ing back with any amount dropping, I lost sight
eventually of these persevering gentlemen, when another alarm
came from a fresh direction. Thinking possibly it was some of
our own troops, I lay down behind an ant-heap facing the
direction, loaded my rifle, and waited to be certain before
firing. I did not fire, however, as at that moment somebody hit
me on the back of the neck with a bar of iron weighing two tons
and a half, for so it seemed to me; it quite numbed me for a
few seconds, and a chap who had lain down beside me shouted he
was shot and began to howl, upon which I politely asked him to
shut up and get it bandaged, and I then moved away to find out
where they were forming up. After half an hour my equipment
became too heavy for me, and meeting a stretcher-bearer he took
it off and bandaged me up. The bullet had entered the left side
of my neck, and, taking a downward course, passed through the
neck and out at the back of the right shoulder. I was then
conducted to the ambulance and away to hospital, and on my way
down saw the Gordons marching up from the baggage to take a
part in it, but the artillery had been working away for two or
three hours then."

Could any troops, officerless, unhinged, riddled through and through,
instantly gather themselves together with sufficient force to hold out
against a foe flushed with triumph and intoxicated with success?
Impossible! Students of Napier may recall the description of the panic
to the Light Division in the middle of the night, when no enemy was
near, and may understand how the bravest and most warlike troops, when
exposed to unexpected and unknown danger, have shrunk back in dismay. On
the occasion referred to some one called out "A mine!" and such was the
force of the shock to the imagination that "the troops who had not been
stopped by the strong barrier, the deep ditch, the high walls, and the
deadly fire of the enemy, staggered back appalled by a chimera of their
own raising." If this result can have been effected by a chimera, how
then could anything else be expected by a real shock, a tangible shock,
such as the gallant Brigade suffered in that dark hour of horror and
despair? It is difficult for the outsider within the protecting walls of
home to realise the awful moments, each long as a lifetime, through
which these noble fellows passed--moments full of heroism