While these things were happening in the centre, on the left and right the attack had been equally unsuccessful. On the left General Hart advanced in column, with two field batteries, toward the drift. Soon after six the enemy suddenly opened upon the brigade, which was still marching in close order, with shell and shrapnel. The brunt of this artillery fire was borne by the Dublin Fusiliers and Connaught Rangers, who sustained heavy losses. A 45-pounder on Grobler's Kloof, another of the same calibre on Red Hill, and several smaller guns fired steadily at them, and the two field batteries seemed unable to effect much against these weapons. The range was too great, and there was, moreover, difficulty in locating them. The strident crash of the Maxims in the enemy's lines was not the least unnerving of the dangers which had to be faced.
But at length the British troops deployed and advanced in open order, company by company, in desperate rushes towards the ford. The nearer they drew the hotter became the enemy's fire, till it was wonderful to observers that any human being could live in it. And still the enemy was invisible, and the British troops had nothing to fire at. Men sobbed with rage at the fact that they were so helpless. The two field batteries, far too few for the work, could produce no impression whatever upon the dimly-seen Boer trenches, within which the enemy lay in almost perfect security, and the Boer guns left them alone, as if in derision, devoting all their energy to the advancing line of soldiery.
J. H. Bacon.] [Sketched from life.
THE CASUALTY LIST AT THE WAR OFFICE.
From the earliest days of the war, drawn, white faces anxiously examined the lists of killed and wounded posted up at the War Office in Pall Mall. Perhaps the most moving scenes witnessed here followed the announcement that the Grenadier Guards—many of them London men—had been in action and lost heavily at Belmont, November 23.
Dec. 15, 1899.] The Dash Across the River.
The Dublin Fusiliers attempt to ford the Tugela.
At last the Dublin Fusiliers reached the ford and attempted to cross. But the Boers had dammed the river, and in place of three feet of water there were seven. Yet, burning with enthusiasm and with determination to get at their enemies, a number of men plunged boldly in. Several were carried down by their heavy rifles and cartridges; others were caught by the barbed wire which the Boers had placed in the stream. Only a handful reached the other side, climbed the steep bank, and, led by a colour-sergeant who had been first up the hill at Elandslaagte, with the words, "Let's make a name for ourselves and die!" doubled forwards towards a kraal, a little way beyond the river. Among them was the heroic Bugler Dunne, a mere boy, who on this day displayed the most devoted valour. In the advance upon the kraal one by one the men dropped wounded; no one reached it but the sergeant. Alone he could do nothing; so he turned and fled unharmed, crossed the river, and regained his battalion.
A. Morrow.]