Awarded for Valour_ A History of the Victoria Cross and the Evolution of the British Concept of Heroism

FIFTY YEARS ON: A HALF-CENTURY OF HEROISM 109
to mind without much effort. The phenomenon reached its epitome (or
perhaps nadir) during the Boer War with the citation of the Honourable
Frederick Sherston Roberts:
On 15 December 1899 at the Battle of Colenso, South Africa, Lieutenant
Roberts, with several others, tried to save the guns of the 14th and 66th
batteries, Royal Field Artillery, when the detachment serving the guns
had all become casualties or had been driven from their guns. Some of
the horses and drivers were sheltered in a donga about 500 yards behind
the guns and the intervening space was swept with shell and rifle fire.
Lieutenant Roberts with two other officers helped to hook a team into
a limber and then to limber up a gun. While doing so, he fell badly
wounded and later died of his wounds.^41
The citation is a direct contradiction of the eyewitness account given by
Captain Walter Norris Congreve – for that matter it embellishes substantially
Buller’s original dispatch on the event. As discussed in the previous chapter,
Buller changed official reality to atone for the order that killed Freddy
Roberts. This practice was rare during the nineteenth century. The coming
Great War would offer more opportunities as the Victorian ideal floundered
to its death in 1914 and 1915.