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Updated: June 8, 2025
Buller, however, with excellent judgment, demonstrated in front of them with Hildyard's men, while the rest of the army, marching round, outflanked the line of resistance, and on May 15th pounced upon Dundee.
Encouraged by the capture of an armoured train at Chieveley, Joubert advanced south in two bodies, one on each side of Estcourt, and seized the railway at Highlands, thus cutting off Hildyard's communication with Pietermaritzburg; and Hildyard having no cavalry was unable to touch him.
All day the line undulated forward, and by evening yet another strip of rock-strewn ground had been gained, and yet another train of ambulances was bearing a hundred of our wounded back to the base hospitals at Frere. It was on Hildyard's Brigade on the left that the fighting and the losses of this day principally fell.
Major Childe, the officer whose squadron performed this daring exploit, was killed on the summit by the shell fire to which the successful assailants were subjected by the Boers. In the evening infantry reinforcements of Hildyard's Brigade arrived, and at dawn the cavalry handed over the hill to their charge. They were not disproportioned to the apparent advantage gained.
Here he was joined by a battalion of Hildyard's Brigade, whose original orders to occupy Green Hill were cancelled, and later on by the remaining battalions of his own brigade; which Buller, wavering for a time, had held back, as the pontoon and the open ground were under fire from the right flank. At 4 p.m.
The beginning of his movement was to have been covered by the six naval 12-pounders accompanying Long's two field batteries, and a position had been appointed them to that effect; it being intended apparently that the army guns should not come into action till later, when the development of Hildyard's movement would permit them to approach the enemy within their shorter range without losing the necessary support of infantry fire, directly by the 6th brigade, specifically charged with that duty, and indirectly by the occupation which Hildyard's attack would necessarily give the Boers.
With the help of the naval guns it did what it could to extricate and cover the retreat of the Irishmen, but it could play no very important part in the action, and its losses were insignificant. On its right in turn Hildyard's English Brigade had developed its attack upon Colenso and the bridge.
The impetuosity of the officers commanding two of the batteries of artillery, in pushing their guns forward unattended by infantry as ordered, not only caused the loss of ten guns and of nearly all the men who worked them, but deprived Hildyard's column of the protection they would have had in crossing the bridge, and rendered the undertaking impossible; while the failure of Barton's brigade to give assistance either to Hildyard or to the assailants of Hlangwane, contributed to the one failure, and entirely brought about the other.
Clery's division consists of Hildyard's and Lyttelton's brigades; the third division, comprising Hart's and Barton's brigades, is not known to have had a commander appointed; Warren's division is composed of Woodgate's brigade and of half of Coke's brigade, to which another half may have been added by taking two battalions which have been some time in Natal, and belong neither to Clery's nor to the third division.
It would be a grand thing if it could be done; but I doubt whether the train could carry enough stores, for it would be a long way round, and we should probably have to fight two or three times at least, and it might take us five or six days." "Then most of the infantry have gone on already?" "Yes, Hart's and Hildyard's brigades have marched straight from Frere.
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