The casualties in the regiment on this occasion were 2 officers (Lieutenant-Colonel Fordyce and Lieutenant Carey), 2 sergeants, and 2 privates killed; and 1 officer, Lieutenant Gordon (who died shortly afterwards), and 8 men wounded. The greater number of the casualties on this occasion occurred in No. 2 company, under the command of Lieutenant Carey, until he was mortally wounded, and then of Lieutenant Philpot. They were opposed to a strong body of the enemy posted behind rocks, but being assisted by the light company, they succeeded in dislodging it.
The bodies of the dead were next day carried in a mule waggon for burial at Post Retief—15 miles across the table-land. “The funeral will never be forgotten by those who were present. The thunder, mingled with the booming artillery, rolled grandly and solemnly among the mountains. As the rough deal coffins were borne out, the ‘firing party,’ dripping wet, and covered with mud, presented arms, the officers uncovered, and we marched in slow time out of the gate and down the road—the pipers playing the mournful and touching ‘Highland Lament’—to where the graves had been dug, a few hundred yards from the Post.”
Death of Lieutenant-Colonel Fordyce.
From “Campaigning in Kaffirland,” by Captain William Ross King, 74th Highlanders (now Lieut.-Col. unattached).
The following division order by Major-General Somerset by no means exaggerates the soldierly merits of Colonel Fordyce:—
“Camp Blinkwater,
“Nov. 9th, 1851.
“It is with the deepest regret that Major-General Somerset announces to the division the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Fordyce, commanding the 74th Highlanders. He fell, mortally wounded, in action with the enemy, on the morning of the 6th, and died on the field.
“From the period of the 74th Highlanders having joined the first division, their high state of discipline and efficiency at once showed to the Major-General the value of Lieutenant-Colonel Fordyce as a commanding officer; the subsequent period, during which the Major-General had been in daily intercourse with Lieutenant-Colonel Fordyce, so constantly engaged against the enemy in the field, had tended to increase in the highest degree the opinion which the Major-General had formed of Lieutenant-Colonel Fordyce as a commander of the highest order, and one of Her Majesty’s ablest officers, and whom he now so deeply laments (while he truly sympathises with the 74th Highlanders in their irreparable loss), as an esteemed brother soldier.”
Small parties of the enemy having again taken up positions near the head of Fuller’s Hoek, they were attacked and dislodged on the 7th; and on the following day the division marched to its camp at the Blinkwater.