[Rudall, Carte & Co.
F. Dadd, R.I.] [After Photos, by S. Cribb.
THE CHAIRING OF BUGLER DUNNE AT PORTSMOUTH.
Advance of Hildyard's Brigade.
Dec. 15, 1899.] Hildyard's Brigade Ordered Forward.
In the centre the battle still raged with unabated violence. Indeed, as our men fell back on the left and right the enemy's fire in this quarter grew in fury and intensity. The Boers' attention was no longer diverted, and they were able to concentrate all their strength and energy to meet Hildyard's assault. To have had any chance of success it should have been made simultaneously with Hart's onset on the left. Hart having failed, had it not been for the desperate position of Colonel Long's guns close to the river and in the very centre of the enemy's fire, a retreat would without doubt have been the wisest course. It should have been no part of the British plan to commit our men to a profitless combat in which they could only be shot down without effective reply. But though the plight of the twelve guns does not seem as yet to have been known to the commander-in-chief, he sent Hildyard forward.
Hildyard's Brigade, led by the Royal West Surreys and the Devons, in superb array descended the gentle slopes which led down from the British camp to the village of Colenso. There was no cover of any kind, and the whole terrain over which they moved was swept at first by the Boer cannon and automatic guns, and then, as our men drew nearer, by the far deadlier rifles of the enemy. "With magnificent hardihood both battalions walked erect," says Mr. Bennet Burleigh, the Daily Telegraph correspondent. "With death filling the air and tearing the ground, onward they went, the most superb spectacle of invincible manhood. Common soldiers in stained, creased khaki uniforms, homeliest of drab—they were heroes bound to command the admiration of the world." From the extreme weakness of the British artillery it was impossible to beat down the fire from the enemy's trenches near Colenso. No guns were available, for the 14th and 66th Field Batteries were out of action, and from the lie of the ground the naval weapons, which alone remained in this portion of the field, were unable to direct their projectiles upon the enemy. Yet in spite of the fact that their onset was virtually unsupported the West Surreys forced their way into the brushwood around Colenso, and even reached the outskirts of the village. A tremendous roar of firing came up from the hollow; then the Boers were seen from the naval 4·7 battery to stream out of Colenso and swarm up the slopes of Fort Wylie. The naval guns, however, lost their opportunity, since at that distance the swarm of fugitives was taken for British soldiers assaulting.
Photos by G. W. Wilson & Co., Aberdeen.]