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.
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