As for the fight itself, people seem inclined to make a great mystery about it and talk about "the difficulty of getting at the truth;" but I don't see myself where the mystery comes in. What happened was this. The Highland Brigade (Black Watch, Seaforths, Argyle and Sutherlands, and Highland Light Infantry) was told off for the night attack and marched before light to the hill. The night was very dark and heavy rain falling. The ground was rough, stony, and rocky, with a good deal of low scrub, bushes, and thorn trees, very difficult to get through at night. The difficulty of moving masses of men with any accuracy in the dark is extreme, and to keep them together at all it was necessary for them to advance in a compact body. In quarter column, therefore, the Brigade advanced and approached the foot of the hill. I have noticed several times that when you get rather close to the hill the rise comes to look more gradual and the ridge itself does not stand up in the abrupt and salient way that it does from a distance. Whether it was this, or simply that the darkness of the night hid the outline, at any rate the column approached the hill and the trench which runs at the foot of the hill much too closely before the order to extend was given. When it was given it was too late. They were in the act of executing it when the volley came.
Of course an attack like this cannot be intended altogether as a surprise--that is, it cannot be pushed home as a surprise. You cannot march 4000 heavy-booted men through broken ground on a dark night without making plenty of noise over it; also the Boers must certainly have had pickets out, which would have moved in as we advanced and given the alarm. But had our fellows deployed at half a mile, or less, under cover of darkness, and then advanced in open order, the enemy could not have seen clearly enough to shoot with accuracy until they were fairly close, and I daresay the fire then would not have stopped their rush.
As it was, the fire came focussed on a mass of men, such a fire as I suppose has never been seen before, for not only was it a tremendous volley poured in at point-blank range, but it was a sustained volley; the rapid action of the magazines enabling the enemy to keep up an unintermittent hail of bullets on the English column. To advance under fire of this sort is altogether impossible. It is not a question of courage, but of the impossibility of a single man surviving. At the Modder fight our men advanced to a certain distance, but could get no nearer. They were forced to lie down and remain lying down. The fire of magazine rifles is such that, unless helped by guns or infinitely the stronger, the attackers have no chance of getting home. People will keep on talking as if courage did these things. What the devil's the use of the bravest man with half-a-dozen bullets through him? It is just as certain as anything can be that, if the Highlanders had "gone on," in two minutes not a man would have been left standing. Already in the brief instant that they stood, dazed by the fire, they lost between six and seven hundred men. The Black Watch was in front, and nineteen out of twenty-seven officers were swept down. You might as well talk of "going on" against a volcano in eruption.