Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  The British, having won the battles of Talana and Elandslaagte, now behaved as if they had lost them. White sent urgent messages to Yule and French to retire on Ladysmith. Death had removed Penn Symons, the most vocal opponent to his plan for consolidating his forces, and he was now more anxious than ever to do what he had wanted to do in the first place: bring his men together at Ladysmith. The Boers had appeared in greater strength than had been predicted, and they had proved themselves such formidable foes that in spite of his victory Yule was in real danger of being cut off and it was obvious that he must extricate himself as quickly as possible; to fall back on Ladysmith made sense. White’s reasons for withdrawing French from Elandslaagte at the same time are less clear, since by remaining where he was French was in an excellent position to cover Yule’s withdrawal.

  With French, reckless and even brilliant exploits were frequently followed by depression and despair; resolute and confident under fire, he seemed to grow fearful in the calm that followed. He had just won, with Hamilton’s help, a complete, crushing victory; now he obeyed the order to withdraw with undue alacrity, tumbling back on Ladysmith so hastily that, as Hamilton later described it, “the withdrawal became a skedaddle: the victorious forces looking over their shoulders at the blank horizon, and the last train especially seeming to be rather filled with fugitives than conquerors.”1 Large quantities of captured stores, arms, and ammunition were simply abandoned. Strangest of all was the abandonment of 30 or 40 Boer prisoners who, to their surprise, were simply left to wander back to their commandos.

  Yule slipped away from Dundee at night, leaving his camp standing with three months’ supply of provisions, large quantities of ammunition, and even the kits of the officers and men. The Town Guard was not told of the move and was left to its fate. And so, too, were the wounded, including General Penn Symons, who died the next day a few hours after the Boers rode in to claim the town and the camp.

  The Boers had been astonished to learn of the British departure from Dundee, but they were quick to occupy the town, and they enjoyed the looting. Deneys Reitz described it:

  Soon 1,500 men were whooping through the streets, and behaving in a very undisciplined manner. Officers tried to stem the rush, but we were not to be denied, and we plundered shops and dwelling houses, and did considerable damage before the Commandants and Field-Cornets were able to restore some semblance of order. It was not for what we got out of it, for we knew that we could carry little or nothing away with us, but the joy of ransacking other people’s property is hard to resist, and we gave way to the impulse. My brother and I ... brought away enough food for a royal feast, and after living on half-cured biltong for all these days, we made up for lost time.

  There was not only the town to be looted, but there was a large military camp standing abandoned on the outskirts, and here were entire streets of tents, and great stacks of tinned and other foodstuffs, and, knowing the meagre way in which our men were fed and equipped, I was astonished at the numberless things an English army carried with it in the field.2

  One burgher was seen riding out of Dundee with a bicycle strapped to his horse. News of the looting put the commandant-general into a rage, for he had a horror of such thievery. Joubert stormed at his men, accusing them of being more interested in looting than in fighting. He berated the Johannesburg Commando for allowing Yule and his men to escape from Dundee. He found reasons to quarrel with Lucas Meyer and Prinsloo. There seemed hardly enough wrath to go around, but he found time and sufficiently cooled his temper to write a letter of condolence to the widow of General Penn Symons.

  Sixty-seven-year-old Piet Joubert, the “Hero of Majuba,” was a man who had had military fame thrust upon him. He was basically a pacifist —“Blood is precious. I hate to waste it,” he once said—and he was not really a good general. He never claimed to be. He gave credit for his victories to God—where perhaps the credit belonged. Once when he was introduced as a great general, he brushed this claim aside, saying, “Heaven won my battles.” He was short (5 feet 7 inches tall), broad, and rather stout, and his voice was high, almost a falsetto. A chronic corn-plainer, continually drawing up lists of grievances, he took criticism badly and was sometimes vindictive. It is difficult to reconcile vanity and ambition with humility in the character of one man, yet such were to be found in this energetic, quarrelsome, intelligent, soft-hearted, self-educated man.

  By Boer standards Joubert was rich. He was an able farmer who owned all or part of some thirty farms; he was also an astute businessman and a successful speculator in gold shares. At the age of thirty-four he had been elected to the volksraad, at one time serving as its chairman, and for one period of fourteen months he had served as acting president of the republic. Next to Kruger he was the most popular politician in the Transvaal; even the uitlanders thought well of him, for he understood the Johannesburg financiers and speculators and had been their champion in the volksraad debates.

  In 1884 he briefly resigned his position as commandant-general. On leaving office he turned in his revolver, sabre, and field glasses, which were the property of the government. The government made him a present of the field glasses and the sabre; the revolver was given to his wife, Hendrina, sometimes called the “real” commandant-general. Gaunt, small-boned, tight-lipped, about the same age as her husband, she wore steel-rimmed glasses and held herself stiffly erect. Fort Hendrina in the Zoutpansberg district was named after her. Piet Joubert had been twenty-one years old when he was called on commando for a war with the Bakwena tribe; he was already married and Hendrina was pregnant, but it was then that she established the pattern of accompanying her husband to war. She gave birth to their child, the first of eight, in a laager during the campaign. Although Joubert was appalled by the number of women who were with the commandos in Natal and issued strict orders for all to be sent home, it did not occur to him-and probably not to anyone else —that this should include Hendrina.

  Joubert had won most of his wars with the Bantu by surrounding his enemies and then waiting for them to surrender. This took time, but it saved lives and was effective. He now proposed to do the same with the British, and General White was accommodating him by drawing into sleepy, dusty little Ladysmith all the British forces in Natal—about 13,000 men.

  Ladysmith was named after the wife of Sir Harry Smith, an exotic Spanish girl whom he had met when she sought his protection after the battle of Badajoz in 1812. As The Times History described it, there was nothing exotic about the town:

  It is a quaint little place, Ladysmith, just a little tin-roofed township nestling in one of the dips of the vast rolling hills; hugging a kopje and a deep-delved stream, and shaded by a few green trees standing out pleasantly amid the bare veld-a town of two parallel streets and a few detached villas, that is all.

  It was an ideal place for a peacetime cantonment area and supply depot, situated on the main line from Durban to Johannesburg beside the Klip River in the centre of northern Natal. It was not, however, an easy place to defend, sitting as it did on a small plain surrounded by hills which were too far away to be included in a defensive perimeter but close enough for an enemy to mount guns on them.

  All the world was soon to know of this small town, now filled to overflowing with troops, stores, and ordnance. There was a cantonment 2 miles out, and in the town itself every public building had been requisitioned by the army; schoolhouses and churches bulged with boxes, bales, and sacks, and hourly trains arrived from Durban with more supplies. They would be needed, for Joubert was closing in. French’s cavalry patrols had had several skirmishes, and the enemy could be seen constructing gun emplacements on Pepworth Hill about 5 miles north-northeast of the town.

  By 29 October White had collected all his forces at Ladysmith. The Boers were taking up positions in the surrounding hills but had not yet completed their investment of the town: the Transvaalers were in the hills on the north and east, but the Free Staters were not yet in their places. White decided to launch an elaborate,
large-scale attack on both forces and break up their line before they could complete their arrangements. The orders he issued for this event were so vague that it is difficult to understand in detail exactly what he intended to do. Called the battle of Ladysmith, it was actually three distinct engagements, often designated as separate battles. For the British, the entire operation was an unmitigated disaster.

  Early on the morning of 30 October a brigade under Colonel Geof frey Grimwood Grimwood was flung at Long Hill, about 5 miles northeast of the town. Although this was thought to be held by the enemy, no Boers were there; the British had attacked a deserted kopje. Once on Long Hill, the brigade came under a heavy flanking fire from Pepworth Hill just west of it. Grimwood, although he had seen considerable action in India, appears to have become hopelessly confused and unnerved; he was unable to remember where his men were positioned, and he issued no orders at all. French, who was supposed to have his cavalry to the right of this brigade, ended up in the wrong position and got into difficulties.

  Also from Pepworth Hill a “Long Tom” opened fire on Ladysmith, causing near-panic among the civilians. White had no heavy artillery with which to reply, but, dramatically, in the midst of the battle a train from Durban carrying 280 sailors from HMS Powerful with four 12-pounders and two 4.6-inch guns pulled into the Ladysmith station. Although these were immediately put into action, they were not enough to turn the tide of battle. Everywhere the British troops were pinned down by the Boers’ firepower and unable to come to grips with or even to see their enemies. By the end of the morning the attack had so hopelessly bogged down that White decided to withdraw.

  The infantry, which had had quite enough of the Boer musketry, was more than willing; the retreat, far from orderly, was almost a rout, and the Boers’ rifle and artillery fire increased as the soldiers stood up and turned their backs on them. French’s cavalry also beat a fast and disorderly retreat, riding back in a mass as fast as their horses would carry them. Throughout it all the British artillerymen behaved with great gallantry, the gunners standing by their guns while the infantry flowed past and behind them. Now was the moment for the Boers to charge, and Joubert’s officers begged him to mount his men and pursue the enemy, but he refused, telling them that when God offers a finger it is not right to claim the whole hand.

  Depressed as White was by the check he had received, he still did not know the worst. The night before the attack he had sent a force under Lieutenant Colonel Frank Carleton north on the Newcastle road with orders “to occupy the kopjes on each side of the pass at the north end of Nicholson’s Nek to keep the enemy from the left flank of the main force.” Although Carleton had been in the army for twenty-six years, he had never seen a battle. His force consisted of six companies (520 men) of his own Royal Irish Fusiliers, five and a half companies (450 men) of the Gloucestershire Regiment and No. 10 Mountain Battery (140 men). In addition to the mules of the mountain battery there were another 100 pack mules carrying extra ammunition, a Maxim machine gun, two heliographs, and several kegs of water. The men leading the mules were simple soldiers and not experienced muleteers.

  Siege of LADYSMITH

  2 Nov. 1819- 28 Feb. 1900

  This force was late in leaving Ladysmith and slow in moving. By 2:00 A.M. Carleton, having decided that they would be unable to reach Nicholson’s Nek before first light, even though it was only 2 miles away, turned off the road to the left to take up a position on Tchrengula Hill, the Irish Fusiliers leading the way and the Gloucesters bringing up the rear, the mules and the mountain battery between them. Three or four hundred yards from the road the hillside turned steep, and in the dark the soldiers tripped and stumbled over the loose rock as they climbed. The leading Fusiliers had reached the crest, the Gloucesters were still on the road below, when disaster struck the column: the mules stampeded.

  The exact cause of the stampede is unknown, but it started with the leading mules just behind the Fusiliers. Terror-stricken, they came kicking and squealing down the rocky slope in their headlong flight, throwing small boulders before them onto the mules and soldiers below. They crashed into the mountain battery and spread their mindless panic. Within minutes almost every mule in the column was thundering down the hill towards the Gloucesters. The terror of the mules was communicated to the men, some of whom came running down shouting, “Boer cavalry!”

  The perplexed Gloucesters fixed bayonets and stood in the road, not knowing the nature of the danger or what to expect. Some nervous men in the rear fired off a few wild rounds, adding to the confusion. Then the frenzied mules crashed into them. Soldiers were knocked down, thrown into the ditch, trampled on, and then the mules were gone in a clatter of hooves, the splintering of ammunition boxes sounding behind them as they disappeared down the road.

  After strenuous efforts on the part of the officers, the men were calmed and brought under control, although some 40 Gloucesters and 70 gunners appear to have run with the mules; they drifted into Ladysmith the next morning. The remainder were at last got to the top of Tchrengula, but the water kegs and heliographs were gone; a few mules had been saved, but there were only twenty rounds per man of reserve ammunition, and although the Gloucesters managed to save their Maxim, there were not enough parts left in the mountain battery to assemble even one gun. Carleton ought now to have retreated, but he was understandably reluctant to go back and tell White that he had been defeated by his own mules.

  Like many South African kopjes, Tchrengula was fairly flat on top and of irregular shape. Carleton’s force occupied the southern end of the hill, but not the higher northern end, which was not even reconnoitred. The men had no entrenching tools, so they began to construct stone sangers (breastworks) in front of their positions. Carleton’s march had been undetected by the Boers until the uproar caused by the stampeding mules alerted them. Then they at once began to close in. At dawn, about 4:45 A.M., the first shots were fired.

  One of the axioms of British musketry training held that soldiers ought not to be allowed to fire their weapons independently but only in volleys on orders of an officer when the enemy appeared in masses. A few soldiers did shoot at dodging, ducking, creeping Boers, but they were ordered to stop. Lieutenant William Temple saw the Johannesburg Police galloping across the valley below him in small groups; it was an irresistible target, and he opened fire with the Maxim, but he was at once ordered to stop.

  Relentlessly the Boers closed in on Carleton’s force and, mounting the high northern end of the hill, poured a hot fire into the Gloucesters on that side. All morning the soldiers huddled behind their sangers while the Boer musketry, according to one of the officers present, played on them “like a garden hose on a flower bed.” Under the cover of their fire the Boers stalked closer and closer.

  Carleton tried to get word of his predicament to White: an unsuccessful attempt was made to fashion a heliograph from a biscuit tin; signal flags were wagged at the observation balloon which floated “serene and unresponsive” over Ladysmith. At noon he received a heliographed order : “Retire on Ladysmith as opportunity offers.” But this was no longer possible. There would be no opportunity.

  By 12:30 P.M. Company B of the Gloucesters had taken so many casualties that Lieutenant Charles Knox ran back to get reinforcements. On the way he saw a group of Boers drawing in on the flank of an unsuspecting unit commanded by Captain Stephen Willcock. Knox shouted and waved his arms to alert them, but he was too far away for his words to be heard, and Willcock interpreted his signals as an order to retire; he passed the message to Companyy C. As the men in Company C left the safety of their sangers to fall back across the open grass slope behind them, the Boers closed in and poured a merciless fire into their backs. Out of 83 men in the company, 13 were killed and 23 wounded; nearly all were losses suffered during the retirement.

  At one isolated outpost on the hill Captain Stuart Duncan, finding himself amid a shambles of dead and wounded men, tied a white towel to his sword and held it up in surrender. Carleton, informed of
it, hesitated. He had considered trying to cut his way out with the bayonet, but he had seen in the distance some of White’s defeated men streaming back into Ladysmith and he knew that within an hour his own ammunition supply would be exhausted. He ordered a bugler to sound the “Cease Fire.” The bugler was so nervous that he had to try several times before he could produce a note, and when he finally succeeded the call was so quavering and unclear that later it gave rise to a rumour that a Boer had sounded the call. The Irish Fusiliers had been only lightly engaged and could hardly be made to believe that the entire force had been surrendered. Some of them went on firing for several minutes. Some of their officers broke their swords in angry indignation. But it was all over.

  The soldiers were disarmed; it was time to count the dead and tend the wounded. Estimates of the size of the Boer force vary wildly from 200 to 2,000, though the evidence seems to indicate that the true figure was nearer the former than the latter. Boer losses were said to be only 4 killed and 5 wounded. British casualties were 38 killed and 105 wounded; nearly 1,000 soldiers were made prisoner. Not in a century had so many British soldiers laid down their arms and surrendered to a foe.

  Both Christiaan de Wet (at this stage in the war a commandant) and his brother Piet were present at this battle, which the Boers called “Little Majuba.” Christiaan de Wet remembered the cries of those who had fallen: “The condition of the wounded touched my heart deeply. It was pitiable to hear them cry ‘Water! Water!’ ”3 It was the middle of a summer afternoon; Boers and Britons had been fighting since dawn, and all were parched, for neither side had water. The Boers did what they could for the wounded, then they sang a hymn of praise and marched their prisoners down the hill on the first stage of their journey to prison in Pretoria. Captain Gerard Rice, adjutant of the 1st Irish Fusiliers, had been wounded and was carried down from the hill on the back of a giant Boer; he was astonished when the man refused the gold piece offered him for this piece of humanity. The British still had much to learn about their foes.