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Updated: June 7, 2025
Despite the severity of the test to which they were thus subjected, the Boers with admirable self-control refrained from any reply, and so preserved in great part the secret of their dispositions from detection by the enemy. Next day, Thursday the 14th, the remaining British force marched out of Frere camp at 4.30 A.M. for Chieveley.
There was at least a brigade available at Cape Town a few days ago, and it could not have been better employed than in strengthening Buller at any point where he can feed it, at Chieveley if not as a reinforcement to Warren or Lyttelton, for a fresh brigade at Chieveley would enable Barton to put pressure on the Boers in his front.
On February 8 the Army was retracing its steps on the road by which four weeks before it had marched from Springfield to Potgieter's Drift; and on the 11th it was concentrated at Chieveley, from which eight weeks before it had been thrown at the Colenso heights. All the Tugela operations had been conducted in a rarified medium.
'How many? 'About four hundred and fifty. 'Out of a thousand? 'Well, out of about nine hundred. This war has fallen heavily on some regiments. Scarcely any has suffered more severely, none has won greater distinction, than the Dublin Fusiliers everywhere at the front Dundee, Lombard's Kop, Colenso, Chieveley, Colenso again, and even here at Spion Kop.
Hart's Brigade, the 6-inch and other great guns at Chieveley, guarded Railhead. Hlangwani Hill, and the long line of entrenchments rimming the Green Hill, were masked and fronted by the display of the field and siege batteries, whose strength in guns was as follows: and which were also able to prepare and support the attack on Cingolo Neck and Monte Cristo Ridge.
We were safe enough, for the bombs had not much effect on the sand-walls of our trench, and there was always time to stoop to avoid them. The following morning news was brought to us that the enemy had abandoned the whole line of battle and were retreating in the direction of Chieveley. The battle of the Tugela had lasted eight days.
Then, after renewed expressions of gratitude from the farmers, the party separated, the colonists going south to Greytown, while the scouts rode west by the line they had come, and late that evening arrived at Chieveley. They had intended to halt after crossing the Bushman's river at Weenan, but they heard the sound of artillery and knew that Buller was again moving forward.
On the evening of February 7 the British army again retired south of the Tugela, and thence returned to the camps at Chieveley, facing Colenso. In the operations about Spion Kop from January 17-24, the British losses were: killed, officers 27, men 245; wounded, officers 53, men 1,050; missing and prisoners, officers 7, men 351. Total, 87 officers, 1646 men.
As the Brigade retired it passed within striking distance of the field guns and their captors; but nothing could be done as ambulances and groups of prisoners were bemingled in the throng. Dundonald seems to have been alone in his recognition of the value of the Hlangwhane position. A retirement to Chieveley and Frere completed the triad of December disasters.
After you leave Hussar Hill on the way back to Chieveley camp it is necessary to cross a wide dip of ground. We had withdrawn several miles in careful rearguard fashion, the guns and the battalion had gone back, and the last two squadrons were walking across this dip towards the ridge on the homeward side.
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