Belfast was defended by three main groups of works, more of the nature of detached posts than of outposts in the ordinary acceptation of the term. South of the railway the Gordon Highlanders were in charge of a long stretch of rising ground; on the other side of the line the Shropshire Light Infantry held Colliery Hill, to the north-west of the town; while the Royal Irish were responsible for Monument Hill, a kopje two miles north-east of the centre of Belfast, and for one of the 4.7-in. guns, which was posted upon it. These hills, three miles apart, were linked by a party of mounted infantry at a drift half-way between them. Early on the 7th of January, 1901, Major Orr’s detachment at Monument Hill was relieved by Captain Fosbery, who was in command of his own company, A, and of D company (Captain Milner); Lieutenant Dease was the only subaltern with the party, which consisted of ninety-three officers, non-commissioned officers and men. Fosbery at once began to improve and complete the partially finished defences he had taken over from his predecessor, but the number of workers at his disposal was not great, for D company had just returned from an exhausting spell of train-escort duty, and as he wished to allow Captain Milner’s men time to rest, he kept them in reserve and gave them little to do. By sundown, however, much had been accomplished, and when General Smith-Dorrien came to visit the post he was satisfied with the progress made, though he disapproved of the loopholes, which he directed should be altered, but owing to the darkness it became impossible to carry out this order, and its execution was postponed till the morrow.
The top of the hill is a plateau about eight hundred yards long, and less than a quarter of a mile in width: at the northern end a rough stone sangar, four feet high, enclosed the 4.7-in. gun: farther to the south a semicircular trench partly surrounded the tents occupied by D company: a short way down the south-western slope of the hill a blockhouse of stone and sods was virtually completed, and scattered along the perimeter of the plateau were eight small trenches, two of which were not yet fit for use. By the scheme of fortification the whole of the post should have been ringed with a strong barbed-wire fence, but at nightfall this portion of the defences was not completely finished. After Fosbery had sent two sections to a subsidiary post connecting Monument Hill with the left of the Gordon Highlanders, there remained in hand six sections, which he thus disposed for the night. Two sections of A company were to man the perimeter trenches, with a sentry posted a few yards in front of each; the remaining section of A with the maxim was to act as a support in the sangar, from which, as will be seen, the 4.7-in. gun had been withdrawn; the three sections of D company were to sleep in their tents, but to be ready at a moment’s notice to line the trench near their little camp. In the course of the evening a mist settled down upon the country round Belfast, so heavy that in the town itself the range of vision was limited to twenty yards; on Monument Hill it was like a London fog, and effectually prevented patrolling to the north-east, east, and south-east, where the precipitous sides of the kopje fell into broken ground, difficult even by day to search with any degree of thoroughness. Thus the safety of the post was entirely dependent on the vigilance and sharp hearing of the sentries in front of the trenches.
Nothing occurred to disturb the garrison of Belfast until midnight, when heavy firing, beginning at Monument Hill, then spreading to Colliery Hill, and finally raging at the Gordons’ posts, showed that the burghers had surrounded the town and were assailing it vigorously on every side. From information obtained by the British officers captured during the engagement, it is known that General L. Botha, who had under him about two thousand men, had allotted to the Ermelo commando the task of driving the Gordon Highlanders from the southern works: the Middelburg commando was to engage the Shropshire Light Infantry at the Colliery, but not to press home the attack until General B. Viljoen, with seven hundred and fifty of the Johannesburg and Bocksburg commandos, had made himself master of Monument Hill—a post which was to be carried at all cost, not only on account of its tactical importance, but also because the burghers were determined to capture the big gun which they thought was left at night on the top of the kopje. Fortunately, during the 7th, General Smith-Dorrien had decided that it should be dragged down the hill and back into the artillery lines at nightfall; and thus the gun was preserved from the fate which overtook the defenders of the sangar in which the Boers expected to find the piece of ordnance they coveted so earnestly.
Owing to the fact that of the three officers on Monument Hill one was killed and the others wounded and carried away by the enemy, the official report of the part played by the Royal Irish is necessarily somewhat meagre. But, thanks to a narrative prepared by Captain Dease, and to information supplied by others who were present, it is possible to form some idea of the desperate struggle for the possession of the hill. The night piquets were posted at dusk, and the officers of A company divided the duty between them, Fosbery taking the watch till 2 A.M., when Dease was to relieve him. Everything was quiet till about a quarter to twelve, when Dease, who was in a shelter near the tents of the reserve, heard a distant challenge, followed almost immediately by the report of a rifle. Nothing happened, and as nervous sentries often fired at imaginary enemies, no one was disturbed by the single shot, though, as it turned out, it was fired not by a British soldier but by a burgher, who when the sentry at the north-east trench challenged, shot him dead. Dease was trying to go to sleep again, when two more rifles rang out; he dashed out of his shelter, and with Fosbery, whom he met in the fog, hurried to the centre of the plateau to ascertain the cause of the firing. On the way they came under a sudden fusilade from a party of Boers who, after scaling the northern and north-eastern slopes of the kopje, had surprised and carried a couple of the trenches, thus establishing themselves inside our line of works. The two officers rushed forward and reached the gun sangar just as the burghers were advancing upon it.
“The fog,” writes Captain Dease, “at this time was extremely dense, and the position of the enemy could only be distinguished by the flashes of the rifles. The Boers at first concentrated on the maxim gun, and a tremendous hand-to-hand combat took place. Our men used their bayonets with effect, and some of the machine gunners (who had slung their rifles in an abortive effort to get the gun to work) set-to with picks, axes, and anything they could lay hands on. In short, as the men said, ‘it was the father and the mother av a fight!’ The enemy suffered so severely that they ceased trying to get over the sangar wall, but remained a yard or two on the far side, pouring in a terrific rapid fire at the crest line of the sangar. It is difficult to be clear about the sequence of events, but I think that among the eighteen men originally in the sangar there were only one or two casualties during the hand-to-hand part of the fight; but during the next phase, when the Boers contented themselves with sweeping the crest, we lost very heavily, for our fellows, the lust of battle on them after the hand-to-hand fight near the machine gun, exposed themselves in a most reckless manner, and were with difficulty prevented from getting out of the sangar and charging into the enemy. The action had continued for about half an hour, when the Boers made a second rush on the gun, and being met at that point by a mere remnant, forced us back. At this moment, as we were gradually drawing back towards the entrance to the sangar, 3733 Private J. Barry,[312] who was nearest the maxim, picked up a pickaxe lying near it. As he forced his way to the gun through the Boers, efforts were made to stop him, and he had just time to drive in the point of the pick into the junction of the barrel and breech-casing before he was literally swept down by a hail of bullets from the enemy round him.[313] As he was shot at by about a dozen burghers within five yards’ distance and from all sides, I fancy they must have played havoc in their own ranks! Fosbery now realised that the position in the sangar was untenable, and shouting out to us to ‘charge through the entrance and make for the blockhouse,’ led the way. The Boers were there in great force, and we were met with a very hot but unaimed fire. Only Fosbery, Corporal Gorman, and myself took part in this charge; all the rest of us were either killed or wounded. About ten yards from the entrance Fosbery, in trying to club down a Boer with the butt of his carbine, was wounded in two places: I got a few yards farther, and while occupied with a couple of the enemy in front was hit on the head by a butt-ended rifle, and temporarily stunned: Corporal Gorman, I think, surrendered, but of this I am uncertain, as I was too busy to notice what he was doing, as he was behind me. When I recovered consciousness about ten, perhaps twenty, minutes later, I searched for and found Fosbery, who was still alive. I did what I could in the way of first aid, but he was hopelessly hit and had already lost a great deal of blood. The Boers were so close to him when they shot him down that his clothing was scorched all round the wounds. A little after this I suddenly ran into a group of wandering Boers, and having lost my carbine when I was knocked over, was easily collared and put under escort. But of this and all subsequent proceedings I can remember nothing. I had been singularly unfortunate in the fight in jamming my revolver (a Service Webley) as I reloaded it. It was no good to me, and I can remember using it as a missile during the charge—I hope with effect! A carbine that night was a useless weapon for officers. We had no bayonets, and the short length of the stock and barrel placed us at a great disadvantage in the hand-to-hand mêlée.”
While the support was fighting desperately in the gun sangar against overwhelming odds, most of the piquets on the perimeter were swamped by sheer weight of numbers. Their trenches were of a type found very useful by the battalion in actions where it had been exposed to continuous bombardment, such as those in the Colesberg campaign—narrow slits in the ground, 2 feet 6 inches wide, nearly 5 feet deep, loopholed with a parapet 2 feet in height and at least 3 feet in width. But excellent as this pattern had proved elsewhere, it was not a success in very close fighting at night, for the trench was so deep that its occupants could not see over the parapet, and the loopholes were ill adapted for firing on an enemy at a few yards’ range. Around these works parties of Boers, from twenty to two hundred strong, suddenly loomed up out of the fog and closed rapidly from all sides upon the defenders, whom they covered with their rifles, demanding instant surrender. Though thus caught in an absolute death-trap, most of these little groups of four or five soldiers showed fight, not laying down their arms until one or more of their number had been killed or wounded. Here Lance-Corporal Dowie, a veteran who had served in the Egyptian war of 1882, met a glorious death. He was in command of a small trench, which he succeeded in holding during the first assault: he refused to surrender, though he must have realised that resistance was hopeless, and with his men continued to fight on desperately until a number of burghers, rushing in from behind, overwhelmed the party and left Dowie dead in the work he had defended so gallantly.
The reserve fared no better than the piquets or the support. When awakened by the sound of battle, the men of D company manned the broad and shallow trench by which, as it has been said, their tents were enclosed, though very incompletely. At first the attack came from their front and right, but after the capture of the sangar had made the Boers masters of the northern end of the hill, a fresh body of the enemy fell upon them from the left rear. There was a short, wild struggle; then the burghers surged forward, and hemmed in the men of D so closely that many of them could not use their bayonets, and while the Boers in front seized the muzzles and pointed them in the air, those behind knocked our men down with the butts of their Mauser rifles. By this time Captain Milner was severely wounded: and those of his company who were not killed, wounded, or prisoners ceased to be a formed body of troops. Singly or in small groups they tried to make their way towards Belfast, but in the fog they stumbled across large parties of the enemy, into whose hands they fell. Out of the ninety-three officers and men of the Royal Irish on the hill only seven escaped; the remainder were killed, wounded, or captives in the hands of the enemy. Little more than half an hour after the first shot was fired the defence had been beaten down completely, and the only sounds to be heard on Monument Hill were the groans of the wounded, and the hoarse shouts of the burghers as they collected the rifles and ammunition and sought vainly for the 4.7-in. gun, which they hoped to turn upon the garrison of the town.
When the attack began General Smith-Dorrien had only two companies—(one of the Royal Irish and one of the Shropshire Light Infantry) available as reinforcements for the posts north of the line. Both companies turned out, stood to their arms, and awaited orders, while Lieutenant-Colonel Spens, Shropshire Light Infantry, at once reconnoitred towards Monument Hill, and before the firing had quite died down, met a soldier who gave him the grim news that Fosbery’s detachment had been cut to pieces. Halting his party, Spens went forward with two or three men to ascertain for himself the real position of affairs, and, undetected by the enemy, worked his way up the kopje until he reached a wire fence from which he could see the burghers swarming over the camp which they were looting. Then, convinced that the post was lost indeed, he withdrew, taking with him the men of two small outlying piquets whom the enemy had not discovered, but who, in his opinion, would inevitably be captured as soon as the fog lifted. This daring reconnaissance was equalled by that of a corporal in the 5th Lancers, who volunteered to find out what had happened to the Royal Irish. He thus described the scene upon the hill—
“I left the road and struck across the veld, and by running, creeping, crawling, and rolling I managed to get up to the wire entanglements which encircled the post. The difficulty now was to get through the wire. I could hear shouts and groans, and there was some shooting going on, but whether Briton or Boer was in possession I could not tell. I dared not go round the entanglement to the entrances, as I knew they would be guarded, and so by a series of wriggles soon found myself inside the post. What was to be done now? I knew if I were seen I should be shot, whoever held the hill, so I continued to wriggle and roll on my stomach. I soon came across the effects of the fight, the dead bodies of the infantry and Boers, and the tents which had been cut down on top of the Irishmen. Some one was calling ‘Water, for God’s sake give me water,’ and suddenly a dog barked a few yards to my right, and I could just distinguish a man. I immediately covered him with my rifle, but apparently he had not seen me. I remained where I was for some time, and then slowly crawled back a little and worked my way to where I heard the shouts for water coming from. I soon found two of the Irishmen badly wounded, and asked them in a whisper what had happened, but the only reply was a piteous appeal for water. I then crawled some fifty yards to the cook-house and found a camp kettle with some water in it, and slowly wriggled back to the two wounded men, and filling my cap with water gave them a good drink. They then told me that the Boers had rushed the sentries in the fog, cutting down the tents on their occupants, and shooting and clubbing the men as they rushed out, and although the garrison had made a gallant fight they were overpowered and the post captured. There was a lot of shouting going on by the Boers, and I quietly crawled towards it, and then there was a shot. Beyond a man standing on the monument I could see nothing, and so gradually crawled back to the wire entanglements; as soon as I was clear of these ran back to the horses, where I found Sergeant Evans and Aldridge safe, and we rode back to camp and made our report.”[314]
Along the rest of the line of outworks the enemy pressed home the attack with great gallantry and determination, but was repulsed at all important points. The Gordon Highlanders beat back Botha’s burghers, though with the loss of a small isolated post, and the Shropshire Light Infantry maintained their hold on the vital part of their position, though also with the loss of a small outlying detachment. Only at Monument Hill were the Boers successful, and this success, obtained solely by overwhelming numbers, they failed to turn to account. Whether they were dispirited by their losses, bewildered by the fog, or crippled by the want of trained staff officers to direct their movements and carry out Botha’s plans, it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that beyond capturing some scores of rifles, a few tents, and much ammunition from the Royal Irish, the burghers accomplished nothing, and retired so hastily with their prisoners and booty that when Spens returned in the early morning to Monument Hill he found it occupied only by the dead and wounded.