h Battery, had arrived with two
spare teams of horses, and another determined effort was made under his
leadership to save some of the guns. But the fire was too murderous.
Two-thirds of his horses and half his men, including himself, were
struck down, and General Buller commanded that all further attempts to
reach the abandoned batteries should be given up. Both he and General
Clery had been slightly wounded, and there were many operations over
the whole field of action to engage their attention. But making every
allowance for the pressure of many duties and for the confusion and
turmoil of a great action, it does seem one of the most inexplicable
incidents in British military history that the guns should ever have
been permitted to fall into the hands of the enemy. It is evident that
if our gunners could not live under the fire of the enemy it would be
equally impossible for the enemy to remove the guns under a fire from
a couple of battalions of our infantry. There were many regiments which
had hardly been engaged, and which could have been advanced for such a
purpose. The men of the Mounted Infantry actually volunteered for this
work, and none could have been more capable of carrying it out. There
was plenty of time also, for the guns were abandoned about eleven and
the Boers did not venture to seize them until four. Not only could
the guns have been saved, but they might, one would think, have been
transformed into an excellent bait for a trap to tempt the Boers out of
their trenches. It must have been with fear and trembling that Cherry
Emmett and his men first approached them, for how could they believe
that such incredible good fortune had come to them? However, the fact,
humiliating and inexplicable, is that the guns were so left, that the
whole force was withdrawn, and that not only the ten cannon, but also
the handful of Devons, with their Colonel, and the Fusiliers were taken
prisoners in the donga which had sheltered them all day.

We have now, working from left to right, considered the operations of
Hart's Brigade at Bridle Drift, of Lyttelton's Brigade in support, of
Hildyard's which attacked Colenso, and of the luckless batteries which
were to have helped him. There remain two bodies of troops upon the
right, the further consisting of Dundonald's mounted men who were to
attack Hlangwane Hill, a fortified Boer position upon the south of the
river, while Barton's Brigade was to support it and to connect thi