidity of the enemy, in leaving the telegraph wires uncut, enabled him immediately to acquaint Sir George White with the peril of his situation. White's orders were emphatic: "The enemy must be beaten and driven off. Time of great importance." The necessary reinforcements were hurried to the spot.
IN HIS ELEMENT
French did not wait for their arrival before striking at the enemy. The Light Horse, under Colonel Scott Chisholme, quickly took possession of a low ridge near the railway station, which fronted the main line of the enemy's kopjes. While he held this ridge French had the satisfaction of seeing infantry, cavalry and artillery coming up the railway line to his assistance. In the late afternoon his force numbered something like three thousand five hundred men, outnumbering the enemy by more than two to one.
Those who ask why so many men were required, do not understand the position in which the British force found itself. The enemy were entrenched on a series of high, boulder-strewn tablelands, which offered almost perfect cover. Between these tablelands and French's force lay a wide and partly scrubless stretch of veldt. Over that terrible exposed slope his men must go, before they could come within useful range of the enemy. French was faced with a most perilous and difficult enterprise. However, that is precisely what French likes. He rose to the situation with ready resource. It was not easy to locate the exact position of the enemy ensconced amid these covering hills. So in the afternoon he ordered a simultaneous frontal and flank attack. Just which was front and which was flank it was for his lieutenants to discover. Sir Ian Hamilton's instructions to the infantry were brief but decisive. "The enemy are there," he said, "and I hope you will shift them out before sunset—in fact, I know you will."
When the action had fairly commenced, Sir George White and his staff galloped over from Ladysmith. French approached, saluted, and asked for instructions. The chivalrous White's only reply was, "Go on, French; this is your show." All the afternoon he stayed on the field, watching the progress of events, and approving French's dispositions.
The battle proved to be, in many ways, one of the most spectacular in history. For as the infantry advanced, under a steady hail of shell and bullets, the sky began to darken. The Boer positions stood silhouetted by stray puffs of white smoke against a lowering cumulus of clouds. While the artillery on both sides shook the ground with an inferno of sound, the storm burst. The thunder of the heavens became a spasmodic chorus to the roar of the guns. One correspondent has described how he found himself mechanically humming the "Ride of the Valkyries" that was being played on such a dread orchestra. Slipping and stumbling, cursing and cheering, the Devons crept forward across the sodden grass. Many of the bravest, among them Chisholme, went down on that plain of death. Far beyond the level veldt there were something like 800 feet to climb in the face of Mauser and shrapnel. At length, however, the top of the ridge was reached. There stood the three guns that had wrought such havoc, now silent among the corpses of the frock-coated burghers who had served them.
THE WHITE FLAG TRICK