Ladysmith: The Diary of a Siege

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

Good news came through the heliograph about General Gatacre's force at Dordrecht. There were rumours about Lord Methuen, too, for which Dr. Jameson was quoted as authority. But the best evidence for hope was the unusual violence of the bombardment. It began early, and before the middle of the afternoon the Boers had thrown 178 shells at us. They were counted by a Gordon officer on Moriden's Castle, and the total must have reached nearly 200 before sunset. Such feverish activity is nearly always a sign of irritation on the part of the Dutch, and one can always hope the irritation is due to bad news for them.

I have not heard of any loss in town or camp. Our guns, with the exception of the howitzers and Major Wing's field guns, which can just reach the new howitzer on Surprise Hill, have hardly replied at all.

The milk question was the most serious of the day. I saw a herd of thirty-five cows which had only yielded sixteen pints at milking time. It is now debated whether we shall not have to feed the cows and starve the horses; or kill the thinnest horses and stew them down into broth for the others. The reports about the condition of Intombi Camp were particularly horrible to-day. But General Hunter will not allow any one to visit the camp, and it is no good repeating secondhand reports.

December 27, 1899.

The side of Tunnel Hill, at the angle of the Helpmakaar road, where Liverpools and Gloucesters have suffered in turn, was to-day the scene of an exactly similar disaster to the Devons.

The great Bulwan gun began shelling us later than usual. It must have been past eight. The Devon officers had long finished breakfast, and after inspecting the lines were gathered for orderly room in their mess. It is a fairly large shed on a platform of beaten earth, levelled in the side of the hill. The roof, of corrugated iron and earth, covered with tarpaulin, would hardly even keep out splinters, and is only supported on rough wooden beams. It is impossible to construct sufficient head shelter. The ground is so rocky that all you can do with it is to build walls and traverses. Along one side of the mess tent a great traverse runs, some eight or ten feet thick, and about as high. When the sentry blows the warning whistle at the flash of a big gun, officers are supposed to come under the shelter of this traverse, till the shell has passed or declared its direction. At the first shot this morning I heard no whistle blow, but it was sounded at the second and third. It was the third that did the damage. Striking the top of the traverse, it plunged forward in huge fragments into the messroom, tearing an enormous hole in the tarpaulin screen. Unhappily Mr. Dalzell, a first lieutenant with eight years' service, had refused to come under the wall, and was sitting at the table reading. The main part of the shell struck him full on the side of the face, and carried away nearly all his head. He passed painlessly from his reading into death. The state of the messroom when I saw it was too horrible to describe. The wounds of the other officers prove that the best traverse is insufficient unless accompanied by head shelter. Though their backs were against the wall, seven were wounded, and three others badly bruised. Two cases are serious: Lieutenant P. Dent had part of his skull taken off, and Lieutenant Caffin had a compound fracture of the shoulder-blade. Lieutenant Cane, an "orficer boy," who only joined on Black Monday, was also wounded in the back. The dhoolies quickly came and bore the wounded away to the Wesleyan Chapel. Mr. Dalzell was buried in the afternoon. "Well, well," sighed the old gravedigger, "I never thought I should live to bury a man without a head."

To-day, for the first time, we heard that Lord Roberts had lost his only son at Colenso. The whole camp was sad about it. The scandal over the robbery of the sick by the civilians at Intombi has grown so serious that at last General Hunter is sending out Colonel Stoneman to investigate. I have myself repeatedly endeavoured to telegraph home known facts about the corruption and mismanagement, but all I wrote has been scratched out by the Censorship. One such little fact I may mention now. The 18th Hussar officers at Christmas gave up a lot of little luxuries, such as cakes and things, which count high in a siege, and sent them down to their sick at Intombi. Not a crumb of it all did the sick ever receive. Everything disappeared en route—stolen by officials, or sold to greedy Colonials for whom the sick had fought. It is a small point, but characteristic of the whole affair.

December 28, 1899.

The night was wet and pitchy dark. Only by the help of the lightning I had stumbled and plunged home to bed, when at about eleven a perfect storm of rifle-fire suddenly swept along the ridges at our end of the town. Rushing out I saw the edges of the hills twinkle with lines of flashes right away to Gun Hill and Bulwan. Alarmed at the darkness, and hearing strange sounds in the rain the Boers had taken a scare and were blazing away at vacancy, in terror of another night attack. The uproar lasted about five minutes. Then all was quiet until, as dawn was breaking, "Lady Anne" and "Bloody Mary" shook me off my camp bed with the crash of seven reports in quick succession just over my roof. For some days it had been an idea of Captain Lambton's to catch the Boer gunners on Bulwan just as they were going up to their big gun, or were occupied with early breakfast. Five of our shells burst on the face of the hill where many Boers spend the night, probably to protect the gun. The two last fell on the top, close to the gun itself. The latter did not fire at all to-day, and I saw the Boers standing about it in groups evidently excited and disturbed.

The bombardment continued much as usual in other parts, and I spent the afternoon with the 69th Battery on Leicester Post, watching Major Wing reply to the new howitzer on Surprise Hill. Rain fell heavily at times, and the Boers never like firing in the wet.