by Celia Sandys
Also watching the battle through a telescope was Churchill’s companion from his days in Estcourt, John Atkins of the Manchester Guardian. War correspondents, while not usually privy to the larger designs, sometimes have a better grasp of the immediate situation than the generals. Atkins certainly had a better understanding than Warren: ‘that acre of massacre,’ he wrote, ‘that complete shambles, at the top of a rich green gully with cool granite walls . . . To me it seemed that our men were all in a small square patch; there were brown men and browner trenches, the whole like an over-ripe barley-field. I saw three shells strike a certain trench within a minute, each struck it full in the face, and the brown dust rose and drifted away with the white smoke.’
Major-General Lyttelton, Warren’s second Brigade Commander, had so far played no part in the battle. As part of Buller’s two-pronged plan, he had been waiting to assault at Potgieter’s Drift after Warren’s operations at Tritchardt’s Drift had outflanked the Boers. At around midday, on his own initiative and with no reference to Warren, he sent the 60th Rifles to capture a feature called Twin Peaks some two miles to the east of Spion Kop. Troops holding this position could make life difficult for the Boers on Aloe Knoll, thereby relieving pressure on the summit. Even as the 60th were climbing the steep slopes, confusion almost resulted in their immediate withdrawal. One of Lyttelton’s staff officers on the summit had signalled that the Boers were holding Twin Peaks and that the 60th’s attempt could hardly succeed. Fortunately for the broader picture, but unfortunately for himself and for many others, the commanding officer, Colonel Riddle, who was to be killed during the assault, ignored the repeated order to withdraw, and by late that afternoon the peaks were in British hands. The cost was high: a hundred casualties. Eventually, as dusk fell, the message to withdraw was acknowledged, and the 6oth abandoned Twin Peaks. They had, though, achieved their purpose, and the Boers who had been holding the position fled, taking with them some of the artillery and leaving a gaping hole in the Boer defences.
Following Crofton’s alarming note from the battleground, Warren sent Major-General Coke with three battalions as reinforcements. One of these battalions, the Middlesex, provided welcome relief at a crucial time. But Coke himself, who had been ordered to assume overall command on Spion Kop, never reached the scene, and appears not to have influenced the battle at all.
Meanwhile, on the summit, Thorneycroft had been on the go for well over twenty-four hours, and under hellish fire for the best part of a day. During the afternoon large shells from the Boer artillery were falling on the hilltop at the rate of seven a minute, while pompoms raked the ground with smaller explosive shells. Apart from his promotion to command, Thorneycroft had heard nothing from Warren, and was unaware that Coke’s reinforcements were on the way. He was also unaware of the preparations, albeit dilatory, being made to manhandle artillery to the summit, and to send up water, ammunition and stretcher-bearers. At 2.30 in the afternoon he sent a note telling Warren that he required more infantry and for the enemy guns to be attacked if Spion Kop was to be held though the night. He added that many of his men had been killed or wounded, and that the need for water was urgent.
The message passed through Coke, who though he was well short of the summit and had no first-hand information of his own, added the astonishing reassurance: ‘We appear to be holding our own.’ As a result, Warren received conflicting and confusing information. Everything appeared to be in chaos.
This was the moment at which General Warren could have personally influenced events for the better by going forward, finding out what was happening, and ensuring that Thorneycroft was aware of the importance of hanging on. He could have explained that the measures already in hand would enable the British forces to exploit the capture of Spion Kop, whereas any faltering at this stage could throw away everything which had been gained earlier that day. His appearance on the scene would have raised morale at a crucial moment. The foot of Spion Kop was no more than half an hour’s ride from Warren’s headquarters at Three Tree Hill. Had he ordered his horse to be saddled, the day could have been saved.
Although Warren was disinclined to exert much influence, there was, in the words of Thomas Pakenham, ‘one self-appointed messenger who might have turned the balance in favour of the British . . . It was young Winston Churchill instinctively taking over the role of general.’ That day Churchill’s regiment were left out of the battle, and by four in the afternoon he could no longer contain his frustration.
He had been watching events unfold from Mount Alice, which, as can be seen from photographs taken in 1900, was then a bare hill affording an unhindered view of the surrounding country. Now, because of overgrazing and the elimination of game, the hill is covered by a mass of tangled bush and aloe trees. Pushing through the thorns, I arrived at the top. Here a memorial and the grave of Colonel Riddle mark the spot from where Buller and his staff had attempted to influence the battle. Even though it is now covered in bush, the hill still affords a magnificent view of Spion Kop, six miles away across the Tugela River, and I pictured my grandfather observing the shambles on that dreadful day.
The summit of Spion Kop dominates the surrounding features. Troops in firm possession of it would have made the containing Boer positions untenable. But, badly positioned, their chain of command confused, and inadequately supported by artillery, the British troops had been anything but firm. It needed little imagination to comprehend their plight, under fire from Twin Peaks and Aloe Knoll to their right, Conical Hill in front of them, and Green Hill and Tabanyama on their left.
The importance of Twin Peaks was obvious, and it was easy to understand why Lyttelton had ordered its capture. His faith in the 60th must have been absolute, as I would not have believed that anyone could have climbed those precipitous slopes under fire had Colonel Riddle and his men not succeeded in that seemingly impossible task. The order for their withdrawal seemed incomprehensible now, though clearly it had not during the confusion of the battle.
I could imagine Buller’s frustration as he watched impotently from Mount Alice. I could see an impatient Churchill swinging himself into the saddle and cantering down the slope towards the sound of gunfire to discover for himself what was happening.
Accompanied by a fellow officer, Captain Brooke, Churchill arrived at the ambulance village, between Warren’s headquarters at Three Tree Hill and the summit of Spion Kop. Here they tethered their horses and continued on foot.
Up to this point Churchill, in describing the battle, had fewer advantages than he normally enjoyed over other correspondents. As a combatant as well as a correspondent he was usually well placed to describe events and comment authoritatively on them. But on this occasion, the first part of his dispatch on the battle was written from distant observation and information gleaned at second hand. From the moment he reached the ambulance village, his dispatch changes in tone: ‘perhaps the reader will allow me to break into a more personal account of what followed’.
The idiom of Churchill’s dispatches is Victorian, yet even a century after the events he describes, when television has deadened the senses, his description of battle conjures genuine excitement. Short, staccato sentences are set against melodious passages, reflecting the contrast between sharp engagements and the strategic ebb and flow of the wider campaign. Aged only twenty-five, he must rank among the great war correspondents. At the turn of the century the vast majority of his readers would have had only a glamorised image of war, and they must have been as shocked by his dispatches as Americans were to be over sixty years later when television brought Vietnam into their living rooms. But in 1900 the British people were deeply patriotic. Bad news simply increased their resolve.
As Churchill and Captain Brooke climbed Spion Kop they passed streams of men coming downhill:
Men were staggering along alone, or supported by comrades, or crawling on hands and knees, or carried on stretchers. Corpses lay here and there . . . I passed about two hundred . . . There was, moreover, a small but ste
ady leakage of unwounded men. Some of these cursed and swore. Others utterly exhausted fell on the hillside in stupor. Others seemed drunk although they had had no liquor . . . stray bullets struck all over the ground, while the Maxim shell guns scourged the flanks of the hill and the sheltering infantry at regular intervals of a minute.
I scrambled with my young son up the track which his great-grandfather had climbed a century before. Under a lowering sky we surveyed the scene of the carnage through which Churchill had crawled under shot and shell. Spion Kop is the most evocative of battlefields. The main British trench, which photographs taken the day after the battle show piled with dead, is marked by a long, curved mound with a low wall of white stones. It is the mass grave of the men who fell defending it. Monuments to regiments and individuals are silhouetted against the sky.
The summit of the hill is really a plateau, and I could see why the mist had caused mistakes in laying out the British position, thus leaving vital ground unoccupied. Twin Peaks and Aloe Knoll menaced the site from the left. Conical Hill was uncomfortably close in front. Green Hill and Tabanyama, though further away, added to the threat. On the crest line, only a few yards ahead, had been the forward Boer positions. The ground is hard and rocky; even with adequate tools it would have been difficult to dig satisfactory trenches. The shallow scrapes and piled rocks would have provided little protection from the Boer field guns and maxims.
And yet the British troops hung on. 24 January must have been their longest day. With hindsight it is clear that they should have prevailed. That was the conclusion my grandfather had reached by the time he decided to return and report to General Warren.
* * *
Churchill arrived in Warren’s headquarters to find a debate in progress. The artillery were saying that they could not get their guns to the summit. The naval gunners, whom Buller had put at Warren’s disposal, said they would try. Churchill’s account of the dispute in My Early Life is at odds with that of Captain Levita, an officer on Warren’s staff, who records Warren’s irritation at what he considered Churchill’s unwarranted intrusion. Churchill began to harangue the General, and Levita overheard him saying the words ‘Majuba Hill’ and ‘the great British public’ before Warren shouted, ‘Who is this man? Take him away. Put him in arrest.’ Eventually Warren was prevailed upon to listen to the bearer of bad news, and to allow Churchill to return to the summit with a message.
Churchill’s account, by contrast, simply records that he was listened to ‘with great patience and attention’, after which he returned to the summit bearing the news, authenticated by a written message from Levita, that reinforcements, water, ammunition, food, sandbags and the guns were on their way.
His second, solitary journey to the summit was even more hair-raising than the first:
The darkness was intense. The track was stony and uneven. It was hopelessly congested with ambulances, stragglers and wounded men . . . an intermittent crackle of musketry . . . Only one solid battalion remained – the Dorsets . . . Stragglers and weaklings there were in plenty. But the mass of the soldiers were determined men . . . Regimental officers everywhere cool and cheery, each with a little group of men around him . . . But the darkness and broken ground paralysed everyone.
Churchill found Thorneycroft, handed over the message and explained the plans for guns and reinforcements. When he asked for Thorneycroft’s views he discovered that the decision to abandon the summit had already been taken. There had been some argument, of which Churchill was probably unaware, as he did not mention it in any of his accounts of the withdrawal. Two commanding officers had agreed to the withdrawal, but Colonel Hill of the Middlesex Regiment had refused. He considered himself senior to Thorneycroft, and did not believe that the latter had been placed in command. Coke, who had not been told by Warren of Thorneycroft’s elevation, supported Hill. But the will of the strongest man prevailed, as it had throughout the long and difficult day, and Thorneycroft’s decision was accepted.
In a final attempt to persuade Thorneycroft to hang on, Churchill suggested that he return to Warren once more. Thorneycroft, physically and mentally exhausted, replied that it would be better to have six battalions safely off the hill than to have them mopped up in the morning. So the trek down the hill began.
Thorneycroft was not to know that the Boers had also accepted defeat. During the day many of them had slunk away, leaving a handful, tormented by the sun and the pitiful cries of the wounded, to hold off the British. Sometime before midnight the remaining Boers withdrew. A seventeen-year-old boy, Deneys Reitz, was one of the last to leave. Later, in his classic account of the Boer War, Commando, he wrote that they withdrew, ‘fully believing that in the morning the British would be streaming through the gap to the relief of Ladysmith’.
So, in the darkness Spion Kop was abandoned by both sides to the dead and wounded. Leaving in opposite directions were two young men, then opponents but later both to command British regiments in Flanders in the First World War: Deneys Reitz and Winston Churchill.
As Churchill and Thorneycroft left the hill they came upon the Dorsets, the reserve battalion which had come up with Coke, still not deployed. Thorneycroft hesitated at the sight of these fresh troops, but for all he knew the Boers had reoccupied the summit, so he continued his descent. They next met the reinforcements coming up, with a written message from Warren telling Thorneycroft to entrench himself by morning. Thorneycroft brandished his walking stick – he was suffering from a twisted ankle – and ordered the reinforcements to turn back.
It took some time for Churchill to find his way in the darkness to Warren’s headquarters. Years later he recounted: ‘The General was asleep. I put my hand on his shoulder and woke him up. “Colonel Thorneycroft is here, sir.” He took it all very calmly. He was a charming old gentleman. I was genuinely sorry for him. I was also sorry for the army.’
The following morning, two burghers found the summit deserted. Botha’s prediction that the situation could be retrieved had been proved correct, and now the Boers reoccupied the position in strength. Reitz records that in the shallow British trenches ‘the soldiers lay dead in swathes, and in places they were piled three deep . . . There must have been six hundred dead men on this strip of earth.’ Botha sent a flag of truce inviting the British to gather their wounded and bury their dead, tasks in which his men assisted. A Boer doctor, surveying the carnage, paid a tribute to British discipline when he commented, ‘We Boers would not, could not suffer like this.’
Among the dead was a young man, a contemporary of Churchill at Harrow, who had hailed him the evening before as he crossed the pontoon over the Tugela. His shattered field glasses bore the name M’Corquodale: ‘The name and the face flew together in my mind. It was the last joined subaltern of Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry – joined in the evening, shot at dawn.’
On 25 and 26 January the whole of Buller’s army withdrew across the Tugela. He had lost 1,733 men killed, wounded or captured. Absolutely nothing had been gained, except that, from Buller downwards, the army had perhaps learned something about modern war.
With hindsight, the Battle of Spion Kop had a huge potential to alter the shape of the twentieth century. There on the battlefield, within a mile of one another, were three men destined for greatness: Louis Botha, the Boer General; a young Indian lawyer, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was organising the Natal stretcher-bearers; and Winston Churchill, the intrepid British adventurer. What a difference one or two or three stray bullets would have made to the history of three continents and the world beyond!
Writing to Pamela Plowden afterwards, Churchill described his ‘five very dangerous days – continually under shell & rifle fire and once the feather in my hat was cut through by a bullet’. To him, nothing was more satisfying than a risk successfully run. Pamela had urged him to come home, to which he replied: ‘My place is here: here I stay – perhaps for ever.’ Small wonder she married another man. At this stage in his life Churchill would have made a very unsatisfact
ory husband.
To his Morning Post readers Churchill wrote that the British people could regard the battle with equal pride and sadness: ‘It redounds to the honour of the soldiers, though not greatly to that of the generals.’ He tempered this criticism by reminding his public that the generals were, ‘after all, brave, capable, noble English gentlemen, trying their best’. Certainly, during their long service, most of them had proved their valour, but at Spion Kop their capabilities were in serious doubt. However, because there were no substitutes to hand, Churchill was not about to undermine them completely in the public eye.
Churchill had failed in his self-appointed mission to turn the tide of battle, but in war soldiers can be more fairly judged by their efforts than by the outcome, which turns on so many unknowns. And, after all, Churchill was only an irregular Lieutenant. Had any of the generals, from Buller downwards, shown even a fraction of his resolution, the British would have triumphed at Spion Kop.
THIRTEEN
Into Ladysmith
‘I knew all the generals and other swells, had access to everyone, and was everywhere well received.’
WINSTON CHURCHILL, My Early Life
YEARS LATER, EVEN AFTER HE had held high political office – Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty and Chancellor among others – Churchill would regard the two months he spent fighting for the relief of Ladysmith as among the happiest memories of his life. Even his dispatch of 4 February 1900, the first after the fiasco of Spion Kop, reflects this, extolling the pleasures of the soldier’s life and comparing it with that of those in a ‘civilised city who . . . gained luxury at the expense of joy’. The young correspondent had enough experience of life in the round to know that there were many city-dwellers for whom the merest form of luxury was unknown – but they would not be readers of the Morning Post. Those, he judged, needed a cheerful message after the recent disaster, and not a harbinger of further sacrifice.
