Fifty-seven officers had fallen in
that brigade alone, including their Brigadier and Colonel Downman
of the Gordons. Colonel Codrington of the Coldstreams was wounded
early, fought through the action, and came back in the evening on a
Maxim gun. Lord Winchester of the same battalion was killed, after
injudiciously but heroically exposing himself all day. The Black
Watch alone had lost nineteen officers and over three hundred men
killed and wounded, a catastrophe which can only be matched in all
the bloody and glorious annals of that splendid regiment by their
slaughter at Ticonderoga in 1757, when no fewer than five hundred
fell before Montcalm's muskets. Never has Scotland had a more
grievous day than this of Magersfontein. She has always given her
best blood with lavish generosity for the Empire, but it may be
doubted if any single battle has ever put so many families of high
and low into mourning from the Tweed to the Caithness shore. There
is a legend that when sorrow comes upon Scotland the old Edinburgh
Castle is lit by ghostly lights and gleams white at every window in
the mirk of midnight.
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