DRUM-MAJOR and DRUMMERS, COLDSTREAM GUARDS.
Photo by Gregory and Co., London.
To return to the troops. While this column was advancing, the Boers were also advancing in a parallel line to the Nek. The following day, 25th, the British column reached the high ground overlooking the Ingogo River, where they encamped (here the engagement of the 8th of February took place). At dawn on the 26th the column again laboriously mounted the terrible steeps leading to Mount Prospect, and fixed their camp about four miles from the Nek. Owing to the abominable state of the weather the nearing of the Nek was not attempted, and attack was postponed till the following day. The night was passed at Mount Prospect, and a laager made.
At six o'clock on the morning of the 28th the advance was sounded, and at 9.55 a.m. the guns began shelling the Nek. The Boers were not yet ready. Some took shelter behind the walls of Laing's Farmhouse, while others kept on the heights above, covered by the ridge from shells. Those in Laing's kraals had a warm time when the Naval Brigade began to play on them with their guns, and they soon evacuated the place.
Those on the Nek, after being for twenty minutes under a hot fire, were beginning to think they had had enough of it, when our lines ceased firing, and the mounted squadron advanced to take a hillock—the most advanced spur of the Boer left flank position. The 58th also prepared to charge. The officers commanding the mounted squadron were Major Brownlow and Captain Hornby, while Colonel Deane, Major Essex (an officer with a charmed life, who survived Isandlwana and the engagement at the Ingogo heights), Major Poole, Lieutenant Elwes, and Lieutenant Inman were in front of the 58th. The leading companies of the 58th having got half-way up the rise—a heavy business considering the slipperiness of the slopes—the first troop of the mounted squadron charged the kopje, going to right and left of the lines taken by the 58th. No sooner were they within sight of the Boers than they were greeted by a heavy fire that emptied half their saddles. Still, those who were left mounted, reformed in a pouring shower of bullets, and again charged.
But gallantry was of no avail, for there was no reserve to back up the charge of mounted troops. Seventeen men were killed and wounded, and thirty-two horses killed.