As the morning wore on, the fight on the summit grew fiercer and fiercer. Fresh troops were continually arriving, for in the daylight the climb was not so excessively difficult, till the small space was packed with men. Just before the first reinforcements came up there was a moment when disaster was narrowly avoided. The British force in one of the outlying trenches was demoralised by its losses and by the fire. About twenty men threw up their hands and shouted that they would surrender to the Boers not a hundred yards away. On this, says Mr. Winston Churchill, Colonel Thorneycroft dashed to the spot. "The Boers advancing to take the prisoners—as at Nicholson's Nek—were scarcely thirty yards away. Thorneycroft shouted to the Boer leader: 'You may go to——! I command on this hill and allow no surrender. Go on with your firing.' Which latter they did with terrible effect, killing many. The survivors, with the rest of the firing line, fled 200 yards," but then were rallied and regained the lost ground. It was owned by the Boers themselves after the battle that the British soldiers had "fought with desperate bravery and died like men." Despite the disadvantage of the ground, despite the tremendous bombardment, they could not and would not be forced back. The heaps of dead grew higher; an awful breastwork of corpses was built to shelter the living; the trickle of wounded to the rear became a stream; but the fight flickered to and fro and the summit was still held.
Lack of artillery support.
From the shoulder of the hill by the mimosas, where the maimed men crowded in a heart-rending throng round the dressing station, the reinforcements emerged upon that bare plateau of death. There were now the best part of 5,000 men, crowded into an area of little over three acres. But no guns came, though all looked long and eagerly for them. A couple of "Pom-Poms," a pair of 15-pounders, would have restored confidence by their roar. But there were no "Pom-Poms" with the army, and the artillery officers could not undertake to move their guns up to the height by the precipitous track. It only remained to suffer and die. In that atmosphere, thick with the fumes of cordite, of melinite, and of the powder in bursting shells, suffocating with smoke and dust and heat, the burning thirst of the battlefield laid its parching grip upon the throats of the combatants, and men cried and screamed for water. Yet water there was none, or, if there had been, there was no time to seek it, and no chance of carrying it alive into the firing line. Units were now commingled, companies confounded with companies, battalions with battalions; so many officers were down that there were few to lead and inspire the men in the fighting line. About 2 p.m. a white flag was raised over part of the British trenches, and 150 of the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers under Captain Freeth surrendered. In this battalion the losses of officers had been terrible, and the consequent demoralisation great. Among those who fell was the ill-fated son of Hicks Pasha, Captain Hicks. Blown to pieces by a shell, while bravely leading his men, no trace of him could be found, and his fate was for months uncertain.
F. J. Waugh.]
Jan. 24, 1900.] An Officer's Experiences in the Battle.
Boer attempts to rush the position.
The rifle fire of the British troops was so shaken by the hail of shells, that the Boers were able repeatedly to close, and were only driven back time after time by desperate bayonet charges. They had set their hearts upon repeating Majuba, and capturing or driving back in utter rout the British troops. Again and again their leaders called upon our men to surrender, and were received each time with derisive shouts, though some small parties raised the white flag. They asserted, indeed, that our officers slashed the men with swords to make them fight—a story which is disproved by the fact that, like the men, the officers carried rifles; and they further accused us of firing upon those who had been made prisoners. There may have been such incidents, but not through any set purpose or with the fixed deliberation which attended their own too frequent breaches of the laws of war.
LYDDITE SHELL FROM A BRITISH NAVAL GUN.