'The poor bastards,' Sean whispered, as he saw one of the retreating
gunners killed, shot in the head so that his helmet was thrown spinning
upwards in a brief pink cloud of blood.
The sight seemed to rouse Acheson also.
'All right,' he said. 'We'll advance on the road bridge.
Come on, Courtney. ' Behind him someone cried out, and Sean heard him
fall. But he did not look round. He watched the bridge ahead of
him.
Although his legs moved mechanically under him it seemed to come no
nearer. The thorn trees were thicker here beside the river and they
gave a little cover from the merciless marksmen on the far bank. Yet
men were falling steadily, and the shrapnel raged and cracked above
them.
'Let's get across. Get the best seats on the other side, ' Saul
shouted beside him.
'Come on, then,' agreed Sean and they ran together. They were first on
to the bridge, with Acheson just behind them.
Bullets left bright scars on the grey painted metal, and then suddenly,
miraculously, they were across. They had crossed the Tugela.
A drainage ditch beside the road and they dived into it, both of them
panting. Sean looked back. Over the bridge poured a mass of khaki,
all semblance of order gone as they crowded into the bottleneck and the
fire from the Boers churned into them.
Once across, the leaders fanned out along the river, crouching below
the dip of the bank, while behind them the slaughter on the bridge
continued. A struggling mass of cursing, running angry, frightened and
dying men.
'It's a bloody abattoir.' Sean was appalled as he watched it.
Dead and wounded men were falling over the low guard rail, splashing
into the brown waters of the Tugela to sink or strike out clumsily for
the banks. But a steady stream of men was coming across and going to
ground in the two-deep drainage ditches, and beneath the angle of the
river bank.
It was clear to Sean that the attack was losing its impetus. As the
men jumped down into the ditches he saw in their faces and in the way
they flattened themselves into shelter that they had lost all stomach
for the attack. The ordeal of the bridge had destroyed the discipline
that had held their steady advance into those neatly controlled ranks;
officers and men were inextricably mixed into a tired and badly
frightened rabble. There was no contact between the different groups
in the drainage trenches and those lying in the lee of the river
banks-and already there was little cover for the men who were still
coming across. The fire from the Boer positions never faltered, and
now the bridge was blocked with the bodies of the fallen, so that each
new wave had to climb over them, stepping on dead and wounded alike,
while the storm of Boer rifle-fire lashed them like wind-driven rain.
Rivulets of fresh bright blood dribbled down the supports of the bridge
in ghastly contrast to the grey paint, and the surface of the river was
stained by a chocolate-brown cloud of it spreading slowly downstream.
Here and there a desperate rallying voice was lifted in the hubbub of
