As the sun came through the mist, bringing the certainty of a fiercely hot day, the British garrison could at last perceive the real situation. The summit of Spion Kop had been but half occupied; the northern end was in the hands of the Boers, who held a trench upon it. Moreover, the table-land on the summit sloped down to the north, and lay open to the enemy's fire from kopjes, rising from the long mountain ridge, which surrounded it on three sides. The ridge forked at Spion Kop, whose summit thus formed a projecting natural bastion; one line of heights ran up to the north-west in the direction of Acton Homes—the line of heights which Sir Charles Warren's infantry had assailed day after day—another ran due eastward, prolonging the Boer positions in front of Potgieter's Drift. The British force on Spion Kop was thus most critically placed. It had no guns, yet it was exposed in the closest of formations to gun fire; reinforcements could only reach it by a long and arduous climb, whereas the Boers, by pushing their men along the ridges which they held, could arrive comparatively fresh; it could be attacked from every side except the south by a converging and enfilading fire; its cover was all but useless, for it was now seen that the trenches faced in the wrong direction. Added to this there was the curious want of attention to detail which had neglected the laying of a field telegraph so as to connect the summit with headquarters; a want of oil for signal lamps; and a paucity in the numbers of heliograph-operators and flag-signallers with the forlorn hope. This neglect of the means of communication disastrously affected the operations at every turn. Generals Warren and Buller did not know what was happening on the summit, and never went there to see. The British artillery, if report can be believed, fired repeatedly on the British troops, through inadvertence and ignorance of the precise positions occupied. Finally, when uncertainty as to who was in command on the mountain arose, it could not be immediately solved by an appeal to headquarters.
F. J. Waugh.]
This drawing is based on a Boer photograph taken on the spot immediately after the battle. The concentrated fire of the enemy was so terribly effective that our men were compelled to shelter themselves behind the dead bodies of their comrades.
The Boers bombard the British position.
From the British position on Three Tree Hill a breathless watch had been kept on the clouds that veiled the summit. As the fleecy whiteness was dispersed about 8 o'clock, the roll of musketry began. At the same time the artillery opened fire, the naval guns shelling two precipitous kopjes which rose just to the east of Spion Kop, while the field guns on Three Tree Hill thundered at the western ridge. The Boer guns had already broken silence and commenced a furious bombardment of Spion Kop, raining shells upon General Woodgate's force. Simultaneously the Boer marksmen in small parties poured in a deadly rifle fire from the kopjes on the three sides of Spion Kop; they began, too, to work towards the British trenches, taking all possible advantage of cover. All the early morning men were pouring in, and the assailants grew steadily in strength. The crackling of the rifles swelled into a heavy and continuous roar, and upon the portion of the mountain held by the British, shell, 94 lb., 15 lb., 12 lb., and 1 lb. in weight, fell at the rate of seven to ten a minute, throwing up dense clouds of dust, blowing human beings into unrecognisable fragments, inflicting the most ghastly wounds, terrifying those whom they did not slay. A cyclone of death had smitten the summit. No words can describe the appalling uproar and confusion; all around the thunder of the guns and the incessant roar of rifles; on the summit clouds of dust and the yells and oaths of the combatants; the groans of the wounded; the shrieks of the dying—man slaying man with every terrible circumstance that the imagination can picture.
[Jan. 24, 1900.
Woodgate wounded.
Under the stress of this terrible fire the British infantry held firm, Thorneycroft's volunteers on the left, Blomfield's Lancashire Fusiliers on the right. If a man showed his head or lifted his arm he was as good as out of the battle; so deadly, so overwhelming was the Boer fire, that he was sure to be hit. From the summit already trickled a steady stream of men towards the rear—towards the point where among the mimosas a hospital had begun its merciful work. With the wounded were a few unwounded—stragglers and skulkers—but not many. The British soldier in these dreadful moments is rarely untrue to the call of duty. He was at a grave disadvantage, for the rifle with which he was armed was awkward to load lying down; the Boer weapon with its clip holding five cartridges could be charged easily in a second or two. It may be that this was a trifle, but none the less the defect made its presence felt. So fierce, so breathless was the battle that no one had time for thought. From general to private on the summit the one concern was to hold the ground, to beat back the enemy, who came on like demons, to fling the dead from the trenches, and to remove the wounded. Here, as in the earlier battles of the war, there were some wonderful escapes. Colonel Thorneycroft, a man of great stature and extraordinary personal courage, was always upright among his men—always a mark for the enemy's bullets, which tore and riddled his clothing, but, strange to say, left him unharmed. General Woodgate had set a splendid example, walking coolly to and fro till, some time before 10 a.m., he was struck in the eye, while watching through his glass the effect of the British fire, and mortally wounded. He was borne off the field murmuring, "Let me alone! Let me alone!"
"It was as though hell had been let loose," was the concise description of a wounded officer. From below the sight was dreadful enough. "I saw three shells strike a certain trench within a minute," writes Mr. Atkins; "each struck it full in the face, and the brown dust rose and drifted away with the white smoke. The trench was toothed against the sky like a saw—made, I supposed, of sharp rocks built into a rampart. Another shell struck it, and then—heavens!—the trench rose up and moved forward. The trench was men; the teeth against the sky were men. They ran forward bending their bodies into a curve, as men do when they run under a heavy fire; they looked like a cornfield with a heavy wind sweeping over it from behind.... They flickered up, fleeted rapidly and silently across the sky, and flickered down into the rocks without the appearance of either a substantial beginning or end to the movement."