Gunners of the 78th Battery recovering a limber under a heavy fire.
It now remained to bring back General Wynne's two battalions from their yet closer contact with the enemy. They had reached a point only 1,200 yards from the nearest Boer works at Brakfontein, and as the officers' whistles blew and the line of khaki-clad men leapt up from the ground, the enemy at last opened a fierce, spluttering rifle fire. Yet again the casualties were not heavy, though the running of the gauntlet of that storm of fire from invisible marksmen for about 1,000 yards must have been a grim experience. The total loss in the two battalions was about fifty killed and wounded. The retirement of our men gave scope for the usual Boer legends. Some professed that our infantry had fled in panic, while the field glasses of an American correspondent with the Boers were so powerful that they revealed to him desperate efforts on the part of our officers to check the flight and to persuade the men to advance. Whence he argued that Thomas Atkins "was beginning to funk it." Had he only been able to see into General Buller's mind he would have known otherwise. In fact, this demonstration was brilliantly managed with insignificant loss of life—no small achievement against such an enemy as the Boers.
[Feb. 5, 1900.
Bombardment of Vaal Krantz.
Soon after noon the batteries began the bombardment of Vaal Krantz, and all the heavy guns joined in the infernal concert. Never in this war had there been such an artillery display before. The naval guns and 5-inch siege pieces divided their attention between Vaal Krantz and the dongas under Doorn Kloof, where the Boer guns, from their higher altitude, had the distinct advantage; the 12-pounders and mountain guns fired wholly at the tangle of watercourses under Doorn Kloof; the field batteries and howitzers concentrated their efforts against Vaal Krantz. The slopes and ridge of that eminence were torn with projectiles of all kinds; the usual method being first to fire a couple of lyddite shells and then a half-dozen of shrapnel in a terrific volley. Not a living being should have been left on the hill if the theories of artillerists were correct. But in actual fact the execution was by no means what was expected. A good many Boers were killed and wounded, but a number of determined men still held their ground and did not flinch. A Boer correspondent tells us:—"Scattered about, crouching low among the boulders, and in the innumerable tiny ravines, the Boers, with the phlegm of their race, patiently endured the storm and waited for Tommy Atkins to come within rifle range. The boulders which covered them were shattered and splintered by the iron hail, but the Boers did not budge. It is really marvellous how the burghers manage to fight effectively while keeping so perfectly concealed. A wounded English officer, who was brought into the laager after the fight, told me that the men who carried him off the field were the first Boers he had seen. During the fight he had not caught a glimpse of a single man." Some idea of the nature of the artillery fire concentrated upon this point may be gathered from the fact that this correspondent picked up a double handful of shrapnel bullets in a space only 50 feet square.
[Photo by Middlebrook.
The puff of smoke on the distant hill shows where a Boer magazine was exploded—it is believed, by a British shell.
[Photo by Capt. Foot.