In the meanwhile the attention of Generals Buller and Clery had been called to the desperate position of the guns, and they had made their way to that further nullah in the rear where the remaining limber horses and drivers were.  This was some distance behind that other donga in which Long, Bullock, and their Devons and gunners were crouching.  ’Will any of you volunteer to save the guns?’ cried Buller.  Corporal Nurse, Gunner Young, and a few others responded.  The desperate venture was led by three aides-de-camp of the Generals, Congreve, Schofield, and Roberts, the only son of the famous soldier.  Two gun teams were taken down; the horses galloping frantically through an infernal fire, and each team succeeded in getting back with a gun.  But the loss was fearful.  Roberts was mortally wounded.  Congreve has left an account which shows what a modern rifle fire at a thousand yards is like.  ’My first bullet went through my left sleeve and made the joint of my elbow bleed, next a clod of earth caught me smack on the right arm, then my horse got one, then my right leg one, then my horse another, and that settled us.’  The gallant fellow managed to crawl to the group of castaways in the donga.  Roberts insisted on being left where he fell, for fear he should hamper the others.

In the meanwhile Captain Reed, of the 7th Battery, had arrived with two spare teams of horses, and another determined effort was made under his leadership to save some of the guns.  But the fire was too murderous.  Two-thirds of his horses and half his men, including himself, were struck down, and General Buller commanded that all further attempts to reach the abandoned batteries should be given up.  Both he and General Clery had been slightly wounded, and there were many operations over the whole field of action to engage their attention.  But making every allowance for the pressure of many duties and for the confusion and turmoil of a great action, it does seem one of the most inexplicable incidents in British military history that the guns should ever have been permitted to fall into the hands of the enemy.  It is evident that if our gunners could not live under the fire of the enemy it would be equally impossible for the enemy to remove the guns under a fire from a couple of battalions of our infantry.  There were many regiments which had hardly been engaged, and which could have been advanced for such a purpose.  The men of the Mounted Infantry actually volunteered for this work, and none could have been more capable of carrying it out.  There was plenty of time also, for the guns were abandoned about eleven and the Boers did not venture to seize them until four.  Not only could the guns have been saved, but they might, one would think, have been transformed into an excellent bait for a trap to tempt the Boers out of their trenches.  It must have been with fear and trembling that Cherry Emmett and his men first approached them, for how could they believe that such incredible good fortune had come to them?  However, the fact, humiliating and inexplicable, is that the guns were so left, that the whole force was withdrawn, and that not only the ten cannon, but also the handful of Devons, with their Colonel, and the Fusiliers were taken prisoners in the donga which had sheltered them all day.