A Verestschagen
Might Find A Subject These 2000 Indomitable Men With Their
Emaciated Horses Pursuing A Formidable Foe.
It is God's mercy they
failed to overtake them.
If the record of the besieged force was great, that of the
relieving army was no less so. Through the blackest depths of
despondency and failure they had struggled to absolute success. At
Colenso they had lost 1200 men, at Spion Kop 1700, at Vaalkranz
400, and now, in this last long-drawn effort, 1600 more. Their
total losses were over 5000 men, more than 20 per cent of the whole
army. Some particular regiments had suffered horribly. The Dublin
and Inniskilling Fusiliers headed the roll of honour with only five
officers and 40 per cent of the men left standing. Next to them the
Lancashire Fusiliers and the Royal Lancasters had been the hardest
hit. It speaks well for Buller's power of winning and holding the
confidence of his men that in the face of repulse after repulse the
soldiers still went into battle as steadily as ever under his
command.
On March 3rd Buller's force entered Ladysmith in state between the
lines of the defenders. For their heroism the Dublin Fusiliers were
put in the van of the procession, and it is told how, as the
soldiers who lined the streets saw the five officers and small
clump of men, the remains of what had been a strong battalion,
realising, for the first time perhaps, what their relief had cost,
many sobbed like children. With cheer after cheer the stream of
brave men flowed for hours between banks formed by men as brave.
But for the purposes of war the garrison was useless. A month of
rest and food would be necessary before they could be ready to take
the field once more.
So the riddle of the Tugela had at last been solved. Even now, with
all the light which has been shed upon the matter, it is hard to
apportion praise and blame. To the cheerful optimism of Symons must
be laid some of the blame of the original entanglement; but man is
mortal, and he laid down his life for his mistake. White, who had
been but a week in the country, could not, if he would, alter the
main facts of the military situation. He did his best, committed
one or two errors, did brilliantly on one or two points, and
finally conducted the defence with a tenacity and a gallantry which
are above all praise. It did not, fortunately, develop into an
absolutely desperate affair, like Massena's defence of Genoa, but a
few more weeks would have made it a military tragedy. He was
fortunate in the troops whom he commanded - half of them old
soldiers from India - [Footnote: An officer in high command in
Ladysmith has told me, as an illustration of the nerve and
discipline of the troops, that though false alarms in the Boer
trenches were matters of continual occurrence from the beginning to
the end of the siege, there was not one single occasion when the
British outposts made a mistake.] - and exceedingly fortunate in his
officers, French (in the operations before the siege), Archibald
Hunter, Ian Hamilton, Hedworth Lambton, Dick-Cunyngham, Knox, De
Courcy Hamilton, and all the other good men and true who stood (as
long as they could stand) by his side.
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