The covenant - James A. Michener [441]
Whole trenches were wiped out, not a single man surviving, and of ten dead soldiers, nine had been shot not through the front of their bodies, but through the side of the head. Christoffel Steyn's men had made the difference, but they did so from a hill they should never have been able to occupy for as long as they did.
Why the ragged line of burghers was permitted to hold the strategic kopje was one of the disgraceful incidents of this battle. While eighteen thousand crack troops still remained in reserve, powerless to aid their brothers dying in such numbers on Spion Kop, a commander of the King's Royal Rifles, on his own initiative, dispatched his two finest battalions, ordering them to rush another hill opposite to the one held by Steyn. If they were successful, they could drive Steyn out with gunfire, and thus save the men on Spion Kop.
It was an impossible ascent, almost straight up, in heat of day, with Boers firing down at them from above, but these brave men, goaded by their energetic officers, somehow made it to the top, drew much of the fire away from their exposed comrades, and began to batter the Carolina burghers. It was a triumph of courage and grit, giving the English their first victory of the day.
Saltwood, witnessing the triumph, hastened to inform General Buller, but when this confused leader heard that a commander of troops had acted on his own, and had, furthermore, split his men into two groups, he fell into a fury and began to heckle his commander. At this moment a message reached Buller, warning that the Boers were in such firm control that if the King's Royal Rifles tried to cross over to Spion Kop, they would be annihilated.
'Bring them back down!' Buller fumed.
'Sir!' Saltwood objected. 'They've performed a miracle. Let them stay.'
'They should never have been split into groups.'
The commander, seeing his general in such confusion, lost all confidence in the daring action and signaled his men to climb down: 'Get off the hill! Come back immediately!' At first the men refused to believe that such a stupid order could have been issued, and one colonel refused to obey it. 'Damn them all,' he shouted, whereupon a Boer bullet struck him below the heart, killing him instantly. The retreat began.
Night fell as the beleaguered soldiers on Spion Kop watched with dismay as the King's Royal Rifles abandoned the neighboring hill. For a few more hours the officers on Spion Kop held their positions, but finally one of the finest commanders signaled a retreat. This heroic man, Colonel Thorneycroft, had been breveted general in the midst of the battle; he weighed about twenty stonetwo hundred and eighty poundsmost of it hard muscle, and he was afraid of nothing. Only his courage had kept the trenches in English hands, despite the awful slaughter, but now he lost his nerve.
He led his brave men down the hill, conceding defeat, just as one of the other commanders was climbing up with fresh troops, hoping for victory. They passed in silence.
When the new commander reached the crest of Spion Kop, in darkness, he found an amazing situation: the Boers, who had faced tremendous fire that day, had decided, half an hour before General Thorneycroft began to evacuate troops down the hill, that Spion Kop could not be taken. The constant pressure of the English gunners had been more than even these Boers could absorb, and they had deserted the hill. They knew they were defeated.
In other words, two heroic armies who had fought as bravely as men could fight, had decided within fifteen minutes of each other that the day was lost. Their two retreats occupied the same moments. After deaths innumerable, Spion Kop was deserted.
The Englishman climbing up as Thorneycroft went down was the first to discover this; he was another of the four in command that tangled day, and now he had a chance to save the day for the English. All he had to do was rush back down the hill, signal his superior, General Warren, and convince him to send more troops