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Updated: May 28, 2025
This was the twelfth day of a battle that Buller's column was waging against the Boers and their mountain ranges, or "disarranges," as some one described them, without having gained more than three miles of hostile territory. He had tried to force his way through them six times, and had been repulsed six times. And now he was to try it again.
The curious omission to inform White in Ladysmith that an attack on Colenso was to be made on December 15 may have arisen from Buller's doubts as to its issue, or from reluctance to heliograph a message in a cipher of which the enemy might have the key. The story of the Battle of Colenso is mainly the narrative of the action of two important components of the Army of Natal.
"Uncle Carr gave up the ranch when he went into Congress, and Darkie and all the other ponies were left at Buller's Creek. She wouldn't have been happy off the prairie, or I'd have begged to have her. Lenox? Why, he's still in France; but I suppose he'll be demobilized soon, and going back to Harvard. He wants to be a professor, not a ranchman. He's a fearfully clever boy.
It was really quite sufficiently clear, that unless yet another boy had got out, and gone skating on the gravel-pits that night, taking Buller's knife with him and losing it, that he himself had been there as he said; and therefore that he was not in the coppice, two miles on the other side of Weston.
The motto of Buller's Army was festina lente and its track towards Ladysmith was in zigzag. On the following day Hlangwhane was occupied by the British troops, and before noon on February 20, all the Boers had withdrawn to the left bank of the Tugela, and Buller was favourably placed for the advance by way of the Klip River on Bulwana.
Thus it was that Tuesday, Majuba Day although on that date the tide of fortune had turned in our favour marked the lowest pitch of despondency into which the garrison was ever plunged during the 118 days of its investment." Buller's telegram of February 28 announcing the success of the next operation, states also its character.
Away in the south they heard the thunder of Buller's guns, and from the hills round the town they watched with pale faces and bated breath the tragedy of Spion Kop, preserving a firm conviction that a very little more would have transformed it into their salvation. Their hearts sank with the sinking of the cannonade, and rose again with the roar of Vaalkranz.
White also was opposed to Buller's making another attempt to cross the Tugela, as he considered that the force would be more usefully employed in preventing the enemy from concentrating on Ladysmith. Buller's new plan was an advance by way of Vaalkrantz.
He was a big, rough, dark, hot-tempered fellow, with a bad reputation for picking quarrels and using his revolver. He and Uncle Carr were continually having lawsuits about the boundary of their ranches, and his sheep were constantly trespassing on the Buller's Creek ranges.
Of such stuff were British soldiers made in Ladysmith, and of such stuff are they, with all their faults, the wide world over! =Lads, We are Going to be Relieved To-day.= But the time of deliverance was drawing near. Hope deferred had made the heart sick. Time after time had Buller's guns seemed to be drawing nearer, and time after time had the sound grown faint in the distance.
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