In the gathering dusk two squadrons of Lancers and Dragoons crested the rise, in what was to be the last cavalry charge in a set piece battle by British cavalry, and bore down on the retreating Boers. A few minutes later the ground was strewn with the dead and dying.The Battle of Elandslaagte was finally over. The mounted troops, their lances and sabres bloodied, trotted slowly away to the south, leaving the stretcher bearers and medical personnel to stumble about the killing field in the darkness. The rain continued to fall and it soon became bitterly cold.
It had begun two days earlier, even before the Boer attack at Talana, when advance units of General Kock’s Boer army had occupied the railway station at Elandslaagte, some 50 kilometres to the south of Dundee.
General Sir George White in Ladysmith, realising that the British force in Dundee was in danger of being cut off, decided that the Boers must be dislodged from Elandslaagte without delay. General French was sent to make an initial reconnaissance with the mounted men. He then asked to be reinforced with infantry.S
Several companies of the Devons, the Manchesters and the Gordon Highlanders, under the command of Colonel Ian Hamilton left Ladysmith by train and arrived at about 15h00. Despite the looming thunder clouds, French decided to attack – infantry in the centre with mounted troops on both flanks.
The Boer forces – German and Dutch volunteers together with the Johannesburg Commando – had withdrawn to a good position to the south east of the railway line which forced the British to attack over open ground. Nevertheless the khaki clad Tommies pressed forward with great resolve. At one point the Gordons were impeded by a barbed wire fence – [the first time such an obstruction had been encountered in a battle and a grim foretaste of the horrors of World War I].
Helped by a torrential downpour, the infantry eventually overcame spirited Boer resistance by about 17h30. An unexpected Boer counter-attack swung the momentum back in their favour for a while but by 18h30 the Boers were riding away to the north and their bloody date with French’s cavalry.
No sooner had the ground been won, at a cost of more than 260 casualties, than General White ordered that the position be abandoned and fell back on Ladysmith. Not long after this, Boers from the Orange Free State re-occupied Elandslaagte. The battle had hurt them however. General Kock was dead together with over 40 of his men and the Boers had been exposed for the first time to the brutal side of war.
Audio : Ron - "snapshots" on the Battle Of Elandslaagte
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