During the night the Shropshire Regiment accomplished a fine feat. They pressed forward some two hundred yards, captured new ground, and there entrenched themselves. It was an excellent finale to four days’ incessant work under a withering fire, and by the 22nd they were fairly exhausted. They were then relieved by the Gordons. Here be it noticed that the Gordons were now incorporated with the Highland Brigade, which was thus composed of four kilted regiments. The Highland Light Infantry, who wear “trews,” had joined General Smith Dorrien’s force.
The exchange of positions between the Shropshires and Gordons was effected in a manner worthy of the slim Boer himself, and showed that the Britons had speedily taken practical lessons from their adversaries. The Shropshires having, as said, seized 200 yards of new ground, they were relieved the following morning by the Gordons. The Highlanders, snake-like, wormed themselves forward to the trenches on their stomachs, while the Shropshire men in like manner crawled over the bodies of the relieving force. An officer who witnessed the evolution said, “I have often heard of walking on an empty stomach, but I’m hanged if I’ve ever seen the feat accomplished so well and so literally.”
Another tremendous thunderstorm broke over the position, causing considerable discomfort to the troops, but still more to the unhappy creatures who, through the stout resistance of Cronje, were held to all the horrors of the trap into which he had fallen. We were now closing in on every side.
A grand attempt was made on the morning of the 23rd to bring help to the Dutchman. Commandant de Wet with a horde of some 1000 Boers, collected from the region of Ladysmith, appeared, and made a desperate effort to thrust himself through the British lines. Part of the force on its way towards its hoped-for destination was luckily accosted from a kopje occupied by the Scottish Borderers. The greeting, smart and accurate, was scarcely to the Dutchmen’s liking, and they made off in another direction, but still with the same result. From position to position they were hunted, and in sheer despair they made for an unoccupied kopje, where they hoped at last to make a stand. But they were disappointed. The lively Scottish Borderers were “one too many for them.” Seeing the Boers in act of seizing this point of vantage, the Borderers promptly hurled themselves in the coveted direction. There was an animated neck-and-neck race, and the Borderers, who won by a nose, promptly took possession of the hill and completely routed the Federals.
Finally the Boers found shelter in a kopje which was vis-à-vis to a like eminence held by the Yorkshires. A passage at arms followed, with the result that the fusillade of the enemy died a natural death. Then the Yorkshires, who had so strenuously brought about this result, were reinforced by the Buffs, lest some more of the Boer hosts from Ladysmith should put in an appearance. At this time the 75th and 62nd Batteries gave tongue from an adjacent farm, but their vociferous notes produced little effect upon the crown of the Boers’ stronghold.
So great was the silence that the Yorkshires moved on with a view to prodding the enemy in his lair, but, in the attempt, they were so furiously assailed by the shot of the enemy that they, in default of cover, were unable to proceed. Meanwhile the Buffs persevered, moving warily round the position till within 150 yards of the Dutchmen, who were eventually driven off. More than eighty—their horses having been shot—surrendered. On many of these were discovered explosive bullets, and it became evident that desperation was driving the Boers to disregard the rules of civilised warfare. Many of our wounded were found injured by these unholy missiles; and other tricks—barbarous tricks—were reported. On one occasion a Vickers-Maxim gun was directed at an ambulance, which at the time was fortunately unoccupied.
During the week our losses were fewer than on the opening day. Captain Dewar and Lieutenant Percival, 4th King’s Royal Rifles, and Lieutenant Angell, Welsh Regiment, were killed. Among the wounded were:—
2nd Gloucester—Lieutenant-Colonel R. F. Lindsell; 2nd Derbyshire—Lieutenant C. D. M. Harrington; 9th Lancers—Captain Campbell; P.R.H.A.—Lieutenant Houston; Royal Engineers—Captain Crookshank; 1st Lincoln—Second Lieutenant Wellesley; Argyll and Sutherland—Lieutenant and Adjutant Glasford; 1st East Kent Regiment (attached 2nd Battalion)—Lieutenant Hickman; 2nd Lincoln—Captain Gardner; King’s Own Scottish Borderers—Captain Pratt; East Kent—Captain Marriott; Yorkshire—Captain Pearson, Lieutenant Gunthorpe, 2nd Lieutenant Wardle.
Lieutenant Metge (1st Welsh Regiment) was missing.
Daily the enemy was squeezed into a smaller space. General Smith Dorrien had now pushed up the river-bed to within two hundred yards of Cronje’s entrenchments. The object lesson in perseverance, both on the part of Boers and British, was becoming almost awe-inspiring—the tension was veritably appalling. Soaked with rain to the very skin—the fevered skin that had been scorched, and toasted, and begrimed with dust—our men, grim and fierce, with the storm-winds piping the pipe of death about their ears, held their ground. Rations had been intermittent till the convoys began to come in, and, almost fasting, they had been acutely conscious of the foul, the nauseating atmosphere that now enveloped them like a loathely vaporous entanglement. The river had swollen and bore upon its turbid breast horrific revelations—thousands of rotting carcases and festering loads of poisonous wreckage, that rendered the act even of drawing breath almost a heroism. All along the great march endurance had been put to supreme test, for the track had been margined with the dead bodies of exhausted oxen and horses. These lay littered about, unburied, disembowelled, and in various stages of putrefaction. Everywhere vultures and flies and other loathsome parasites of the veldt hovered and sidled and crawled, glutting themselves at veritable orgies of destruction, and contesting their prizes with the winds. These, taking their fill, hastened to diffuse the remains of the grisly banquet far and wide. Thus the foul dust, wantonly distributed, blew in the throats and eyes and ears of gallant men, and contributed death more liberally, more pitifully, than even the bullets of the Boers!