Chapter 33 - Page 2

low grassy ridge. Some
hundreds of De la Rey's men were lying in the long grass upon the
further side, and their first volley, fired at a fifty-yard range,
emptied a score of saddles. It would have been wiser, if less
gallant, to retire at once in the presence of a numerous and invisible
enemy, but the survivors were ordered to dismount and return the fire.
This was done, but the hail of bullets was terrific and the casualties
were numerous. Captain Norman, of C squadron, then retired his men,
who withdrew in good order. B squadron having lost Yockney, its brave
leader, heard no order, so they held their ground until few of them
had escaped the driving sleet of lead. Many of the men were struck
three and four times. There was no surrender, and the extermination
of B company added another laurel, even at a moment of defeat, to the
regiment whose reputation was so grimly upheld. The Boer victors
walked in among the litter of stricken men and horses. 'Practically
all of them were dressed in khaki and had the water-bottles and
haversacks of our soldiers. One of them snatched a bayonet from a
dead man, and was about to despatch one of our wounded when he was
stopped in the nick of time by a man in a black suit, who, I
afterwards heard, was De la Rey himself... The feature of the action
was the incomparable heroism of our dear old Colonel Wools-Sampson.'
So wrote a survivor of B company, himself shot through the body. It
was four hours before a fresh British advance reoccupied the ridge,
and by that time the Boers had disappeared. Some seventy killed and
wounded, many of them terribly mutilated, were found on the scene of
the disaster. It is certainly a singular coincidence that at distant
points of the seat of war two of the crack irregular corps should have
suffered so severely within three days of each other. In each case,
however, their prestige was enhanced rather than lowered by the
result. These incidents tend, however, to shake the belief that
scouting is better performed in the Colonial than in the regular
forces.

Of the Boer attacks upon British posts to which allusion has been
made, that upon Belfast, in the early morning of January 7th, appears
to have been very gallantly and even desperately pushed. On the same
date a number of smaller attacks, which may have been meant simply as
diversions, were made upon Wonderfontein, Nooitgedacht, Wildfontein,
Pan, Dalmanutha, and Machadodorp. These seven separate attacks,
occurring simultaneously over sixty miles, show that the Boer forces
were still organised and under one effective control. The general
object of the operations was undoubtedly to cut Lord Roberts's
communications upon that side and to destroy a considerable section of
the railway.