"DIE HARD! MY MEN, DIE HARD!"

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3121, 6 April 1915, Page 2

"DIE HARD! MY MEN, DIE HARD!"

A STORY OF THE FAMOUS 57th.. Now Victory to >our England! And where'er she lifts her hand In Freedom's fight, to rescue Right, God bles3 the dear old land! Once more, as Sir John French's dispatches eloquently tell us, the gallant British Fusiliers are covering themselves with glory, as in every battle in which thev have fought for their King and country; but the proudest page in their annals is still that which tells the Ktorv of their prowess one May day, in \H{[, when in such dramatic fashion they' rescued Beresford's army from annihilation in the "fierciest, bloodiest and most amazing tight of the Peninsular War." . . General Beresford was besieging the great frontier fortress of Badajos when the swift coming of Soult's army from Seville compelled him to raise the siege and face the oncoming enemy; and when dawn came on May 16th, it found the two forces face to face, separated only hv a shallow river—Soult with 24.000 war-hardened veterans; Beresford with onlv 7,000 British soldiers, supplemented by 23,000 Spanish and Portuguese., half-trained, half-starved, and wholly demoralised. It was a mad enterprise on the part of the British army. Beresford, if he had been a wise general, would have retreated; but a passion for fighting was in his Irish blood, mid he knew that the Englishmen, who had had no part in recent .battles, were 'spoiling for a njjht. THE ENEMY PREPARES A SURPRISE. Re-yarding the bridge as the key of his position, he occupied the village with a strong force and covered the bridge with his batteries. The remainder ot hi*armv he placed on a crescentshaped ridge overlooking it and screened in front by a low, wooded hill, which afforded excellent shelter for an attack' int armv, as Soult was quick to see. During the night the French genera stealthily placed 15,000 of his men and 3C gun*' behind this hill within halt a mile of the unsuspecting British forces, and awaited the dawu with supreme confidence.

At nine o'clock the next morning, after a feigned attack on the bridge, Soult launched his thunderbolt on beresford's right, feebly held by the Spaniards too exhausted to fight, almost to flv Up the ridge the French men poured irresistibly the artillery sweeping the Spanish ranks with lire. At intervals ten thousand chassepots hurled the tempests of lead at them; while at their flank regiments of Lancers ami Hussars swept down on them in a gigantic

W Invain did Beresford command the Spaniards to charge: they refused to move a foot, preferring to be killed as thev stood. When in his anger he seized a young standard-hearer in ins powerful arms, and, carrying him titty yards towards the onrushing enemy, planted him there, Hag and all the moment he was released, he rushed back like a rabbit.. A few moments later the encircling torrent was on the Spaniards, and was sweeping them with furious thrusts of bayonet and flash o sword, a broken rabble, over the crest of the hill. Thus in a few minutes halt of Beresford's army was put hors do combat: their dead and fallen strev.cd the ridge in thousands, and victory was in Soult's grasp. A few minutes more, and the whole British army would have been surrounded and annihilated. FOR LOB X HOPES. Such was Beresford's desperate plight, when the first of three gallant attempts to save the day was made the last of which was destined, when all hope of victory seemed dead, to torn disaster into a glorious victory Hie first of these three great attacks, each a miiacle of British heroism, was made by the second division led, in person, IjV General Stewart, as valiant a soldier as ever led a forlorn hope in batt.e. When he saw the Spaniards put to rii"ht and slaughtered like a drove ot helpless sheep, he rushed his brigade up me hill at breathless speed through a hurricane of shot from the 1' lench h»tteries, and a tempest ot rain which smidelilv hurst on the hillside, and «il.i the drifting clouds of smoke mad. it impossible to see anything twenty yjm.» ahead. ... . , When the fog slightly lifted, the attackers found themselves faced b\ a harrier of steel and flame, the massed infantrv of France; the merciless scythe of death mowed them down in hundreds; and at the same moment ab-vc the roar of cannon and the tumult ol battle, they heard the thunder ol ga.loping boots. . The French horsemen, " hussars ami lancer=, were sweeping down on them like a tornado, hacking and hewing, riding through and over them and crushing them out of existence. Jn me minutes two-thirds of the brigade ware deadordving: the hillside ran red »iii blood. The 31st Regiment alone withstood the shock, in a hastily formed square, around which the storm of carnage iaged as hungry waves leap and rajje around a rock. A GLORIOUS or AND. Through all this inferno of lighting Beresford, a giant in stature and strength, carried a charmed life, mowing down the French horsemen with strokes of his mighty arm. One lancer who charged him he seized by the throat, and lifting him from the saddle dashed him lifeless to the ground. Am! no less brave were two ensigns who carried the colours of their regiments. One was struck down, covered his flag with his body, and defended it until, pierced by a dozen lance-thrusts, he drew Lis labt breath. Another was found dead, the pennon, torn from its staff, hidden beneath his tunic and stiff with his life's blood. Two-thirds of the brigade were down, and still the French horsemen, drunk with the rage of battle.

were sweeping backwards and forwards over the face of the hill, cuttiqg down the survivors.

Then it was while the gallant square of the 31st, still unbroken, held the enemy at bay, that Houghton brought up Ins brigade to the attack :and tin 29th, 48th, and the ">7th surged up the blood-stained hill in his wake. Before they had advanced many yards Houghton fell dead with three bullets in him : but without a moment's check the brigade rushed over his body, a swift moving line of grim-set faces and bayonets up and up the slope, until at last the summit was reached.

Here the on-sweeping wave was brought to a sudden pause by a deep ravine which made further progress impossible. Their position was now periless in the extreme. Across the ravine, jess than fiftv yards distant, the enemy, in massed thousands, began to scourge them with pitiless blasts of lead; the French guns at the same short range were pouring destruction into then ranks and on their Hank they were raked by a tempest of musketrv.

THE "DIE-HARDS." To stay meant annihilation, but not

a man took a backward step, though they were falling faster than leaves in I autumn. Of the 57th, within a few \ minutes, only 430 out of 570 were still standing. Their gallant colonel, Inglis, when he in turn was stricken down riddled with bullets, called out, "Die hard! my men, die hard!'' and raising himself on his elbow he watched witn proud eyes his brave men drop like himself until he fell back a dead man. Ever since that glorious hour when the 57th fell in ranks exactly as they had stood, looking death in the face with fearless eyes, the 57th have borne the proud name of the "Die-hards," and have proved their title to it on many a later field of battle.

Though they had shot their last bullets Houghton's men still refused to yield. A few minutes more and the last of them would be struck down. At this horrible crisis even Beresford's brave heart failed him, and he was about to give the order for a retreat which would certainly have meant the entire destruction of his remaining force, when the matter was dramatically taken out of his hand by a man more daring and masterful than himself —Colonel Hardinge, a soldier who was later to win many laurels in war, and who was now attached to the Portuguese Army. Cole had opportunely arrived on th« scene of battle from Badajos with seme Portuguese troops and two regiments of Fusiliers, the 7th and the 23rd; and Hardinge, galloping up to him, urged him to make a third attack on the hill while Abercombie's brigade swept round its flank. It was the last chance of averting a terrible disaster, and Beresford, though he expected nothing to come of it, gave his consent. While Abercombie's men moved swiftly round the base of the hill, Cole led his Fusiliers straight towards its summit at the moment when the French Lancers, with exultant cries, were rushing on the square of the 31st, to scatter the last remnant of Houghton's brigade to the winds. ASTOUNDING INFANTRY. Up the hill slopes heaped with corpses, the two regiments swept through the fog which had now fallen like a pall on the scene of so much carnage. It was an intensely dramatic moment. Suddenly through the fog the Frenchmen saw the long red line of Cole s Fusiliers advancing swiftly on their right, and on their left a long gleam of bayonets—Abercombie's brigade—and at the sight, so unexpected and so menacing, the jubilant cries died down. A moment they stood still, then, stung to action, after emptying their muskets at the swiftly closing in lines, they made a desperate attempt to enlarge their front. Too late, however. The British ranks, swept by the torrent of bullets, never wavered for an instant. Pouring in volley after volley they literally hurled themselves at the enemy, with shouts which struck terror into every Frenchman. •• In vain did Soult, by voice and gesture, seek to animate his men; in vain did the hardiest veterans break from the crowded column and sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open on such a fair field; in vain did the ni;iw itself bear up. and. fiercely striving, gre indiscriminately on friends and foes, while the horsemen, hovering on the flanks, threatened to charge the advancing line. Nothing could stop that astounding infantry. Up and up the hill they swept the enemy, resistlessly, remorsely, striking them down ns they went in a veritable fury of slaughter—up the last steeps until they hurled the survivors over its crest and flung them in panic flight down the other side.

The day was saved, the hill was ours; but at what a cost! Within an area, a hundred yards square, near the summit seven thousand dead men lay—from base to crest the whole ridge was red with blood. In one company of the Fusiliers every officer down to the corporals was killed: one rg;mcnt, the 3rd Buffs, emerged from the fight reduced to five officers and IVt men; the rest, 731 in number, had fallen. Well might Soult exclaim, when tolling- the story of this terrible day,

"There is no beating these troops! I turned their right, and pierced their centre: they were everywhere broken, the day was mine and yet they did not know it and would not run '." And tolay sh a century and mo'o ago, the irallan: Fusiliers have still t< learn when thev are beaten, and how io run.