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The way in which officers and men hung on under
conditions to which no troops have ever been exposed was worthy of
the highest traditions of the British army. From the death of
Wauchope in the early morning, until the assumption of the command
of the brigade by Hughes-Hallett in the late afternoon, no one
seems to have taken the direction. 'My lieutenant was wounded and
my captain was killed,' says a private. 'The General was dead, but
we stayed where we were, for there was no order to retire.' That
was the story of the whole brigade, until the flanking movement of
the Boers compelled them to fall back.
The most striking lesson of the engagement is the extreme
bloodiness of modern warfare under some conditions, and its
bloodlessness under others. Here, out of a total of something under
a thousand casualties seven hundred were incurred in about five
minutes, and the whole day of shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire
only furnished the odd three hundred. So also at Ladysmith the
British forces (White's column) were under heavy fire from 5.


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