With Roberts to Pretoria: A Tale of The South African War

by G. A. Henty

The Grenadiers led the way in the right column, the Scots Guards were on their left rear, the two battalions of Coldstreams were in reserve. Unfortunately these positions were not maintained. The Scots Guards came up abreast of the Grenadiers, but some distance to their left; the Grenadiers, instead of maintaining their direction, bore to the left and marched against Kaffir Kop; the Coldstreams diverged still further to the left; thus, instead of being concentrated for the attack on the central kopje, the brigade were scattered over a front of two miles. No doubt the efforts of the various battalions to find out each others' position delayed the advance, and they did not arrive until day had broken. The sun was just rising over the eastern hills when the Grenadiers came within three hundred yards of the foot of Kaffir Kop. Suddenly some guns placed on an eminence to its right opened fire, and at once a roar of musketry came from the top of the hill, while a heavy flanking fire also opened from Gun Hill, and a storm of bullets swept the line, many men falling at once, while the dust rose thickly around them as the Mauser bullets pattered fast on the sand. The order had been given that the troops were not to fire, but were to carry the hill at the point of the bayonet.

The pause was a short one. Joined by some of the Northamptons, who apparently had also missed their way, the Grenadiers fought their way up the hill. The Boers here, as at Talana, on the other side, lost heart as soon as they found to their astonishment that, in spite of their tremendous fire, the troops whom they had despised still pressed up the hill. They did not await their arrival at the crest, but fled precipitately down into the valley behind it, and took up a fresh position on another hill there. While the Grenadiers had been engaged in this short but desperate conflict, the Scots Guards on their left had effected the capture of the central kopje. They rushed to the attack as bravely as their brothers-in-arms. The Boers on the summit had opened as hot a fire upon their assailants as had the defenders of Kaffir Kop, but the troops were not exposed to such a terrible cross-fire, and the consequence was, their loss was comparatively small.

On the left the fighting had been sharp. The enemy had thrown out outposts towards the railway from Table Hill, and the Northamptons were soon engaged in driving them in. At the foot of the hill, however, the Boers made a stand. They had thrown up some stone breast-works, and held them until the Northamptons pushed forward to the right and so took the defenders of the sangars in flank, and forced them to quit their position and retire to the hill. The two regiments then advanced to storm the position. The defence of the Boers here was more feeble and half-hearted than that offered at Gun Hill and Kaffir Kop. On gaining the summit the infantry halted until the guns came up and opened fire on the next range of hills, where the Boers, driven from their first line of defences, had now ensconced themselves, keeping up a continuous fire from among the rocks. Two regiments advanced and seized a ridge to the south, from which the Boers had been maintaining a flanking fire; but they could advance no farther, for the Yorkshires and Munsters, who should have been their supports, had been withdrawn.

This was an unfortunate tactical error. Had they been with their brigade, and had this been strengthened by one of the Coldstream battalions, our left could have pressed steadily on and have driven the Boers by the south-east route, where they would have been harassed as they passed by the fire of the Guards Brigade, and cut up by the little body of cavalry that had arrived there from Witputs. The Coldstreams came late into action, but they attacked and carried the hill called Mont Blanc, while they aided the Scots Guards to capture another eminence to the south of that hill. They were aided by the artillery and by the guns of the Naval Brigade, which now, after tremendous efforts by the marines and sailors, had been brought up.

The enemy, disheartened at the manner in which they had been driven from position after position, now gave way altogether. Their only means of retreat was to cross the level ground to the north-east, and had there been a strong force of cavalry, with a battery or two of horse-artillery, under Lord Methuen's orders, their defeat would have been converted into a disastrous rout. But half of the little force were on the other flank, there was no horse-artillery, and although the little party of Lancers and Rimington's Guides attempted to perform the work assigned to them, they were unable to do so. The broken ground running north from Table Hill was held by a strong body of Boers, who covered the retreat of their waggons and guns. In no case could they have overtaken the flying horsemen, for their chargers were worn out by the heavy work of scouting they had carried on. Water, too, had been short since they had left the Orange River, and after suffering a good many casualties they fell back. The battle was virtually over by six o'clock, having lasted about two hours.

Yorke had ridden with Rimington's Guides from Belmont, and, as they were on the extreme left of the fighting-line, had seen little indeed of the combat. That the British were gaining ground was evident from the direction from which the roar of battle reached them, and when at length the order came for them to advance, they had ridden forward eagerly until checked by the heavy fire opened from the low line of rocky eminences facing them. To have pressed on against riflemen hidden among rocks would have been to incur certain and heavy loss, and might have deprived the army of its already utterly insufficient cavalry force; consequently Colonel Gough, who was in command, reluctantly gave the order for them to retire. Yorke had the evening before handed over his Kaffirs to the medical department as stretcher-bearers, and as soon as firing ceased and it was evident that the battle was over, he rode across the country to give what aid he could in the work.

He found that the greater part of the British wounded had already been carried off by the troops, some in the ambulance waggons, some on stretchers. By half-past ten the infantry were already in camp, and by one all the wounded were being attended to in the hospitals. The loss of the Grenadiers, 117 men killed or wounded and 10 officers, exceeded that suffered by the whole of the rest of the division. The Northumberlands and Northamptons had over 60 casualties among the men and 6 among their officers; of these the Northumberlands had by far the larger share. Yorke, after seeing the last of the wounded, Briton and Boer, placed on ambulances, was now free, and fastening his horse to a sagebush, he and Hans ascended the hill the Grenadiers had won.

On reaching the summit he saw that it had been carefully prepared for defence, and had evidently been occupied for a long time. The wall was not, as it had appeared, continuous, but was broken up into little enclosures or forts, each sufficiently large for two or three men to live and sleep in; straw, old sacking, and brushwood formed the beds. In each were generally to be seen the ashes of a fire, a cooking pot, meat tins, fragments of bread, and other signs of continued occupation.

Empty cartridge-cases littered the ground everywhere, while many still loaded showed how hasty had been the flight of the Boers. Several dead bodies lay in these little forts; they were for the most part of men of the lower class, farm-servants and others, with rough ill-fitting clothes and closely-cropped heads. Among them, however, were a few of a very much superior class, clean and carefully dressed, but these were quite the exception; and Yorke afterwards heard from the prisoners that men of that class generally sent on their best horses, and rode in on spare animals or in light carriages and carts, and as soon as they saw that the fight was going against them, ran down the hill, jumped on to their fresh horses, and rode off, leaving the unmounted men to fight and die. Eighty-three Boers were found dead, but it was certain that the bodies of many of the better-class Boers had been carried off when they fell. More than fifty prisoners were taken, and twenty wounded; sixty-four waggons and a considerable number of horses were captured.

The next day all the wounded were sent down by train. That afternoon the troops moved forward again, knowing that another Boer force was collected at Graspan, some seven miles to the North. The Ninth Brigade and the Naval Brigade started in the afternoon for Swingspan, while the Guards moved on somewhat later with the Naval guns, armoured train, and baggage. Lord Methuen's intention was this time to attack the left of the Boer position, which was planted along a low range of hills, the highest and most commanding of which lay on their left.