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WAYS AND MEANS 166
A party of some fifty or sixty men started out
at a run to try to reach the donga. Spreading
out over the whole field, they set out at top
speed down the slope. No sooner had the first
men started than shrapnel burst amongst them,
striking down some, whilst others got through
unhurt and continued the deadly race. From
other parts of the crest more men were starting
out, but the Russians had shrapnel everywhere,
singling them out on the crest and on the slopes.
Quite a number of men had reached to about
fifty yards from the donga, converging from all
sides, when a large-calibre shrapnel was fired,
flinging hundreds of bullets in amongst them,
and killing every man in the little cluster. In
front of the group an officer was running, closely
followed by one of his men. Though the
shrapnel seemed to burst right in front of him,
he succeeded, as by a miracle, in getting
through unhurt, and was but a few paces away
from the donga, when another shrapnel burst and
struck him and his follower down. The officer
tottered forwards, reeling like a drunken man,
then fell lifeless, his arms outstretched over the
very edge of the donga—the donga that would
have meant life and safety to him if it had been
only ten paces nearer.
Of the whole force not a mother’s son escaped.
Every man was killed. Although the sight was
somewhat gruesome, the Russian gun-practice
was so excellent that it could not but warm an
old artilleryman’s heart. The whole affair did
not last much more than a minute ;
the men
were running at the top of their speed and were
spread out over a considerable surface, and those
who know the difficulty of changing sights and
time fuses and aiming guns within the space of a
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