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Updated: June 6, 2025
Buller on this occasion determined rightly upon a turning movement. All his previous attacks had either been frontal or had been made so by the enemy. His plan was to move eastwards with the IInd Division under Clery, while the Vth Division under Hildyard, who succeeded Warren when the latter was called away to Bechuanaland, advanced up the railway against the Boer centre.
To this end his plan appears to have been for information is scarcely yet properly codified something as follows: Lyttelton's Brigade, the corps troops forming Coke's Brigade, the ten naval guns, the battery of howitzers, one field battery, and Bethune's Mounted Infantry to demonstrate in front of the Potgieter position, keeping the Boers holding the horseshoe in expectation of a frontal attack, and masking their main position; Sir Charles Warren to march by night from Springfield with the brigades of Hart, Woodgate, and Hildyard, the Royal Dragoons, six batteries of artillery, and the pontoon train to a point about five miles west of Spearman's Hill, and opposite Trichardt's Drift on the Tugela.
A very important position was won and the enemy driven back with scarcely the shedding of a drop of blood on either side. Hildyard was in executive charge of the operations. Thus, after eight months' fighting, the main body of the Natal Army was at last in bivouac in the enemy's country.
We have some twenty-three thousand men, and the Boers more than as many, and what with magazine-guns, machine-guns, and fast-firing cannon of all sizes, it will be an inferno." By daybreak next morning the whole force was under arms. General Hildyard in the centre was to attack the iron bridge at Colenso.
On November 10th the Boers held Colenso and the line of the Tugela. On the 14th was the affair of the armoured train. On the 18th the enemy were near Estcourt. On the 21st they had reached the Mooi River. On the 23rd Hildyard attacked them at Willow Grange. All these actions will be treated elsewhere. This last one marks the turn of the tide.
Hart's attack therefore had failed, and his division contributed nothing further except the menace of its presence, which must retain some of the enemy to resist a possible renewal. A yet more decisive mishap meanwhile had occurred in another part of the field. Reckoning that Hart and Hildyard were to attack in mutual support, the time had come for the latter to advance, and he had done so.
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.
That day four transports lay at Southampton Docks, to take on board Major-General Hildyard, with the first brigade of the first division of the army to be commanded by Sir Redvers Buller. The trains ran down to the wharf near the ships, the troops remaining in them until the usual officers, alighting, had placed the markers to indicate the positions for each company.
The divisional generals are all picked for their known grip of the business of war; among the brigadiers there are such devoted students of their profession as Lyttelton and Hildyard, and the younger officers of to-day are more zealous in their business and better instructed than at any previous period.
Earlier in the action Buller had been informed that the guns were "all right and comfortable," but later reports gave him the impression that this cheery optimism was delusive, and that owing to loss of men and exhaustion of ammunition the artillery told off to support Hildyard was now permanently out of action.
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