495 CHAPTER XXXVIII. ON SPION KOP. N O sooner had the Boers been driven from the second trench than the party of Engineers set to work to prepare the ground to be held for the British. They worked hard at the trenches, digging one in advance of the second trench captured from the enemy. And in the captured trenches and the one dug by the Engineers our men took posts. Dawn had come in the valley, but on the mountain tops there was mist and darkness. No enemy could be seen and no shot was fired ; and the Engineers had to work in the dark, metaphorically as well as literally. The meaning of this is, that they could not see the ground ahead of them or around them, and consequently, the Boers being hid from them, they could not tell in what line or direction to con- struct their fortifications. This after- wards proved a most serious disadvantage, for when at eight o’clock the mist lifted, it was seen that the trenches occupied by our men formed little or no protection against the attack which the Boers were able to direct upon it. Let us now see what sort of a position Woodgate’s column found itself in at eight o’clock on that morning of the 24th of January. To begin with, the mountain was 7,000 feet high. It had a flat top— one of those enormous plateaus commonly found at the summit of South African hills. This plateau was triangular in shape—not, of course, a mathematical triangle, but three-sided—the corners were at the south- western extreme, the northern, and the north-eastern. The highest point was at the north-western end. The stormers had stopped too soon—100 yards away were trenches, commanding the British position, and lined by Boer riflemen. The ground was shaped very much like a hog*s back, and, unfortunately, our sappers had constructed their advanced trenches on that part of the back which sloped down towards the rest of the plateau. In fact, the trenches so con- structed were of such little use that our men might almost as well have been lying on the open ground. We had no artillery, not even a machine gun ; and when General Woodgate saw the position we were in, the first thing he did was to send down Colonel k Court to Sir Charles Warren to ask for reinforcements and artillery. There could be no doubt that once the British could place in position upon the part of the hill captured one or two heavy guns, they could hold it against the world. Further, there was no doubt that Warren had been right when he judged this point to be the key of the Boer position. For it was plain enough to be seen that a force, even a small one, holding the north-western spur of Spion Kop with artillery, could enfilade the Boer trenches on all sides with the greatest ease, and so render their whole position untenable. As a natural consequence it followed that General Botha would have to abandon Brakfontein Ridge, thus leaving open the road from Potgeiter’s Drift to AngloBoerWar.com
Transcript
495
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
ON SPION KOP.
NO sooner had the Boers been driven from the second trench than the party
of Engineers set to work to prepare the ground to be held for the British. They worked hard at the trenches, digging one in advance of the second trench captured from the enemy. And in the captured trenches and the one dug by the Engineers our men took posts.
Dawn had come in the valley, but on the mountain tops there was mist and darkness. No enemy could be seen and no shot was fired ; and the Engineers had to work in the dark, metaphorically as well as literally. The meaning of this is, that they could not see the ground ahead of them or around them, and consequently, the Boers being hid from them, they could not tell in what line or direction to construct their fortifications. This afterwards proved a most serious disadvantage, for when at eight o’clock the mist lifted, it was seen that the trenches occupied by our men formed little or no protection against the attack which the Boers were able to direct upon it.
Let us now see what sort of a position Woodgate’s column found itself in at eight o’clock on that morning of the 24th of January. To begin with, the mountain was 7,000 feet high. It had a flat top— one of those enormous plateaus commonly found at the summit of South African hills. This plateau was triangular in shape—not, of course, a mathematical triangle, but three-sided—the corners were at the south
western extreme, the northern, and the north-eastern. The highest point was at the north-western end. The stormers had stopped too soon—100 yards away were trenches, commanding the British position, and lined by Boer riflemen. The ground was shaped very much like a hog*s back, and, unfortunately, our sappers had constructed their advanced trenches on that part of the back which sloped down towards the rest of the plateau. In fact, the trenches so constructed were of such little use that our men might almost as well have been lying on the open ground.
We had no artillery, not even a machine gun ; and when General Woodgate saw the position we were in, the first thing he did was to send down Colonel k Court to Sir Charles Warren to ask for reinforcements and artillery. There could be no doubt that once the British could place in position upon the part of the hill captured one or two heavy guns, they could hold it against the world. Further, there was no doubt that Warren had been right when he judged this point to be the key of the Boer position. For it was plain enough to be seen that a force, even a small one, holding the north-western spur of Spion Kop with artillery, could enfilade the Boer trenches on all sides with the greatest ease, and so render their whole position untenable. As a natural consequence it followed that General Botha would have to abandon Brakfontein Ridge, thus leaving open the road from Potgeiter’s Drift to
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Ladysmith to the uninterrupted advance of Lyttelton’s brigade, and the rest of the force under the immediate command of Buller massed round about that drift.
Hardly had the mist rolled away, giving our storming party for the first time a view of the country, than they found themselves exposed to a tremendous fire. The Boers had six guns bearing upon them from three points of the compass—a converging fire directed with the greatest accuracy and the utmost ferocity. There were two Maxim-Nordenfeldts particularly annoying. These lashed the ground with a perfect hail of missiles, sending up earth and dust in clouds, and laying low many a stalwart Lancashire lad. There were two other guns of heavier calibre at the back of the ridge occupied by them on the left—that is, opposite to Warren—and the gunners who manned these pieces were men of skill. They had the range to a nicety, and hardly once did they drop the shell short or pitch it over the mark. Then, from the other side, a Krupp and a 15-pounder hove shrapnel at the spur.
Nor was this all. For simultaneously with the converging artillery fire the Boers began an infantry attack of the deadliest character. They spread themselves out over the plateau and along the hill side in loose order. They hid behind the black rocks as they only could hide, making themselves invisible even at short distances to our men. And they kept up a rifle fire, deadly and concentrated. This was the kind of attack the Dutchmen excelled in. As for advancing over open country it was none of their business. But give them plenty of cover and a hillside climb and they could attack, perhaps, better than any troops in the world.
At the foot of the mountain to the left
Warren had two howitzers placed. He was quite unable until night fell to send guns up the hill, but he tried to reach the Boer artillery so as to silence them and so give some sort of protection to the infantry at the top. He was not very successful, for the simple reason that the howitzers, though they were quite able to carry the distance, could not locate the Boer batteries, which were concealed with the greatest skill ; and the result was that Woodgate’s infantry was exposed to their fire without the slightest means of replying to i t The only thing that could be done was to take such shelter as the trenches afforded, to reply to the riflemen as well as might be, and to hang on. It may readily be imagined that the British reply to the Boer musketry was not particularly effective when, as has already been said, our poor fellows were quite unable to see the Boer marksmen. Nearer and nearer drew the swarm of sharpshooters. As the moments flew by, and the Dutchmen crept closer and closer, the fire became more and more accurate. It had been close enough before, God knows. By halfpast nine it was almost unbearable. Still the Lancastarians and Thorneycroft’s men hung on like grim death, determined that the position which had already cost them dear should not be given up while life remained.
At ten o’clock a serious disaster occurred to the British, for at that hour a rifle bullet struck General Woodgate and laid him low. The wound was mortal, and Woodgate knew it. He became almost delirious, and tried to get out of the trench to rush single-handed upon the enemy. And it was only with the greatest difficulty that his men held him back from such suicide. He struggled in their arms, uttering wild cries ; and the
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command then devolved upon the senior regimental officer who happened to be at the top of the hill. This gentleman was Colonel Crofton of the Royal Lancasters,
One of the first things done upon capturing the position was to erect a heliographic station, and, as this was necessarily in the open, it came under the full fire of
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M 1 1 COMMAND HERE, ' SAID HE, ’ AND I WILL HAVE NO S U R R E N D E R ’ ” ( / . 498).
an officer who had completed his term of command six months before, but had been allowed to continue at the head of his battalion and lead it to the war chiefly because he had had previous experience in South African warfare.
the Boer artillery. The signallers stuck to it pluckily, though their post was one of the greatest danger. There were four of them altogether—Lieutenant Martin of the Royal Lancasters, and Signallers Goodyear of the West Yorks., and Lomax
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and Turner of the Lancashire Fusiliers. Hardly had they set up their apparatus than a shell pitched on it and wrecked it totally. They set it up again, and the first message they were able to send was from Crofton to Spearmans Hill for transmission to Warren as follows : “ Reinforce at once or ail lost. General dead.” It was impossible to hold communication b\ signal with Warren direct.
Buller was at the signal station when the message was received. He had been watching from Mount Alice as best he could the progress of events on Spion Kop, and the last thing he had seen before he received the heliogram convinced him that our men there were losing ground. He at once telegraphed to Sir Charles Warren : 44 Unless you put some really good hard fighting man in command on the top you will lose the hill. I suggest Thorneycroft.” Before Warren received this message he had already ordered General Coke to proceed to the top and take command of the force there, but as soon as Buller communicated his wish that Thorneycroft should be placed in command, Warren did as his commander had suggested. So that Coke was in general command of the hill, while Thorneycroft commanded the fighting line on the summit. It was a most extraordinary course—considered in the light of military etiquette—to give the command of the summit to Thorneycroft. For that officer, though no doubt a good hard fighting man and a first-rate leader of irregulars, was only a major, holding the local rank of lieutenant-colonel ; and there were many other officers on the hill superior in rank to him. As a matter of fact General Coke did proceed to the top of the mountain, but was almost immediately recalled by Sir Charles Warren,
in order that he, Warren, might obtain a report of how matters stood.
Well and hard did Thorneycroft fight that day. He exposed himself to the bullets and shells of the enemy with a gallantry that would be remarkable if it had not been shown by nearly every other man on that corpse-strewn summit. The Boer skirmishers crept closer and closer, emptying their magazines with such deadly effect that the Lancastrians dared not raise themselves above the level of the trenches. Then with a rush the Boers advanced to within thirty yards of the first British line. They covered with the muzzles of their Mausers the Fusiliers who lined the trench ; and summoned them to surrender. A Boer with a white flag came right up to the trenches ; and many of the men were uncertain as to whether they should or should not surrender when Thorneycroft leaped forward from his position behind. 44 I command here,” said he, 44 and I will have no surrender.” This he shouted at the Boer leader, adding, 44 You may go to----- ! ” How Thorneycroft escaped thattime is nothing less than miraculous, for he was a big man and was standing up exposed to the aim of, at least, a hundred rifles, the farthest of which was not more than fifty yards away. But he did escape, and he rallied his men. The Boers rushed the trench for the moment ; but Thorneycroft shouted 44 Follow me,” and the Lancashire boys, who only wanted an officer to lead, fixed bayonets and hurled themselves at the foe. They lost more than half their number by the way, but at last they got in with the steel; and they made the Boers pay them back in lives at the rate of three for one.
The men were thick on the ground— much too thick, for there was not shelter in the entrenchments for them all, and
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COLONEL THORNEYCROFT’S PLUCK. 499before long this disadvantage—and a very serious disadvantage it was—was increased considerably. General Warren, having received the heliogram from Crofton asking for reinforcements, sent up with General Talbot-Coke two new battalions of infantry, so that there were now upon the summit four battalions, or about 3,000 men, where there was only room effectually to manoeuvre about 1,000. The reinforcements consisted of the Middlesex, Somerset, and Dorsets, and they reached the top of the hill at about eleven a.m. During the last part of their ascent they were severely shelled by the Boer artillery, especially by the pom-poms. Indeed, the Boer gunners both then and during the day made most excellent practice. The forces at the summit were running short of ammunition, for they had only taken up 100 rounds per man with no reserve supplies, and messengers were being sent down entreating somebody to send up more cartridges.
The fighting was terrible in its closeness, and the Lancashire men dropped one after the other, shot, most of them, through the head. It was a serious misfortune for them that when they first rushed the position there was not only the darkness of the night but also a heavy mist that prevented them from seeing exactly where they were, and this darkness had resulted in the Engineers digging their trenches and the men placing their sangars right on the crest of the kopje. The result was that any man who put his head above the parapet, as he must do to aim, at once showed against the sky-line, and at a distance of never more than 1,500 yards he made an easy target.
But the Lancashire men were not content altogether to lie down and be shot at. Two or three sections, by whose orders
nobody ever knew, tried the plan of rushing along one edge of the plateau in order to get to close quarters with the foe. Nobody but the most valiant would have attempted a feat of this kind, for the little parties were exposed without a vestige of protection to a devastating fire of shell and bullet, and very few of them lived through the storm. There was one half company of the Royal Lancasters that set out upon one of these expeditions thirty-five strong, and by the time the section had progressed 300 yards it had lost eighteen of the thirty- five. But the rest kept on. By this time they had made up their minds that they were to die, and they had resolved to die fighting. A private named Gilmore reached the trench he aimed at with six others. Gilmore took command, halted his men, and fired three volleys at close quarters. Then the seven did a deed the like of which had not been done that day. Gilmore shouted “ Fix bayonets ! ” and, placing himself at the head of his handful of resolute comrades, rushed upon some sixty of the enemy who were ensconced behind a row of piled- up boulders and loose stones. As happens sometimes, the desperate boldness of the thing succeeded, and that handful of men, by sheer thrusting and stabbing, conquered, bayoneting some dozen Dutchmen and driving the rest helter-skelter down the slope. Then Gilmore gathered his men, and the seven of them held that position for the rest of the day. The gallant private was mentioned in despatches, and if every man had his due Gilmore would have been able to write himself “V.C.,” but there was no one to report his extraordinary gallantry, and Sir Charles Warren only heard of him as a man in the ranks who had taken charge of a section when all the officers were down.
Other sections there were of equal
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500 HISTORY OF THE BOER WAR.
bravery, who struggled along the ridge. There is one such party, headed by a young officer, charging along a ridge at a line of sangars. “ Down ! ” and the men fall flat. “ At them, my lads ! ” and they rise and rush onward. Ah ! They fall, they fall. Two drop, shot through the head ; and another writhes in agony, for a bullet has gone through his bowels.“ Follow me, my----- ! ” He’s down, thatplucky lieutenant ; but there is not wanting a sergeant to head the charge.
the enemy. The last volley accounted for a dozen, but the foemen still outnumber the little band by five-to one. But they, undaunted, charge in one line. Every bayonet has its red draught. The steel does its bloody work ; and fifty women of the Free State may mourn their best- beloved. And so, time after time, the burghers charge, and the ever-lessening band each time dashes out upon them, till at last there is no hand to wield a bayonet. Well may the mothers of Lancashire be proud of their sons.
At about two o’clock in the afternoon the Boer skirmishers again crept up, after their old manner, crawling amongst the boulders, keeping up a terrible fire, so that the defenders dared not show above their parapets, and then rushing. In this way some 400 of them attacked a trench held by what was once a company of the Lancashire Fusiliers and a section of the Middlesex Regiment. They rushed to within a few yards of the trench, pointed their rifles at the heads of its defenders, and shouted “ Surrender ! ” Now there was in that trench no single officer to give a command. Every one of them had been shot. But the men had no thought of yielding. As by instinct the steel flashed out and clashed upon the rifles, and with one cheer the battered men, many of them bleeding, all of them faint with hunger and parched with thirst, threw themselves at the enemy. In ten minutes they had wiped out some of the score. The Mauser bullets flew, and many a brave lad would never see the sun again ; but the rest took royal vengeance, and when at last the Dutchmen broke and fled for their lives, they left some fifty ragged corpses at the edge of the entrenchment. So the fight wore on ; regiment was mixed with regiment, section with section. Of officers
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IIP WENT THE 60th , WITH BAYONETS FIXED (/. 503).
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HISTORY OF THE BOER WAR.
there were scarcely any, for, as usual, the men who held commissions exposed themselves freely, and paid the price of their rashness. But Thorneycroft was there, moving from trench to trench, from sangar to sangar, cheerily dealing out words of encouragement to the hardy lads who held the summit. “ Reinforcements are coming up,” said he. “ What, no ammunition ! then you must use your bayonets till some more comes ; there is more on the way. Come on, my brave lads ! there must be no surrender, and we must hold this hill with our fists if need be.”
Thorneycroft knew the way to talk to British soldiers. If they were told to hang on, they would hang on so long as a single man had strength to pull a trigger or thrust the steel. Shells were bursting in the entrenchments. Here one drops whole, and the fuse is still burning. A man jumps up, takes in his naked hands the dangerous missile and throws it over the side of the hill, where it rolls for a yard or two and then bursts. The name of that man was Wischhusen, and he was a private in the 2nd Middlesex.
Meanwhile the battle was raging on the lower ground. Directly Buller heard that Spion Kop had been successfully assaulted, he sent word to Lyttelton to advance along the road towards Brakfontein Ridge and engage the enemy there. Lyttelton was encamped with his brigade on a hill called Zwarts Kop, or Black Hill, a little on the right of the road running from Pot- geiter’s Drift to the north. The brigadier at once set out with the whole of his force and advanced with all speed to the foot of the ridge. He might have assaulted the position successfully, though at great expense ; but he had been ordered simply to engage the enemy there and keep him occupied, for, as you will remember, the
force at Potgeiter’s was intended merely for the purpose of making a feint to cover Warren’s movements. Still the brigade of riflemen, though it did not become closely engaged, had a particularly hot day. At about 1,500 yards the men took up position about the veldt, lying behind stones and heaps of anything else that would afford protection, and firing steadily and heavily at the Boers on the ridge. It may have been mistaken policy not to press the attack home. For if the Boers had not been in very great strength, as it seemed possible they were not, Lyttelton’s men would have taken the position, and from it would have been able to help Thorneycroft, by enfilading the Boers’ position on the lower slopes of Spion Kop. From the same quarter—that is, from Potgeiter’s—Buller sent direct help to the men at the top of the hill. He ordered one of the reserve battalions of Lyttelton’s Brigade, namely the Scottish Rifles, together with the 3rd King’s Royal Rifles, to proceed to the summit of Spion Kop by the northern slopes. These two battalions were to be covered by Bethune’s Horse. It was about 4.30 p.m. when these troops advanced. They were not intended to reinforce the men already on the summit so much as to take their places, for Buller rightly judged that the poor fellows who had been on the kop the whole day, foodless and waterless, and exposed to the pitiless fire of the enemy’s rifles and cannon, must be by this time almost exhausted.
It was the finest sight of the day to see the advance of these two battalions. Bethune’s men spread themselves along the front, scouting and driving in stray Boers who were sniping from behind rocks. After about an hour’s march the ascent became so steep that the horsemen
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NO SURRENDER. 503
were obliged to dismount and proceed on foot. So steep was it that even on foot they could not climb the face of the hill directly. They had to wind round and take a serpentine path to reach their destination. And when they were within eight hundred yards of the summit they were forced by the steepness of the ground to work round to the same side that the original storming party had ascended by. The confusion was appalling. Warren was doing his best to send up water and ammunition ; and, as it was quite impossible for carts to climb that hill, the water was put in 401b. biscuit tins and each tin slung between two mules. A long stream of these improvised tanks was painfully struggling up ; bearers with stretchers were trying to walk—some up, some down—the mountain ; men who had been wounded, but were still able to walk, were crawling down, leaving red tracks by the way. And the Boer gunners, knowing perfectly well that in this direction reinforcements and supplies must be on their way, were pitching shells venomously into the straggling mass. And this time the shells burst and scattered death and destruction around them. Here is a mule with its belly ripped open ; there is another with its two forelegs shattered and splintered ; here an ambulance-bearer with both legs blown to pieces; there a wretched Indian water- bearer bleeding from three wounds, but still, with the stoical patience of his race, urging his mules to the summit ; and there, ghastliest and grimmest sight of all, is a British private carrying his own arm, blood flowing from his shattered shoulder down the khaki.
The confusion was so hopeless that Buller’s reinforcements could by no means reach the top of the hill. The mass was so dense that hardly any of the water ever
reached the poor wretches who thirsted for it. It was so dense that the ammunition mules could not struggle through, and so for many hours Thorneycroft’s men were holding that untenable position with nothing more effective than their bayonets.
Up went the 60th, with bayonets fixed, and they worked round to one side of the ridge. But their steel remained clean. The Boers on that side fled as they saw the men in khaki coming on so wholly together—fled to the main position where their guns protected them.
The day wore on—a day of blood and sweat. Shells burst in the trenches ; Mauser bullets whistled and plashed as they struck the flesh. In one entrenchment the slaughter was so great that the men were lying in rows as though they had been laid out for burial. But they were men of lion heart and they were led by a commander of the supremest courage. To the lads of Lancashire the highest praise must be awarded for their gallantry, but the men of Thorneycroft’s Horse, men of Natal, showed a spirit and a courage equal to the bravest. Once or twice it was said by some of the weary soldiers that if no reinforcements came the whole force must surrender. But the Colonials always protested that they would rather die. “ Surrender,” they said, “ means to us imprisonment like felons in Pretoria goal.” For it was a melancholy fact that the Boers, though they treated the men of the regular British army whom they captured as well as could have been expected, meted out a different measure to any Colonials who were unfortunate enough to fall into their hands. These they treated as criminals. They intended by their harshness to frighten the British subjects in Cape Colony and Natal, but it had a very
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different effect on their fighting spirit. By 6.30 in the evening the fire of the enemy had somewhat subsided. There was still light enough for Talbot-Coke, from the summit, to exchange messages with
able to reply, or at least a few companies had doled out to them half a dozen cartridges per man.
White and his staff at Ladysmith were viewing the battle afar off. White, like
Warren, at the foot. Warren asked, “ Can you keep two battalions on the summit ? ” Coke replied that he thought he could, at all events he would try. There was now nothing more serious than an intermittent fire from the enemy’s rifles and artillery ; and a little ammunition having been dragged up to the top, our men were
Warren, believed Spion Kop to be the key of the enemy’s position. And so, no doubt, it was, if guns could have been placed on the captured summit. And the Ladysmith garrison, seeing that in some way part of the hill had been seized by the Relief Force, perceiving that the Boers had not been successful in driving the
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SPION KOP EVACUATED.
British from the position, and, thinking it won, rejoiced. But they could see what Warren could not. They could see the back of the Boer position, and when late in the afternoon they observed the Boer laagers at the back of Spion Kop being broken up and the waggons defiling to the north and east, they concluded that Botha had resolved to abandon the position.
The question was then whether our men could contrive to convey artillery up to the captured position. Remember that it was a very steep climb, even for infantry ; but there are those who think that with hard work heavy guns might have been dragged up. There was a long and anxious discussion amongst the staff officers and artillery officers at the foot ; and the opinion of most of them seems to have been that it was absolutely impossible for heavy guns to be taken up the mountain. The only person who seemed ready and willing to try to accomplish the task was Lieutenant James, of H.M.S. Tartar. The naval man put in an appearance with a 12-pounder ; and, when asked what he thought of the practicability of dragging artillery up to the assistance of Woodgate, declared his willingness to try his luck. He believed that he and his men could get the 12-pounder to the top. What would happen when they got there was quite another matter. But the powers that were would not let him try his luck. Whether they were wise or not is a serious question.
Night fell. The two battalions of Lancasters and Lancashire Fusiliers, with the Middlesex and Somerset men, still held the summit of Spion Kop. But they were sadly diminished in numbers. Some 1,300 of them had been struck by shell and bullet, and the rest could hardly keep their eyes open from fatigue. Still they were cheered
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by the indomitable Thorneycroft, who assured them that water and food and reinforcements were on the way. Unfortunately there were no means of communicating with Sir Charles Warren. For the oil which should have been used by the signallers for their lamps had run out. As for messengers getting through—first of all, it was no easy task for them to find their way down in the dark ; second, they had to force a passage through the straggling crowd two-thirds of the way up ; and when at last they did reach the foot of the mountain, it was extremely difficult to find anybody who could give an order.
At Q.30 p.m. a messenger arrived with a verbal request from Sir Charles Warren to General Talbot-Coke to proceed to the foot of the hill for purposes of consultation. The general had no option but to obey ; and when he went Colonel Thorneycroft was left in sole command. That officer felt himself in desperate straits. No reinforcements had arrived to take the places of his weary men. He had received no intimation whatever that any help was to be sent. For seventeen hours his troops had toiled and fought foodless and waterless, and at last Thorneycroft came to the conclusion that it was impossible for those men to permanently hold the position. Having made up his mind upon this, he acted promptly and with decision, for he immediately gave the order to retire. He could not wait longer, because it would take many hours for him to collect and carry away his wounded and to march his force out of reach of the Boer guns. And, though it might be bad to attempt to hold the summit against a renewed assault, it would be simple suicide to retire from it by daylight under such a concentrated fire as the Boers would be able to mete out to him.
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fo6 HISTORY OF THE BOER WAR
So, acting to the best of his judgment and upon his own responsibility, Thomey- croft evacuated the position. All that night his men, in good order, retired, bearing such of the wounded as they had been able to collect. They passed by the spot where Bethune’s troopers and the Scottish and the King’s Royal Rifles were lying upon the hill. Tramp, tramp, with slow and weary gait the heroes of that gallant defence filed out of the position they had won so easily and purchased so dearly. Many scores of the brave infantry were still lying upon the summit of that fated mountain—lying with bullet-holes piercing them through and through, with limbs and bodies mangled, and twisted into all sorts of attitudes and positions. These were the men who had died in a hopeless struggle. And their comrades, as they dragged their limbs wearily down the slope, prayed for the day when they should again come face to face with the foe, for the day when Lancashire should dye the Red Rose yet more crimson.
They mourned every man his friend, every man his comrade. There was one rough fellow who was struck down in a rush along the plateau, and his chum, heedless of bullets, went to him to bind up his wounds. “ Never mind me. lad," said the stricken one. •* Thee get eawt o’ this afore tha gets one thysen. I’m done ; and yo connot help me.’’
What think you of the man who, in the throes of an agonising death, could still think of his chum’s safety? And what of him who could cross that deadly plateau to bind up a wound ?
Women of Loyal Lancashire ! Mothers and wives. Though your eyes be dim, let not all your thoughts be mourning. Not yours to rend your hair. Not yours to sorrow for ever.
That bit of crape is as the insignia of merit. Those widow’s weeds are as a bridal garment. Lift up your heads. Walk proudly.
For ye are the mothers of heroes, the heritors of an undying fame.
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