Lieutenant Tait was one of the most beloved men in Scotland. Thousands had seen him upon the green, and few in Scotland could read of his death without a sense of personal bereavement. In the middle of June 1915 another eminent golfer of equal fame and no less popularity, Captain John Graham, of the Liverpool Scottish, was fated to give his life for his country. No two finer men and finer sportsmen ever brought fairer honour to the name of Scotland in peace and war.
The action continued all day, and eventually, on the approach of the 9th Lancers, the Boers fell back and the Highland Brigade returned to the Modder River, having lost some fifty men. There followed afterwards the relief of Kimberley, and from thence onwards to the end of the war the part taken by the Highlanders was peculiarly arduous and without many distinguished features. Month after month they were employed in hard marching, holding positions that the mounted troops had carried, uncomplaining as always, and winning back here and there some of the losses that they had suffered at the hands of the enemy at Magersfontein. We have seen how the Gordons were instrumental in the capture of Cronje, despite the heavy fire with which they were met from the Boer trenches, and it is a notable fact that the Highland Brigade, for all their handling at Magersfontein, appear to have suffered in no way in prestige, and were only too anxious to make good. “On the 18th,” says General Colville, speaking of the end of Cronje, “the courage and determination shown by the Highland Brigade in their advance over some fifteen hundred yards of perfectly open plain, and their passage of the river, both under heavy fire, are beyond all praise.”
CHAPTER XXVII
WITH SIR IAN HAMILTON TO PRETORIA
(1900)
To you who know the face of war,
You, that for England wander far,
You that have seen the Ghazis fly
From English lads not sworn to die,
You that have lain, where, deadly chill,
The mist crept o’er the Shameful Hill,